'Net Features : plugins

How to Use Wordpress Plugins

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:30:00 GMT

INSTALL, CONFIGURE, & DEPLOY PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS

There are hundreds of thousands of Wordpress plugins, for nearly every imaginable purpose. That alone can make the first few steps in blogging some confusing ones.

But once you find the functionality you want or need, it becomes even more challenging - you also must know how to use those Wordpress plugins (install, configure, and deploy).

Plugins are simply tools (essentially small PHP scripts) which work with the Wordpress software to extend (or enhance) its core functionality. Let's look at the download, installation and plugin management process in more detail and then address configuration and deployment considerations.

Download & Install Wordpress Plugins

There are two ways to access (download) plugins and install them on your Wordpress blogging system - directly from the Plugins page (as seen in the image below) which is available through the administration dashboard or by using some file transfer protocol (FTP) to upload to the appropriate folders on your Web server.

Install Plugin to Server through FTP

Adding a plugin to Wordpress through FTP is rather straightforward. To get started, first make sure you have FTP access (username, password, FTP address) and some means to transfer the plugin files (FTP software).

Once a connection with the server is established, the unzipped (most plugins are available for download in a compressed file such as ZIP) plugin folder should be uploaded in its entirety to the appropriate folder on the server. If the Wordpress weblog is on the root of the domain, the path to the plugin folder would likely be the following: wp-content/plugins/. Open the plugins folder and plugins already installed will be visible. Then upload the plugin (folder) to the wp-content/plugins/ folder. Most plugins are rather small in size so with a few quick refreshes you will be able to make sure that the file has uploaded in its entirety.

Add New From Plugins Dashboard

If you're adding a plugin from the administrative dashboard of Wordpress, it's a much easier process. Let's say for example that I want to add a plugin named Jetpack (built by Automattic, the makers of Wordpress). Wordpress enables its administrative users to search for plugins (by keyword, author, or tag), see popular and featured plugins, and most importantly - upload plugins directly. That means that you can install plugins you find - either from the Wordpress directory or from an independent Wordpress developer - without using FTP.

If you plan on uploading a file from your own computer, make sure that the file is in a .zip format. Choose the file from your system, and Wordpress will automatically unpack the zipped file and make it available in your plugin library.

If you plan on installing a plugin found through the featured or popular categories, or which you found by conducting a search through the available search interface, simply select "install" directly from the return list and Wordpress will unpack the file and install it in your plugin library.

Activate the Wordpress Plugin

That's not the last step however! Remember that it's necessary to activate the plugin before being able to use it. From the plugins page, locate the plugin you just installed (plugins are in alphabetical order) and select "Activate". Once the plugin is activated, depending on its functionality, there may be a need to configure it to work.

Configure the Wordpress Plugin (and Deploy)

Since many third-party software vendors provide plugins to the Wordpress community, there is often a need to configure each plugin you install on your Wordpress installation to enable it to communicate with those providers (through an API which requires a key for example). For example, in order to use blog/comment spam prevention plugin Akismet (also provided by Automattic) you must enter an API key - which is available (based on a sliding scale dependent on request volume) at Akismet.com. That's just onen example of what is required in configuring a Wordpress plugin. Some configuration processes are rather involved but take the time once the plugin is activated to continue the process if you want the functionality it promises to bring. The plugin you installed and configured may also require some direct integration with your theme.

Final Thoughts on Using Wordpress Plugins

Using Wordpress plugins is a great way to make your blog a better, smarter, faster, cooler destination on the Web. Plugins require near constant maintenance however. Make sure to install only plugins whose providers you trust, from destinations that are reputable, and update them immediately upon the release of a new version - or delete them outright if you're no longer using or need them. You'll find that these two suggestions will prevent quite a few security headaches down the line.

More Wordpress Related Articles from Website Magazine below:

- 25 Best Wordpress Plugins Ever
- Wordpress Security in Focus

Bing Sitemap Plugin Accommodates Webmasters

Michael Garrity — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Last week was a big one for Bing. The Mircosoft-owned search engine announced a substantial update that consisted primarily of three major changes.

Two of these refinements are distinctly user-centric, as they provide a new tile-based image search layout (similar to the interface of Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices) that comes with revamped “Friends Photo Search” functionality, as well. The other change consists of a series of autosuggest enhancements meant to improve the search experience for users by making autosuggestions faster and more intuitive with the addition of “ghosting” features, which include complimentary text where a user is typing that is already highlighted, so that searchers can either accept the suggestion or keep typing to have the ghosting text change based on additional information.

However, the third Bing update was made with webmasters in mind; it is a plugin that makes it considerably easier to create an XML sitemaps to submit to the search engine. This tool will be especially useful for those website owners that aren’t using a content management system (CMS) to develop XML sitemaps.

As you probably know, XML sitemaps allow webmasters to give search engines a comprehensive and, most importantly, accurate representation of their websites, thus letting them control what the search engines will index, at least in terms of priority. Webmasters can even inform Bing of new or updated content on their sites.

There are many benefits to utilizing sitemaps, the most obvious of which is that users will always have a full, updated list of all of the URLs on their site, plus a list of all the URLs that were recently modified. This makes it much easier for a search engine’s crawlers to prioritize all of a website’s various URLS, which will help keep bot traffic bandwidth down.

Bing’s Sitemap Plugin, which is an open source project that was made available through an Apache license, is compliant with sitemaps.org and runs on Microsoft IIS servers, as well as Linux/UNIX servers that run Apache. It can create two different types of sitemaps: The first is a comprehensive sitemap of all the URLs seen in server traffic, and the other is a sitemap that’s dedicated to storing URLs that have recently changed. Furthermore, the plugin doesn’t just generate a list of URLs; it also adds <lastmod> and <priority> tags and values to a sitemap based on a page’s popularity.

But among the most important aspects of the sitemap plugin is the amount of control that it gives to users. Webmasters that use the Bing plugin to create their sitemaps will be able to control exactly what gets added to it, and the plugin will be able to detect any Disallow and Allow directives inside a site’s robot.txt, thus allowing it to skip any URL patterns that shouldn’t be added. In addition, it provides greater control through various configuration files with rules that will augment pre-existing robots.txt Disallow directives, and webmasters will be given total control over selecting those query parameters that the plugin should honor and include in added URLS.

