5 crazy SEO mistakes not to make in WordPress

There’s a nasty rumor going around that WordPress is beautifully set up for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) “out of the box.” Now don’t get me wrong - I’m a huge fan of WordPress - but the core software does need a little nudge in the right direction when it comes to SEO. Tom Ewer from ManageWP.
In reality, if your idea of optimizing your WordPress stops at hitting Publish on your latest post, you’re missing out on a lot of potential. But even those of you who feel that you are doing quite a lot in terms of onsite optimization are probably making at least one of the following mistakes (I know I certainly have done in the past).
So take a few moments to digest the following common SEO mistakes made by WordPress users - I’ll be offering straightforward solutions to each one!

1) Not Providing an XML Sitemap

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.
- Google

I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to learning new SEO strategies - if I hear it on the grapevine I take it with a hefty pinch of salt, but if I hear it from Google I take it as gospel. That’s why my position regarding sitemaps is simple: if Google says it helps them to find pages on your site that they may not otherwise discover, I’m going to give them one.
But that’s not all there is to sitemaps. They can also be used to supply additional information about your website (such as how often you expect pages to be updated) and meta data relating to specific media types (such as the running time of a video). And if you are running a new site or one with only a handful backlinks pointing towards it, a sitemap can make a big difference in enabling Google to discover and index all of the relevant pages on your website.
In simple terms, a sitemap is simply a specifically formatted list of the pages on your site that you would like to be indexed by the search engines. You could create one manually if you like carrying out jobs that can be automated with ease. Otherwise I have a couple of suggestions:
Google XML Sitemaps: with over ten million downloads and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, you can rest assured that this free plugin gets the job done.
WordPress SEO by Yoast: this free plugin has a number of SEO-related functions, one of which is an excellent XML sitemap generator.
The process of building an updating a sitemap is almost entirely automated. You set a few options as you see fit then let the plugin do the rest. Google says that “[most] webmasters will benefit from sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.” With that in mind, why wouldn’t you create a sitemap for your WordPress website?

2) Poor Categorization and Tagging

Few things bug me more than sites that do not utilize categories and tags (sometimes referred to collectively as taxonomies) properly. The simple fact is that categories and tags offer opportunities for increased engagement and traffic, but the bigger issue at hand is that poor use of categories and tags can actually persuade a visitor to leave your site.
This is what you need to know about WordPress taxonomies: if categories are your table of contents, tags are your index When people try to tell me that tags are useless, I ask them of how many non-fiction books they have read that don’t have an index (I just checked five on my bookshelf and discovered that only one of them doesn’t).
Conscientious categorization and tagging of your posts will not only make it easier for visitors to find what they want (assuming of course you create an Archives page that makes accessing categories and tags simple) but it will also boost your onsite SEO. While Google may not rank category and tag pages high in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) (although it certainly does happen), it will be able to get a much better grasp on the keywords that are most relevant to your site by examining them.
Let me give you an example. Say for instance you run a site about zoo animals which has a particular focus on llamas. If you have a tag page for llamas that links to various pages and has various pages linking back to it, that is a strong indicator to Google that llamas are kind of a big deal on your site.
If you want to know more about how to categorize and tag effectively, click here

3) Not Defining Canonical URLs

If you have never heard about canonicalization before then brace yourself - it can be a slightly confusing concept. In order to define it effectively I will turn to Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Search:

Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these URLs are different. A web server could return completely different content for all them. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, we try to pick the one that seems like the best representative from that set.

Put simply, if you don’t tell Google and friends which version of a page to index and rank, they’re going to try to figure it out themselves. The last thing you want is search engines having to pick from multiple instances what is essentially the exact same page. The solution is to provide them with a canonical URL.
This is essentially a three step process:

• Tell WordPress how to present your site (i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/ or http://yoursite.com/).
• Tell Google (using Webmaster Tools) which URL type you want them to use.
• Use a plugin (such as the aforementioned WordPress SEO by Yoast) to ensure that canonical URLs are defined on each page of your site.

That may sound complicated but in reality it’s a piece of cake. You can find a complete guide to canonicalization in WordPress here.

4) Not Optimizing Your Site for Google+ Authorship

Like it or not, Google+ is here to stay. You may be surprised to know that it is the second biggest social network behind Facebook, beating the likes of YouTube and Twitter.
But I’m not here to talk about social media strategization. Instead I want to focus on the concept of Google+ authorship and how it can be utilized to strengthen your position in the SERPs and boost click through rates.
If you’ve not heard of Google+ authorship before, you’ve almost certainly seen it. Every search result in Google that incorporates a profile photo of the author is an example. Astonishingly, that little photo has been proven to boost clickthrough rates in the SERPs by 150%. Further, an experiment by Cyrus Shepard from Moz resulted in an additional 56% increase in clickthroughs. In short, by incorporating Google+ authorship on your site, you can attract more search engine traffic with the same rankings.
Getting Google to verify your authorship is not an entirely straightforward process but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and will subsequently offer you ongoing benefits. In short, it’s well worth doing. My favorite tutorial is by WPBeginner

5) Not Optimizing How Your Posts Look in the SERPs

This mistake is similar to the previous one regarding Google+ authorship, as it relates to your clickthrough rate in the SERPs.
It is borne out of an ignorance of the importance of what searchers see on Google as opposed to simply where they see it. Although the placement of a website on the SERPs (ie, 1 - 10) is a key factor, people can often be drawn to lower rankings if the titles and/or descriptions are compelling. That is why you should optimize each of your posts to give yourself the best possible chance of attracting a good clickthrough rate.
There are two things that you should concern yourself with:

• The Meta Title: this is what will display on the SERPs in place of any headline you choose for the post onsite.
• The Meta Description: Google may choose to use this in place of an excerpt from your post (which can often be nothing more than a confusing mass of words).

By default there is no way to define these in WordPress - you need a plugin to get the job done. You can either choose a standalone plugin (for which my recommendation would be Add Meta Tags) or a plugin that incorporates multiple SEO features (such as the aforementioned WordPress SEO by Yoast).

What Mistakes Have You Made?

Let’s face it - we’re not perfect. If you haven’t made a few SEO blunders in your time then you’re simply not trying hard enough. In reality, this post could be called, “Top 5 SEO Mistakes I Have Made With WordPress.”
With that in mind, I’d love for you to share your wisdom in the comments section. What have you learned from your forays into the world of SEO that you think others will benefit from reading about? Fire away!
via wordtracker.com
5 crazy SEO mistakes not to make in WordPress

6 WordPress Backup Tools for Blog and Website Security

If your self-hosted WordPress blog is important to you, then you need to make sure it's protected by taking WordPress website security steps. You also need to backup all of the files that make up your WordPress installation and blog. While the free WP-DBManager plugin is great for automatically backing up the databases that store your blog posts and pages, it does not backup your plugins, themes, and customizations. Following are several free and affordable WordPress backup tools that you can try to get a comprehensive solution for blog backup and restoration. Be sure to visit each website to check on the most current pricing for each tool.

