'Net Features : wp plugins

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 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

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 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

WordPress Wednesday: Formstack Web Form Plugin

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:42:00 GMT

Welcome to another edition of WordPress Wednesday at Website Magazine.

Each week our editors profile a WordPress plugin they believe provides unparalelled value to WordPress blog operators and administrators. This week, let's take a look at the Formstack WordPress plugin.

One of the benefits of having a website or weblog for a company is that it carries with it the ability to increase interaction and engagement with your audience. As greater demands are placed on Internet marketers (and weblog administrators) to show return on their promotional efforts (like the development of content), collecting information from site visitors is fast becoming a crucial. To do that you will need to have a data collection strategy and the form you use to collect information will be taking center stage. Fortunately for WordPress bloggers, several form plugins exist to make the process about as simple as it can get. case in point - Formstack.

Formstack's Web Form plugin (which is free - non-commercial) enables you to embed a Formstack form into your sidebar, posts, or pages. Users can create far more than just standard contact forms. Thanks to a bevy of third-party integrations, contact forms can connect with payment services like PayPal, email services like MailChimp, or CRM services like Salesforce.

The Formstack plugin adds a button to the TinyMCE editor that allows you to select the Formstack web form you wish to embed. Once the form of your choice is selected, a shortcode will be inserted into the editor, which will be converted to the selected form once your page or post is rendered. This plugin supports the following shortcodes [Formstack], [formstack], and [fs].

The plugin has only been downloaded a handful of times (just over 150 times) at WordPress but it was only released September 13th, 2010. You'll need a Formstack account to use the plugin but if you are only interested in testing out the plugin there is a free option available which provides up to three forms with 10 fields per form and fifty saved entries. If you're looking into new ways to acquire information from users and run a WordPress blog, Formstack is one of the premier to collect and manage data.

Three FAQ Plugins for WordPress

Administrator — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:40:00 GMT

For millions of websites WordPress acts as far more than just a weblog - using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) is certainly within the realm of possibility. Should "WordPress as CMS" be the direction you take, realize that certain customizations will need to be made to your deployment. For example, a service oriented business will need to make customer service a priority, right? There are a variety of ways to provide service and support, but one of the least intrusive, highest-impact means is to provide a list of frequently asked questions (sort of a virtual self-help section for your business). Fortunately for you - there are quite a few WP plugins (commercial and free) that fit the bill nicely.

Questions and Answers from Tribulant is one such WordPress plugin. The FAQ software provides adminisrators with a full featured dashboard to create question and answer groups and manage the entire process automatically. Users are able to submit their own questions (options to force registration in order to post is included) and users can also browse the FAQ's, simply flipping through the questions via a sliding accordion feature. A search function is also built-in which enables site vistors to find questions within a specific group or within the entire FAQ database.

There are of course several other plugins designed exclusively for the purpose of publishing and administrating frequently asked question sections on your WordPress installation.

FAQ Builder for Wordpress, created by Square Compass, is another plugin that allows you to develop a Frequently Asked Questions section for your Wordpress blog. FAQs made with the plugin include the original question from your reader, and an answer provided by you; all in a well formatted page. When one page is filled (default set for 30 questions), the plugin paginates the rest for you. The plugin's Admin tab allows you to approve questions before they appear live on the site, and to add your own answers. You can also add, edit and delete FAQs from within the Admin tab.

FAQ-Tastic Lite is a free WordPress plugin for creating FAQ sections on your WP weblog. The plugin has the ability to produce either single or multiple page Q&A's, offers user submitted questions, HTML markiup in answers, drag-and-drop reordering of questions, email notification to admins of new questions (and user notifications of answered questions), a simple rating functionality, and a resources section with a built-in media player.

WordPress Font Fun

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:27:00 GMT

According to WordPress’ official download counter, the open-source blogging software has been downloaded more than 6.6 million times, as of this writing. Chances are, if you are running WordPress, your site has a lot in common with some other sites out there. And that raises an important question: How do you make your site stand out from the crowd?

One way, without labor intensive hacks, is by altering your website’s fonts.

If the default font in your WordPress installation is leaving you uninspired, and the concept of tweaking CSS files seems a bit too daunting, try the following WordPress plugins to dress up your design and have some fun.

Read more: FONT FUN WITH WORDPRESS

Wordpress Shopping Pages Might Blow Your Mind

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:44:00 GMT

A new Wordpress affiliate plugin (WP Shopping Pages) has been released today and it may be just what you need if you're in pursuit of making some extra cash (and who doesn't?). Please note - this may just blow your mind.