The Bing Sitemap Plugin can be configured to operate in four different site and server scenarios: 1. Single site on a single server, 2. Single site on multiple servers, 3. Multiple sites on a single server or 4. Multiple sites on multiple servers. When the plugin operates across multiple servers, it enables a merge process that generates a single, unified sitemap that can be distributed across all of them.

With the addition of the Bing Sitemap Plugin, the search engine has taken another step toward becoming more webmaster-friendly, which will be important if it ever hopes to take away market share from Google. What do you think about the new plugin? Will it convince you to focus more on optimizing your website specifically for Bing? Let us know in the comments.

10 Mind-Blowing jQuery Plugins for Developers

Michael Garrity — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:30:00 GMT

The JavaScript-based coding language jQuery is popular among many Web developers because it allows them to incorporate a variety of interactive effects it allows them to incorporate in their websites without requiring as much of the elaborate coding of regular JavaScript.

But jQuery is also attractive because it offers a wide selection of possible design elements, features and functionality that developers can include on their sites. This can be anything from parallax scrolling to slideshows to responsive text; the possibilities are virtually endless.

Most jQuery plugins aren’t necessary, or even all that useful, for every website, since they tend to cover a broad range of objectives, but any developer that wants to create a robust, feature-rich website, or just one that is visually striking, will be able to find at least a couple of plugins that can help him or her do just that.

Here at Website Magazine, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite jQuery plugins for our dear readers to check out, each of which can add distinct elements to a website that help it come to life and appear more engaging to users.

Of course, there are plenty of other jQuery plugins available. What are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments section!

Simple Parallax Scroll
Parallax scrolling is one of the hottest design trends of 2012, and there is no shortage of plugins that can help you achieve this entertaining effect, wherein the background image of a Web page translates slower than the foreground content as a user scrolls. This technique by Mohiuddin Parekh is a simple way (it’s even in the name) to incorporate this cool feature on your website, and starting engaging more users, in about 20 minutes. And once you have parallax scrolling to show off, you’ll be the coolest website in school.

Gamma Gallery
Users are accessing the Internet from a plethora of different devices these days, even more than just five years ago. During that same span of time, images have become the most popular type of content on the Web. Naturally, this has led to a need for responsive image galleries that can be easily viewed and interacted with on any device. However, building one can be difficult because of the myriad factors one must consider, such as layout or features. Fortunately, there is the Gamma Gallery plugin, which takes into account and provides suitable image sizes for fluid grid thumbnails and full image views.

Baraja
This plugin adds a neat feature to websites that lets developers move elements in a “card-like fashion” (think like holding a hand of playing cards during a game of poker) and spread them out like a deck of cards on a table using CSS transforms to rotate and translate the items. Users aren’t just bogged down by one or two spreading options, though; the plugin presents a variety of possibilities, such as moving items laterally or rotating them like a fan. Baraja will provide your website with a unique interactive element to delight and engage your visitors.

A jQuery Heat Map
Heat maps are an excellent way to track the actions of users on your website. They allow you to follow their clicks and make design changes or decisions based on the actions that most users are likely to make. The jQuery Heat Map is an easy way to create a heat map for a website that tracks clicks and then displays the click pattern using semi-transparent dots on an overlay, so you can quickly identify the most popular aspects of your Web page and fix anything that is being neglected.

jQuery Snow Falling Plugin
Get into the winter spirit – and impress your visitors – with this plugin that adds a snow falling effect to your Web page(s). With this plugin, users create one snowflake initially and then clone that snowflake at a time interval and then add random value properties to each individual flake, all in less than 1 KB minified. It’s an easy way to spruce your page up for the holiday season.

jGravity
jGravity is an interesting plugin that add “gravity” to elements on a Web page, meaning developers apply a gravity effect that drops all of the selected elements to the bottom of the page. Developers can either add the effect to all of the elements on a page, or choose specific elements to receive the gravity treatment. This is a fun way to add a level of interactivity to your page, but it can also help you highlight important content (or, on the other hand, do away with superfluous content by dropping it down and letting users focus on the important stuff).

WideText
Another page element to remember when considering responsive design for a website is text. The WideText plugin offers up a full width responsive text solution that is both lightweight and easy-to-use. Now, you’ll never have to worry about visitors seeing your whole message, no matter what device they’re viewing it from.

Superslides
Create visually stimulating, interactive full screen slide shows on your site that you can use to show off your image content with the Superslides plugin. Best of all, this solution was designed with flexibility in mind, so it’s highly customizable. It also offers a handful of configurable options, such as auto play with a delay, slide transition speed and slide easing. If your site is heavy on image content, using Superslides is a great way to display it.

pageguide.js
Keep your website clutter-free with the pageguide.js plugin, which provides information to users via an interactive visual guide that can teach them about features or functionality. It will attach CSS “pseudo elements” to the features that define your pages, providing numbered arrows on the top, bottom, left or right of what you want to highlight. The guide will even scroll for users. Developers are given control over the style of the guide, and they can track the actions of users by simply including their tracking codes from services like HubSpot or KISSMetrics to find out which aspects of the guide are of greatest interest to their visitors.

PicStrips
Take your images to the next level with the PicStrips plugin, which splits the picture into any number of strips with whitespace between each one. Users are not only able to specify the number of strips they’d like, but also the white space between each one and the vertical whitespace at the top and bottom of alternate strips. This simple alteration helps your pictures stand out from similar content and adds some extra flair that will capture the attention of your audience and give your images new life.

The 25 Best WordPress Plugins Ever

Michael Garrity — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:40:00 GMT

The year is coming to a close, and if 2012 has taught us anything, it’s that WordPress is still the most widely used free, open source content management system (CMS) out there.