1. VaultPress

VaultPress is the backup solution offered by WordPress and is arguably the most comprehensive and easiest to use tools available. Pricing starts at $15 per month for one WordPress blog or website, but backups are made instantly as you update your blog. Also, staff members are on hand to help you if you have problems with your backups or restoration. If your blog is extremely important to you, is your source of income, or is the online destination for your business, then you should consider paying for VaultPress.

2. Blogvault

Blogvault is another complete WordPress backup solution with a lower price than VaultPress. Starting at $9 per month, you can backup your WordPress blog or website. Backups are done on an hourly basis (at the time of this article's writing) and if you do need to do a restoration, you can restore and test your blog on Blogvault's server before you publish it on your own site to make sure everything is working correctly. Support is offered through email and chat, and you can download your backup in a zip file.

3. WP-Monitor

WP-Monitor offers free and paid WordPress backups. Depending on your needs, the free service might be appropriate. It backs up your WordPress database and files and stores up to two days of backups (up to 1 GB daily backup size). However, the free version does not provide all of the features that a paid subscription gives you, such as restoration of your site, up-time monitoring, plugin and theme updates, reports, and more. WP-Monitor subscriptions start at $49 per month, but a free trial is available with all paid plans. That means you can try it before you buy it.

4. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy from iThemes is a premium WordPress plugin (which means it is not free). For $75, you can get two licenses to backup two WordPress blogs or websites, and prices go up if you need more licenses. This is a one-time fee because you control all of the backups in terms of timing and storage. When you backup your blog using BackupBuddy, you can send your files to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, an FTP server, or an email address. If you understand the various files, databases, tables, and so on that make your WordPress site work and you're comfortable backing them up and restoring them on your own, then BackupBuddy is a good solution for you. If you need more help, then consider using Blogvault or VaultPress.

5. BackUpWordPress Plugin

BackupWordPress is a free plugin that enables you to back up your entire WordPress blog or website, including your database and all of your files, on a schedule that you choose. Backups are stored on your server and can be emailed to you. A support forum is available if you need help. Also, this plugin comes in multiple languages.

6. Online Backup for WordPress

Online Backup for WordPress is a free WordPress plugin from Backup Technology and comes with 100 MB of free online storage space from Backup Technology for your backup files. The plugin backs up all of your files and makes them available to you for free via online storage, email, or in a downloadable zip file. Your backup data is encrypted, so it's secure during the download process. With the Online Backup for WordPress plugin, you can schedule automatic backups and perform backups on demand whenever you need to. If you have any problems, support is available to you through an online forum.

Original post here

WordPress Backup Tools for Blog and Website Security

The best WordPress plugins Recomended for You

WordPress developers always have a list of WordPress plugins they wouldn't be without. Here's a selection that Julie McNamee keeps seeing in the developer forums (and many she's used herself). Have you used any of them? Do you agree? Have you any to add?

Secure your site

Avoid the heartache and hassle that will inevitably result from your website being hacked, by installing a security plugin. And if you haven't heard, bot attacks are happening in a big way at the time of writing.
One security plugin I've used on quite a few sites and isn't very resource-intensive is WordFence It's very simple to set up and looks after your site nicely, repairing infected files if you've been hacked and scanning plugins and content for malware.
Better WP Security was a much recommended plugin for this job, although if you see Mike's comment below and another from Steve Bolton on Google+ (thanks both) it has been causing a few problems recently - clashing with existing plugins. If it does work for you, go into Settings once it's installed, and you'll be asked if you'd like to backup the database in case of problems - of course you do. A backup will duly be emailed to you.
Then it will ask if you'd like to allow the plugin to change WordPress core files. In most cases this is an easier option than changing code in these files yourself, but if you have a unique server setup or just want to do it yourself, then don't allow the plugin to change anything in these files.
Now you'll be given a report on how secure your site is looking. Go through each option, clicking to fix (or not) as you choose.

SEO your site

Sitemap

Image: blogs.visionwebinfo.com
Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that makes it easy to create a sitemap and even notifies the search engines when content has been added to your site. Just upload the plugin and your sitemap will be generated automatically.
Read How to create a sitemap and let Google know where you're at to find out more about what sitemaps are and why they're useful.

Specialist SEO plugins

All In One SEO is a tool that covers a lot of ground in getting your site optimized for the search engines, but the settings have to be configured to get full use out of it. Read this article on WP Beginner for some tips on how to set All-In-One SEO properly. Of course you'll need to find the keywords to use with it - that's where Wordtracker can help.
Yoast is another very highly regarded SEO plugin that covers an enormous range of SEO issues.
There's a lot you can do when it comes to SEO'ing your WordPress site that we'll not go into here because we've already written about it here: You can optimize your website. It's easy!

Stop bad robots hitting your site

Defensio anti-spam

Defensio is a free alternative to Akismet. (The latter charges $5 per month for small businesses with fewer than 5 employees, but is free for personal use). Defensio has basic spam defence capabilities and can even be used to protect your Facebook profile and pages.

Back up your site

Backing up your site is an absolute must - and you should do it on a regular basis. And you should especially back up before upgrading plugins or WordPress itself. But which tools are the best?

Backup Buddy backs up everything including your database (some of the more basic plugins don't do this) on to Amazon S3 storage. This means that your files aren't being stored locally and you'll be able to get to clean copies of them if you ever need to. A year's worth of unlimited backups is included for two sites for the sum of $75.

Image: StateofSearch
A free alternative is BackUp which you can schedule to make copies of your files that you can store locally, or have them sent to Google Drive. As you can see from the image above, you can choose which part of your website to back up.

Add functions to your site

The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar provides an events management framework for WordPress that includes events pages, a calendar or event list view and Google Maps showing where your event is being held. There's also a microformats field that means Google will know that these pages are events pages, giving results such as this:

Maps Marker

Maps Marker allows you to create a map showing the location of your own b&b or your nearest restaurant when they're staying at your b&b. The plugin doesn't only restrict you to creating a map using Google Maps - you can choose between OpenStreetMap, Google Earth, Bing Maps or even customize your own.

Add buttons to your site

There are lots of different styles of buttons to share your fantastic content with. Here's a selection of the best.
Social share buttons

If you've seen the share buttons that hide their faces until you click on them, you've probably seen these Shareaholic buttons. Shareaholic have a huge range of buttons to choose from and they're customizable.
Have Slick social button slide up and down your screen, follow your article around, float or simply stay put as a static bar, if that's what suits you. Lots of customizations are possible with the Slick social share buttons.
Or try this alternative:
If you're less concerned with fancy buttons than you are with making sure that your web pages don't load slowly, check out this tutorial by Toby Osbourn It's probably the JavaScript that's causing your Twitter and Facebook buttons a while to load, and doing away with it is Toby's solution. It takes some knowledge of coding to make it work.