The $69 plugin allows WP users to create an "affiliate store" by utilizing native pages. Users can opt to display Amazon and eBay products and earn commissions from those respective programs. The plugin enables bloggers to create these affiliate pages related to any topic or niche of their choosing just by specifying some keywords.

Customization is a benefit of WP Shopping Pages. By modifying the templates used (check out the screenshots) users can control the output of the plugin and tailor the generated pages exactly to their own weblog. Website Magazine is looking into testing this plugin now but do check out the full list of features for details as we prepare a formal review.

"We noticed that most bloggers do not utilize the pages feature Wordpress offers to the fullest, for example often merely having a single contact page on their blog.", Thomas Hoefter, one of the creators, said. "WP Shopping Pages changes that by giving all bloggers the opportunity to add an additional layer of content and a new source of revenue to their weblogs with barely any work involved."

What other revenue generating plugins do you use on your WP weblog?

Referral Source Messages on WordPress

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:04:00 GMT

Personalization comes in many forms on the Web these days. While you may not know everything about the user(s) visiting your WordPress weblog, you might be surprised to learn that you actually have a lot more data than you think about each user session.

Oftentimes data about user sessions is wasted while the user is actually visiting. Most of us don't do anything with the data being bassed by the referrer. By acknowledging the referral source of the visitor during the visit however and providing them a custom (hopefully compelling message), you can dramatically increase the chance the user either shares your message or converts on your unique selling proposition.

For example, say you want to encourage the Twitter followers that visit your weblog to sign up for an email newsletter. Or perhaps you want all visitors from search engines to access a specific piece of content, or to have visitors from Delicious or Facebook share the page they are visiting with their friends and colleagues. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

Here are two excellent WordPress plugins to make the most from what you know about the source of the visitor:

WP Greet Box is perhaps the best known of the plugins for displaying referrer messages to visitors. Notable features in WP Greet Box include the ability to choose where (top or bottom) greeting messages are placed, the ability to detect the visitor's search keywords, the ability to set a timeout, and a whole lot more, which make for an excellent experience for users. My favorite feature is the ability to detect the keywords that drove the initial visit; this enables you (the blogger) to show posts related to that search term or phrase (see below.

Referrer Detector is another plugin that provides comparable functionality to WP Greet Box. Notable features include the ability to set the message position, a custom tag which can be used when you don't want to show a greeting, option to exclude URLs, and a STAT panel to get data reporting about visitors. New in version 4.1 was the ability to display related posts and in v4.2 users can now opt to show the welcome box in lightbox stule using SimpleModal jQuery plugin.

Here's an example of WP Greet Box and its related posts feature (based on the keyword passed from the referral source):

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Top Search Plugins for WordPress

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:18:00 GMT

It doesn't seem that anyone really likes the default search feature that ships with WordPress. Not to worry though; once again, WP plugins to the rescue. Website Magazine has featured ten powerful, feature-driven plugins which add an entirely new level of functionality to your weblog installation.

Did we forget one? Let us know and add your comment below.

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Google Custom Search Plugin: Very popular plugin which replaces all WP search forms and points them to a Google Custom Search. Adds a new search page on a weblog, converts the default search URL to one that is more search engine friendly. All-time downloads for the plugin are over 7,000. Download URL

Search Everything: A plugin which adds some much needed functionality to the default Wordpress Search. The plugin highlights search terms, searches pages, tags, categories, and comments. All-time downloads for the plugin have topped 160,000. Download URL

Amazon Search: Allows for direct linking to items in your posts using a special tag. Set associate IDs for each international amazon server and set one server as the default. Also includes an Amazon Search widget which will produce search results with direct links to products. All-time downloads for the plugin are just over 2.300. Download URL

Better Search: Aims to improve the visitor search experience by providing contextually relevant search and list results based on relevance. Also tracks searches and allows for the presentation of a “search heatmap” of the most popular queries. All-time downloads for the plugin are over 5,000. Download URL

wpSearch: A very handle blogs search plugin based on the open source search engine Lucene. Requires PHP 5 or higher to run without conflict. All-time downloads for this plugin are just under 3,800. Download URL

Dave’s WordPress Live Search: Similar to the LiveSearch Popup, this plugin adds functionality which allows users to see results before they finish typing their query. There are some limits as it stands – only one search box per page, requires JavaScript to be enabled and the plugin won’t work on PHP 4.x. All-time downloads of the plugin are over 4,000. Download URL

