Cyriac George

By popular request , I have prepared an article on,

The 22 must have wordpress plugins for your blog

The list is not prioritized, its just a comprehensive list. Plugins are sorted into various categories for easy navigation. But I have prioritized plugins in each category.

Comments

Subscribe to comments :- Very useful and must have plugin. It displays a simple check box in the comment box (where you place it). So when someone leaves a comment with the check box ticked, they will be notified via email when someone leaves a comment on that article.

WP Grins :- Yet another useful plugin where readers will have graphic smileys to use in their comment. This brings life to the conversation they are having.

WP Ajax Edit Comments :- This plugin gives the readers the power to edit the comments they just have made. It is helpful when a reader made a comment, but he would like to change something or he recognizes a mistake and would like to correct it, this plugin would come very handy. It only let the original commenter to modify the comment, also one can edit their comment for 15minutes only. After that it is permanent (there on editable by admin only)
I have been experiencing some problems with this plugin, there are some others too complaining about it. So am de-lisiting it.

Show Top Commentators :- This plugin displays a list of top commentators in your blog. This can help your blog to get number of comments if the readers are interested in being displayed in your blog, there by getting a link !!!

@ reply :- This is just a show plugin. By enabling this plugin, it will show a small image right next to the commenter’s name and just by clicking it, the plugin will add the commentator’s name in the comment box. So with this plugin you no longer need to type “@Cyriac” any more.

Search Engine Optimization

Google XML Sitemap Generator :- Those who own a blog should register and avail Google’s webmaster tools service. In that you can add sitemap of your site to Google. But to do that you need to generate one. This plugin easily and automatically does that whenever you update the site. So this is a must have.

All In One SEO Pack :- Another must have plugin, if your blog is based on a particular niche (topic). This will help you to add meta keywords, description, title specific to each individual topic. I suggest you spend extra time to fill those forms once it is enabled, because its worth it.

Publicize

Share This :- This is a super cool plugin which places a small link “Share This” after every post (even pages) and when clicked it will give the reader plenty of options to publicize your article. It even has an option to send articles as emails. I have installed this plugin and try sending this article to someone you know.

WP-Email / WP-Email Widget :- This plugin will display a small link where you place and it lets users to send the article as email to someone (Mine is placed under the article title, try it now). We already get this function from “Share This” plugin, so what’s the big deal. The big deal is that, it contains a widget which displays the top articles which are send as emails.

WP-Postratings / WP-Postratings Widget :- This plugin gives your readers a chance to rate your article. Mine is just under the article title. Try it now.

WP-Postviews / WP-Postviews Widget :- This plugin displays the number of times that particular article is viewed. It also contains a widget which displays the most viewed article in your blog.

Anti-Spam

Akismet :- I would say, the most useful plugin for you blog. Because it blocks spam comments with such ease so that you dont have to worry about your inbox being flooded with spam comments. For this plugin to work properly you need to have an API key, which you can obtain by registering in wordpress.

Back End

WP-DB Backup :- Another useful and must have plugin, because you never know, when your blog….

Tip: It’s always a safe practice to take periodic backup of your database so that you don’t lose your hardwork due to a server glitch.

WP-Cache / WP-Super Cache :- To be frank I donno what’s the exact difference between the two (Would love it if someone who knows it, could share with us below). I know WP-Super Cache is more powerful than WP-Cache, so am using that plugin. Installing and enabling it is easy and same as any other plugin, but the configuring part can give head ache to some guys out there, because it might involve CHMOD’ing and accessing/editing .htaccess files (I hate to play with those options). But lucky for me its all working fine. One thing you should note is, after enabling it, sometimes after posting an article, the article might not be correctly updated in the blog. It is due to the cache not being refreshed. To solve this, just go to WP-Cache / WP-Super Cache options and delete cache. Then it will rebuild the cache the next time you load the site (expect some delay for loading, since new cache is being created) – (Thanks to Abeymon for this tip)

Miscellaneous

Adsense Deluxe :- Very good plugin to integrate your adsense blocks inside your posts, and exactly where you want too. Only Google adsense can be integrated (i don’t see it as a limitation). What’s unique with this plugin is, it is all manual, not automatic. NO that does’nt mean that its tedious, it means it gives you more power. I know another plugin which randomly places your adsense code in your articles, it also supports YPN. Although it is automatic, I dont feel it is going with the flow. While with this plugin you can specifically tell where the ads to come inside an article. You can also the code (default <!–adsense–>) inside your template files instead of adding the entire code to display ads wherever you want.

EasyTube :- Although i don’t use it in this blog, it is very helpful to those guys who uploads lots of youtube/google videos in their blog. With this plugin, you no longer need to add their UGLY embed code, you just need the URL to the video and use EasyTube’s short code to embed the video.

