January 9, 2008

Over the last year, I’ve added different functions to this blog and I’d like to share with you these specific plugins for Wordpress.

If you’re just getting started with your own blog, congratulations: a well-written, authoritative, trafficked blog is a great way to get you and your company’s name out there as a resource for your field or industry.

For ASuccessfulWoman.com, our target is in supporting success-oriented women. In our business building section, we offer a number of tools and resources for those starting out in the business world; additionally, in 2008, I’m focusing on how you may use your blog and your website to effectively market your products and services.

For blogs, I always recommend you purchase your own domain and hosting, and install Wordpress as an organizing tool to get your blog up and running.

You may use a number of prepackaged templates using the free submissions here: http://themes.wordpress.net/, and you may also “tweak” these themes to fit your own style.

In alphabetical order, these are the other plugins I use:

• AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down)
  http://www.addthis.com
  This widget allows your visitors to promote your website or blog to any of the popular bookmarking services. AddThis.com
• Akismet
  http://www.akismet.com
  This allows you to filter out spam comments from your blog. You’ll have to sign up for an API key directly from WordPress.com to use it, but the spam catcher is extremely effective.
• Customizable Comment Listings
  http://www.coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/
  This plugin allows you to display recent comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks.
• Custom Query String UTW
  http://andybeard.eu/custom-query-string-utw
  When you’re displaying the results from a search, you may specify the number of results that display using this plugin. For example, when displaying the archive pages, I request to show all archives within a particular category (instead of five at a time, or three at a time).
• Google Sitemaps Generator
  http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
  A great plugin to generate a Google Sitemaps-compliant file, so your blog constantly gets updated correctly in the Google archives.
• sds_Talkr_Plugin
  http://www.talkr.com
  This might be useful for you if you want to offer an audio component to your blog: the Talkr service creates a podcast version of each blog post and stores it on their site, available for audio download. It’s helpful for those who enjoy listening rather than reading. You’ll also need to sign up for a Talkr.com account to use this service. update 06/2008: this doesn’t work anymore
• Similar Posts
  http://rmarsh.com/2006/10/04/similar-posts/
  Displays a “related posts” link depending on word usage patterns in your existing post. The plugin increases the “stickiness” of your site by keeping visitors on your site and allowing them to click from one related post to another.
• Viddler Video embedding
  http://wiki.developers.viddler.com/index.php/WPViddlerVideoComments
  Download the Viddler video plugin to allow users to comment via video. Uses Flash. Can also easily use for videoblogging, with a fun way of allowing embedded comments into the video file itself. Viddler.com updated October 20, 2008
• What Would Seth Godin Do
  http://www.richardkmiller.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do/
  An easy-to-use plugin that uses cookies to display a welcome message to new visitors: the message invites visitors to sign up for the feed or receive updates via e-mail.
• Wordpress Database Backup
  http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup
  Very important to create regular backups of all your precious blog postings. This plugin makes that work easy.

Tag Cloud
This is a great way to show a “cloud” of topics on the sidebar, which is based on the keywords assigned to each post.

Custom 404 Page
I’ve also found a nifty plugin to manage your 404 Error page. If a user visits a broken link on your site, give them a chance to see some potential hits instead of a plain error message.
http://www.askapache.com/seo/404-google-wordpress-plugin.html

Additionally, I recommend installing the two following if they fit your specific needs:

Contact Form with Spam Protection
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/09/22/wordpress-contact-form-with-spam-protection/
If you need a contact form on your website.

and

Viper’s Video
http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/
Viper’s Video if you link to a lot of Youtube or Google videos: this makes the linking process easier.

Social Networking
If you’re a Twitter user, you may want to use their badge as a sidebar to add your latest tweets (to add interest and additional keyword tagging), I particularly recommend this if your tweets are relevant to your blog.

LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace users may add a badge with a link to their presences, and you could also use a link aggregator like Delicious.com to add your latest saved bookmarks.

I hope these plugins are useful to you as you develop your own Wordpress blog. Feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments section.