It is time for an updated list of useful Wordpress Plugins that work with the 2.5.1 version.

I’m not going over 2.6 as it is still in its early stages and not all plugin authors have successfully updated to this version. But I will get to this soon.

Some of these are going to overlap with my previous list as they have been upgraded to work with this version and some I have already discussed in detail in several other posts.

1. Accordion Tabs
   This lets you add Wordpress functions in a tabbed interface. Not only does this look pretty neat but it also saves space. A must have for any blog!
2. Add This Social Bookmarking Widget OR Add To Any
   Both plugins offer your visitors the chance to bookmark your posts and pages. Instead of adding several icons under your post and making them look cluttered, the whole menu pops up AJAX style on mouseover.
3. Adsense Deluxe
   This is a classic and should not need any introduction. It lets you add adsense or YPN ads to your posts at the click of a button. Manage the codes on the plugin settings page.

   An alternate which lets you add either adsense or YPN is the All in One Adsense and YPN. However, I haven’t tested this one yet.

   Continue Reading »

Once you have visitors to your blog, the point is to keep them reading and keep them coming back. For that you need to keep your content in front of them. Give them easy access to posts they might be interested in.

This means you need to show listings of your most recent posts, popular posts, posts with comments on them and so on and so forth.

And as always Wordpress plugins help.

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I joined Twitter a while but never bothered much with it. That is until I found this very simple to use Wordpress plugin.

This pulgin not only displays my last X twitters but also lets me add Twitters from inside the WP admin. Now that is a God send for people like me — what a time saver!

This can be called as a function or added as a widget. And that is the way all plugins should work. Give both options! You never know what might be needed.

Now I can tweet to my heart’s content and it is quite a lot of fun to do so, too.

For those of you who are still as yet unaware of Twitter, it is reminiscent of its name. Think of it as constant status updates of your life. It is the answer to one simple question: What Are You Doing? You can twitter away, let your friends and family follow your escapades or make new friends and see what they are up to.

Check out the My Twitter Plugin.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER

Wordpress, by default adds a no-follow tag to links in comments.

What that means in very simple terms is that a Search Engine Bot should not follow that link. Your commentator receives no link benefit from this and gets no page rank credit from Google. The reason why this is a default action in Wordpress is to combat comment spam, to stop people from leaving meaningless comments just to get a link back to their websites.

However, all this does is inconvenience the real posters who are genuinely contributing to the discussion. The no-follow tag has not served its pupose and has not stopped spam flooding your comments. Best option is to just use the Akismet plugin (comes with Wordpress) for that and be done with it.

So let’s come back to the people who are contributing effectively to a discussion on your blog. Why are they being punished? They are giving something, they should get something back. It is a fair exchange. And it is a win-win situation as you can be at the receiving end as well by posting comments on blogs that do-follow links.

So from today onwards, this blog is officially a DO FOLLOW blog.

You can use a very simple, set it and forget it plugin called Semiologic Do-Follow

You can add your do-follow blog to this list.

There is a list of more plugins as well as directories you can add your do-follow blog to. Check it out.

If you have tried using the NextGen Gallery Plugin (and mind you it is one of the best image gallery plugins out there for Wordpress) then chances are you might have run into the php memory limit problem.

What this means is that unless you increase the memory limit, you might have problems with automatic thumbnail creation.

There are a few options here:

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While I was busy designing his blog, my friend Rob beat me to this announcement (as soon as I had given him the update on WP). Now I can either re-do the whole thing again or point you to his post so you can read about all the great new features. Oh and he has a video up as well.

See Rob’s Post

And I just upgraded two of my websites to WP 2.5.1

Although some of the features (word count, post revisions, turbo blog) in 2.6 are tempting me to upgrade, I think I will wait a bit and make sure the plugin authors update their plugins to ensure compatibility with 2.6. I’m betting by the time that happens and I get on the 2.6 bandwagon, it will be time for 2.7 … not that I’m complaining

This has to be the most useful and time saving plugin ever. What are the steps you follow when you install a plugin? Here’s how I do it:

1. Look for a plugin which performs the needed function.
2. Download the plugin
3. Unzip it and place it in the plugins directory locally
4. FTP the plugin to my website
5. Login to Worpress, go to the plugins page and activate the plugin

Here’s how you do it with Plugin Central:

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This is not the must-have top of the list plugin. Nor is it one you can’t live without. It is just one of those fun, I want this option, kind of thing.

The plugin I am talking about is the Stray Random Quotes plugin. It let’s you add an unlimited number of quotes, be they famous ones or your own rants, to the database. These posts are then displayed in your sidebar randomly and one at a time.

You can also click next to view the next random quote.

Just a bit of harmless fun!

This can also be used to add a random tip. I can imagine a yellow post-it or a piece of torn paper with some random wisdom posted at the top of your website.

Time to go take a look!

Edit: See how I have used this plugin in the header. It can also be added to your sidebar as a widget if your theme is widget enabled.

Trying to add code to your wordpress post can be one of the most frustrating experiences. That is if you want the code to appear as code in your post.

Say, something like this:

<ul><li>This would have been a bullet</li></ul>

Had this been added to Wordpress normally, it would have appeared as a bullet. But since I’ve used a really cool plugin called ‘Code Auto Escape’, I can add code as code as long as I add pre and code tags around it.

Now you may never need to show html, xhtml, javacript, php, etc code in yuor posts but just in case you do, this is the plugin to get.

Get the Code Auto Escape Plugin

I have been installing and trying out new plugins at this blog. Some have worked out very well while others have not been anything to talk about.

So over the next few days I am going to go over the gems that I have found. Some you can’t live without and some are just a luxury.

However, the best out of the lot is the Accordion plugin. See the tabbed navigation in the sidebar for Categories/Archives/Tabs? Yes, that is accordion. It can display up to 6 tabs for plugins which use li tags. This is necessary as it encloses everything in ul list tags.

However, I have a tweak around that.

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