I quite like the concept of writing posts in the form of a series, either sequentially over several days or by releasing each edition at a set time, for example weekly. The concept of posting a topic as a serial is not new and can be a great tactic to entice your visitors back. Of course the content of the series needs to be such that it lends itself to serial release and is written well enough to encourage return visits. This WordPress plugin makes the process of series writing so much easier.

The WordPress plugin is In Series from Rem State and to quote their blurb:

[source]In Series is a plugin that lets you write series of posts in WordPress, without having to deal with the hassle of manually writing up tables of contents or “next” and “previous” links in each post. It adds a new set of controls to the post editing screen, allowing you to add the post to a series (new or existing), re-order the post within a series it’s already in, or remove the post from a series entirely

When writing a series using this WordPress plugin you can smoothly connect all the parts with relevant links. This of course is a very useful SEO strategy for internal link building.

If you like the idea of writing posts as a series then this WordPress plugin is for you. It is easy to install, easy to use, and makes the life of a content writer so much easier.

This latest blog plugin for WordPress, Photo Dropper, allows you to search for Creative Commons photos on Flickr and, with one click, add them into your posts.

As with most WordPress blog plugins, just download the file and upload it into your plugin directory. Once activated go to to the Photo Dropper options. For commercial use you will need to select the commercial use option - this restricts the photos in the search to those allowed for commercial use.

The Photo Dropper blog plugin is accessed through the ‘Write Post’ window. Enter in your search text and Photo Dropper will search through Flickr and return thumbnails of those images marked as Creative Commons. You can preview the photo full size and then add the photo to your post with a single click. You can add the photo as either a small, medium or large image. Photo dropper will also add the photos attributes below the image.

Flickr has one of the largest collections of photos online. Creative commons photos are photos that the owners have marked for public use at no cost. For more information on Creative Commons  I suggest you read Skelliewag’s article on Creative Commons and the use of Flickr photos - this is the best article on this topic that I have read in quite some time.

This blog plugin has to be one of the best so far for 2008. It is very useful and I can foresee a lot of blogs now starting to include images in future posts.

Our previous post on WordPress Tips looked at decreasing the time it took to load and run the PHP code together with plugins and widgets. Today we will take another look at the sidebars but first, one of the biggest enemies to time when it comes to loading a page, graphics.

Graphics, particularly the memory hungry high resolution photos can take forever to load. Just visit some of the celebrity sites - and grab a coffee while you are waiting for it to finish loading. I am sure you have witnessed this effect.

There are a number of ways to sidestep the slow loading. While it may sound obvious, reducing the size of the graphic helps. You can do this using a good graphic editor. If you cannot reduce the size physically, then try reducing the size within the graphics link. You can use either pixels or % and use the <height=”xx”> and <width=”xx”> tags. You can also use a blog plugin like ImageScaler to do the job more efficiently. Another option is to use a plugin that render thumbnails of the image. Hover the mouse over the image and it appears full size. Images are always going to effect the load speed of a blog. The key is to use them wisely.

The second WordPress tip to a faster blog involves the sidebars. WordPress by default allows a maximum of nine text boxes. You do not have to use all nine boxes. Wherever you have related code, for example, banners with links, they can be combined within the one text box. If you have nine text boxes in use, each box is loaded into memory, the code run and the results rendered to the screen - one box at a time. By combining the code into only a few text boxes you will gain extra speed on loading.

These WordPress tips work well to help your blog load faster. What is most important is that you take the time on a regular basis to review your blog. Make sure everything is up to date. Remove what is no longer needed and keep everything optimized for speed.

Some blog plugins are used to enhance the look, feel and functionality of a blog. Other blog plugins work behind the scenes to assist with administrative tasks. This blog plugin does both.

One of the recommendations I frequently hear is that blogs need regular face lifts. Change or update the theme, introduce new colors, new header image - really give your blog a new life. I wont go into the rights or wrongs of this theory in this post, however, should you decide to give your blog a face lift, how are you going to accomplish it?

The normal process is to find a theme or three that you like and upload them into the theme folder. From there you can go to the Theme tab in the administration panel and with one click you have changed theme.

