Sunday, January 29, 2006

Top 30 Tools For Working With Wordpress Posts

Aside from tweaking the design and installing the occasional plugin, most of the time in your WordPress blog is spent writing and editing posts. In the penultimate post of the WordPress Tips series, we present 30+ tools to help you with everything from saving recurring post layouts to hiding the spoiler at the end of your movie review.

Post Administration & Layout

Add Graphic Signature – Adds a graphic of your signature to your posts either automatically or via the insertion of a simple tag.

Adman – Allows you to post ads such as Google AdSense at the beginning or middle of a post.

Another WordPress Meta Plugin – Allows you to add Meta tags and keywords to your post to try to further optimize your blog for search engines.

Category Remindr – Category Remindr puts a button next to the “Publish” button to remind you to select the categories for your post.

Corrector – Adds Google Spell to your admin area and can spellcheck in 27 languages.

DropCap First Character – Enlarges the first character of a post to give it more of a magazine appearance.

Front Page Excluded Categories – Sometimes you don’t want posts from certain categories on your front landing page, this allows you to exclude them from appearing there.

Limit the size of main page posts – Set the number of words you want each of your main page posts to contain, if they exceed that limit, a link is provided to a page with the complete post.

Notify On Draft Post – Notifies the editor when the authors of a multi-author blog post a new draft for review.

Post Notification – Sends an email to all of the registered Users, who have opted in, when you make a new post. Includes the option to include the post in the email.

Post Repeater – Sometimes you have a post with significance every week, month, or year; this plugin will do it for you with just a few edits.

Post Templates – Allows you to set up repeating templates such as a “Picture Of The Day” and so on without all the tedious copy and pasting.

PostPost – Allows you to add content such as advertisements before or after every post.

Posts Expire – Set an expiration date on your post, after the date passes, it will no longer be displayed.

Subscribers Only – Lets you mark a post as “subscriber only” so they are visible only to members of your site.

Subscribe-Remind – Adds a reminder to the bottom of each post to your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.

WordPress PDA – Helps your readers view your blog on a PDA browser.

WP-orderposts – As more people use WordPress also as a CMS, sometimes you don’t want your posts in chronological order; this plugin allows you to change it.

WP-Sticky – Sometimes you want a post to always be the first entry for your blog, especially when using WordPress as a makeshift CMS. This plugin does just that by making a post “sticky”.

Post Tools

Auto Link – Use the Google API to set delimiters like [movie]Move Title[/movie] to make it auto link to the page on IMDB. Can set others as you wish.

Author Complete Post List – Gives you the ability to display all the posts by an author, including the ones where they are co-author.

Blog by Mail with Categories – Changes the “Blog by Mail” feature in WordPress so you can also set the category.

Code Markup – Allows you to include snippets of code, including HTML, in your post without it affecting the page.

Easy Post-To-Post Links – Allows you to use a shortcut when writing a post linking to another post on your blog; shows the full hyperlink in the published post.

On This Day – Will display posts posted on the same day in previous years.

Plain Text Paste – Helps to ease the pain of pasting something you wrote in Microsoft Word into WordPress.

TD Word Count – Will display a word count for each post on a blog, and gives you a total count.

Ubernyms – Allows you to make shortcut for terms and links you use often. Just enter the abbreviation and this plugin fills it in for you.

WP-Footnotes – Allows you to add footnotes to a more detailed post.

wpSpoiler – Great for sites that do movie or TV reviews, will allow you so hide text behind [spoiler] tags. (via)

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Top 30 WordPress Plugins To Get More Blog Readers

Gaining blog readers is hard; WordPress makes it much easier. Here are 30+ WordPress plugins to help you garner some of that attention, and then retain readers once they visit.

Crossposting

DJ-Email-Publish – Once you publish on your WordPress blog, this sends the post as an email to your other blogs such as MSN Spaces.

Live Space Sync – Allows you to import all your posts to your Microsoft Live Spaces so you can advertise your blog to your contacts.

LiveJournal Crossposter – Automatically posts your latest entries to your LiveJournal account, or any other LJ software based site.

Vox Crossposter – Makes it so your posts also appear on your Vox account.

Xanga Crosspost – Allows you to have your posts appear on your Xanga account also.

RSS Feed Tools

©Feed – Adds copyright info to your feed and puts a digital fingerprint on it so you can search the web for content theft.

Add to Any Subscribe Button – Allows your readers to subscribe via just about any reader out there.

AddThis Sidebar Widget – Adds RSS info and social bookmarking to the sidebar.

Better Feed – Adds a “read more” button, a copyright notice, and a “Add to del.icio.us” link.

