'Net Features : wordpress

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

WordPress Under Attack

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Internet professionals using Wordpress have been under attack for the last few weeks but only now is it being widely reported.

Numerous security experts have issued warnings recently about the botnet, a brute-force password-guessing attack against sites that are powered by the popular blogging and content management system and the providers that host those sites.

What makes the broader attack so malicious is that infected sites are seeded with backdoors that let the attackers control the site remotely. The compromised sites are then forced to launch password-guessing attacks against other sites running Wordpress. Scary.

According to Web site security firm Incapsula, those behind the attack are scanning the Web for WordPress installations, and attempting to log in to the administrative console at these sites using a list of commonly-used username and password combinations.

Web hosting provider HostGator last week suggested that the problem has grown to include more than 90,000 compromised sites.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince last week said in a blog post that the tactics employed in this attack were similar to those used in the so-called itsoknoproblembro/Brobot botnet which, in the Fall of 2012, was responsible for a series of cyber attacks against US financial institutions.

If you're a Wordpress user, make sure to change administrative passwords immediately and make sure those password meet the security requirements set forth on the Wordpress site (upper and lowercase letter, at least eight characters long, and includeing special characters.

Social Sharing Plugins for the Wordpress Experience

Administrator — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:52:00 GMT

You know what two great things go great together? No, not peanut butter and chocolate (well, OK, they actually do). It's social media networking and blogging of course.

In this edition of Website Magazine's SOLOMO e-newsletter, we're profiling several of the most interesting Wordpress plugins for the social media marketing set that have caught our attention and the attention of professional bloggers over the years.

Now, we can only cover a few so we're turning over the virtual keys to our readers (how social of us!). Read our top suggested social media plugins for the Wordpress experience below and share your own in the comment section below!

Sociable

Downloads: 1,900,550
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars

Digg Digg

Downloads: 559,456
3.5 out of 5 stars

Sharebar

Downloads: 140,275
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Shareaholic

Downloads: 1,741,065
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Social Media Widget

Downloads: 665,020
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars

Add To Any

Downloads: 2,399,222
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars

Slick Social Share Buttons

Downloads: 224,968
Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Social Toolbar

Downloads: 46,499
Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars

Follow Me

Downloads: 102,168
Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars

Floating Social Media Icon

Downloads: 128,237
4.8 out of 5 stars

Shareaholic

Downloads: 63,804
Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars

WordPress Welcomes Elvin (3.5)

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:30:00 GMT

It’s another edition of WordPress Wednesday here at Website Magazine and what better way to celebrate than with a new release!

Version 3.5 of the popular blogging and CMS platform Wordpress is now available and there are quite a few changes that WP site administrators should become familiar with – let’s take a closer look:

New Media Manager: The most dramatic (or obvious) new feature is a “completely- reimagined” flow for uploading photos and creating galleries. The media management feature had long been a “friction point” according to Wordpress and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, so the improvement will likely be welcome. The ability to create galleries feature is quite exciting as users will now be able to leverage drag-and-drop reordering and inline caption editing.

New Default Theme: Wordpress 3.5 also offers a new default theme (Twenty Twelve) which offers a mobile-first responsive design (and which can work very well as a CMS).

Admin Enhancements: In addition to a new Welcome screen, several other administrative enhancements were made including updating the dashboard styles to be “Retina-ready” (HiDPI) so it looks good on high resolution displays, a new color picker, and better accessibility for screenreaders, touch devices and keyboard users.

Developer Improvements: Wordpress developers (those working on the core, plugins and themes) also received quite a few new features with this release which can be reviewed here – along with the rest of the rest of the changes and highlights.

What’s most exciting (at least for me personally) is that now, when plugins are favorited by users on WordPress.org, they can now be viewed specifically by that user and directly installed from within their own WP Dashboard.

Version 3.5 of Wordpress is named “Elvin” in honor of jazz drummer Elvin Ray Jones.

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.