While the extensive adoption of the platform obviously benefits users, as it means there are going to be more developers creating plugins and designing themes that WordPress users can employ to spruce up their blogs or websites (in both appearance and functionality), it also presents a bit of a nagging problem. The issue is that there are so many options to select from, which makes it very difficult to differentiate the good from the bad.

Luckily for you, Website Magazine editors recently compiled a list of the 25 best WordPress plugins for websites of all shapes and sizes, just in time for the new year. However, if there's a plugin we may have missed, or you disagree with a selection, feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Jetpack
If you want to get your hands on one of the best WordPress plugins around, why wouldn’t you want one developed by the creators of the platform? Well, Jetpack is just that, a plugin that is meant to expand the capabilities of your site by harnessing the cloud power of WordPress.com. There are a number of great features you can utilize, including displaying site analytics, creating photo galleries and even spell checking your copy, among many others.

Disqus
Don’t let the punny title fool you, Disqus is one of the best comment systems available. The tool allows users to add comment functionality to their site/pages, giving visitors an opportunity to engage with the content (and the brand). Those interested in building a community of users on their sites should get Disqus ASAP.

Social Toolbar
Social media has become a necessity for most Web professionals, so it’s more likely than not that you’re on at least one (and probably more) social networks. Why not show off your social prowess with Social Toolbar, a plugin that places a toolbar at the bottom of your blog/site to display links to all of your social network profiles. But that’s not all it does; additional features including sharing buttons, a full display of your latest tweets and more.

WP Google Fonts
A big part of having a sleek design for your blog or website means utilizing cool, appropriate fonts that really invoke the spirit of your brand. Unfortunately, most generic font packs are limited in what they offer. That’s why you should download WP Google Fonts, which allows users to easily incorporate a slew of new fonts from the Google Font Directory into your WordPress theme.

WPtouch
Mobile is hot, and any successful Web strategy must include a mobile-optimized site. For WordPress users, the fastest and simplest way to accomplish this is by using the WPtouch plugin, which will serve up mobile visitors a different theme. This comes complete with a new device-optimized and user-friendly version of your content.

Gravity Forms
One of the most important aspects of working on the Web is gathering consumer data to use in the future, and the best way to go about doing that is by using forms. The Gravity Forms plugin is able to create any kind of form you may need in a flash, regardless of its complexity. This can include email signup forms or extensive applications.

WordPress SEO
Look, even with all of this social media hullabaloo, SEO is still one of the most important practices that a site owner can conduct to increase his or her audience and generate more revenue. WordPress SEO from Yoast is one of the better plugins for search engine optimization, featuring XML sitemaps, customizable title and meta description options, RSS optimization and social media optimization – and that’s just for starters!

W3 Total Cache
Want to make your WordPress site run up to 10 times faster? Check out W3 Total Cache, a powerful plugin that caches every single element of your site, so readers can read your post in no time. Use this plugin to reduce download times and provide transparent CDN integration.

NextGEN Gallery
Everyone loves images, and the more you can (appropriately) add to your site or blog, the more likely you are to drive traffic and interest users. So why not add this fully integrated image gallery plugin? It is absolutely chock-full of features, which offer a lot of flexibility in creating gallery content, such as the ability to add watermarks to images, create slideshows, use different display themes and organize pictures into albums, among many others.

Digg Digg
As aforementioned, social media plays a big role in Web success these days, and accruing Likes or +1s (or other social seals of approval) on your content is a great way to get it (and your brand) noticed. Use the Digg Digg plugin to integrate the most popular social buttons into your WordPress site, which can be configured to display in various locations.

All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO Pack is the most comprehensive search engine optimization plugin available for WordPress users and remains one of the platforms most downloaded plugins ever for a good reason. It’s especially useful for new users or those who aren’t terribly familiar with coding. In includes Google Analytics support, as well as other features like custom post types, canonical URLs, automatically generated meta tags and much more.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator for WordPress
Create a fully customizable sitemap for your WordPress website with this plugin from Dagon Design, which gives users multilevel categories, pages and permalinks support. You’ll be able to choose which links you want to display, the order their shown in, comment counts and post dates to make your site more searchable for, uh, search engines.

WP e-Commerce
This is one of the most popular and easy-to-use e-commerce platforms available for WordPress sites. WP e-Commerce offers a 100 percent customizable experience with easily modified templates, in addition to community support, integration with multiple payment gateways (including PayPal, Authorize.net and Google Checkout), various marketing and SEO features, checkout capabilities with SSL security and the ability to manage orders and shipping from within the plugin. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. To say this plugin is “feature rich” is a massive understatement.

Sociable
Make your content more social with Sociable, which will automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and RSS feeds.

Google Analytics for WordPress
Google Analytics is the widely adopted, fully featured analytics platform from one of the Web’s leading companies, so it makes sense that it would eventually be turned into a plugin for WordPress users. With this plugin, you can easily track your WordPress site or blog and use a lot of fancy custom variables to track the metadata on your pages, such as author, single or multiple categories, post type, publication year, tags and more.

FeedBurner FeedSmith
Have a bunch of different RSS subscribers that you don’t know how to manage? Never fear! Just use FeedBurner FeedSmith to detect all of the possible methods through which users can access your original WordPress RSS feeds, and then redirect them back to your FeedBurner FeedSmith feed to track every single subscriber.

Akismet
If building a community is an important part of your Web strategy, you no doubt allow your visitors to comment on and discuss your content. Unfortunately, as your traffic increases, so will the amount of comment and trackback spam you receive. Luckily, this popular plugin from Automattic checks comments and trackbacks against the Akismet Web service, and if they’re found to be spam, they’ll automatically be moved into your WordPress installation’s spam folder. You’ll never have to get your hands dirty.

Google XML Sitemaps
Google just does it all, doesn’t it? With this plugin, you can generate an XML sitemap that will help search engines – and not just Google, but Bing, Yahoo and others – better index your WordPress website, which means crawlers can see all of your site and retrieve data from it much more quickly and efficiently.

