Must-have WordPress plugins: The Top Six
I love, love, LOVE, WordPress. I especially love how there are free WordPress plugins for pretty much anything you can possibly think of. However, it’s easy to go nuts on WP plugins and start installing dozens at a time willy-nilly, but you must fight that temptation, especially since the more WP plugins you have, the less they tend to play nice with each other. Weird, but unfortunately true (and I’ve learned that firsthand). Here are the top six WordPress plugins you need to install right off the bat, the ones that will instantly make your life easier and make your blog or site into a well-oiled machine.
All In One SEO Pack: This SEO (search engine optimization) plugin is the Cadillac of SEO plugins. Download it, install it, and within minutes you’ll have optimized your entire site with just a few well-placed tags and descriptions. Doesn’t get much easier than that.
WordPress Stats: If you’re a little stats-obsessive (not that I would, uh, know anything about THAT), you’ll need the WordPress Stats plugin. Nothing fancy here, just a daily graphical representation of the traffic your site is getting, including trackbacks or backlinks.
Akismet: Spam is bad. Spam is annoying. Akismet kills spam. End of story. (That almost rhymed.) You’ll need an API key to activate this plugin, which can be found by opening up a free WordPress.com account (see this quick resource for more information).
XML Sitemap: Need a directory of your entire site? If you would rather not do it by hand, you can just activate the XML Sitemap plugin and it will automatically whip up an entire navigational map of your entire site, no matter how big or small it may be. Search engines love sitemaps, since their spiders can crawl them quickly, which means your content gets indexed. WIN.
Mass Post Manager: If you ever need to edit a lot of posts at the same time, say, you want to delete all the posts from February 2007, for example, then you’ll have to laboriously click the Delete key for every single post. Which is both annoying and a huge waste of time. Mass Post Manager gives you the ability to go all Costco (bulk shopping reference, doncha know) on your editing projects.
Sociable: Sociable automatically tacks as many (or as few) social networking and social bookmarking services on your posts as you want; then, if people like what you’re writing about (and hopefully they do), they can choose to share it with their contacts at those services.
What’s your favorite WP plugin? The one that you can’t do without? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Need a good domain name? Here are three things to keep in mind.
Many people, when designing a new site personally or professionally, leave the choosing of the domain name till the very last. It’s almost an afterthought, when it should actually be one of the first things that you really put some creative effort into. Why? Because that domain name, for better or for worse, is going to represent you online. What do you want it to say? What do you HOPE it will say? Here are three things to keep in mind so you can pick the perfect domain name:
Make sure it includes who you are or what you do. Your domain name should include the top key phrase that you would like to be found for. Example: if you’re a jewelry maker, your domain should have something to do with jewelry, and not with your unicorn fan fiction. Keep it short, make it easy to remember, and easy to type.
.com all the way, baby. Let’s get this out on the table: .com’s are preferable to ANY other Web extension out there. Period. Don’t mess around with .net, .biz; stay away from .edu unless you’re an educational institution, and don’t get a .org unless you’re a non-profit.
Be unique. You’re special, did you know that? Let your domain name reflect that. On the other hand, don’t reinvent the wheel here, but then again, don’t go with the flow. Make your domain name something that will represent you and your unique point of view/services/offerings.
How do you pick a domain name? Any special mojo? Share in the comments.
Three reasons why Twitter is worth using
According to who you talk to , Twitter is either a gigantic waste of time or the best thing since sliced bread. Personally, I’ve found a middle ground that works for me: it’s worthwhile as long as you have a clear purpose in mind for the time you spend there.
The reason I say that is because Twitter can be incredibly addictive. It’s VERY tempting to power up TweetDeck and flit in and out of conversations all the live long day. However, eventually, you do have to get to work, right? Right!
Here’s why I use Twitter, and why I keep using it. Your experience might be different; this is what works for me.
Interact with people in my industry. That’s pretty much a fancy way of saying “talk to people that do the same thing I do for work”. I love chatting about various Web developments with people from all over the world that “get it”, plus, I almost always come away with something pretty cool because these people are way smart, and love to share their knowledge with me. Win!
Keep track of key phrases. You can do this with TweetDeck; just set up a search and TweetDeck will instantly install a column that will ping you everytime that particular word or phrase is mentioned in the literally millions of tweets that occur daily on Twitter. Amazing technology, no?
Track yourself. This one is a little bit vanity (just a tad), but mostly it’s to make sure that if anyone is talking to me or about me, I can answer back in a timely manner. I get questions all the time from readers or from potential readers, and I don’t want to rely on Twitter’s hokey (and hidden) system to keep up on these.
What do you use Twitter for? It doesn’t have to be anything particularly groundbreaking, yall. Just share what works for you.
12 sites for free WordPress themes
One of the first things you’re going to want to do when starting your blog is make it look good. Fortunately for those of us who are, shall we say, “design impaired”, there are PLENTY of great freebies out there that will transform you blog into something you’d be proud to take home to Mom. Here are my 14 go-to sites for free WordPress themes; yes, they’re pretty much all WordPress, but some of them have additional blog platform templates available (honestly, though, why wouldn’t you use WordPress? It’s the best bet for starting a new site!).
How to import your feeds into Facebook using Facebook Notes
Want more exposure for your site or brand? You need to be on Facebook, and you need to import your site’s RSS feed into your personal or public Facebook page content. Facebook has made this about as non-intuitive as possible to do, especially with the newest redesign, but here’s a quick how-to:
First, get to your Facebook page. On the left-hand side, you’ll see a menu with a link for “Applications”. Click on that link.
Once you get to the Applications page, you’ll have to scroll all the way to the bottom. You’ll see a menu with multiple categories: sports, entertainment, business, etc. Click on the Business link.
Once you arrive at the Application Directory, click on the “On Facebook” link (are you starting to see why I said this was so janky?!?!? Good Lord.).
Type “Notes” into the search box. Facebook Notes should be your second result.
You’ve arrived at the Notes fan page. Click on “Go To Application”.
On the right hand side, you’ll see a little box that says “Note Settings”. Click on “Edit Import Settings”.
FINALLY, we get to the meat and potatoes. Here’s where you can add your site’s actuall RSS or ATOM URL, or, you can just add in your site’s URL. Click the box that says you have the right to import that content.
And you’re done. Facebook will give you a preview of your feed and ask you if you approve; click “yes”, and guess what? Your feed is now integrated with your personal or public Facebook content. Every time you publish something new, it will show up in yours and your friends News streams. Note: Facebook Notes are VERY buggy, and sometimes they will tell you that they “can’t find the URL specified”. Give it an hour and try again; I had to do this about three times (!!!) before they added my feed.