Transform your site into a social network

Forums are an excellent way to keep and engage followers, and the plugin created by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, bbPress 2.0 is simple to install and lightweight, meaning it doesn't take up too much of your site's resources. Once set up it's easy to moderate. Find out how to set it up and more in this article in Smashing Magazine

Social Media Examiner is an example of a very successful social networking site that makes use of another forum plugin, BuddyPress, to great effect. Actually, BuddyPress is a whole set of plugins that together add up to a very sophisticated networking site. Here's an article on wpmudev on how to make BuddyPress work.

Let customers buy from your site

Woocommerce is a well-regarded ecommerce plugin that makes setting up tax and shipping rates, reports and payment gateways fairly simple. Beware that you may need to pay for extra add-ons depending on the options you need. One page checkout is an important feature it boasts, which is a must for checkout optimization
And there's a big choice of "WooThemes" available that are made to work with WooCommerce, including some free ones, like that pictured above. There are also a whole range of responsive, magazine style and business themes available, both free and paid.

Speed up your site

If you have a large site with bucket loads of traffic, a highly customizable solution to improving the speed is W3 Total Cache. It's used by Mashable and was in fact created by that site's CTO. Beware that it's massive and you need technical skills to run it.
For smaller sites with not too much in the way of huge traffic surges, WP Super Cache is a good choice. It works by creating static HTML pages: all you need to do is activate it and you should see a difference in the time it takes your page to load. And of course there's a benefit in that for both your user and the search engines.
Here's an article explaining how caching plugins work: WordPress Caching Plugins
Other speed-enhancing plugins include:
WP Minify compresses script such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, thereby making your site run more smoothly and swiftly.
And last but not least, WP Widget Cache which works on compressing your widgets rather than your pages.

Point to the good stuff on your site

Hello Bar
Have you seen the orange bar across the top of Wordtracker pages saying "Do you have SEO errors on your site? Check now"? Well, the Hello Bar lets you do the same thing on your own site:

Link it to your new e-book, or a specific piece of content that you think is worth promoting.
YARPP & Better Related Posts

Promote posts that you think your visitor will like, based on the one they've visited. And, give the search engines an easy way to get to your old content at the same time. How? By using a recommended posts plugin like YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) Better Related Posts

And finally ... some tips on using WordPress plugins

• Be selective in the ones you choose. The more plugins you use, the more chance there is in one of them going wrong or slowing things down.
• Don't install more than one plugin at once without checking that nothing is broken on your site. Sometimes one plugin will clash with another and chaos ensues. If an error does occur, delete the latest plugin from your FTP directory and try an alternative or look in the forums for help.

So, which plugins are you using ...?

... and can you recommend any more "must-haves"?

The best WordPress plugins Recomended for You
Original article here

Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

If you run one of the 70 million websites built with WordPress, you are likely concerned about SEO, and overwhelmed by your options. These days, there is no shortage of plugins built to assist with SEO and social sharing, but it’s hard to find the gems in a sea of widget madness. Read on for advice on which are truly helpful in boosting your search engine efforts!

WordPress SEO Basics
Before you start installing a plethora of plugins, you’ll want to tackle a few basic SEO tasks on your WordPress site. These are must-haves for Google-friendly sites, and are a great place to start your strategy.

1) Map Out Your Site’s Structure
All you need to create an easy to follow site flowchart is a great MindMap tool. Mind42 makes an excellent one, and it’s totally free too. The tool will help you create a site guide that compartmentalizes navigation sections and lets you see a snapshot of the entire flow.

2) Setup Your Permanent URL Structure
First, set your preferred permalinks format in the WordPress settings; you’ll have several options to choose from, but none are completely SEO friendly. To rectify this, download the WP No Category Plugin, which will then remove the <word>/category sections of your URLs. This makes them clean, concise, and keyword rich.

3) Specify Which Folders Can and Cannot Be Crawled
Chances are there will be sections of your site that you would rather not allow search engines access to. To manage this process, create a Robots.txt file in the top-level directory of your site. For full instructions on how to add one to your site, visit the ‘Robots.txt how-to guide’ (http://www.robotstxt.org/ robotstxt.html). Once created, you can specify any folders that search engines will thereby ignore, and keep others from spying on this private content as well. It’s also a great solution for hiding duplicate content. Don’t forget that users can still access the pages through the direct URL.

4) Create a Sitemap
Many of the tools listed below will help you quickly generate a sitemap. When this is complete, don’t forget to submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools as a request to start crawling your content.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins
1) SEO Ultimate
This puppy is a meta data powerhouse, with access to controls for descriptions and keywords, Google Webmaster Verification, and integration with Google Analytics. If you have a lot of pages with separate titles, Ultimate will help you manage all this data with ease.

2) Local Search SEO Contact Page
Perfect for those just beginning their quest for great SEO, Local Search allows you to add all business information to your site’s contact page, and will also include an embedded Google map, which links to your Google+ Local account.

3) WordPress by Yoast
Yoast helps determine what your current SEO score is, and in tandem, lets you monitor the areas that require some improvement. Yoast will let you know if your keywords are missing from title and H1 tags, and looks at your content and metadata too. This tool is rumored to be the most-used WordPress SEO plugin, and for good reason. It assists in setting up XML sitemaps, helps you map out all title and description templates, and truly enables you to stay on top of all the SEO must-do’s. If you only have one SEO plugin, this should be it. It’s regularly updated too, which is a big bonus.

Top SEO-Friendly Image and Content Tools
1) SEO Friendly Images
This plugin does exactly what you’d expect – ensures all your images have alt attributes, title tags and all other relevant search engine data. There’s also a premium version that unlocks a myriad SEO features, like XML sitemap generators and custom settings.

2) SEO Content Control
If you’ve got a lot of content on your site, you need this tool to help you identify the weakest links. Options for SEO Content Control include viewing a list of all pages/posts that have lackluster (too short) text, missing meta data, and missing keywords.

Must-Have Analytics Plugins
1) SEO Rank Reporter
Rank Reporter is an awesome tool that allows you to monitor your Google ranking through your WordPress dashboard, and it’s updated every three days. This plugin will help you assess if and when more SEO improvements are needed. When your ranking slips, you can use the other tools to identify why this may have occurred, and then set out to address each one.

2) Google Analyticator
If you’re a fan of Google Analytics, download this plugin now and integrate the data directly into your WordPress dashboard. You’ll be able to view your top performing pages, referrers, and keywords, among many other invaluable metrics.

Top-Notch Social Plugins

1) Sociable
Sociable is a superior sharing plugin that is jam-packed with
customization options. It features an excellent default setup,
with the options to use all your own personal icons and images.
It’s super easy to connect to most WordPress themes, and makes
your social sites immediately accessible to your users.

2) Social Media Tabs
This one is a unique plugin that allows you to add a social media widget to your site in a tabbed format, showing data from your major social sites. It currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, and RSS.
You are now armed with a gaggle of excellent, functional and easy-to-use WordPress SEO tools. Go forth and enjoy your increased rankings!