WP-DBManager
You’re probably well aware of the delicate nature of working with digital content, likely because some mishap or other in the past has led you to lose a substantial amount of work before you were able to back it up. Don’t let that happen with your website or blog; instead, download the WP-DPManager plugin that allows you to optimize, repair, backup and restore your database. You can also delete backed up content, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. WP-DPManager even supports automated backups, optimization and repairs.

Contact Form 7
This simple, yet flexible contact form plugin allows users to manage multiple contact forms. Also, they can customize their forms and mail content by using some simple markup. Contact Form 7 also supports various security enhancements, including Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering.

Editorial Calendar
Managing a blog can be a hassle, but never again with the Editorial Calendar plugin that lets users see all of their scheduled posts and when they’ll be posted and offers drag-and-drop functionality to change post dates, draft management, quick edits of post titles, content and times and the ability to manage posts from multiple authors.

All in One Favicon
Website owners and bloggers can easily add a favicon (the small icons next to the URL in the address bar, the page name in a browser tab and/or the page’s name in a bookmark list) to their websites and WordPress admin pages. The All in One Favicon plugin offers complete upload functionality and supports all three favicon types, ico, .png and .gif, which can even be animated.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the best e-commerce platforms for WordPress users, allowing users to turn their websites into fully functional, highly customizable online stores that deliver enterprise-level quality and feature. This includes a PayPal standard gateway, Mijireh checkout, free and flat rate shipping functionality, Google Analytics and international and local shipping and local pickup, among many others.

ShareThis
This social media plugin enables WordPress users to seamlessly allow visitors to share the site or blog’s content on up to 120 different social channels, including email, Facebok, Twitter, Google+ and more. With ShareThis, users can do more to engage their audiences and increase traffic. Plus, the plugin features customization functionality that means it can be seamlessly integrated into a user’s site.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
YARPP may be just "another related posts plugin," but its also the best. It provides a site or blog’s visitors with a list of posts and/or pages that are related to the entry they’re currently reading. Site owners can use this plugin to introduce their readers to other interesting, relevant content on their site.

Wordpress Wednesday: Halloween Edition

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:50:00 GMT

It’s another edition of Website Magazine’s Wordpress Wednesday - and it's the Halloween edition!

Let's celebrate by showcasing some "scary" cool plugins - those that should make you freak about your blog's security, fight zombies like there's no tomorrow, and all while consuming your weight in cookies and candies.

What's so scary about these particular plugins? Keep reading below... muahahahahaha!

Detectify for WP: Thinking about your Wordpress blog’s security is enough to freak out anyone. The Detectify plugin analyzes the security by simulating a hacker attack to identify website security flaws. The plugin generates a report on the vulnerabilities (a long list actually including local and remote file inclusion, XSS and DOM XSS, cross site agent scripting and more) and the probable consequence of them.

LionScripts IP Address Blocker: Rogues, like zombies, are everywhere – and your only line of defense will likely be to block them entirely. This plugins allows blogs to blocking unwanted or known Spam IP addresses, saving lots of time and bandwidth. The plugin enables users to display predefined messages or a blank page to the blocked user and offers free support.

Cookie OK: You know what’s scary? The EU cookie law. This plugin includes a notification above each page about cookie usage on your site through the CookieOK script by Digital Morphosis. There are numerous other related plugins including Cookie Control which deserve very close inspection as well.

My Pinterest Badge: I don’t know about you, but the mere prospect of my wife logging onto to Pinterest is simply terrifying. The plugin essentially adds a customizable Pinterest badge to any Wordpress installation, which shows a widget containing recent pins from your Pinterest account. That last line sent shivers down my spine. If you’re looking for alternatives, check out Website Magazine’s post on 3 Pinterest Plugins for Wordpress.

Maintenance Mode Z: The plugin doesn’t offer the best look, but it does bring some scary cool functionality including time-based maintenance controls, and access rules that can be set up by IP and users. Remember, these are new plugins. If you’re looking for something a little more established, check out DP Maintenance Mode Lite – which has over 6,000 downloads.

Check out some other recent editions of WordPress Wednesday from Website Magazine:

- Top 3 Favicon Plugins for Wordpress
- Top 10 E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress
- Take Your WordPress Site Mobile
- WordPress Themes of a Social Nature
- Facebook for WordPress Plugins
- 10 Wordpress Plugins You Can't Live Without

Top 3 Favicon Plugins for Wordpress

Michael Garrity — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

As I sit here typing this, I have three different browsers open with at least 10 different tabs up in each one (and that’s being conservative). Luckily, I have no problem opening up the right tab each and every time thanks to the Web’s unsung hero – the favicon.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, favicons are small 16x16 pixel icons associated with a particular website (or page) that show up primarily next to the URL in the address bar, next to the page name in a browser tab and/or next to the page’s name in a bookmark list. For instance, if you look up at this tab or next to this page’s URL in your address bar (depending on what browser you’re using), you’ll see a tiny version of our classic “WM” icon that indicates that you are, in fact, on a WebsiteMagazine.com page.

If you’re the proud owner of a WordPress website, it’s probably a good idea for you to have your own favicon(s) that can help users identify your site and ensure that they’re in the right place, while also building your brand and making it easier for visitors to come back in the process.

However, it’s safe to say that favicons probably aren’t top of mind for busy individuals trying to get a website off the ground. To simplify favicon creation for your WordPress site, check out these three great plugins that can do the job for you:

Shockingly Simple Favicon
This plugin changes the favicon of a WordPress blog without requiring users to edit their theme files. It will also put a WP icon in the administration interface, making it easy to find the tab in a browser. And fortunately for those of us who aren’t code-savvy, the changes are all fixed, so you won’t have to go back and alter them if/when you change your blog’s theme.

All in One Favicon
Users can either use favicons that they’ve already uploaded or upload a new favicon into their WordPress installation with a built-in upload mechanism to add a favicon to their site and admin pages. All in One Favicon supports three different favicon types: .ico, .png and .gif, which includes animated images. It also supports Apple Touch icons.

Favicon Generator
With support for .jpg/.jpeg, .gif and .png images, Favicon Generator allows users to upload an image. Then it will automatically convert that image into a unique favicon-formatted file. This file will then be placed in the user’s WordPress root dictionary, and the plugin will add a link tag to the HTML output.