Website Builders, Tools for Restaurateurs

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:30:00 GMT

From mom-and-pop diners to celebrity chef-owned bistros, there may be no better example of a brick and mortar that needs a Web presence, than restaurants. Today’s consumer demands access to hours, location, phone number, menu, prices and more – at the click of a mouse. Even more so, they are demanding this information from their mobile devices.

This is especially true when you take into account that 85 percent of consumers search online for local businesses (Local Consumer Review Survey 2012). Luckily, there are many restaurant-worthy development tools available.

LetsEat.at

Let’sEat is a website builder for restaurants and bars. It was built from the ground up specifically for restaurant owners. The interface is simple and clean and designed to be updatable on the fly.

Of the available features are: the ability to post menus online, generate printable online coupons, promote orders with a mobile site, Google Maps integration, photo gallery and more.

BistroSquare.com

BistroSquare.com was founded in 2010 with the goal of making it easy for all restaurant owners to easily and efficiently build an affordable, modern website. Its team is made up of restaurant veterans and Web hosting experts to build the software, tools and infrastructure necessary to help restaurant owners build their website with no technical knowledge required.

The site offers three different plans for companies ($9.99, $19.99 and $29.99). All include a domain name, unlimited pages and email accounts, Web control panel and more.

myRestaurantWeb.com

Starting at $25 a month and ranging up to $99 a month, myRestaurantWeb offers a range of services for restaurant owners looking to create a Web presence. Some of its services even include full access to designers, writers, graphic artists and programmers, for companies seeking additional help. All memberships, however, include website manager, premium themes, domain names, social tools, unlimited Web pages, menus, online store, testimonials and more.

Wordpress.com

According to Yoast (2012), 22 of every 100 new domains created in the U.S. are running WordPress. While the site’s attractiveness is multipronged, its versatility and ability to run on many operating systems are its biggest pluses. For restaurateurs, WordPress recently announced its Confit theme. And, smartly, the design began with the mobile experience.

“When looking at common restaurant site problems, one of the first issues that sprang to mind was how often broken animations, inaccessible information and bloated PDFs are foisted upon us when using our smartphones, when all we really need is a phone number and tappable address,” wrote WordPress’s Kevin Conboy.

Thus, the next couple areas WordPress focused on for this specific theme were mobile-accessible contact details and easy OpenTable reservations, both of which the company tackled by creating custom widgets. Additionally, in the name of food, the theme doesn’t sacrifice gorgeous photography to show off a company’s creations with this theme.

Regardless of tools used, it’s imperative for every restaurant – of all sizes – to have a Web presence. But for businesses not ready to take the digital plunge, a Facebook fan page should be made, today. It should include hours, contact information, images, responsive customer support and more.

To learn how to maneuver participation on the social network, check out Website Magazine’s Facebook Fan Page Fail Guide. Another valuable strategy for restaurant owners is the use of hyperlocal marketing strategies. For five of these strategies, check out Website Magazine's article on the topic, here.

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

WordPress Wednesday: Liveblog v1

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:35:00 GMT

Welcome to another wonderful edition of WordPress Wednesday from Website Magazine! Could we fit another "W" in that first sentence?

Today, instead of profiling a specific category of plugins as we normally do, Website Magazine has decided to profile a recently released plugin from Automattic (the company that runs the commercial side of Wordpress) - Liveblog version 1.0. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/liveblog/

Liveblogging is not neccessarily suited to every website. Instead, it's most common in the news and publishing industries where covering events - of any variety really, from sports to tech conferences - is quite common. While there are several liveblogging platforms on the Web (Wordfaire, Coveritlive, Scribblelive - there are also some liveblogging platforms available specifically for Wordpress here and here),

The LiveBlog add-on provides users the ability to post live updates from the front-end of a website (instead of through the dashboard), create posts that update automatically (useful as readers don't have to refresh), and offers a drag and drop interface for adding photos quickly. Plus, unlike other liveblogging platforms (namely Coveritlive) users can make every post a liveblog (even existing ones) - so there's no need for a seperate website or static setup on the same domain.