Also Read: 11 Factors to Consider to Choose a Wordpress Theme or Blogger Template 

Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

If you run one of the 70 million websites built with WordPress, you are likely concerned about SEO, and overwhelmed by your options. These days, there is no shortage of plugins built to assist with SEO and social sharing, but it’s hard to find the gems in a sea of widget madness. Read on for advice on which are truly helpful in boosting your search engine efforts!

WordPress SEO Basics
Before you start installing a plethora of plugins, you’ll want to tackle a few basic SEO tasks on your WordPress site. These are must-haves for Google-friendly sites, and are a great place to start your strategy.
1) Map Out Your Site’s Structure
All you need to create an easy to follow site flowchart is a great MindMap tool. Mind42 makes an excellent one, and it’s totally free too. The tool will help you create a site guide that compartmentalizes navigation sections and lets you see a snapshot of the entire flow.

2) Setup Your Permanent URL Structure
First, set your preferred permalinks format in the WordPress settings; you’ll have several options to choose from, but none are completely SEO friendly. To rectify this, download the WP No Category Plugin, which will then remove the <word>/category sections of your URLs. This makes them clean, concise, and keyword rich.

3) Specify Which Folders Can and Cannot Be Crawled
Chances are there will be sections of your site that you would rather not allow search engines access to. To manage this process, create a Robots.txt file in the top-level directory of your site. For full instructions on how to add one to your site, visit the ‘Robots.txt how-to guide’ (http://www.robotstxt.org/ robotstxt.html). Once created, you can specify any folders that search engines will thereby ignore, and keep others from spying on this private content as well. It’s also a great solution for hiding duplicate content. Don’t forget that users can still access the pages through the direct URL.

4) Create a Sitemap
Many of the tools listed below will help you quickly generate a sitemap. When this is complete, don’t forget to submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools as a request to start crawling your content.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins for Wordpress

1) SEO Ultimate
This puppy is a meta data powerhouse, with access to controls for descriptions and keywords, Google Webmaster Verification, and integration with Google Analytics. If you have a lot of pages with separate titles, Ultimate will help you manage all this data with ease.

2) Local Search SEO Contact Page
Perfect for those just beginning their quest for great SEO, Local Search allows you to add all business information to your site’s contact page, and will also include an embedded Google map, which links to your Google+ Local account.

3) WordPress by Yoast
Yoast helps determine what your current SEO score is, and in tandem, lets you monitor the areas that require some improvement. Yoast will let you know if your keywords are missing from title and H1 tags, and looks at your content and metadata too. This tool is rumored to be the most-used WordPress SEO plugin, and for good reason. It assists in setting up XML sitemaps, helps you map out all title and description templates, and truly enables you to stay on top of all the SEO must-do’s. If you only have one SEO plugin, this should be it. It’s regularly updated too, which is a big bonus.

Top SEO-Friendly Image and Content Tools for Wordpress

1) SEO Friendly Images
This plugin does exactly what you’d expect – ensures all your images have alt attributes, title tags and all other relevant search engine data. There’s also a premium version that unlocks a myriad SEO features, like XML sitemap generators and custom settings.

2) SEO Content Control
If you’ve got a lot of content on your site, you need this tool to help you identify the weakest links. Options for SEO Content Control include viewing a list of all pages/posts that have lackluster (too short) text, missing meta data, and missing keywords.

Must-Have Analytics Plugins for Wordpress
1) SEO Rank Reporter
Rank Reporter is an awesome tool that allows you to monitor your Google ranking through your WordPress dashboard, and it’s updated every three days. This plugin will help you assess if and when more SEO improvements are needed. When your ranking slips, you can use the other tools to identify why this may have occurred, and then set out to address each one.
2) Google Analyticator
If you’re a fan of Google Analytics, download this plugin now and integrate the data directly into your WordPress dashboard. You’ll be able to view your top performing pages, referrers, and keywords, among many other invaluable metrics.

Top-Notch Social Plugins for Wordpress

1) Sociable
Sociable is a superior sharing plugin that is jam-packed with
customization options. It features an excellent default setup,
with the options to use all your own personal icons and images.
It’s super easy to connect to most WordPress themes, and makes
your social sites immediately accessible to your users.

2) Social Media Tabs
This one is a unique plugin that allows you to add a social media widget to your site in a tabbed format, showing data from your major social sites. It currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, and RSS.
You are now armed with a gaggle of excellent, functional and easy-to-use WordPress SEO tools. Go forth and enjoy your increased rankings!

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Article by  Tina Courtney-Brown in SPN
Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

WordPress Tips For Newbies

There is no query that wordpress is one of the mostly preferred blogging platform among millions of bloggers and webmasters. This post explains some wordpress tips which are must for every beginner to know about if he/she is planning to start a blog that matters on wordpress.


Although there are various and lots of features or we can say wordpress tips which we can write and explain to beginners, yet we are explaining some of the mostly essential to know wordpress tips.
So, lets begin.

1. We can schedule our posts to be automatically published in future.
Suppose I write 10 posts in one day and I don’t want to publish all of them on a single day. Then I can simply use this wordpress tips and schedule my posts for future publishing as my desire. If you want to use this wordpress tips and want to enable this option of publishing your post in future, follow these simple steps.

• Just complete with your article and include every necessary link and image required in it. 
• Look at the option at the right side that will say “Publish Immediately”.
• Beside it is written Edit, click it and set your date and timing and click ok.
• You are done. The button saying “Publish” will automatically turn to “Schedule for xx/xx/xxxx and xx:xx“

2. We can easily modify the URL’s of our posts and pages.
Sometime we write titles as “How To” or anything regarding any question which requires special characters like ? to be used in the tile. These type of titles are difficult for search engines to read and react to. So we can easily modify our post’s URL and remove every type of special character.
This option can also be used to reduce the URL of our post or page title.Sometime we write articles with long titles, with this option we can easily and automatically reduce the titles to short URL’s which is mostly preferred by search engines.

3. We can use wordpress editors to enable spellchecker to eliminate any misspelling from our posts or articles.
With these wordpress editor, we can also use this wordpress editor to remove formatting from any type of copied text. WordPress also enables us with keyboard shortcuts. With these shortcuts we can easily bold, italicize, or underline our keywords and also convert them to H1, H2 or H3 tags.

4. We can easily embed any type of video in our blog post.
No matter either the video is from youtube, vimeo, or any other video website, yet we can upload the video in our post in single click.Its very simple to do process, just click on add media and upload your video manually or click “Insert from URL“. Just input your video link and you are done.Its very simple to do process.

5. We can easily change/add/remove authors for our blog.
Just what you have to do is choose any article that you want to add any certain author with. Click on top right tab termed “Screen Options” and tick “Authors”. A new box with all the authors will be opt-out and you can add any author from the list of them.You are done with this awesome feature of wordpress to add any author to wordpress posts.