DeCat – Allows you to select certain categories to not be included in your feeds.

Feed Control – Gives you the ability to exclude posts from your feed, add pages and much more.

Feed Footer – Adds copyright and advertising to your RSS posts.

Feed Master – Assigns a number to your feed readers so you get a better idea of stats specific to them.

Feed Styler – Allows you to style your feed.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Make sure all your RSS feed subscribers get counted along with the ones signed up via FeedBurner.

FeedStats – Gives you statistical data on your feeds.

Feedvertizer – Add text links to the end of your feed posts.

RSS Flashfeeder to Myspace – Feeds your last two posts to your MySpace page.

Slash Comments – Adds info to your feed about how many comments are on the post.

Subscribe-Remind – Adds a little reminder to the end of each post reminding readers to subscribe to your feed.

Social Bookmarking

Digg Button – Allows you to add the Digg button anywhere in a post with just a simple code snippet.

Digg IT – Another plugin allowing inclusion of the Digg button.

JPF Add to Reddit – Allows readers to submit your posts to Reddit, if they are already logged in, it automatically posts the title and URL.

Share This – Adds multiple social bookmarking links and an e-mail-this function in one handy button.

Sociable – Adds the linking information for 61 social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmark Buttons – Adds social bookmark buttons for Digg.com, Netscape.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon.com, Google.com, Socialogs.com, and Socialposter.com.

Social Bookmarks Plugin for WordPress – Gives you access to the social bookmarking icons.

Socializer Plugin – Adds the ability to post to nearly 40 social bookmarking sites.

SocialList – Lets you see which of your posts have been submitted to del.icio.us and Digg.

Socialogs.com – Allows you to have your entries submitted to Socialogs.com.

WP-Notable – Adds the icons for numerous social bookmarking sites to each post.

wphotspots – Tracks the activity of your posts on several social bookmarking sites. (via)

Friday, January 27, 2006

Top 50 Tools For The WordPress Admin

Running your WordPress blog can feel like a full-time job sometimes. We’ve compiled an A-Z list of more than 50 plugins to help you streamline everything you need to do out back. As with any plugins list, don’t install them all at once!

404 Notifier – Gives you a log of all your 404 errors so you can see why your readers are ending up on broken pages.Admin Dropdown Menus – Make your crowded admin panel menus neat and orderly by turning them into dropdown menus.

Admin Panel Comment Reply – Adds a “reply to comment” option in the comments section of the admin area.

Ajax Spell Checker – Uses a combination of dictionaries to check your posts.

Auto-hyperlink URLs – Gives you several options for having URLs automatically turn in to hyperlinks.

AWSOM Pixgallery – Designed to allow artists and webcomic creators to create a portfolio of their artwork.

Batch Categories – Adds a page to the category management, showing all the posts that belong to a category making it easier to add to another category, or when using an import tool from another blog.

Custom Admin Menu – Gives you the power to rename, hide or move just about anything you want in the admin area.

Custom Write Panel – Allows you to customize the “Write” panel of WordPress. Hide things you don’t need such as “Post Password” and add things you feel you may need.

Dashbar – Let admins have admin access while working in the frontend of the blog without having multiple windows open.

Dashboard Editor – Ever wanted to change the Dashboard to be more useful? This is the plugin you need.

DashNote – Adds a post-it note feature to the dashboard to jot down notes to yourself.

Digital Fingerprint – Adds a digital fingerprint to your posts so you can search the web to see if your content has been scraped.

Domain Mirror – Will allow one WordPress install to be accessed from multiple domains and will even change the name and URLs based on the address people access it with.

Download Counter – Counts and tracks the downloads of all your files.

Email Users – This plugin allows you to mail registered users on your blog based on their role.

Enforce WWW Preference – Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www to make sure your search engine indexing is uniform.

Excerpt Editor – Gives you more control over the excerpts such as length and auto creation.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Make sure all your RSS feed sbscribers get counted along with the ones signed up via FeedBurner.

Fix Database – Will check your WordPress database for errors and attempt to fix them.

Genki Announcement – Allows you to add an announcement before your first post without editing your themes, can even run on a timer.

Genki Pre-Publish Reminder – Forget to set your categories before you publish? Write yourself a reminder!

Google Analyticator – Inserts Google Analytics on every WordPress page

Google Sitemaps Generator – Will create a Google compliant sitemap of your blog.

GT Post Approval – Adds “Approve” and “Reject” buttons to the administrators view on all posts, very handy for blogs with multiple authors.

Instant Update – Will handle the tedious chore of upgrading your WP install with just one-click.