Benchmark Email Brings Multi-Newsletter Plugin to WordPress

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:15:00 GMT

Email marketing service Benchmark Email has released a free plugin for WordPress that gathers email subscriptions and sends out newsletter versions of blog posts. But that’s not all it does.

Two features make the plugin noteworthy in my opinion. First, bloggers can customize the subscription form with up to 28 custom fields. That comes in handy, as it relates to the second feature worth highlighting, which is that bloggers can create up to five different email lists in the back-end of Wordpress for sending post-driven newsletters to their subscribers.

The WordPress plugin directory is in no shortage of supply for plugins for creating email newsletters (most, if not all, of the major email marketing service providers have them) but the plugin from Benchmark Email is really testing the limits of what’s possible – and we like that. Any blogger using WordPress that signs up for a 30-day free trial at Benchmark can use the plugin for free – paid plans start at $9.95 per month.

Wordpress Wednesday: 7 New Plugins to Watch

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:30:00 GMT

Welcome to another edition of Website Magazine’s WordPress Wednesday!

Every once in a while the editorial staff takes some time to explore plugins to help our readers add some useful - and sometimes neccessar - functionality into their WP installations. Typically, we profile plugins that fit nicely within a specifci category such as plugins for translation, email marketing, membership, rewards/gamification/loyalty, and even those with great jQuery features. today we're taking a different tact and profiling some of the new plugins within the WP plugin directory.

If you are testing out a Wordpress plugin that you think would be useful to members of the Website Magazine community, just let us know by commenting below.

The AuthorSure plugin simplifies the process of adding Google Authorship Verification to a WP blog. The plugin uses rel=author, rel=me and rel=publisher links to connect posts, authors pages, Google+ profiles and Google+ pages. AuthorSure works on both single and multi-author sites.

Ultimate Maintenance Mode is a plugin that displays a screenshot of your website with an overlayed window (through HTML5 and CSS3) to show users the reason the site being visited is unavailable. The plugin works with any WP theme, supports custom messages, offers multi-site support, and even returns a 503 http status header to search engines.

The WPX Affiliate Manager plugin integrates affiliate images (125x125) side by side using this plugin. Self hosting images on your site (and direct-links) is the only way to bypass ad blockers. There is room for six ads but the widget will show whatever has been included in the system.

The Per Page Sidebar Blocks (PPSB) plugin provides the ability to include sidebar templates on a per-page basis (conditional). The plugin scans the current theme’s root directory for sidebar templates and lets bloggers decide which get displayed on individual pages through a check box within the edit area. Another terrific plugin for showing page-specific widgets is Widget Logic Visual.

A terrific plugin for creating a sponsor wall with a flip effect. One side shows a scaled logo and the other provides details such as name, description, and link. Perhaps the best part is that the tiles can be embedded anywhere through the use of shortcodes.

Google+ certainly isn’t the biggest or most active social network – that honor of course goes to Facebook. This jQuery Facebook pop out plugin places a FB tab to the side of the page which visitors can hover over to reveals a like box for your fan page. Another Facebook related plugin worthy of a closer look is this Facebook Comments plugin, which allows users to leave comments on a blog using their FB accounts.

WordPress Wednesday: Ten Top Email Plugins

Allison Howen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Despite predictions to the contrary, email is still the most popular way to communicate on the Web – and the competition doesn't even come close. There are more than 2.9 billion email accounts worldwide, which is three times as many registered Facebook and Twitter users combined.

Therefore, anyone trying to establish a presence on the Web should be using email marketing to build, inform and engage with their audience. WordPress provides some of the best tools available to achieve these goals.

Check out the list below for ten email WordPress plugins that can help site owners grow their contact lists, protect their lists from spambots, customize their emails and more.

Newsletter Sign-Up

This simple plugin allows for a newsletter sign-up checkbox to show on comment and registration forms, as well as a widget sign-up form to appear in widget areas. It also provides a shortcode that can embed newsletter sign-up forms in posts and pages. Currently this plugin has been downloaded more than 26,800 times, and it supports providers such as Mailchimp, YMLP, Aweber, iContact and others.

Thank Me Later

Thank new visitors by sending them an email when they leave a comment on your blog with this popular plugin that has been dowloaded more than 45,000 times. By thanking your active visitors, you are welcoming them to further engage with your blog in the future. This plugin is also customizable, allowing the user to create multiple email messages and schedule messages to automatically send – making the messages appear more unique and personable.

ALO EasyMail Newsletter

This plugin allows users to write and send emails, as well as gather and manage subscribers. Features include multilanguage options, the ability to select themes, manage subscribers, create mailing lists and batch send. The site owner can customize emails or set the plugin to pull content from a blog and send automatic emails. This plugin has been dowloaded more than 89,000 times and requires WordPress version 3.0 or higher.

AutoChimp

In order to take advantage of this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 24,000 times, a user must have a MailChimp account for the plugin to sync with. The plugin can be set to update your mailing list when a new user subscribes, a user unsubscribes or a user updates his or her information. Additionally, users can set email campaigns to be automatically created from new blog posts.

BuddyPress Group Email Subscription

This plugin allows group members to receive email notifications for group activity and forum posts. Each user has the ability to choose how they want to subscribe to their groups, such as without email, a weekly summary email, a daily digest email, new topic emails or receive emails for all activity. This popular plugin has more than 42,000 downloads, and requires WordPress version 2.9.1 or higher.

WP Better Emails

Instead of sending plain emails, send customizable emails with this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 8,700 times. WP Better Emails uses a customizable HTML template and also lets users set their own sender name and email address. The template has been tested on popular email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook, and more – to ensure that the email always displays properly. Additionally, users can send out sample emails to test and preview their own custom template.

Email Encoder Bundle

Protect the email addresses on your site from spambots! This plugin encodes all email addresses so spambots can’t read them. Features include protection of email and mailto links, as well as protection against scanning of posts, widgets, comments and RSS feeds. Additionally, your audience will be thankful that you are protecting their information with this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 6,000 times.