The problem is, themes often look good until you actually load them with your content and your widgets. If you don’t like the look, one click and you have changed to another theme; and another. Finally back to your original theme while you go hunting for more themes.

This is all fine, except for one issue. Your visitors to your site are watching all of this. It certainly doesn’t look to professional. Not only that, it can send visitors away. I had the humorous (at least I thought so at the time) experience of a visitor emailing me and apologizing for any ‘damage’ they had done to my blog. “I don’t know what I did but when I changed pages your blog went all weird” was the email. Of course that was me changing the theme.

This is where the blog plugin ‘Theme Test Drive” comes in. It allows you to change your theme, tweak it, change colors and really play around with a theme all behind the scenes. Your visitors continue to see the old theme until you make the permanent switch. This blog plugin has the added benefit of protecting your blog. You can make all the changes you like in a theme to the point of crashing the theme - your visitors continue on totally unaware and your blog has come to no harm.

To quote the theme’s author:

[source] Theme Test Drive Wordpress plugin allows you to safely test drive any theme on your blog as administrator, while visitors still use the default one. It happens completely transparently and they will not even notice you run a different theme for yourself. Best part is you can even set the testing theme options (if it has them) in the Admin panel while you are testing the theme.

Blog plugins can be very useful. This is one blog plugin that is worth have in your tool chest ready for the day you decide to update your theme.

Yes - another blog plugin to create sitemaps - this one’s a little different. This is a plugin for WordPress that creates a  real sitemap, not an XML sitemap for search engines, this a sitemap for your visitors.

DD Site Map Gen is from Dagon Design and generates a sitemap that can be placed on a dedicated static page. As it uses dynamic code it is constantly being updated. The sitemap can be customized to sort all your posts, all your pages or both your posts and pages. The sitemap can be produced sorted by date and or by category. I find it useful to sort by category first and then date. This produces a very professional looking sitemap in the old list web page list style.

The plugin has language files for English, Albanian, Brazilian-Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. It is very easy to install, configure and use.

A good sitemap like this is one way to instantly produce an enormous number of internal links for blog.

WordPress tips:

If you file posts in more than one category then that post will appear in your sitemap under each category - file a post in three categories and it will appear three times in the sitemap.

Unless you have a large number of pages, by large I mean more than 300, then produce your sitemap on one single page.

Gotbanners is one blog plugin that has several applications. Written specifically for WordPress to counter the banner blindness that can occur when returning visitors see the same banners every day, this plugin is quick to install and quick to configure.

The plugin works by taking the assigned banners and rotating them. Whenever the pages is loaded (or refreshed), the banners are shuffled into a new display order. To configure Gotbanners, simply copy the banners code into the configuration panel, save, and place the widget into your sidebar.

Whilst designed for affiliate 125 x 125 type banners, I can envisage this blog plugin being used for any banner campaign. If you want to promote static pages, competitions, related sites, or any other link; create a series of banners and let Gotbanners do the rest. The plugin is also capable of handling double width columns to display two columns of banners. This WordPress tip will certainly help to avoid any banner blindness.

WordPress is a great program to run a blog on. Every time you write a new post or edit an old post, WordPress pings services you have listed. The problem is, if you are like me, you write a post; publish it; read it and say oh-oh, made a mistake - and go back in to make a few changes. Then you save it again. Some writers think safety first and hit ’save and continue editing’ frequently while writing or editing their post.

The problem is, once a post has been published, WordPress pings those services every time you hit that save button. This could create a situation where your blog gets accused of spamming. The only solution is to make sure your post is perfect before publishing - or use a WordPress plugin that pings without spamming.

There are a few WordPress plugins you could use including MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer which is available from WordPress.org. MaxBlogPress prevents WordPress from pinging until you publish your post. You can edit as often as you require, the post will be pinged only once.

A previous post listed a variety of Blog and Ping sites that can be used to ping your post. You can just select copy and paste into MaxBloPress with the knowledge that each post will only be pinged the once

There are two signature plugin feeds for WordPress that are tremendously helpful. One is for your blog posts and the other is for your RSS feeds. Either one works fine, and you can use both plugins together because your RSS feed subscribers don’t need to visit your blog to read your blog posts. You’ll see why in a minute.