Just Unzip – Upload a zip folder from the Write page; this plugin unzips the contents and associates them with the current post.

Khanh’s Instant Notepad (KIN) – Allows you to jot notes to yourself on a notepad.

Leprakhauns Word Count – Adds a Java powered word counter to your editing page, very useful for writers working to a word count on professional blogs.

Mass Post Manager – Allows you to move or delete all the posts in a category at once.

Mutliply – Allows you to control multiple blogs from one administrator.

NextGEN Gallery – Adds an image gallery to your control panel and can even add a flash gallery.

OneClick Install – Adds an extremely powerful uploader and installer for plugins and themes to WordPress, eliminates the need to unzip or FTP!

Page Link Manager – Allows you to easily rearrange pages, hide them, and move them at will.

Permacop – Allows you to redirect any URL to another.

Post2Page – Write a post that should really be on permanent display? Turn it in to a page with this plugin and have it handle the URL redirects to boot.

PlugInstaller – Point this plugin to a new plugin you want on the web, it takes care of obtaining it, uploading it and unpacking it.

podPress – Numerous features for bloggers wishing to add podcasts to their WordPress install. Previews, RSS feeds, adding cast to posts, and many, many more.

Search and Replace – Search all your posts at once for specified text, quickly replace it.

Share This – Adds multiple social bookmarking links and an e-mail-this function in one handy button.

Simple Pop-up Images – Add a thumbnail image to your post; when the user clicks on it, they get a larger pop-up of the picture.

Simple Tagging – Simplifies the tagging process to drop down menus, can import from your current tagging plugins.

Site Unavailable – Puts up a message your site is down, customize the message, all the while, the admins can still log in.

Throttle – Monitors your bandwidth and limits non-essential items during heavy load times to help performance.

Wikipedia-NoFollow – Written in response to Wikipedia’s implementing a “nofollow” rule to their outgoing links, a plugin to add nofollow to links you give to Wikipedia pages.

WordPress Mobile Edition – Strips your blog down for easy reading on phones and PDAs.

WordTube – Why use YouTube when you can host and stream your videos as you please? Includes a flash player.

WP Grins – Adds clickable smilies to both the administration area and comments section at once.

WPAds – Add rotating banner and text ads to any position you define in your blog.

WP-Custom Login – Allows you to modify the user login page logo to an image of your choice to allow you to brand your site more completely.

WP- DBManager – Gives you the power to optimize the database, back it up, restore, delete the backup database , drop emptied tables and run selected queries.

WP-phpMyAdmin – Gives you quick access to your PHP databases directly from the WP admin area without haveing to login to phpMyAdmin. Very handy.

WP Plugins Tracker – Will verify all of your plugins are the latest version by checking them against the wp-plugins-db.org database.

WP Super Edit – Gives you more control over the Visual editor including emoticons, layers, style attributes and more.

WP-Table – Allows you to add a table directly in the Visual mode or import from a spreadsheet. (via)

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Top 50 Tools For Torrenting

When they think of torrents, most people think only of illegal downloads. But the same file sharing technology can be used for legal distribution of all kinds of content. Today, for instance, the record label Labrador Records is asking fans to share its free summer sample on The Pirate Bay to ease the load on its servers.

To show that torrenting isn’t all bad, we’ve rounded up 50+ tools to help you get started on the torrent path, all with totally legal uses.

Distribution Sites Of Legal Content

BitTorrent – From the makers of the original software, they now offer a mixture of free and pay-for content.

bt.etree.org – Band videos of “trade friendly” musicians.

BTSharp – Integrates with .NET apps and helps you distribute with private trackers.

Ibiblo.org – Torrent distribution site of ibiblo content.

Legaltorrents.com – A completely legal torrent site and a great place to experiment and get a feeling for how it works.

LegitTorrents.info – Includes free videos, games and Linux distributions.

LinuxTracker.org – A centralized location for Linux related software, all delivered by torrent.

PublicDomainTorrents.com – Hundreds of torrent media files that reside in the public domain such as movies, TV shows, serials and more. (WARNING:Occasional rotating questionable ad)

Revision3.com – Mixture of torrent-delivered media and direct downloads of vidcasts.

Star Trek:New Voyages – Fan-produced Star Trek episodes, some with original cast members, all distributed with torrents.

SXSW – Free torrents from the organizers of the SXSW music festival.

tlm-project.org – The Linux Mirror Project, helping spread the alternative operating system.

Vuze.com – From the makers of the Azureus client, hosts a mixture of free and pay-for content, all delivered via torrents.