Liveblog was just released today but is already enjoying some nice ratings already - 4.6 out of 5 stars with just over 1000 downloads at the moment. Check out the video below for some more details.

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.

WordPress Wednesday: Top 10 E-Commerce Plugins

Michael Garrity — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:30:00 GMT

So you want to run your own e-commerce website, but you also want access to the convenience and simplicity of the WordPress platform? Never fear, because there’s a plugin for that.

Well, actually, there are a lot of plugins for that, but here are 10 of the best WordPress e-commerce plugins to help you get started making your fortune selling junk online in no time at all.

WP E-Commerce

Probably because of its easy-to-search-for name, WP E-Commerce is among the most popular e-commerce shopping cart plugins for WordPress. Although, I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that it’s simple to install and works with any WordPress theme. Users can customize the shopping experience for their customers with product widgets, free shipping options and quantity discounts. The plugin even offers search engine-friendly URLs and a feature that allows for product-specific sales.

Ecwid

This free, robust shopping cart plugin (a portmanteau of “e-commerce” and “widget”) is easy to install and maintain and is totally customizable, so users can adjust the appearance to match the look and feel of their sites. Ecwid also comes with seamless upgrades, meaning you don’t have to wait around or update it every time new features are added; they’ll just show up one day.

Cart66 Lite

Despite its “lite” modifier, Cart66 is still a very powerful e-commerce plugin. It comes with multiple shipping and currency options for transacting international business, custom product fields and inventory tracking. However, the coolest thing about Cart66 is its Amazon S3 integration, which allows users to sell digital products in addition to traditional physical products.

WooCommerce

This plugin from WordPress theme publisher WooThemes includes local and international delivery options, extensions for creating personalized products, Google Product Feed, inventory management, thorough shipping and tax options, marketing tools and reporting features. Moreover, it focuses on a clean, beautiful design to compound its robust functionality with startling elegance.

WP Auctions

Arguably the best auction plugin for WordPress, WP Auctions comes with three different bidding engines, as well as features for registered only users and reserved prices. Users can use their WordPress blog or website to host auctions (as many as they’d like) and sell anything without any fees. It’s incredibly easy for users to edit, end or delete their auctions. You can even use PayPal to accept payments. And speaking of PayPal…

PayPal Payment Terminal WordPress

In less than five minutes, users can start accepting PayPal payments on their WordPress-based e-commerce site with this plugin. Then, they can view all of their transactions and sort their transaction list as needed. It will even send the purchaser and merchant automatic notifications during the purchasing process. This particular premium WordPress plugin costs $12.

WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

However, if you don’t want to pay for PayPal functionality, then maybe you should consider this plugin. It allows users to put an “Add to Cart” button and display the shopping cart on any of their blog posts or site pages. This will show customers what items they currently have in their carts (and remove it, if they want). Users will get access to the PayPal sandbox to do testing, as well.

eShop

This free full service shopping cart option provides a simple administration area that makes it super easy to add products, review products and check site statistics. It’s also highly customizable, so you can definitely make it reflect the tone of your brand. Mostly, this solution is ideal if you want customers to create a profile to make purchases on your site.

YAK for WordPress

Merchants can use this open source shopping cart plugin to create products from pages or blog posts, so that the post ID becomes the product code. YAK handles different kinds of products through categorization, and includes a basic XML feed. It also offers a variety of customizable purchasing options, including checks or deposits, credit cards, Google Checkout, PayPal and PayPal Payments Pro and Authorize.net, as well as a configurable shipping address feature.

Shopp

Shopp is an excellent, albeit somewhat pricey (starting at $55), premium e-commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress. Easy to install and begin using, Shopp provides a clean user interface with strong customer support, including a user forum on its official site. After buying the initial single license for the software, users can build upon the Shopp platform by purchasing additional plugins like payment gateways, shipping modules and priority customer support.