Actually there are lots of features in wordpress than these that I mentioned in my article. These tips are for newbie bloggers planning to choose wordpress as their blogging platform. Don’t forget to share my article if you liked.

Refference idealtechblog.com
WordPress Tips For Newbies

WordPress Blogs at Risk Due to Plug-In Flaw

A security flaw in the default configuration of a popular plug-in for WordPress has put blogs hosted on the platform at risk of data theft.
The flaw, discovered by researcher Jason Donenfeld, is in W3 Total Cache (W3TC), a plug-in to the blog-hosting platform that caches content in order to speed up request times.

Since data are stored similarly and in searchable form, Donenfeld says it's possible to extract sensitive information like password hashes and database cache keys from any directory that has been enabled.
Even directories that aren't enabled wouldn't be very difficult to guess, a Seclist.org post on the matter said.
At present, all versions of WordPress are vulnerable to the flaw, but a later post by Donenfeld said the author of the plug-in plans to close the gap soon. W3TC users are encouraged to disable the plug-in until such a fix is released.
WordPress is an extremely popular platform for hosting both personal and professional blogs.

A post by Ben Weitzenkorn from mashable.com
WordPress Blogs at Risk Due to Plug-In Flaw

Get A Real Digital Newsroom for Your Multi-Author WordPress Sites

There are very few good blogs that are single-writer based. Almost all such blogs have multiple writers and bloggers working on different segments or niches of the blog. Such blogs are not only more likely to have quality content, but are more likely to generate traffic and develop a brand. The main problem arises in the effective management of these multiple authors, often a chaotic and hectic process. Effective team management helps the team to efficiently produce much higher volumes of content to feed the Web’s 24/7 news cycle.
Gone are the days of using spreadsheets and e-mails to manage the multiple authors, to keep the co-authors in check, line up and distribute assignments and maintain records of payments to freelancers. All of this can now be handled by the many WordPress plugins available. These plugins not only help publishers to manage freelancers across different locations easily and efficiently, they also help facilitate the management of administrative tasks and enable the publisher to focus on producing top-notch content.
Below is a list of five WordPress Plugins for multi-author blogs that will digitize your newsroom. Check them out and pick the ones that suit your needs the best.

1. ContentCloud
The BetaOut ContentCloud is a hosted plug and play newsroom platform for all publishers running their content portals on WordPress. By making use of ContentCloud, publishers can manage a large number of contributors for content production.
ContentCloud offers a highly-intuitive, well-structured and user-friendly interface. It offers two interfaces for editors and other team members. One is the newsroom app and second is the workbench app. ContentCloud looks very minimalistic at first glance, especially the workbench app, but it is quite powerful and can be customized once you gain access to your settings panel in ContentCloud.
ContentCloud empowers you to create multiple workflows for a single publication and can share a desk across these workflows. The assignments are routed through these workflows and you can either define the contributors for every stage of the assignment or make it available to any user on that desk. Editors can keep an eye on the progress of the assignment through their newsroom app. ContentCloud is an amazing solution for WordPress publishers looking for an efficient newsroom.

2. Edit Flow
The Edit Flow plugin is a highly rated WordPress plugin that improves collaboration between the editorial and publishing teams. The plugin is a highly useful tool for teams with editors working on different timings because its calendar feature helps synchronize the mutual content in an effective manner. The plugin also allows automatic notifications for each post submission, making sure the communication channel between different members is not subjected to any delays.
The Edit Flow plugin helps redefine the editorial workflow by allowing mutual collaboration of the editorial team within the WordPress platform. The editorial comments feature of the edit flow plugin allows for in-house discussions between various writers and editors through threaded comments in the administration section. The users group feature improves workflow by allowing organization between various users according to their functioning or handling of various departments like editing and publishing.
Edit Flow, with all its features, is a completely customized plugin allowing administrators the power to pick and choose and enable the desired functionality options available within the plugin according to the needs of the website and the editorial team.

3. Editorial Guidelines
The Editorial Guidelines plugin, as the name suggests, is one of the most useful plugins for multiple authored websites based on the WordPress platform. It allows writers to understand the exact guidelines required for the content acceptable to the admin team. No other plugin acts in such a simple and serene manner helping editors, managers and administrators have a one-on-one briefing of sorts with those adding content to the website.
Editorial Guidelines may look like a simple plugin but it is one of the most important plugins, enabling smooth workflow between users and editorial teams, especially for large websites with a listing of multiple users. Editorial Guidelines allows the option of a small box in the edit screen containing a list of the various editorial guidelines of the respective content as desired by editors and publishers. The biggest advantage of the plugin, apart from being able to send individual guidelines to different writers, is the guideline section is editable and can be used for a broader author base in the future.
Editorial Guidelines allows for a smoother workflow within the system as it allows clear communication between users and the administration team, cutting out time discrepancies in editing the content or sending it back for approval.

4. Approval Workflow
The’Approval Workflow plugin highlights the ease of the workflow mechanism process in WordPress-enabled websites with a multiple user base and editors. Approval Workflow eases the structuring of the workflow process by automatically verifying users for administrative and publishing rights for their articles or posts.
Approval Workflow is not a standalone plugin – it can also remove time discrepancies by sending out ‘mailers’ to authors with publishing rights after each successful submission. This mailer feature is a boon for websites with different users working in different time zones. While one user with publishing rights may not be available, another active user gets the update of the successful submission and can proceed to publish the content, increasing overall productivity. The plugin, that works just as well on multiple websites over a network, uses a small notification box at the post edit screen if the user has no publishing rights for the respective submission. If the user does not have publication rights, the plugin switches on its intelligence mode and looks for active users with publishing roles while sending mailers to all users with publishing roles.

5. Simple History

Simple History is another WordPress plugin that gives ample freedom for keeping the history of users on a WordPress blog or website. Users can also clear the history database after the update and take the advantage of the log item deletion from the database as well. Moreover, the working interface of this plugin is more flexible, so you can work with it ceaselessly. Through this plugin, you can get the benefits of pagination in your WordPress website, allowing for more information about the history items. This plugin is useful when several people are involved in editing the contents. The latest version of this plugin has an updated POT-file for the translators.

WordPress Child Themes Development

There are a number of reasons that WordPress developers are starting to use child themes. They give you the opportunity to customize a unique layout on top of another existing theme. This is perfect for beginners who want to play around with building their own themes.

Additionally many premium designs will release new updates over time. If you are making changes to core theme files they will be overwritten when performing an update, but child themes are separate and neatly tucked away. This means you can build off existing premium themes and save loads of time in the process.
In this guide I want to introduce the basic concepts of building a WordPress child theme and why it’s such a good idea.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Plugin Development

Getting Started

Child themes are not as difficult as they may appear. The benefits of working off a parent theme means you don’t need to write all the HTML/CSS from scratch. A child theme will automatically use any template files you include, such as sidebar.php or footer.php. But if they are missing, then your child theme will pull the same files from its parent.
This functionality offers an enormous amount of freedom to customize already existing templates. It’s also great for touching up areas around your website for special events, such as adding design patterns for Christmas or New Years.