Information Sites

Brian’s BitTorrent FAQ – Large FAQ that answers some of the most basic questions about starting with torrents.

Magoo’s Guide To BitTorrent – An in-depth instruction from beginning to advanced torrent use.

Slyck.com – News from around the torrent community.

TorrentFreak.com – Up-to-date news on the torrent community of both the legal and illegal variety. Occasionally offers legal downloads. They also have a good tutorial on how to start a torrent of your own using some of the most popular clients.

Video Tutorial – A nearly 14 minute video demo of how to get started with torrent clients and downloading from sclipo.com.

Vlad44.com FAQ – Covers some very in-depth questions about torrents such as how to make your own and to configure your web server to host the files.

Wikipedia entry on BitTorrent – Explains how the technology works, some of the history, legal issues, and more.

Torrent Clients

ABC Client – Runs on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Linux.

Acquisition – A torrent client exclusively for Macs.

Arctic Torrent – Runs on Windows 2000/XP/XP 64/2003/2003 64.

Azureus – Runs on all operating systems and supports numerous languages.

BitComet – Runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, some support for Windows 98.

BitLord – Works with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003.

BitPump – Runs on all versions of Windows.

BitSpirit – Compatible with Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003.

BitTornado – Windows (doesn’t list which versions), Linux, OS X, BSD.

BitTorrent – The original one developed by Bram Cohen. Works with OS X, Linux, and Windows. Is sometimes referred to as “Mainline” to denote its status as the original.

BitTyrant – Works with Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Bits On Wheels – Exclusively for Macs, features 3D images of your peer swarm.

Burst! – Compatible back to Windows 98.

Deluge – A Linux client

Enhanced cTorrent – For Linux.

FlashGet – Windows-only client program.

FoxTorrent – Torrent client that integrates with the Firefox browser.

Gnome BitTorrent – Another Linux only torrent client.

Halite – Windows NT, 2000, XP

KTorrent – For Linux and OS X.

Opera – Web browsing suite with a built-in torrent client.

qBittorent – For Linux and OS X.

QTorrent – A bittorrent client for Linux.

rTorrent – For Linux and OS X.

sharktorrent – For Linux, OS X, Windows.

Tomato Torrent – Only for the OS X operating system.

Torrent Swapper – For Linux, OS X and Windows – all flavors.

TorrentVolve – For Linux, OS X and Windows (versions not listed).

Transmission – Available for Linux and OS X.

Turbo Torrent – Windows only.

μTorrent – Windows only.

WizBit – For S60 smartphones.

Wikipedia Client Comparison – Lists the features of all the clients so you can choose which one best suits your needs. (via)

Monday, January 23, 2006

Top 30 Plugins for Wordpress Comments

When working on a WordPress blog, posts often take center stage. However, the comments are often just as important – they create valuable discussion. And yet the default WordPress comment box is simplistic and uninspiring – here are Mashable’s favorite comment-focused WordPress plugins that can eliminate spam, improve the appearance of comments, and add more value to your posts.

Fight Spam

Akismet – Antispam plugin from the creators of WordPress that uses a central database of spam comments to flag spam. Requires a free API key from WordPress.com

Spam Karma – Analyzes comments for spam based on a karma system.

Bad Behavior – Prevents spambots from even accessing your site by analyzing their HTTP requests.

Did You Pass Math? – Asks commenters a simple math question before their comments are posted.

Comment Timeout – Closes comments on old posts.

Encourage Commenting

BlogFollow – Shows a snippet of the commenter’s blog at the bottom of the comment.

DoFollow – Removes “nofollow” attributes from links in comments so search engines can follow them.

DoFollow Trackbacks – Removes “nofollow” attributes from trackbacks

Show Top Commentators
– Lists the most frequent commentators on your blog, along with links to their blogs, in your sidebar.

Improve appearance

Nicer Trackbacks – Improves the appearance of trackbacks from other blogs.

WP-NoSh*t – Filters bad words from comments.

Numbered Comments Adds numbers to comments.

AuthorHighlight – Highlights comments by the blog’s author.

Comment Highlighter – Styles comments based on the author’s name, email, or URL.

wp-chunk – Truncates long URLs in comments to prevent them from stretching the page.

Enable rich comments

Custom Smileys – Adds clickable smiley emoticons to comments.

TinyMCEComments – Turns the comment box into a full-featured rich text editor.

Live Comment Preview – Allows readers to preview their comment before posting.

Edit Comments XT – Lets commentators edit their own comments.

Enable avatars

Gravatar – Displays user-selected avatars from a central database next to comments.