WP Email Newsletter Plugin

Easily send mass emails to your existing WordPress user database with this plugin. Features of this plugin allow users to choose newsletter templates, settings and content, as well as insert images. This plugin also allows for users to review past newsletters and campaigns. This plugin starts at $25 and is especially designed for Wordpress 3.

WPSubscribers

This plugin helps users build their email list. It comes with a plethora of features, including an opt-in form, registration subscribing, commenter subscribing, the capability to put a subscribe box in posts, Facebook connectivity, analytics and more. Users can customize all of these features in order to build better and larger email lists. The price of this plugin starts at $47 and is good to use on up to three WordPress sites.

Subscribers Magnet

According to its makers – maxblogpress – users can grow their email contact list by 300 percent or more with this plugin. Although not a free plugin ($147 introductory special), there is a money-back guarantee for users that don’t double their subscriptions within 60 days. The plugin allows users to add an opt-in form anywhere on a WordPress blog. Additionally, a visitor's name and email is automatically filled within the opt-in form, which saves visitors time and can increase sign-ups.

Sunday Special: E-Commerce WordPress Themes

Michael Garrity — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:00:00 GMT

One of the largest providers of themes for WordPress sites, WooThemes, has launched WooCommerce, a new plugin that offers WordPress users a library of various integrated themes for their e-commerce websites. Of course, there are plenty of other (and sometimes free) options for e-commerce themes on WordPress that users could also consider. After all, having the right theme can make all of the difference in luring consumers to your site, fostering engagement and making conversions.

So, here is a list of 10 more WordPress themes for online merchants to consider:

ShopperPress
This is the simplest of e-commerce plugins for WordPress. It's very clean and easy to navigate and the designs can be customized; it also offers over 20 different store layouts. Other features include built-in tools for affiliate stores, advertising slots and shipping/tax/weight/promotions/coupon codes, the ability to sell ebooks and digital downloads and easy-to-use shopping baskets, checkout pages, contact pages and member accounts.

Sport & Grunge
Perfect for extreme sports athletes or alternative rockers, Sport & Grunge by ThemeForest provides users with a simple shopping cart and newsletter plugin, as well as seven custom widgets to do things like make product specials, allow newsletter subscriptions, view a cart and more. It also comes with a built-in contact form. You can write up custom post types for products and add them to the news/blog that the theme also provides. There's also a feature where it automatically greyscale hovers over home-page buttons.

Sofa SuppaStore
If you're feeling a little sporty, and by that I mean you sell sports equipment, Sofa SuppaStore is a great option for your e-commerce store. Another ThemeForest design, this plugin provides some neat and unique features such as Stock Inventory Manager and Order Tracking. It's also totally compatible with PayPal and mail orders, comes with 11 built-in widgets, a newsletter feature and the ability to define the shipping price for each product or by country, or both, and gives you the option of multiple home-page layouts.

Boutique
This is a very quaint theme from Elegant Themes that is perfect for selling unique and classy decorative items. Heavy on the pastel, this attractive theme was designed to work with major WordPress e-commerce plugins like WordPress E-Commerce, Cart66, Shopp and eShop. The real appeal of this appealing theme is its design customization abilities, offering a seemingly limitless array of color schemes, numerous font options and the ability to adjust header and body text independently of one another. You can also add user and author ratings to products.

Emporium
Mimicking the style of major clothing retailers like The Gap or Macy's, Emporium is a sleek and simple theme for your e-commerce store. Complete with a built-in shopping cart with an affiliate module, this theme makes it easy to sell regular products or digital goods. It also works well if you just want to have an online catalog. Emporium lets users manage tax percentages on products, provides multiple payment gateways (like PayPal, Google Checkout, WorldPay and more), has order management capabilities and allows for guest checkout.

Kakileema
Kakileema is a quirky, fun and simple design that is perfect for clothing and accessory retailers focusing on a younger, more artistic crowd. It comes integrated with the WordPress E-Commerce plugin. It comes with a sleek header to define your brand, provides a great visible section for new products and gives easily acessible category sections. It also shows users a "recently viewed" column on the product page that will allow them to quickly and efficiently return to old products that they have checked out.

Aquisto
Full disclosure here, this is one of my favorite themes on the list. It's got a really attractive, sleek look that could fit a wide variety of possible online stores. It's different because of its three-column layout that offers information and widgets on the left, product pictures, names and prices in the middle and featured products and other widgets on the right. You also get logo and theme-style customization options, so you can change a lot of the text and colors and really make it your own. Unfortunately, it's only integrated with the Cart66 plugin for physical products and the PulleyApp plugin for digital products.

Store
A great theme with an unoriginal name, Store has a graceful look that comes with built-in e-commerce features, so you don't need any extra plugins to use it. It offers various types of shopping cart options such as "Add to Cart," "Buy Now" or "Send Inquiry." Other features include multiple shipping options and payment gateways, coupon codes, user registration, a catalog mode and order management options, among many others. You get to choose from four distinct color schemes and the main page is almost totally customizable to best suit your business.

Velvet Sky
Velvet Sky is a really gorgeous (and free) WordPress store theme that is perfect for selling fragrances or other high-end products. It's layout is based on a scrolling, horizontal menu with a smaller, horizontal menu below it that shows featured and/or new products. You can totally customize this homepage. It also supports guest checkouts, categorized products views, detailed product pages and a sorting function.

AppCloud
Lets say you've developed a bunch of sweet apps, but you just don't have any way to get them into the hands of users. Never fear, AppCloud is here. This free theme is super clean and simple, although very professional-looking. You're able to categorize the view of products and product search using a variety of filters, such as Most Downloaded. It can also be used to sell various "gadget products," and its soft blue and white color scheme is a great way to calm customers and keep them focused on your products.