Your Required Files

You only need a single .css stylesheet to set up a child theme in WordPress. You also need to create a new directory in the /wp-content/themes folder which will house your child theme. Pay attention that you aren’t creating this folder inside the parent theme, but right alongside with it in the same themes directory.
Developers will often include a functions.php and screenshot.png in the same folder as your new CSS file. The screenshot is displayed in your WordPress admin panel and the functions theme file can be used for tons of backend changes.
But for now we should focus on the main stylesheet. This is commonly named style.css and includes a comment header with key meta information. This is important because your theme will only display as a child if you include the parent’s directory name. Below is an example header comment:

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1. /* 
2. Theme Name:   Twenty Eleven Child 
3. Theme URI:   http: //example.com/ 
4. Description:  Child theme for the Twenty Eleven design 
5. Author:     Jake Rocheleau 
6. Author URI:   http: //www.hongkiat.com/blog/ 
7. Template:    twentyeleven 
8. Version:    0.1 
9. */  

The value for template should be the directory name for the accompanied parent theme. Other than that all the other tags should be familiar to standard WordPress theming.

Although all the parent PHP templates will be used, the original parent’s style.css will not be imported automatically. If you want to work off the original styles you’ll have to include it at the top of your child’s style.css document. Below is an example including the WP Twenty Eleven theme.

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1. @import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");  

Setting Up New Styles

Applying CSS rules to your theme is just as easy as editing the original. If you know which elements you need to target then use the same selectors in your own child theme.
We could demo with some really easy changes to links and paragraphs. I’ve used code from the original Twenty Eleven theme for targeting the different elements. At times it is necessary to use a more specific selector to override the older design.

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1. body {  
2.     padding: 0 1.4em;  
3. }  
4. #page {  
5.     margin: 1.667em auto;  
6.     max-width: 900px;  
7. }  
8.   
9. a {  
10.     color: #5281df;  
11.     text-decoration: none;  
12.     font-family: Calibri, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;  
13. }  
14. a:focus,  
15. a:active,  
16. a:hover {  
17.     text-decoration: underline;  
18. }  

In these changes I’ve reduced the overall body size and also removed some padding from the edges. All of these selectors can be found listed in the original .css document. It’s notable that I’m also changing some properties for all anchor links which include a different font stack and color choice.

The !important Things

CSS has a special declaration to mark priority above other styles. The syntax is displayed as !important beginning with the exclamation mark and terminating at the end of your CSS property. This is necessary if you have cascading styles from a parent theme which are overriding your own custom rules.

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1. a {  
2.     color: #5281df !important;  
3.     text-decoration: none;  
4.     font-family: Calibri, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;  
5. }  

Above I have copied my original changes and edited the anchor text color with an important clause. This will take precedence over all other styles of the same selector depth. More defined elements (such as #access li:hover > a) will usually hold their own styles unless the color was still inherited from our original selector. In this case our parent theme does not setup a font-family property on anchor links, so as such we don’t run into any inheritance issues.

If you are having trouble making your changes stick, try popping one of these important marks at the end of your property statement. This isn’t a perfect fix for every inheritance problem, but it does come in handy a lot more frequently than you’d think.

Cloning functions.php

Unlike the main stylesheet, your child theme will import its parent’s functions automatically. This means you don’t need to copy over any of the PHP code to still have it active in your new theme. Yet if you’d like to re-define some of the functions you can build another functions.php and write in your new code with any changes.
As an example I have built a function which parses a few JavaScript files when the template initiates. This will remove any older versions of jQuery and SWFObject scripts, while simultaneously adding the most recent versions to the wp_head area.

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1. // queue js files for load  
2. function mytheme_js()   
3. {  
4.  if (is_admin()) return;  
5.   
6.  wp_deregister_script('jquery');  
7.  wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js');  
8.  wp_enqueue_script('jquery');  
9.   
10.  wp_deregister_script('swfobject');  
11.  wp_register_script('swfobject', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js');  
12.  wp_enqueue_script('swfobject');  
13. }  
14. add_action('init', mytheme_js);  

I should point out that if you are importing code from the parent functions.php then you’ll have to use a different function name. Otherwise PHP will give out a fatal error and you will have to FTP into the server to fix the mistake.

Working with Theme Files

The most broad category of theming is building custom layouts and page types. By default your child theme will inherit all of its parent’s theme files. But you have the option of creating new child theme files and WP will register these as the ‘primary’ template.
For example archive.php and index.php are used to display the post archives and homepage screen, respectively. If there are changes you’d like to make which require edits to the HTML then you’d be safer cloning the parent files and editing them in the child’s theme directory.

Custom Page Templates

While we’re talking about template files I also want to introduce a piece of WordPress functionality which many are not familiar with. You can build page and post templates which will be selectable from the Admin panel when creating new content. Even if the parent theme doesn’t have the new custom template file WordPress will still use the child in place of a page.php or single.php.
First create a new file named page-offer.php. This will be a “special offer” promotional page which is themed differently than all the others. In here you can copy over your original page code or even build the theme entirely from scratch. The only code we need to let WordPress know about this new template is a comment setup in PHP.

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1. <?php   
2. /**  
3.  * Template Name: Offer 
4.  */   
5.   
6. ?>  

Another alternative to this method is building custom pages named after the unique ID number. So instead of loading the default archive.php for author pages you could create a file such as author-ID.php where ID is the user’s unique WordPress ID number. Although this system is more taxing since you’d need to create a new template file for each of the authors on your site.
It becomes more useful if you can combine these two techniques with other template files. Notably categories and tags work well using their own theme files. Also if you link to attachments in your content then you’ll want to consider the different possible template layouts for each mime type. I included the template hierarchy below for a simple JPEG image attachment:

• image.php
• jpeg.php
• image_jpeg.php
• attachment.php

Helpful WordPress Tools

WordPress itself has a versatile plugins system that can manage a whole lot of customizations. Since child themes are so new, there aren’t a whole onslaught of 3rd party releases (yet). However there are a couple of tools you may check out to make your development time a bit shorter.
An obvious mention is the One-Click Child Theme plugin built and tested for the latest WordPress 3.x version. It adds a menu link into your Admin “Themes” section to automatically build a child using your currently active theme. This is fantastic if you don’t want to mess with FTP and are looking to play around with some new ideas.
If you plan to edit these files within the admin panel you’ll also enjoy clearer syntax highlighting. This isn’t offered in WordPress by default but you can install the Advanced Code Editor for some much-improved functionality. This makes wading through PHP code blocks and HTML/CSS a whole lot more manageable.