Favatars – Pulls the favicon from a commenter’s blog or website, and uses that for their avatar.

MBLA – Adds user images from MyBlogLog to comments.

OpenID Comments – Lets readers comment with their OpenID identity.

Show off comments

WP-Most Commented Posts – Displays posts with the most comments in the sidebar.

Latest Comments with Avatars Reloaded – Shows the latest comments, along with the MyBlogLog avatars of the commenters.

Allow better conversation

Simple CoComments – Tracks the conversation across blogs.

Comment Karma – Digg-style voting on comments.

Quoter – Allows users to quote a previous comment in their comment.

Whisper – Lets users “whisper” comments that are only visible to one person.

Moderate comments effectively

Comment Twitter SMS Notification – Notifies you of new comments through Twitter SMS.

Bannage – Adds the ability to ban users from commenting by name, email, or IP.

CommentCentral – Allows batch opening and closing of comments on multiple posts. (via)

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Top 40 Firefox Add-ons for High Speed Blogging

Firefox works great on its own, but it’s the thousands of extensions that make it excel. We’ve pulled together more than 40 add-ons for Firefox that provide quick access to handy blogging tools. But whatever you do, don’t install them all at once.

Blog Publishing

Blogger Bar – Search Blogger, “Blog This” function for any page you’re on.

Clipmarks – Clip any portion of a website to save, email or put on your blog.

Deepest Sender – Blog to multiple platforms from one window.

JustBlogIt – Just right click, and you’re blogging about the page you’re viewing.

LiveJournal Addons – Notifies you of friends updates, messages and more.

LiveJournal Hook – Gives you quick access to many LiveJournal commands and tags.

MySpace Blog Editor – Post directly from Firefox, drag and drop clips from sites.

Scribefire – A blog editor that integrates with your browser and allows you to drag and drop items from a web page into a blog post.

Twitterbar – Post to Twitter directly from the address bar.

WordPress.com Sidebar – Adds a quick access sidebar to get to your WordPress.com account.

Uploading Photos and Media

Fireflix – Sidebar extension to upload, browse, and manage your Flickr photos.

Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery – Upload photos directly to your Kodak EasyShare Gallery.

Firefox Universal Uploader – Universal program for uploading to sites such as Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, and Facebook.

FireFTP – An integrated FTP system that syncs and checks versions.

Flickr Sidebar – View the pictures in your account in a sidebar.

Fotofox – Select, tag, and upload images to popular sites such as Flickr.

ImageBot – Lets you upload photos to ImageShack or Photobucket.

OakFlickr4PFF – Allows uploading to your Flickr account.

Blog Tools

Adsense Notifier – Displays your current earnings from Google Adsense in the status bar.

Copy as HTML Link – Copies the address of a page to the clipboard as an HTML ready link.

Create short URLs – Right click an address, click wrapURL, and create a shortened URL for your use.

Dict – Highlight a word, right click it, select define and get a definition in a pop-up window.

DictionarySearch – Similar to Dict, but the result appears in a new tab.

FastDict – Add quick access to any number of dictionary sites to spruce up your blog entries.

ShrinkThisLink Link Shrinker – Use the ShrinkThisLink service without leaving the page.

Tiny.pl – Shortens an address via the tiny.pl service.

Blog Design, Customization and Development

ColorZilla – Get a color reading from any spot in your browser.

DT Whois – Adds a button for Domaintools.com whois service for the site you are currently viewing.

Firebug – Look under the hood of your favorite websites and take a peak at their code.

Greasemonkey – Allows you to run small java scripts to manipulate the way a page displays to you.

HTML Validator – Checks the validity of a page’s HTML and tells you the results in simple graphics.

IE Tab – Lets you view a webpage in an Internet Explorer tab without leaving Firefox.

iWEBTOOL Webmaster’s Toolbar – Allows you quick access to services and tools from iWEBTOOL.

JavaScript Debugger – In browser Java script debugging.

KGen – Allows you to see the strongest keywords for a given site.

LinkChecker – Checks the validity of all links on a given page.

Load Time Analyzer – Allows developers to measure how long a page takes to load.

MeasureIt – Draws out a ruler to get a pixel dimension of any element on a page.

MetaTags – Checks the meta information of a site and features an automated search engine submission tool.

RankQuest SEO Toolbar – Quick access to over 30 SEO tools.

SearchStatus – Keyword density analyser and checks backlinks.

SEOHAND – Tracks a site’s standings and creates graphs over time.

SEOQuake – Ever wonder why a page gets good search ranking? This will help you figure it out.

Web Developer – A highly regarded debugging tool for designers. (via)