Take Your WordPress Site Mobile

Michael Garrity — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:15:00 GMT

Much of the appeal of the WordPress platform is that it makes it easy to create an affordable, functional, and often feature-rich website without requiring extensive knowledge of the “nuts and bolts” of website development.

So when it suddenly became important to have a mobile-optimized website to stay competitive, many business owners or bloggers who aren’t necessarily experts in the field probably felt a pang of dread. However were they supposed to create another version of their sites that could work on an array of mobile devices?

Over time, a natural demand for easy-to-use mobile Web design solutions led to the creation of platforms like DudaMobile, which helps webmasters quickly and efficiently build a customized version of their websites that is optimized for most mobile devices. When DudaMobile noticed that a significant percentage of its customers were working with WordPress-powered websites, it seemed like a natural decision to streamline the optimization process by creating the DudaMobile WordPress plugin.

Released just last month, the new DudaMobile plugin saves WordPress users a significant amount of time and effort. It also makes it easy to optimize WordPress blogs with unique mobile-friendly templates, in addition to a number of useful add-ons and features for business websites that help them leverage the power of the mobile Web sooner, rather than later.

The plugin is easy to install and activate, and after that, it’s just one click to get started. DudaMobile will automatically render an “initial version” of a user’s mobile site and provides previews of what it will look like on the four major mobile operating systems (Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Phones). These previews can always be accessed during the optimization process to allow users to examine their changes as they make them.

Once the initial version is rendered, users can customize their mobile site in just four steps. The first is to choose a theme. When the site is first created, it uses the original template employed by the site, but for the mobile version, users are able to select a brand new website or blog theme.

The second step is the most involved and deals with the majority of the editing and customization. Users are able to totally customize the site’s header and logo, navigation menu, background and text, and footer, as well as add a home icon or remove content. (The options are slightly different for blogs, allowing for customization of the header and logo, home page, blog posts, comments, and the footer.) Perhaps the most important aspect, however, is the ability to add widgets, which greatly increase the functionality of the mobile sites.

This additional content is split into three categories for Business, Design, and Social features, including the ability to insert images or a photo gallery, a mobile map, a restaurant menu, PayPal functionality, a click-to-call option, and much more. However, it is important to note that many of these features are only available with a premium mobile site (more on that in a second).

After the site is customized, the third step is to take it live. Here, users can choose between the free basic plan and the premium plan, which costs nine dollars a month. The premium plan provides a wider range of features than the basic option, including Google AdSense integration that lets users to monetize their mobile sites. Premium sites also get a unique “m.” mobile URL, while the basic users receive a standard DudaMobile mobile URL.

When the mobile site is live, all that is left to do is redirect the URL so that the mobile optimized site is loaded in mobile browsers. This is literally as simple as clicking “YES” to confirm the mobile site URL at the end of the process.

As you can see, with the new DudaMobile plugin, it’s cheap and easy to take your WordPress website or blog mobile. In just a few quick steps, you can begin leveraging the power of the mobile Web, and you can always go back and edit, customize, or add features to your mobile site as needed, which is especially helpful since DudaMobile will be adding new capabilities to the plugin every three weeks.

WordPress Wednesday: Themes of a Social Nature

Michael Garrity — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:15:00 GMT

When Facebook burst onto the national scene and stopped being the exclusive domain of college undergraduates, its biggest selling point (and the attribute that helped propel its phenomenal success) was a clean, straightforward design.

A far cry from the cluttered, disorganized social profiles of the earliest years of the 21^st Century, Facebook’s first priority was simplicity and readability. Now, thanks to some fanboy designers, you can adapt that same aesthetic for your WordPress site.

