For those people who have been using WordPress for years, the first plugin that they would recommend anyone starting out with the WordPress format would be the All in One SEO Pack. All in One SEO Pack was one of the first comprehensive WordPress plugins and since it was launched has been downloaded over 8 million times. It is without doubt the daddy of all WordPress plugins and the one most people download first when they set up their WordPress blog.

All in One SEO Pack allows you to quickly and simply configure the meta tags, meta description and Title for each and every post that you write for your WordPress site. This is particularly useful because WordPress will use your blog tag as a keyword. Thus the plugin is brilliant for customizing every post or webpage to get the maximum benefits of optimization. This automation of the SEO process is brilliant for beginners, because it not only generates the correct tags but it also avoids duplicate content.

However, the problem with being the top dog is that someone always comes along and tries to steal your crown. And lately another SEO package has been getting a lot of attention. The WordPress SEO by Yoast is the most recent, and certainly most discussed, SEO plugin around. Boasting a whole raft of new features it promised to be less high maintenance than All in One SEO Pack. And it comes with a good pedigree with Yoast and his team being a reliable source and having been downloaded a great deal as well.

Indeed it is well designed and very easy to use with a bunch of great options for tweaking your search engine optimisation settings. The page that takes the place of the old All in One SEO Pack page works extremely well and allows you to simply customize the titles for differing page views, with numerous options for flexibility. However, there are also some problems with Yoast at this stage, that still need ironing out. Some category tags and templates didn’t work once the plugin was enabled, and after the installation of the plugin the category permalinks also stopped working. In addition there were problems with sitemap functionality and a few other minor teething problems that still need to be sorted out.

To be fair Yoast’s SEO plugin has not been around anywhere near the same length of time as All in One SEO Pack so it needs some time to bed in. But for a plugin that does one basic job – generating and organizing meta description, title and keyword tags – and does it well, All in One SEO Pack is still the only plugin worth installing.

About the Author

Alex Simmonds is a copywriter and journalist based in the UK.

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Every once in a while I like to scan the plugins directory on WordPress.org and see what beautiful & useful pieces of code the community comes up with. Here’s a selection of 6 of the latest WordPress plugin releases that caught my attention during the last “scan”.

1. Simple Fields

Plugin description: Simple Fields for WordPress lets you add groups of fields to your edit post page. Simple Fields turns WordPress into an even more powerful Content Management System (CMS).

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Fields

2. Simple Mail Address Encoder

Plugin description: Automatically encodes every e-mail address on posts, pages and sidebar widgets to prevent spam. Simply decodes any previously encoded e-mail address by just clicking the mail link.

Required WP version: 2.7+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Mail Address Encoder

3. SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

Plugin description: This SEO plugin automatically generate a keyword density report of used keywords and 2-/3-word keyphrases in the pages’ or posts’ content. The statistics will be updated at a specific interval while the author is typing in edit-post and edit-page dialog.

Required WP version: 1.5+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

4. Anthologize

Plugin description: Anthologize is a free, open-source, WordPress-based platform for publishing. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, pull in feeds from external sites, or create new content directly in Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a coherent volume for export in several ebook formats, including PDF, EPUB, and TEI.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Anthologize

5. FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

Plugin description: The plugin enables you to get a great insight into your FeedBurner feed, along with information and statistics about the subscribers, views, clicks, feed item information and chronological statistics right from your WordPres administration panel.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1
Also requires: PHP 5.1 or higher

Downlod & more info: FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

6. Members Only Menu Plugin

Plugin description: This plugin allows you to mark a page as “Members Only”. Once this is done, the user must login to view the page. However, you can still add the page to the menu, and it will then ONLY show up if the user is authenticated. That way you can have more items for logged in members on your website.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Members Only Menu Plugin

Important note

All the above descriptions are provided by the plugins’ authors. At the time this post was published, the latest stable WordPress release was 3.0.1, thus, all plugins are “Compatible up to 3.0.1″. Check out each plugin’s info page to see an updated compatibility as new WordPress versions come out. And remember, always try (if possible) new plugins in a testing environment, on a test installation of your WordPress blog, for safety measures. If anything breaks or you need instructions, please ask the authors for support, I’m simply the messenger.