Search Hilite: Highlights the term a user searched for when referred from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Wordpress own internal search system. All-time downloads for the plugin have topped 5,000. Download URL

Enhanced Search Box: Built with jQuery, the plugin adds provides control over the default search text from the admin panel and clears the default search text when the search box is focused. All-time downloads for the plugin are under 1,000. Download URL

Zanox Product Search: Queries the zanox Web service API for sponsored programs and products based on the search query and displays them within the search result page. Configure the “sales region”, minimum and maximix price, and even how many (and which products) are displayed. All-time downloads of this plugin are just under 300. Download URL

Recent Searches Widget: Show recent search performed by other users in a sidebar widget. New searches top the list and are SEO-friendly and can have the rel=”nofollow” tag added. Available in English, Italian and Polish. All-time downloads are just over 600. Download URL

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Top WordPress Contact Form Plugins

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:15:00 GMT

You'll never convert anyone from a browser to a buyer if they can't contact you! While there are loads of online form providers (I typically recommend FormSpring and Wufoo), there are lots of ways to collect user data. Here are the top five WordPress contact form plugins. Did we miss one? Let us know by commenting below.

Contact Form 7: One of the best form plugins available. Downloaded nearly 600,000 times (nearly 5,000 daily), Contact Form 7 is a powreful plugin which enables for the creation and management of multiple contact forms. The plugin supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and more.

SimpleModal Contact Form (SMCF): An Ajax powered modal contact form, SMCF utilizes the jQuery JavaScript library and the SimpleModal jQuery plugin. Options for including certain form elements (such as a Subject field and "send a copy" option for senders) are available. All time downloads for SMCF are just under 18,000.

Enhanced WP Contact Form: Joost de Valk's enhanced Wordpress contact form is elegant, even in its simplicity. Downloaded just over 35,000 times, features include excellent spam protection, displays referrer information for the person contact you, and an option for users to send themselves a copy of the message.

MM Forms: One of the most underrated WP form plugins available. Feature rich is an understatement. Features include field creator, CAPTCHA prevention, Akismet SPAM filtering, HTML layout, customized forms and unlimited contact forms. Downloaded just under 10,000 times, this one's a gem.

Visitor Contact Forms: Certainly the best looking form available of those listed, to say the Visitor Contact Form plugin is "stylish" is a complete disservice. Key features of the plugin include geocoding, CAPTCHA prevention, auto-responder, contact manager, twitter follow and skype status and even Google Maps integration.

MailChimp's Analytics360 WP Plugin Impressive

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:48:00 GMT

Email marketing service Mailchimp released an impressive free plugin today which displays tracking data from Google Analytics and its own email analytics data.

The Analytics360 Plugin provides a comprehensive view of a blog's performance, allowing publishers to quickly identify which posts are enjoying the most inbound traffic whether from web site referrals or by email. The traffic-over-time chart shows when a post was published or an email campaign was sent in relation to the numbers of site visits.

MailChimp supports email for blogs with its RSS-to-Email option that updates subscribers whenever a new post is published. MailChimp also developed a simple to install Wordpress plugin to manage email list signups.

The Analytics360 plugin from Mailchimp is available within the WordPress Plugin Directory.

WordPress Membership Plugins - Commercial (Paid) Solutions

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:14:00 GMT

It seems that everyone has a self-hosted WordPress blog these days. The problem is that few if any are able to actually generate any significant revenue from their blogging and content creation efforts. It doesn't have to be that way of course. With some strategic thinking (and unique value proposition of course) you could quickly be on your way to profitability. One way to make that happen is to put a portion of your content behind a subscription wall by using WordPress membership plugins.

Below you'll find a few of the best WordPress membership plugins available on the market today.

MemberWing: One of the most popular commercial WP membership plugins, MemberWing is perhaps the most robust of all options. There are actually two plugins from MemberWing; the WM Gradual Content Plugin ($79 for a single license and $149 for unlimited use) and the MW Membership site plugin (there are four levels of pricing - from free to $295). The Gradual Content plugin allows for prescheduled release of premium content to members while the membership plugin offers site owners a more traditional approach to putting content behind a subscription wall and promoting it to non-members (the plugin even includes integration with several affiliate marketing tools and resources).