WordPress Plugins From A to Z

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:30:00 GMT

WordPress is just a regular old CMS/blogging platform without plugins - feature-based add-ons for extending functionality. Plugins are undoubtedly the only way to really customize the experience for users and improve the visibility of a blog's Web presence. Today let's look at some of the best plugins - from A to Z. While we could not manage to find too many plugins for X, Y, Z (and a few other letters), we hope you get the general idea. If you have your creativity cap on and can think of some categories for the letters we missed, or if we happened to miss one of your favorite WP plugins, just comment below and we'll update this post (and reference you and your site with a link).

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Best Wordpress Plugins for Audio
Podcasting and the use of audio may not have the draw that it once did but it remains prevalent and is in fact used heavily in certain industries. Providing the best quality audio is only half the battle; you will also need a seamless, pleasing way to present it to users. Let these plugins support that objective.
Recommended Plugins: Audio Player, MediaElement.js - HTML5 Video & Audio Player, Audio Player Widget, Audio Link Player

Best Wordpress Plugins for Backups
When it comes to backups, it's always better to be safe than sorry. The sad truth is that the vast majority of bloggers simply don't back up, which as they quickly learn, can cause more headaches than necessary. Take a few minutes each week to backup your WordPress site or use one of these plugins to automate the task.
Recommended Plugins: EZPZ One Click Backup, WordPress EZ Backup, XCloner - Backup and Restore

Best Wordpress Plugins for Comments
One of the clearest signs of a successful blog is the number and veracity of comments from visitors. It's not easy to elicit comments but they do provide other users a sense of the value in the community. If you are considering ramping up your comment acquisition efforts, consider these WP plugins for comments.
Recommended Plugins: IntenseDebate Comments, Disqus Comment System, Facebook Comments for WordPress, Comment Rating

Best WordPress Plugins for Donations
WP is used in nearly every industry. Thanks to it's open nature, it is even quite common in the non-profit realm. Since these entities exist primarily on donations, if you are interested in requesting and processing funds from visitors, let these plugins support that objective.
Recommended Plugins: PayPal Donations, Donation Can, Donate Plus, Mingle Donations Button

Best WordPress Plugins for Email Subscriptions
Blogs and email go together like peas and carrots. Since it is unreasonable to expect that every one of your visitors will subscribe to an RSS feed or even visit your site everyday, there is no greater compliment to a weblog that a well devised email marketing strategy. Let these plugins help get you started.
Recommended Plugins: MailChimp List Subscribe Form, Constant Contact for WordPress, AWeber Web Form Plugin, WP Email Capture, Subscribe2

Best Wordpress Plugins for Forms
Every website needs a contact form and blogs are no different. Having forms for general and specific requests that can be quickly and easily created are the sign of a well-developed website. If you don't have a contact form (or two or three), stop what you're doing and get started with these WP plugins.
Recommended Plugins: Contact Form 7, Fast Secure Contact Form, Custom Contact Forms, Formiddable Forms

Best Wordpress Plugins for Images/Galleries
Photo galleries are excellent ways to increase time on site and build loyalty. When blog owners use images as assets (and more broadly, galleries as showcases of these image assets) it's easier to increase exposure for brands and increase brand interaction. Let the following plugins support that mission.
Recommended Plugins: NextGen Gallery, Page Flip Image Gallery, WP Photo Album Plus, Flickr Photo Album, SEO Friendly Images

Best Wordpress Plugins for Links
The Web is not a "web" at all without links. Maintaining the many links that bloggers create on a daily, weekly or monthly basis however can become cumbersome - even for the most organized. Automating the maintenance proves useful in relation to customer experience and overall SEO efforts.
Recommended Plugins: SEO Smart Link, Broken Link Checker, WP Render Blogroll Links

Best WordPress Plugins for Managing Ads
Bloggers can't make money without selling something - and that includes advertising space. Managing advertising creative and placements is often best left to technology. Let the following plugins support your quest to towards blog profit with these WP plugins for managing ads.
Recommended Plugins: Simple Ads Manager, WP125, AdRotate, Ozh’ Who Sees Ads

Best Wordpress Plugins for Optimization
Everybody wants a well-optimized Web property and why not - the benefit of natural traffic is well documented.
Recommended Plugins: Platinum SEO Pack, Greg’s High Performance SEO, WordPress SEO by Yoast, SEO Ultimate

Best WordPress Plugins for Polls
If there's one tactic that works to get peoples attention and drive traffic to a Web property/weblog, it is the use of polls/surveys. While best suited to those with a large, active community, when well promoted polls and surveys are an interactive way to get site visitors involved.
Recommended Plugins: SodaHead Polls, PollDaddy Polls and Ratings, WP Polls

Best WordPress Plugins for Ratings
Search engines are placing greater focus on the presence and quality of ratings and reviews. While the introduction of schema.org and the increased demand for structured data present blog operators with a measurable opportunity, you still need comments, ratings and reviews to work with. Let these WP plugins help you begin the process.
Recommended Plugins: Comment Rating, GD Star Rating, Star Rating for Reviews

Best WordPress Plugins for Social Media
Social media is here to stay (what form it will take in the future is another matter). Whether Facebook, Twitter, or one of the myriad smaller niche social media destinations, offering users the ability to help you spread/distribute message is standard. Not doing anything in the social realm puts you in the minority so use the plugins to help users start socializing.
Recommended Plugins: Sexy Bookmarks, Simple Facebook Connect, WP Tweet Button

Best Wordpress Plugins for Translation
The opportunities to gain new customers (and increase sales) is only possible through internationalization. While few sites delve deeper into translation than through automated means, something is better than nothing (despite those that
Recommended Plugins: Global Translator, Google Ajax Translation, Transposh, qTranslate

Best Wordpress Plugins for Users (Membership Community)
Successful Web enterprises have one thing in common - loyal, active communities. Start a blog with membership/community features available in the first iteration and you will be positioned well to keep growing your site, and brand. Consider the following WP plugins for your own membership-based Web property.
Recommended Plugins: s2Member, Mingle, WP-Members

Best Wordpress Plugins for Video
Video is not the next big thing - it is the channel that marketers and consumers are most excited about right now. Video can be challenging to implement and even more cumbersome to manage so use the following plugins to get started the right way.
Recommended Plugins: VideoPress, All-in-One Video Pack, WordPress Video Plugin, Stream Video Player, MediaElement.js, Embedded Video

Best Wordpress Plugins for WordPress Health
Thanks to the sheer number of WP deployments, it has become a very visible target for spammers. The health of your Wordpress installation is vitally important, so important in fact that Google has even begun sending warnings to those WP sites that may have security vulnerabilities. Stay healthy with these two essential plugins.
Recommended Plugins: WP Security Scan, Akismet

More WordPress Plugins for Affiliates

Linc Wonham — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:30:00 GMT

About six months ago we published a popular list of WordPress plugins for affiliates. While we stand by that list and urge you to take a look, six months is a long time in the digital world. Below is a new 2011 list of WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers and other Web professionals:

Google XML Sitemaps
Will automatically create a special XML sitemap of your website to help the search engines better index your content. This plugin also automatically notifies the search engines whenever new content is posted to the site.