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Soon after one starts blogging, the fact that just posting the entries and waiting for an indefinite “them” to come is not really working well hits you. Posts need exposure, especially for new blogs that don’t have an established readership. Even when we’re talking about a well known blog, the audience has its preferences when it comes to where they like to receive the latest updates. And Facebook is one of those places where you can reach a lot of new or returning visitors.

As it happens with any other social media channel, the blog author’s connections are limited. But their readers come with their own friends that might be interested in what the blogger has to say. So making it easy for them to share your fresh stories on Facebook is important. You’re faced with two options – going for the Facebook Share button or choosing the Facebook Like or Recommend button that’s so popular right now.

Most times, Share buttons are placed at the beginning of the post. They’re easy to spot and a visitor shares the story with a few clicks. Recommend or Like buttons are usually smaller and harder to spot, especially when there are no prior recommendations. Yet when a few people have already clicked the like button, you’ll see how many of them have done so and if they are people in your network, their photos will also appear.

The names of those who have already recommended the story add credibility. If your friends, the people whose updates you follow, think this story is worth reading and sharing, it probably is. The one seeing the recommendations will more likely read and share it.

It’s also important to note that a single click on the Facebook Like button is a lot easier than a Share. People find it fast and painless and don’t think of it as a big effort. They just push the button and continue to read the story or its comments.

If you’re inclined to choose the Like button, you now need to consider Facebook visibility! A simple like comes with a quick update on the Facebook feeds saying X likes the Z story. A share comes with a link to the story, an excerpt and eventually a photo. If the person sharing it adds their comments, they will also show up on their wall and in their friends news streams.

The trick is the Facebook Like button also allows visitors to add their comments and share the story. But people sometimes overlook this feature. The option to add your comments and post them to your Facebook page shows up after liking the story. So a second action is required, which some would choose to say no to.

Best solution to decide which to use? Trial and error! Add each button to your website and see how people react. Add them both for further testing and see what the outcome is. Then decide which button suits you better!

Have you added Facebook Like and/or Facebook Share buttons to your blog? Which worked better in your case?

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There are a lot of bloggers out there that write great content and even if they get a decent amount of traffic, some of them don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with their readers. On top of that, some of them might discover your site from the search engines and never come back again, even if they liked it. Seriously, they could have forgotten your URL or website name.

Your goal is to grow as much as possible with your current traffic. There are many different ways to get more traffic to your blog or website, but why not establish a better connection with your current readers from the start. Master this and then you can work on getting more unique visitors later on. So listed below are some ways to accomplish this and brand your website or blog:

1. Email Optin Newsletter Form

One of my favorite suggestions is to display an email opt in newsletter form on your site. If you’re using a WordPress blog platform, then you can place it in a widget on the side. In order to get an opt in form, you will need to sign up for a email service such as Aweber, Constant Contact, along with multiple others out there.

Another tip is to choose a newsletter form that is eye popping and has a good call to action. Then once you got a large list of email subscribers, you can easily email them about a new post that you made. This is more direct than having them subscribe to an RSS feed because the message is sent straight to their email address. RSS feed subscriptions can also be powerful and should be used along with email newsletters. Also, RSS is free so don’t forget to display a RSS feed on the site as well.

2. Subscribe to Comments Plugin

Another favorite tip is to use a free plugin called “Subscribe to Comments” for WordPress. Quick Online Tips uses this itself as shown on the bottom of the comments section and all they have to do is check the box. This allows readers to get email notifications after they submit a comment. That way they don’t have to keep checking up on the blog to see if someone answered their question.They just get an email that shows any comments placed after them and it gets more exposure to your blog so they are more likely to reply to the conversation. It gets them coming back to your blog.

3. Social Media

This has been discussed before, but you sometimes need to do more than the average person does. Instead of posting to social media sites and expect people to start following you, go out and read other peoples information and leave comments. You should look for targeted and similar subject areas. For an example, in Facebook you can do a search for your topic and register on a fan or group page. Sometimes there are thousands of people registered on one fan page. By interacting with a large fan page and leaving a link to your site in the signature can help get people to notice you.

4. Conversations with Readers

My third tip is to actually interact with your readers on the blog. Write a sentence or two at the end of your blog post telling them how much you would appreciate a comment or tell them to ask a question. Then come and reply to their questions or think of some to ask them. Usually having them ask questions will help lead you to more blog post ideas because some people start to become stuck with new ideas to write about. So this can be a big helper to keep your blog fresh with ideas and the readers will be more eager to come back for the whole post.

