blondish.net

Recommended WordPress plug-ins for blogs

I do not call myself a WordPress guru. I am far from it. However, I have been following the swelling tide of the blog script since its baby days as b2. I have been thrilled with a lot of the developments. There are a lot of tools offered to allow bloggers to become seen by search engines, and overall, get the audience they need. Of course, Wordpress does more than that, so I thought I might divulge a few nifty plugins that I use either here or have for clients.

1. All In One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert. This plugin allows the author to insert keywords into their site. There is one downside. If you have several blog entries show up on a page and a lot of keywords (example: more than 20), it might not work in your favor. On the other hand, this plugin could prove powerful if you are keen and able to choose valuable keywords to describe your posts.

2. CommentLuv by Andy Bailey. CommentLuv allows your visitors to not just leave a comment, but a footprint leading back to their own website with the title of their most recent post. This is great because not just the blog owner can see, but any visitor might also become interested in visiting your other commenter’s sites.

3. Dagon Design Form Mailer. This form is extremely customizable and contains a great verification system.

4. Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin is something I say is extremely essential in making a sitemap that Google will definitely recognize. Although I was going to mention the one by Dagon Design, I have not been able to get it accepted in the Google Webmaster Tools.

5. Sub Pages Widget by Alper Haytabay. The Sub Pages widget allows you to organize your subpages from section to section and choose whether you want to list your root pages on your sidebar. This helps get rid of some of the long list of pages and gives it a more hierarchal look.

I almost made 6 choices, but the WP Link Directory by Sean Bluestone did not make it due to a few captcha errors. I was trying to put this on Blondish.net to help me maintain my link exchanges more efficiently.

However, for the moment, these are the ones I have enjoyed the most. Do you use any of these?

Tags: internet, wordpress

500 Internal Server Error?

Not sure if anyone has come by the site and has seen the 500 Internal Server Error. It was the WordPress, but I am not sure if it is the 2.7 installation or one of the plug-ins. I installed the NextGen Gallery so I could put my pics of my son, myself, and my stock photos. I think I have pinpointed the issue to this particular plugin, but I cannot be certain as of yet. I have been tackling this issue the past few days. It sucked getting online to find out this issue. I may have to go back to the technicians at HostGator to try to tweak my server if this is the case.

Tags: Add new tag, blog, nile flores, site news, web hosting, wordpress

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7

I have been tinkering around with my Wordpress panel since the official release of version 2.7. I am fairly impressed. The sections are much easier to find. Also, I like that the plug-ins now offer the ability to instantly install directly from the WordPress plugin directory. I installed a few that will help with my pictures and my artwork.

So far I have not had any issues. I have been following the testing of the script for a while and this is the best version yet. I do not know how they could even outdo themselves after this.

Anyone else using 2.7?

Tags: blog, technology, wordpress