Breadcrumb NavXT :- A very useful plugin who have a blog based on some niche. It displays “you are here” type links when their readers are viewing the innermost pages. It gives readers more and simple navigation options, according to categories (or tags may be). What it actually does is, it displays a series of links showing the hierarchy of the page you are viewing, ie,

Home>>Tips & Tricks>>The 22 must have wordpress plugins for your blog

PageNavi :- Useful to those guys who are having lots of posts and want their readers to navigate easily through their blog.

7hide :- Its just a fun plugin which enables you to publish sealed content like the one below.

Buy Me a Beer :- Its another fun plugin that i found interesting. It displays an image and text which is clickable and interested readers can donate for your contributions through paypal. It has so many options which can display a link after every post if you want, or display in the sidebar (look at mine, and buy me a beer if you like )

WOW…I just finished my longest quality article in my blog till date. Am i exhausted? You just guess. So am winding the post now. Please go through the plugins you find interesting and install them. Share your experiences here. Also did I miss something that you actually like or would like to add something more to the list? Share all those as comments. I would be happy to add them after testing (Oh BTW all of the above plugins are tested by me, so am not just recommending for the sake of it!)

Update 1: I forgot to add two things.

1. Do integrate Google Analytics in your blog. It gives great analysis of lot of parameters (like traffic, sources, bounce rate, landing page, time spend, visitor trends, geographic location and many more ) for your site.
2. If you want to make one post appear on the top, even if you update the blog, you can do that in two ways. Earlier you should use a plugin to do it. But now its an inbuilt function in wordpress 2.7. So upgrade to wordpress 2.7 and make use of the feature

Update 2: I forgot to add one IMPORTANT plugin, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. How useful this is, just try the links that come right after this text. It is very useful to encourage your readers to stay on your site and explore the site further. Actually while initial research I had this plugin in mind, but i forgot to add it. Now thanks to Abey, he reminded me to add it.

After a long stretch of work time in front of my laptop, I was about to call for a time-up. Then I checked my email once again, which is then I found out, Gmail changed their favicon!!! Earlier it was a simple G ,but now they have added some colors to it.

I like the change anyway, its about time.

First of all let me tell clarify what a favicon is, to the ones who don’t know what am talking about. Favicon is a small graphic associated with every website (page). It is essentially the icon in internet, similar to that in your computers.

So Gmail has changed their favicon, have you ?

Here’s how to add a favicon to your site.

Step 1: Create your favicon.

You can either download from the tens of thousands available from internet.

You can create one yourself. Make sure the image size is exactly 16X16, not a pixel more.

Tip: While creating you can use larger sizes such as 32X32 and then resize it.

Make sure your the file type extension is .ico (windows icon).

Step 2: Upload it to your root folder using any FTP client.

Step 3: If you had named the file with “favicon.ico”, then the favicon should automatically show up. Most browsers will automatically pick the icon up.

If its not comming, dont panic. Clear your cache then you re-try, even try another browser or try after some time, it should work.

Step 4: Add the following code to your <head> section.

<head>
  <link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="http://www.mydomain.com/myicon.ico"/>
  <title>My Title</title>
</head>

Actually the standards set in internet recommends that you use Step 4 not Step 3.
Thats how you add favicons. Try adding a favicon for your site now itself. Did you succeed or failed ? Did you resolve the problem ? Share your experience to others here as comments.

There is no need to say that i was very much excited to upgrade my old worpress to the latest version Wordpress 2.7. But it didnt lasted for long. As i was preparing the previous article Why you should upgrade to Wordpress 2.7 ? i tried to upload few screen captures of the new interface. But then all the excitement went to PANIC.

This is what i got when i tried to upload an image.

wordpress-2_7-image-upload-error

/home/.boogee/cyriac/cyriac.me/wp-content/uploads

So I googled for the solution and i had to research for 3 hours to find a solution. I found the solution from Wordpress Support Forum. As usual all Wordpress upgrades have some problems. Its actual cause is unknown, because only few have this, for others it works just fine.

In that various solutions were given and some claim they work too, but for me the following solution worked.

Solution for the error

Step 1: Log into your admin panel

Step 2: Go to Settings>>Miscellaneous

You will see two options,

1. Store uploads in this folder
2. Full URL path to files

Most probably you will see

/home/.boogee/XXXXX/XXXXXXX/wp-content/uploads

in the first field.

Step 3: Edit that to just

wp-contents/uploads

PS: Please take a backup of what you are editing, incase this trick didnt work, you can restore the old URL.

This should do the trick.

Why I like this solution ?

Other solutions given in the forum were including CHMOD’ing wp-content directory to 777, and everybody who has little “techie” knowledge doesnt like that. Its because CHMOD 777 means, everybody has access to that folder and they can write/read or do what ever they want. Generally this will leave a security hole. Lucky for me, that didnt work too, else I would have to be affraid from a security hack anytime. Lucky for me the other solution worked fine, it doesnt leave any security holes.

So did you guys upgrade your wordpress to the latest version ? Did you guys had this “image upload error” or any other problems? If yes please try this solutions and let me and other know what happened. If you have any other problems, just share it, I will try to find a solution.

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