AddSig For WordPress
AddSig from DagonDesign is useful and allows you to add a signature to all of your blog posts without any hassle at all. The drawback to this plugin is you need to install it when you first start using your blog. If you’ve been manually putting your blog signature in all of your posts then you add the AddSig plugin later, you’ll have two signatures at the bottom of all the posts you put your manual signature into. It will look stupid and you’ll have to go in and delete your manual signature. If you start using AddSig and then stop using it later, all of those posts that had your signature put in them will no longer have it. So you either need to use it and stick with it or not use it at all. If you do use it, it’s a great way to brand yourself using your signature.

sig2feed For WordPress
sig2feed by Smackfoo is an even better tool, in my opinion. This plugin allows you to add a signature at the bottom of all of your RSS feeds. The drawback is, in order to use it, you have set WordPress on full feed display rather than summary. If you set it for summary then the signature won’t be seen by your RSS subscribers.

So why would you want to use it then? Because you can use it as an advertising tool to make special offers that go out only to RSS feed subscribers. On your blog somewhere, advertise that your RSS feed subscribers gain the added benefit of reading full blog posts in their feed without having to visit your blog. Many people will sign up for the feed for that reason. If you sell advertising in your RSS feed then you put that advertising in your signature as a text link and Google won’t ding you for that but your subscribers can see it. Be careful though that you don’t overdo this; you’ll lose subscribers.

Also, you can make special offers to your RSS feed subscribers. If you sell things on your blog then you can make special offers that only go out to your feed subscribers. Advertise that on your blog somewhere by letting them know that they’ll get discounts, coupons, and special offers by signing up for your feed. They’ll do it and you place those special offers in your signature.

Now that you’re getting to know more and more about blog marketing, I guess its time that you learn the value of backing up. Much like your PCs and laptops, it is important that you back up your blog database because you’ll never know what could happen. Your WordPress blog database for example contains all your entries, comments, and links that you have gathered throughout the years of blogging and you simply can’t afford to have them deleted just like that — kaput in an instant!

Backing up your blog must be done regularly, the same way you back up your important files. You know what could happen if you don’t—all your entries and photos sent to oblivion. You’ll never know when your web hosting server will crash or your blog gets hacked by some clever programmer whose only goal is to annoy you, so it’s good to be prepared.

Don’t wait until a series of unfortunate events happens to you blog. Get into the habit of backing up by following these simple and easy steps. No, you don’t need to be a geek to do this.

1. Use an FTP client to download all the site files (the Wordpress folder)
2. Log into phpMyAdmin and select your Wordpress database
3. Click on “Export” and make sure that all the Wordpress tables are there
4. On the “Structure” section tick “Add Drop Tables,” “Add AUTO_INCREMENT,” and “Enclose table and field names with backquotes”
5. On the “Data” section leave all the boxes unticked
6. Tick “Save as file” and download the database (you can use compression if your database is big (SOURCE: DailyBlogTips)

If you don’t have access to your WP’s phpMyAdmin, you may use the Database Backup plugin instead. And remember, backing up habits can save your online life. So save the blog, save yourself,save the world.

One useful plugin I’ve found for WordPress is the SRG Clean Archives plugin. Not all blogs need this plugin, but I’ve found it useful on some WordPress themes that don’t come with archives or on themes whose archives are broken. Most themes will come with an archives.php file but if yours doesn’t then the SRG Clean Archives plugin for WordPress could be your savior.

The file has two options. You can install it and have it appear in your sidebar as most archives for WordPress do or you can have it open in a separate page. Personally, I like the separate page options. All you do is activate the plugin and create a page with the plugin code provided in the Readme file. Save the page and the Archives page is activated. It’s that simple.

If you find yourself with a WordPress theme you can’t live without and your theme needs an archive, try the SRG Clean Archives.

(Source) The next topic the panel discussed was the SEO-friendliness of blogging platforms such as Wordpress. The general consensus was that these services are relatively good for SEO, but they could still be better. For example, nofollowing tags links could make these blogs so much more SEO-friendly, as the majority of bloggers won’t know to do this themselves.