Additional Resources

Along with all the tips in this guide I want to share a set of important links for theme developers. There are already so many great articles and free child themes you can check out to study deeper into this subject. I added a wonderful collection of these resources below:

• 8 Free Twenty Eleven Child Themes
• WordPress Online Codex » Child Themes
• How to build a WordPress Child Theme using Hooks and Filters
• A Few Words on Child Themes
• How to Create, Modify, and Use Child Themes in WordPress

Conclusion

I hope the process of building WordPress child themes is clearer for you after reading this article. I’ve tried to explain how child themes can inherit both CSS and PHP templates from a parent. Additionally it’s very simple to manipulate specific files and create your own unique themes.

10 Reasons for Utilizing a WordPress Business Website

Developing a well-designed professional website for your business is critical these days and WordPress is an excellent way to achieve this goal. The internet is more competitive than it ever has been and you will need an up-to-date, user-friendly, proficient website.

I used to have a site that was built manually and all changes had to be done manually as well. I really loved the site and it did well, but it finally came time to admit that I needed to modernize and update our site. My online business is a big part of me and letting go of my hard work was difficult, but I knew it had to be done. My web consultant recommended WordPress and after looking it over, I agreed.

The differences with WordPress are amazing! My site is much more efficient, easy to use and I can do much more with it. There are more options for this type of site, but WordPress is the one I use and can personally recommend. Below are some of the more important reasons why you should be using WordPress for your business website.

1. Free – Building a business is tough enough so when you can get something of quality for free that will help your business it is definitely worth looking into. WordPress does not charge for the use of their themes, plugins, widgets, etc.

2. SEO Friendly – SEO (search engine optimization) is an important part of your online success. Much of your site’s traffic will come from the major search engines. Getting listed towards the top of these search engines is not always easy so having a search engine friendly site can help immensely. There are many WordPress plugins to help specifically with SEO. WordPress also provides spam protection to keep your site from getting penalized by the search engines.

3. Social Media Efficiency – WordPress sites have excellent social media capabilities to help build your business. There are plugins that will connect all your social site pages to your main site and automatically post to them when you post on your site. This enables you to share more of your content and get more people to see what your site has to offer.

4. Easy to Use – You do not need to know HTML or PHP coding to create your own WordPress site. Everything is coded for you and it is basically a matter of putting everything into place. Instead of having to build your house, all you have to do is
arrange the furniture.

5. Content Updates – Updating your site with new content regularly is very important and using WordPress makes it very easy to manage your content. It takes just minutes to create new pages or posts with a simple text editor in your site Admin.

6. Support – Anytime you have problems with your site there is an extensive support system available. Also, WordPress is so widely used that you can do a search and easily find answers to your website questions.

7. Professional Themes – WordPress provides hundreds of professionally designed website themes for you to use. These themes come in a variety of designs, layouts and color. This does not mean that you will have a cookie cutter website. You can easily customize the look of your site so it has its own unique appeal.

8. Plugins – Plugins are little add-ons that provide different features for your site. There are tons of plugins from which you can choose. For example: there is a plugin that schedules and displays events on your site. This is great if you have special offer sales, do webinars, classes or online parties. There is another plugin that will make your site mobile ready. The
possibilities are limitless!

9. Easy to Change – Many people periodically freshen up their site with a new layout or design. Also, your business might become such a huge success it outgrows your original site and requires more features, etc. Changing and adding to your site is extremely easy with WordPress. You can choose a new theme and it will override the old one without disturbing your content. You can add on more extensive plugins and widgets to accommodate your business’s growing needs in minutes.

10. Blogging Ability – WordPress sites originally were developed for blogging so not only can you successfully manage your whole business site, you have blogging capabilities as well. Although blogging started out more like writing a daily journal it is invaluable for most businesses. These sites are blog ready.
So if you have or are thinking about a business website, be sure to look into WordPress and other similar sites. The ease, efficiency and capabilities of these sites can help you and your business grow and progress for great success!

Facebook Integration With WordPress – Is It Worth It?

In June 2012 Facebook announced its tighter integration with the WordPress (self-hosted) Content Management system by releasing its free plugin “Facebook” available through the WordPress plugins directory.
The plugin allows users of both platforms to automatically post their WordPress posts to their personal profiles and pages they manage, as well as to “tag” (add the names of) pages or friends in the posts.

What the Facebook Plugin Actually Does
The Facebook for WordPress plugin also creates these Widgets that you can add to your sidebars:
* Activity Feed – displays friends’ activity, including likes and comments;
* Recommendations – offers readers personalized suggestions for pages.
* Like, subscribe, and send boxes – customizable with fonts, sizes, options to show Faces.
* Via Plugin settings you can configure the following options:
– Customizable Like, Subscribe, Send – can be added to the top, bottom of the post or both.
– Comments box – allows readers to leave comments that will be published on their Timeline. Also includes moderation tools for blog administrators.
– Recommendations Bar – adds a pop up in a corner at the bottom, showing personalized recommendations for other posts that might interest your readers. Readers can “like” posts and add them to their Timeline.
– Social Publisher – the key functionality that helps you publish your new posts as updates to your profile or to your Pages. You can also include mentions of other people or pages and you can configure where these mentions will be displayed.
On paper (or rather on screen) it all sounds pretty exciting. So we couldn’t wait to get it all tested on our sites and see how it really works!

Plugin Installation
The installation process is quite straightforward. Just download the plugin from the WordPress directory or install directly via WordPress. You do need to make sure you are running WordPress v.3+ though.
You will then need to go into plugin settings to set it up. It’s got helpful screenshots to show you how to get it done. You will need to create your own Facebook App (probably a first one for many Facebook users!) in order to get App keys that the plugin will use. And, in order to create an App, you will need to verify your Facebook account by either adding a mobile number or your credit card (if you’ve not done so already).
You will also need to authorize the plugin with your Facebook account login in order to enable post publishing to your profile/pages.
I’m not going to re-write the steps here as I think the plugin itself and Facebook Developers Help contain enough information to create a basic App for the plugin to work.

Plugin Settings
“Main Settings” information will be obtained from completing your Setup stages and instructions provided by the plugin.
Next you would want to configure your Post and Page settings.
Personally I would prefer to be able to choose by Post, by Page or both. However, in this first option, you will either use social sharing options on both or none. I’ve shown you some of the options below of what the plugin does and how these can be customized to suit your website.

Benefits of Using the Plugin

1. It easily adds social sharing buttons (like, send, share, subscribe) to your posts and pages. You can also add these options to the sidebar. HOWEVER: you could set up these options previously using various other sharing plugins like AddThis, ShareThis or DiggDigg. These plugins also give you more flexibility on where to place social sharing buttons and customization of styles.

2. You can offer customized recommendations to visitors of your blog based on the activity of other visitors. This is a very useful option for a blog because it could keep your visitors there longer, getting them to read one post after another. The Recommendations bar at the bottom also makes sharing posts easier via Facebook so potentially you could get a greater visibility of your content via readers and visitors. You could get round not using the Plugin and offer similar functionality using Most Popular posts, Most Commented posts, other social sharing plugin and so on, but I would say it’s not quite the same and as interactive.