I hope this has helped and if you implement these tips you will see your blog grow. With that said, please share your own experiences, or thoughts or any question that you might have. I appreciate any feedback or if you have a tip, leave it in the comments section. Thank you!

About the Author

This is a guest post by writer Eric Woolf from the Pixels and Dots web design team. Please leave him your comments below or on the Pixels and Dots blog.

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Setting up correctly the permalinks in WordPress is one of the things that contribute to your blog’s better search engine optimization (SEO). Using relevant slugs for categories, pages and posts will help improve your general ranking. Those looking to get the most out of these permalinks will want to remove the ‘category base’.

There are about a dozen tutorials out there, telling you how to handle this job on your own, editing PHP files, the .htaccess file and adjusting WordPress settings, but what you actually need is one small and efficient plugin that does it all for your, with no extra effort, other than the download and installation process.

WP No Category Base

The WP No Category Base plugin will remove the category base from all your linkd in a SEO friendly way, using 301 redirects for all your old permalinks to the new ones. Also, it is compatible with other Sitemap plugins and works with multi-level categories.

There’s one downside to this method (actually the reason why WordPress decided to use the category base). If you’re going to use the same slug for both a page and a category (‘news’ for example), clicking on a link similar to http://yourdomain.com/news/ WILL take you to the category archive, and never to the page. So, be careful when choosing you permalink slug by keeping them unique.

For those using WordPress as CMS and not as a blog engine, this downside might prove useful when creating a page based navigation. Adding a page with a slug ‘news’ will redirect that menu link to the news archive, which is indeed useful.

Download the plugin: WP No Category Base

The plugin works with WordPress versions from 2.3 up to 2.8.4.

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There’s a huge hype these days around WordPress and the (infamous?) GPL license. Out of the “big guys”, first Brian Gardner of StudioPress (ex-Revolution) decided to distribute his themes as GPL. Later, iThemes followed, and now it’s time for WooThemes to adopt the license.

The discussion around this always seems to evolve into “open source” versus “author protection”. As Alex King pointed out in one of his posts, theme authors should be aware of what the GPL license exposes them too, while it provides freedom for basically everyone else.

I’m not by any means against freedom and open source. I’ve been preaching about the power of WordPress and the wonder that it is, but what I love more is to see a protection system for those authors that make a living out of releasing quality themes and plugins for WordPress. Somewhere along the way, in our quest for “freedom” we forgot how hard it is to earn our living, how hard it is to learn the things we now use to feed our families.

With all the respect I have for Brian, Adii and Alex who have been more than an inspiration for so many people and their contributions to the world of WordPress changed our lives, I fail to see how this sudden change of heart (or maybe “dictated” by Matt Mullenweg’s recent reactions) will help other developers.

The problem does not reside in the GPL license, but rather in the fact that by using WordPress you have to also release your “products” under this license. In theory the GPL license is an amazing thing that allows people to improve and build upon other people’s work, and thus contributing to the development of a bigger, better product, free or paid.

The problem comes when commercial work can be distributed for free, once you get your hands on it. Brian and Alex both agree on the fact that most times, people come back to get support after getting pirated or unsupported versions of their work. Is this a good business model? Yes, if you are Brian, or Alex, or Adii. For those thriving in this poor economical moment the GPL license and its enforcing is like a hammer in the head.

While I totally agree with the ability of being able to contribute and improve software, I can’t stop thinking about those who will try and benefit for the work of developers, and not in a GPL-ish open source friendly way. Some developers don’t have the brand and support of thousands of bloggers that Alex, Brian or Adii have to fight these entitled-to-be pirates.

Can’t get the reality of this comment Alex received on his blog out of my mind:

But me, being an unknow guy from Mexico who is trying hard to make a living and if I released my work under GPL and you, The Alex King, repost my work for free, nobody will care who I am or if I’m having difficulties paying the rent.

Sure: “GPL ftw!” “Yay freedom” “That’s the spirit of the opensource” that is all b*****it if somebody use that freedom to take away food from my table.

I like opensource, but I prefer my three meals a day.

I’ve already release 2 of my works for free, the Simple Balance theme and the Latest Posts by Category plugin, plan to release another one pretty soon and I for one believe in helping as much as I can the others. But that’s the whole point: AS MUCH AS I CAN or AFFORD TO.