This is absolutely true. The nofollow tag is a determent to good comments on your WordPress blog. Until WordPress makers take the nofollow tag out of WordPress, I recommend you making that change yourself. The reason is because the nofollow tag is telling search engines not to follow the links. The commentators on your blog lose any SEO value that they would normally get with blog comments. But if you install a dofollow plugin or disable the nofollow feature then you are telling your commentators that you don’t value their comments much. This is one WordPress change I would duly welcome.

According to WebProNews, there is a group working on a StupidFilter that will tell someone their comment is unintelligible and they should try again.

I can’t stress what a bad idea I think this is for your relationship with your readers.

An inanimate object is going to judge your readers to be stupid? And no one finds this as potentially insulting, and a good way of alienating your users? Why not let other readers judge what’s stupid, but let every one have their say?

This just strikes me as a good way to insult people to me.

A lot of people focus on the plugins that your users can see, but what about the ones that they don’t see? There are a wealth of them out there that will help you run your site more efficiently, and won’t do one thing to change the physical appearance of your blog.

One that you should certainly look into is a cache plugin. This will allow the site to pre-load certain items so that when the visitor comes to your site, it will load the most recent save of a section of your site, allowing for a faster load for the visitor, and less strain on your server. While the server part may not sound important, it is. If your blog becomes popular, and starts causing too much strain on the server, it is possible your webhost may fine you depending on your contract, or go as far as to close you down.

If you are using WordPress, I would highly recommend you download WP-Cache and get it installed as soon as possible. It’s easy to load and set up, and shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes.

Get on it, and start relieving some of that stress on your poor server!

I’ve seen bloggers install so many plugins into their WordPress themes and then not use them, or use them for a little while then deactivate them. The problem with plugins is that too many can be worse than not enough. You really don’t need most plugins. There are so many to choose from that you can find two or three plugins that do the same thing. Which one do you choose?

The easy answer is whichever ones will benefit you the most. But which ones are those exactly? Keep in mind that every plugin you install adds more code to your blog posts. That increases your code-to-text ratio and makes it more difficult for the search engines to crawl your posts and rank you accordingly. Remember, it’s the content that is the most important part of your blog.

So why do you really need plugins at all? That’s a good question. One without an easy answer. To be sure, some plugins are worth it. For instance, you probably want to install a plugin to make it easy for your readers to bookmark and subscribe to your blog. Those are useful plugins. But be careful which one you choose. Someone I know installed a plugin for their WordPress blog that adds several bookmarking buttons to their blog’s face and for every button there is additional code. They’ve got a plugin for del.icio.us, Fark, Pluck, this, that, and something else. Not necessary. One plugin can make it easy for your readers to bookmark at any bookmarking site on the Web and will add less code than any of the other plugsins singularly, let alone all of them at once. The plugin is called AddThis. I highly recommend it.

Be careful with plugins. Too many will make your blogging experience less useful and less effective. You don’t want to murder your blog with useless code. So be judicious in your choice of plugins.

Have you tried the ddAddSig plugin for your wordpress blog? If not, you should. It’s like having css for your website. For those of you who have code they want to put into every blogpost, signature lines, links, etc., this wordpress plugin is essential.

Once you upload and activate the ddAddSig wordpress plugin , all you do is put the code and text you want at the bottom of each post into the text box which is found under options in the ddAddSig tab.

Every time you post to your blog the ddAddSig plugin adds the code and text you put there. It also adds it to all of the blog posts you have made previously.

The problem with that is that ddAddSig is going to add that to all the code and text you put into your previous posts, so if you have already added the same code before, it will be there twice.

This small inconvenience is far outweighed by the benefits of the wordpress ddAddSig plugin. Let’s say your phone number changes, you want to promote a new website you built, or your email address changed, etc.

What usually happens is that all of your present and future posts will have the correct information, but all of the old posts will not, unless you go back and edit every single one of them.

With the wordpress ddAddSig plugin, you only have to change it in that one text box for it to change throughout the entire blog.

For us the ddAddSig plugin has become standard in all wordpress blogs we own or manage.