WP Member: WP Member is another excellent options for bloggers looking for a solid membership plugin to integrate with WordPress. Pricing is based on the number of site on which it is deployed; a one-site license will run $45, while the per-site fee for running the plugin on ten blogs will drop the price to just under $20 each. WP Member also offers several support packages (tickets, live help, email, and emergency) at various price levels. Create unlimited membership levels and select which post, page and category can be viewed by each membership level. Select one or multiple membership levels per post, page & category and wp-Member will automatically manage users subscriptions, payments and access rights.

Membership Plugin: One of the more pricey WP membership plugin options ($99 for a single site license and $199 for a multi-site (5) license), Membership Plugin offers the standard features of a subscription solution with subscription control, content protection, teaser pages and posts, payment options and more.

Suma Plugin: Suma is a Membership and Subscription Management plug-in for the WordPress publishing system. It provides functionality which transforms WordPress into a pay-to-view, membership-oriented, subscription-based content publishing platform.
Some of the most notable features are a hosted registration process, PayPal and regular credit cart payment methods, secured sign-up pages, off-site storage of payment details and a customizable GUI. The perpetual license for this membership plugin costs $199.

WP Wishlist: Another very popular option, WP Wishlist features much of what is desired in a membership plugin; unlimited membership levels, sequential content delivery, shopping cart integration, multi-level access, subscription length control, sneak peak content display and a lot more. A single license runs $97 while a multi-site license (with free updates and 3 months of support) costs $297.

Read the commentary from our June 2009 issue, Transparency is So 2008, addressing the idea of membership sites and protected content.

Do you use another membership plugin that isn't listed here? Let us know. Share your preferred WordPress membership strategy with other Website Magazine readers by commenting below.

Amazon S3 for WordPress: Cloud Hosting Solution for WP

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:51:00 GMT

Several weeks ago I received a frantic text message in the middle of the night from a friend whose website (a WordPress blog) I host on my Web server. Apparently, the site was receiving a surge of traffic. I immediately increased their bandwidth just in case they were to go over the limit previously established, but it made me think how this user could reduce costs and ease up the demands (storage and bandwidth) on my server. The answer was in the cloud.

There are quite a few cloud hosting providers on the market. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an online storage service that is perhaps the most well known. The Web service can be used to host static contents, like image files, instead of hosting them yourself. One of the biggest advantages of S3 is the reliability from Amazon servers during high traffic, and their bandwidth and storage prices are low compare to other similar services. Startup companies are embracing it for their online storage solution, and even bloggers are starting to use it to host their images and other static media.

The website had a WordPress installation which means, as in most things, there must be a plugin working with a cloud hosting provider like Amazon S3 wherein media content could be stored and served, right? Right!

Amazon S3 for WordPress is a plugin that allows bloggers to use Amazon's Simple Storage Service to host media for WordPress powered blogs. Once integrated into a WordPress install, WP users can upload files (images, video, audio, etc.) which are then saved into an Amazon S3 bucket without any extra steps. These files are delivered by Amazon S3 instead of your web host - problem solved.

Exclude Pages In WordPress Navigation Menu

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:44:00 GMT

Wordpress is clearly the go-to open-source blogging software (and some would say content management system) for the Web entrepreneur and affiliate marketers. Despite its active support community and broad extensibility, new installations often require some tweaking.

One of the main issues many have is what to do when they have too many pages in their navigation menu. Let's look at two ways to exclude pages and customize a WordPress navigation menu.

The Coding Way
The first way to exclude pages is to do hack the source code a little. If you are comforable making some adjustments to PHP files, go to the theme editor under "Presentation" and select header.php. From here, look for the wp_list_pagse() tag - it often looks like this <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=-1);?>. To exclude pages, simply add the (=&exclude= 1,2,3) (without the paranthesis) wherein the numbers represent the page IDs you want to hide from the navigation menu. For example, the whole string would look like the following:

<?php wp_list_pages(’title_li=&depth=-1=&exclude= 1,2,3‘); ?>

The one problem with this method is that you need to exclude pages each time you create them. Is there a better way? Why, yes, of course!

The Plugin Way
As has been said over and over before, the real beauty of WordPress is the extensibility. Thousands of available plugins give you the ability to add some unique functionality without having to know how to code. If you don't wan't to have to exclude pages manually, there is a way - the plugin way.

The Exclude Pages WordPress Plugin by Simon Wheatley enables bloggers to hide pages in a WordPress blog. This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus). Pages which are children of excluded pages also do not show up in menu listings. (An alert in the editing screen, underneath the "include" checkbox allows you to track down which ancestor page is affecting child pages in this way.)

Do you know of other page exclusion methods or plugins?
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