3. You can integrate Facebook Comments into your posts. These posts will then be visible on readers’ profiles, therefore promoting your content to their friends. HOWEVER: if you previously used the WordPress default comments option (and you had comments on your blog), enabling this option will override the WordPress comments template so your old comments, made without the Facebook option will no longer be visible! If you used another plugin to manage your discussions (like DISQUS), then you will now have 2 comments options: via DISQUS and via the Facebook Plugin. Personally, I think it’s confusing for your readers. Besides, DISQUS already offers Facebook login/integration as well as many other options for those who don’t want to use their Facebook account when commenting.

4. You can automatically publish posts and pages to your profiles and the pages you manage. You can also mention other people and pages in your posts, which will increase your visibility on Facebook – since these updates will get published to profiles and pages that you mention. HOWEVER: I’ve tested this functionality with 2 different Facebook profiles on 2 different websites and although I followed the instructions several times, it just wouldn’t publish posts to my profile! Page publishing worked well (twice in my case as I use Networked Blogs to syndicate my blogs), but the only way I could get my profile linked was by mentioning myself in the post. So at the moment, it looks like this feature isn’t quite right.

5. If you have Networked Blogs or a similar app already publishing your posts to your profile and Page, you would need to decide which option you prefer to use: Facebook Plugin or a Facebook 3rd party App. The benefit of the Plugin would be that you can mention other people and pages, not just yourself and your page. And, you can add a custom message when publishing a post for both mentioning of pages and mentioning of people. A bit like doing an update message with a link attached, but through WordPress and this can be scheduled!

The Negative Aspects of Using Facebook Plugin for WordPress

1. It slows down your website – Like any other extra plugin that has to query another website before yours is fully loaded this plugin will affect your loading speed.
   
2. It overrides WordPress comments – If you previously used WordPress comments, rather than a 3rd party plugin, your old comments list and form will disappear if you activate the Facebook Comments option (not if you just use other parts of the Plugin). We tested it with Genesis and Themeforest themes. It might be that other premium themes will behave differently.

3. The options can conflict with each other – If you activate Like, then tick Send, you don’t need to activate Send because the feature will be replicated.

4. Open Graph activation didn’t work in the test – It didn’t allow publishing of posts on my personal profile. If you managed to get this fixed, or know why it happened – please share your comments! However, Page publishing worked. Also, I’m left in the dark now as to what will happen to my Apps. I’ll keep trying and will update this post if I have any more information…

In summary
I will use the Facebook Plugin for WordPress on TJConsulting blog. I won’t be publishing posts to my Page or Profile with it yet until I figure out the App integration part. Networked Blogs publishes all my posts reliably on my profile and pages and also creates a Tab with a feed of recent posts. On the occasion I need to share a post with another Facebook user – I’ll do it manually, using the usual Facebook’s share button under each update. I’ll stay with my current comments’ arrangements that also allow integration with MailChimp for my newsletter subscription.
You can, however, see new boxes added to the Blog sidebar: personalized recommendations, Share this on Facebook. Also, below posts and pages you’ll find Like, Send and Subscribe options.
Now, it’s over to you. Have you tried the new Facebook plugin? Do you like it? How will you use it? Have you managed to integrate it with your App? Look forward to your thoughts!

10 WordPress Plugins That Save Bloggers Time

1. WordPress.com Stats
Personally, I feel it is essential for bloggers to track the activity on their blogs. You can make use of a web analytics tool, but it takes sometime to navigate through all the reports. That is where a plugin will be handy. The WordPress.com Stats plugin is a big help in this regard. Instead of using another application, you can keep track of your blog’s stats directly from your WordPress dashboard.

 2. WP-Polls
It is a well-known fact that people like to participate in polls. There are options available to you on the internet, but the WP-Polls plugin will allow you to create custom polls on your WordPress dashboard. You do not have to leave your account to log into another site to manage it. This is only if you want to make use of polls.

3. Sociable
This plugin automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites.

4. Akismet
It is very important to activate your Akismet plugin on your blog. It is a fact that blogs unfortunately get comments that are spam. This plugin checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “comments” admin screen. Your readers do not like to see spam comments. This can easily result in a decrease of your traffic. I cannot stress this enough, please make sure you are using a plugin like Akismet. This WordPress plugin will save you time.

5. Math Comment Spam
In the fast growing era of technology, it is unfortunately a fact that comment spam blocking plugins like Akismet will not always be enough to eliminate all spam comments. By using the Math Comment Spam plugin in conjunction with the Akismet plugin, you will be able to decrease spam comments. The Math Comment Spam plugin will ask readers a simple math problem such as 2 x 3 before they can comment. This is to make sure that it is a human comment.

6. Theme Tester

Editor’s Note: The Theme Tester plugin may not work with newer versions of WordPress. A good alternate plugin is Theme Test Drive which can be found at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-test-drive/
It sometimes happens that bloggers want to change the WordPress theme. You do not want your audience to see the changes until all is finished and ready. This is where the Theme Tester plugin is of great help. Your readers will see your existing design until all is set up and ready for publishing.

7. WP-Database Backup
I want you to read the following with attention! If your blog is important to you, do yourself a big favor and install the WP-Database Backup plugin. It is most crucial to have this plugin installed and set to back up your WordPress database. This plugin will save the data on your hard drive or it will be sent to you via email. The next important point I want to stress is the following: Please keep in mind that this plugin makes a backup of your database files only. Make sure to make a manual backup of your WordPress content folder from your hosting account.

8. Easytube
This plugin will help you to get a YouTube or Google video published on your blog. It easily makes embedding YouTube and Google videos into your post a snap. Easytube also includes a preview image of your YouTube videos in the RSS feed with a link to the video. If you want to make use of visual media, it is essential to install this plugin.

9. Auto Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks
To reduce spam on older posts, you can make use of this plugin. Older posts are targets for automated comment spam bots. After installing the plugin, set the timeframe to a date when you want to close comments on your posts.

10. Google Maps Plugin
Editor’s Note: The Google Maps plugin may not work with newer versions of WordPress. A good alternate plugin is the Comprehensive Google Map plugin which can be found at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comprehensive-google-map-plugin/
This plugin speaks for itself. If you want to make use of maps from Google to be part of your blog post, this plugin will assist you in the process of creating, inserting and customizing it. This WordPress plugin will definitely save you time.
I really hope these 10 WordPress plugins will save you time and make blogging a treat. Make use of them and enjoy your blogging!

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Jan de Klerk is an internet marketing enthusiast. Want to learn more about blogging and the online home business? Did you find the tips in his post helpful? Claim his free report about blogging, available at http://www.jandeklerk.com . He likes to give honest, real and valuable information to help people become successful online. He specifically likes to help with blogging and the online home business niche. Jan’s articles are jam packed with real honest tips and techniques for the internet marketer.