Developers are “forced” to find different business models: donations, updates, support. Again, all works well when you’re on top, otherwise the donation/support model is worth nothing. I’ve never expected huge donations for Simple Balance and I was right. 15.000 downloads later (with no promotion through the WordPress.org directory) the amount of donations is… $75. I can celebrate by renting a 3* room in a hotel in my city. At the same time I’ve lost count of the support requests, some of them starting like this: “This is URGENT, you must help me do X”. No, I don’t, especially if your communication skills are well below ZERO.

The only feasible business model under GPL is making a name for yourself. Don’t doubt it. As long as people will have the possibility of getting something for free. WordPress has to come up with a way to support ALL honest developers, not just the big names and those looking to make a quick buck. Even if that means an additional commercial license for WordPress, for those looking to be able to sell their products without the “limitations” of GPL. May it be a single-usage license or percent of the sale, this could be a good alternative and if I’d ever decide (which should be my decision) to release a commercial product, I’d gladly share my profits with this amazing platform that is WordPress.

Until then, some will only see the joys of GPL while others will see their own failure to make an honest living with the skills they’ve trained so hard and for so long. Unfortunately, there’s no middle way, at least for the masses, but I’m definitely looking forward for what Matt is preparing for those who embrace the GPL license.

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Justin Tadlock has recently released on cool little WordPress plugin that works miracles for those with little PHP knowledge. As the name says, the plugin is a visual reconstruction of the query_posts WordPress template tag.

So, what does the plugin do? It basically allows you to setup an infinite number of widgets in you widget-ready theme, widgets that will display posts from your blog, defined in the widget option area. You can display posts with a certain tag, posts from a certain category or published in a chosen month. You can display them in full, excerpt or under the form of a list, and many other really cool options.

Adam Warner has also released a video overview of this nifty plugin that you can view here or on WordPress.tv.

More info on this plugin you can find on Justin’s blog.

And you can download the plugin from WordPress.org.

Note: While PHP knowledge is not required in order to manipulate this plugin, a basic understanding of how the query_posts template tag works would turn out to help.

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After posting the Latest Posts by Category Archive tutorial, I’ve received requests to transform the code into a WordPress plugin.

Update: Version 1.2 has been released. Read about the changes below, in the “Version History” section.

The Features of ‘Latest Posts by Category Archive’ WP Plugin

Here’s the list of features currently available:

• Can be used via hard-coding inside page templates;
• Can be used as a widget in your widget-ready areas;
• Can be used via shortcodes inside pages’ or posts’ content;
• Can be used either inside or outside the loop;
• Can limit the archive to certain categories, or exclude certain categories;
• Can display or hide post dates;
• Can display or hide post excerpts and adjust their length in words;
• Can set the number of listed post from 1 to ‘all’.

Version history

Version 1.2

• The plugin is now available as a widget for your blog’s widget ready areas;
• The widget’s output can be easily customized using a few newly added CSS classes. Information about the widget is available in the plugin documentation, which is also included in the download package;
• Fixed the dashboard area that notifies WP 2.7+ users on the latest plugin version available.

Version 1.1

• Added option to display post dates;
• Added dashboard widget for plugin version tracking (Only available for WP 2.7+ users).

Documentation

The plugin documentation is available for download in PDF format: LPBC Documentation (5473)

For further information and plugin updates, please refer to this page, as it will be edited with further improvements.

Live demo

The following list has been generated by the use of the next shortcode within this post’s content:

[lpbc posts="3" categories="1,3,23" more="Archive of %name%"]

Enjoy the plugin!

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Even with the latest WordPress release – 2.5 – we still need to make use of plugins to order our pages, categories and links, without having to go through each one and set an order number manually. If we still have to do this, let’s do it right.

Geeky Weekly is the blog of a 23 year old self-proclaimed geek, with a BS in Computer Science and extensive expertise in computer technologies and databases. For a while now he has been working on 3 WordPress plugins that he kept constantly updated, with every new release of the blogging platform. The latest versions of his plugins are fully compatible – claims their author – with the 2.5 release and are now listed and hosted in the “Plugins” section of WordPress.org.

So, for your ordering needs, Blogsessive recommends:

• My Link Order
• My Page Order
• My Category Order

Also, for more information and update history, visit the dedicated sections on the author’s blog: My Link Order, My Page Order and My Category Order.

From now on, enjoy your blogging. Everything is “in order”.

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