WP Super Cache
Creates static html files from your WordPress blog, ensuring faster-loading Web pages that will result in better search engine results and lower bounce rates. The approximately 1 percent of users who do not see static files will also benefit by seeing different cached files -- which are still better than uncached files.

ClickTrackZilla
This WordPress Analytics plugin offers extensive conversion tracking for affiliate sales including what site and page a hit originated from; which search engine found your site; what keywords were used, the landing page visitors entered from and much more. Tracking is currently available for ShareASale and ClickBank, but more networks are expected to join in the near future.

FD Feedburner Plugin
Automatically redirects the main feed to Feedburner.com without the need to modify templates, set up new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files or asking users to migrate to a new feed. There is an option to also redirect the comments feed, and all existing feeds become Feedburner feeds transparently for all users.

HeadSpace2 SEO
Fast becoming considered the best WordPress SEO solution, this all-in-one meta-data manager has dozens of features and provides an import function for numerous other SEO plugins including the All in One SEO Pack from last year's list.

Digg Digg
Don’t be misled by the name as Digg has certainly seen better days. However, this all-in-one social buttons plugin provides display counts not only for Digg but also for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TweetMeme, Topsy and many more.

AskApache Password Protect
Uses fast and proven built-in features that add multiple layers of security to your site. Affiliates can set up password protection using basic authentication or the more secure digest authentication, building a virtual wall to stop attacks and also block spam.

Login LockDown
Another security precaution, this plugin limits the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain amount of time. It defaults to a one-hour lockout of an IP after three failed login attempts within five minutes, but the times can be modified through the Options panel.

WordPress Wednesday - WP Customer Reviews

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 11 May 2011 21:35:00 GMT

Product and customer reviews are vital to the success of many Web-based businesses today. If you're using the WordPress platform, capitalizing on the value that review content provides is much simpler thanks to the WP Customer Review plugin.

The plugin allows customers and website visitors to leave reviews and/or testimonials of your services. The reviews are displayed to visitors in a friendly format, but where the plugin really shines is its ability to show the content to search engines in the hReview microformat. Since there are sites actively crawling for user-generated reviews on the Web now (including Google Places and Google Local Search) using the plugin might be something to look into.

The plugin is WP Multisite and Multiuser (WPMU / WPMS / WordPress MU) compatible and submissions can be moderated giving WP admins the ability to control which reviews are shown. The plugin is compatible up to version 3.1.2. The WP Customer Reviews plugin has been downloaded over 10,000 times since launch.

ShareThis Social Tool Gets Big Update

Mike Phillips — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:59:00 GMT

ShareThis, the popular social sharing widget, has released an update that is currently in beta. The biggest upgrade is the ability for users to share a page's content to more than one destination simultaneously. With a single click, users can share your content via email, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, LinkedIn and more. This added convenience for the user could be significant - anything that makes content sharing easier should also be on publishers' radars.

Also included in the update is the ability for users to share content without ever leaving your website and the incorporation of custom themes and colors. In the works are updated plugins for Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad. ShareThis claims nearly one million websites use the tool.

You can see an example of the new widget functionality below, and vist the ShareThis website for more details and to test it out.

38 Popular WordPress Plugins by Download Metrics

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:40:00 GMT

If you're using WordPress as the platform for your website it is wise to routinely check out (and perhaps test) some of the newly released plugins to make sure you're not missing out on the latest and greatest.

But what if you are more interested in plugins (and their associated functionality of course) that are more proven or established? That is not always easy to ascertain however. Perhaps an appropriate unit of measurement to determine this is through the number of downloads.

Below you will find 38 WordPress plugins we discovered while conducting a few searches during a routine visit to WordPress. You will likely be familiar with many of these but even I, someone working with WP for many years, have not used them all. These WP plugins are definitely worth your time to download and install if only for the novelty of being able to say, "Yeah, I've used that."

All in One SEO Pack - 6.9 Million

Akismet - 5.8 Million

Google XML Sitemaps - 4.8 Million

Contact Form 7 - 3.1 Million

NextGEN Gallyer - 2.7 Million

WordPress Stats - 2.2 Million

WP Super Cache - 1.9 Million

WPtouch - 1.5 Million

AddToAny (share/bookmark) - 1.4 Million

Google Analytics for WordPress - 1.4 Million

WP-Page Navi - 1.2 Million

Google Analyticator - 1.1 Million

Sociable - 1.1 Million

Fast Secure Contact Form - 948K

WP e-Commerce - 912K

Twitter Tools - 759K

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - 751K

Smart YouTube - 682K

Viper's Video Quicktags - 643K

Simple Tags - 623K

GD Star Rating - 619K

WP-Polls - 611K

Broken Link Checker - 598K

WP-Cumulus - 586K

TinyMCE Advanced - 573K

ourStats Widget - 517K

ShareThis - 517K

Redirection - 499K

Lightbox 2 - 496K

TweetMeme Button - 485K

Platinum SEO Pack - 467

podPress - 452K

BuddyPress - 446K

Subscribe2 - 425K

Ozh' Admin Drop Down Menu - 404K

WP-PostRatings - 398K

HeadSpace2 SEO - 372K

WP-DBManager - 318K