My WordPress Plugin

I’m no wordpress plugin author so when I say my wordpress plugin, I’m not talking about plugins that I wrote for wordpress blog but more of the plugins that I have in my blog which I find useful and like to share with anyone who’s curious. Links to the respective plugins are also included so you could also download the plugins for yourself.

Just a quick note for those that’s not sure how to install the plugin, just download, use your fav. FTP program (I uses FileZilla that ShaolinTiger recommended to me) and upload it into your plugin folder (…/wp-content/plugins) and then activate it through your wordpress admin (…/wp-admin/plugins.php). Just look for this icon if you’re not sure what I’m talking about.

Akismet: http://akismet.com/

Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging. It isn’t 100% foolproof but for what it was designed to do, it still produce good work to keep spam away from my blog. It’s intuitive enough to mark some comments into a spam folder just in case the comment isn’t really a spam so I could look at it and approve it or permanently delete it at my own convenience.

CommentLuv: http://www.commentluv.com/

CommentLuv enabled me to reward my blog readers by leaving a link to their latest post automatically whenever they comment thus encouraging more comments by more people on more posts! It definitely helped me to increase traffic to my site as well to the people who comments on mine. Only Relax find problem with it on my blog as commentluv wouldn’t recognize his link, aside from that, most commentors that commented on my blog have their link posted unless they opt not to. So do drop me some comments and see your link posted here to encourage others to visit your blog as well. At the end of the day, it’s a win-win situation which is healthy in promoting one another. Right?

For Blogger users, do not fret as they also provide the service for Blogger/Blogspot platform. You can find it at http://www.commentluv.com/download/blogger-commentluv/. You’ll need to use the JS-kit commenting system on your blogger blog, you will be able to use CommentLuv Blogger and start enjoying the benefits of being able to add something unique and valuable to your visitors experience.

Events Calendar: http://www.lukehowell.com/events-calendar/

This is a simple calendar to store your events so that you could share it with your readers. I find it useful as I find it a good way to remind myself of upcoming events that I’m supposed to attend. At present, it’s not active on my blog as I don’t have any latest events to update until I’m settled down.

You can add it as a widget and have it presented in a calendar format or point form as well as can automatically create a post (to update) for the event with this plugin. If you want to share with your readers where you go and all, you can give this plugin a try.

FeedBurner Feedsmith: http://www.feedburner.com

FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. It’s a great way for blog owners to promote their site. An interesting update regarding Feedburner is that it had been acquired by Google. So we can expect Feedburner to be updated and improved to provide better experience for bloggers like you and me as well as for advertisers, but it’s too early to know how FeedBurner’s technology will be integrated into Google. Until we learn more about what will happen to Feedburner and it’s integration into google, you can follow my feed through http://feeds2.feedburner.com/mikeyip/AQDc.

Google XML Sitemaps: …/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. The format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. I am no expect on this so for more information on what XML-Sitemaps are and how they can help you to get indexed by the major search engines can be read at Sitemaps.org. An example of what this plugin does can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/az2or7. This is how my site looks through the eyes of the google search engine after the plugin was activated.

Sociable: http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/

Sociable is a plugin which adds social media buttons to your posts, and does so easily, and beautifully. It was originally developed and maintained by Peter Harkins and is improved on by Joost de Valk. Unlike many other Social Network buttons out there, this one doesn’t force the user to go into another site just to share the link but connects directly with the Social Networks themselves to post the respective links that was shared. I find it very useful and as you can see it at the bottom of this post, the icons are neatly displayed and not cluttered and unorganized. Give it a try by clicking at the buttons at the bottom, it’s also a way to help promote this post if you like what you read.

Statpress: …/plugins/statpress/

The real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc. Once the plugin StatPress has been activated it immediately starts to collect statistics information. Using StatPress you could spy your visitors while they are surfing your blog or check which are the preferred pages, posts and categories. In the Dashboard menu you will find the StatPress page where you could look up the statistics (overview or detailed). StatPress also includes a widget one can possibly add to a sidebar (or easy PHP code if you can’t use widgets!).

Personally, I find the statistics quite good, simple to use and you don’t have to constantly log into other sites to check your statistics. Another plugin you can also check on is the WordPress.com’s Stat but the wordpress one requires some configuration and also an account with WordPress.com. So if you’re lazy to go into Google’s Analytic or your respective Advertisement Aggregator’s dashboard, this is something you can use.

WP-Cumulus: …/wp-cumulus-released/

I get quite a few people asking me about this. You see this tag cloud on on my side panel that’s floating around and all? WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard (depending on your speed setting) but does take you to the appropriate page .

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: …/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

YARPP provides a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on the site. As you can see at the links below that list 5 posts/pages that are most similar to the current post through categories and keywords. It’s quite useful when encouraging readers to view more posts within your own site. I’m still searching for another plugin that shows related posts from other blogs/sites but unable to find it even though I’ve seen some sites using it. If you know of the plugin I’m talking about, it’ll be a great help if you could point me to it.

That’s about it for the collection of plugins that’s installed in my wordpress platform. Don’t worry about the updates as when there’s an update, the plugins will provide you with an update link at your plugins list.  Do you have a favorite plugin you would like to share? Do let me know by commenting below this post. (You can see how Commentluv works by commenting)

You can also follow me by subscribing to <A href=”http://mikeyip.com/feed/”>http://mikeyip.com/feed/</a>.

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