Check out these Facebook-inspired WordPress themes:

If you like your social networking a little more bite-sized, here are a few Twitter inspired themes:

And, of course, for both of those huge Google+ fans out there:

Plus Theme

WP Plus

PayLane Payment Processing comes to Wordpress

Allison Howen — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:15:00 GMT

E-commerce merchants on a multitude of platforms can now leverage payment processing provider PayLane to accept payments from consumers all over the world.

PayLane enables merchants to accept payments in 160 different currencies from more than 50 countries, as well as process a variety of payment methods, including credit and debit cards, PayPal and Giropay. In addition to the company’s current plugins for Magento and osCommerce merchants, PayLane has released four new plugins – for Wordpress, OpenCart, Zen Cart and PrestaShop merchants.

The Wordpress extension differs from the other e-commerce platform plugins because it enables merchants to create an easy-to-use system that allows consumers to make payments for a fixed-price service, product, access to website content or to make a donation. For example, merchants can create custom buttons with call-to-action terms such as “Donate” or “Pay”.

The various payment processing plugins can be found on the company’s website – where merchants can download their platform-specific extension, extract and copy the files to the root folder and configure basic settings in the admin panel.

WordPress Wednesday: Facebook for WordPress Plugin

Michael Garrity — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Facebook is undoubtedly the driving force behind the rise of the social Web, and the social network is increasingly becoming a vital component of ‘Net success for online retailers, content publishers and pretty much anyone else working on the Web.

For many, this means finding ways to integrate Facebook functionality directly into their website(s). A recent Pingdom survey of the world’s top 10,000 websites reveals that nearly a quarter of them (24.3 percent) feature some type of official Facebook integration on their homepage, and when one considers “regular” links to Facebook, the number shoots up to 49.3 percent. This integration can be anything from widgets to social plugins.

Now, WordPress website owners can harness the power of Facebook by adding the officially sanctioned Facebook for WordPress plugin to their site, with no coding knowledge required. In addition to offering a range of Facebook functionality, the plugin also supports internationalization and mobile sites, and is WordPress.com VIP approved.

Whenever one publishes a new page or post on their WordPress site, they will have a number of options for distributing it directly to Facebook. This includes the ability to mention specific friends or pages on the social network, as well as add a message that will be posted with the content. Then, once it is published, the content will appear on the friends and pages’ Timelines, and the mentions will also show up in the post on the WordPress site.

Author’s can alter the plugin’s settings so that the post shows up on their Timeline as an Open Graph action, the Timeline of any friend or page mentioned as part of the post and any Facebook page the author chooses that automatically publishes the WordPress site’s content once it is live.

Facebook for WordPress also offers users a variety of social plugins that they can easily enable on posts and pages. This includes Like, Send and Subscribe buttons, comments with SEO support (meaning they can be indexed by search engines) and a Recommendations Bar that lets users start getting recommendations, “Like” content and add what they’re currently reading to Timeline.

Finally, the plugin features a number of WordPress Widgets with drag-and-drop functionality that allows users to include social features like recommendations, recent activity and Like, Send and Subscribe buttons in their sites’ sidebars.

Click here for instructions from Facebook Developers on how to install Facebook for WordPress to your site.

WordPress 3.4 (Green) - New and Noteworthy

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Wordpress 3.4 has arrived and comes with some significant improvements worthy of note - let's take a look!

Perhaps the most important change in 3.4 is the theme customizer which allows users to change the look and setting of an active theme without publishing the changes for everyone. Users can change colors, backgrounds and custom image headers on themes that support it. Wordpress also make it easier to use images from a media library to popular custom headers and now empowers users to choose the height and width of those header images.

Wordpress also expaned its embed support to include tweets. Now, users only have to put a Twitter permalink on its own line in the post editor and Wordpress will turn it into an embedded tweet.

But that's not all. Wordperss users can now also include HTML (and links) within image captions. Read through the list of user and developer features within the Codex.

Recent Wordpress Coverage at Website Magazine

- 10 Minimalist WP Themes for Maximum Inspiration

- Best Wordpress Comment Plugins

- 10 Plugins You Can’t Live Without