When I come across a sharp new blog I often wonder what kind of plugins they’re running under the hood.  I’ve always believed seeing a slick plugin on a live site is a million times better than any review you could read on WordPress.  When I first started out, I shared the plugins used in Cuban Nomad and followed it up a couple of months later with more cool plugins I had discovered.  This time instead of a bucket list of everything under the sun, I wanted to focus on a specific aspect of my blog and the plugins used to enhance it.

Ease of Use

Commenting isn’t always a straightforward activity.  There are forms to fill out or logins to enter and then you have to decide what you’re going to say.  For newbies just the thought of trying to format the comment can trigger panic attacks.  What if you screw up and your comment is forever engraved with broken code?  Are they all gonna laugh at you? 

That’s a lot of stress for a newcomer looking to add their two cents.  If you want people to participate then you have to make it as easy as possible.  For me that meant leaving comments open to just name and email.  Yes, anonymous trolls can jump in and cause trouble, but why should I punish my readers for someone else’s anti-social behavior?  Here are the some other ways I’ve tried to make it painless to participate.

• Comment Form Quicktags: Adding flair to your comment or including a link should not involve memorization of HTML code.  This zero config plugin adds handy icons that anyone familiar with a word processing program will instantly recognize.
• Live Comment Preview: Real time preview of your comment as your write it.  Works well with the above Quicktags and is seamless to the commenting process.  No more buttons to click or worries that your epic comment will appear as a garbled mess.

Adding Features

Folks with blogs love to share and interact, so give them more opportunities to do just that when they come to your little slice of the web.  Comments can take an article to whole other level, sparking conversations between author and reader that only arise from organic interaction.  Adding functionality which strengthens these connections gives even more incentive for people to join in. 

• CommentLuv: I first came across this fantastic plugin when Dave Doolin wrote about CommentLuv tricks on Website in a Weekend.  With one single checkbox you’re allowing folks to pimp their own blogs without feeling spammy or sleazy about it.  You’re also increasing your understanding of the people reading your site by partaking of theirs.  Win-win situation.
• Subscribe to Comments: One of the oldest and most used comment plugins for WordPress, this rock solid addition is a must have for any blog.  Not everyone can make it daily to their favorite blogs and some who stumbled upon your site might have–gasp!—lost the link after commenting.  Letting them receive email notifications when more comments appear not only pulls them back into the fold, but makes it ridiculously convenient to engage again.
• TwitterLink Comments: Twitter is one of the strongest growing communication channels on the Internet.  Cutting it out of your site only limits your reach.  This allows readers to include their Twitter handles when commenting.  I’ve been able to start relationships through my blog posts only to see them further solidified on Twitter and vice versa, some of my daily reads stemmed from a single tweet.

What’s in your wallet?

I’d love to hear what plugins are tweaking your knobs or making readers foam at the mouth upon arrival.  Feel free to leave a comment in the easy to use and feature rich comment form below

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If you’ve been writing your blog for any length of time there will be one or two posts that you’re especially proud of.  Maybe they sparked a ton of comments or were exceptionally well written or were even linked to by a Big Name blogger.  No matter what the reason, they make your chest puff up whenever you think of them.

And if you’ve been writing your blog for any length of time, you’ve sadly watched as the chronological format of the traditional blog caused your AAA post to drop lower and lower on the main page until it eventually disappeared to the land of Archives & Previous Entries.

So what do you do at that point?  Hope your readers scour the back issues and stumble upon these gems?  Lament the loss of your content while praying to the writing gods for more inspiration?  None of the above.  Instead you bring your best work to the front of the line, showcasing it in addition to the new stuff you churn out on a regular basis.  Since everyone’s style is a bit different, here are 3 ways you can effectively show off your goods.

Sidebar with hand picked content – Mark McGuinness’ “Lateral Action”

This approach works well when displaying your blog’s cornerstone content.  These are resource posts (filled with links or tips that people will bookmark and come back to) or flagship content that encapsulates the theme and direction of your blog.  As you can see in Lateral Action these posts are part of a static sidebar, easily accessible from the main page and always within visual range of the reader.

You can call this sidebar “Popular Posts” (as seen above) or “Resources” or anything that matches the voice of your blog (Kelly Diels of Cleavage calls hers More Great Cleavage).  Run with whatever you think will best capture your reader’s attention.  This isn’t an automated option, so only use it if you’re cool with preventing the content from getting stale or if you only want to draw attention to specific posts.

Table of Contents Post – Kristine Rusch’s “Freelancer’s survival guide”

Occasionally one post will spawn a sequel and then morph over time into a sprawling series.  This is the kind of content that readers love and keep coming back to.  The problem is that a blog’s standard chronological format will bury the beginning of your series deep within its bowels, making it difficult for readers to find all the pieces or start from the beginning.  One way of keeping things convenient is by creating a Table of Contents or ToC post.

Kristine Rusch knew her Freelancer’s Survival Guide would be a huge series of posts, so she gave her readers one easy bookmark to keep, allowing them to find all the content with minimal fuss.  And if someone came late to the party a link to this post would quickly bring them up to speed.  Again this is not an automated option.  A setup like this would favor longer running series that could eventually be turned into e-books.

Nav bar drop down menu – Gabriel Novo’s “Cuban Nomad”

If all this talk of manual updates has your eyes rolling in the back of your head (welcome to the club) then this option would work best for you.  Leveraging WordPress’ category feature you can automate the process so you don’t have to futz around with HTML or keep appending a single post.  Using a parent category as your menu heading, you put your content in a child category.  Then you add an entry to your navigation menu for that parent category and viola.  For instance, I created the parent category TOPICS and made all my other categories its children.

You can name the parent category anything you want and tie as many or as few categories underneath it as you like.  As long as you categorize your posts appropriately this will be a fully automated solution. Thesis worked like a champ for me with this, but YMMV.

Depending on your theme and blogging platform, some of these options will be easier to implement than others.  No matter which method you use, it’s always a good idea to bring your best work to the forefront, giving even the most casual reader a chance to discover your diamonds in the rough.

are there other formats you think work better? If so, drop a line in the comments and provide a link as an example.

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When things look good we tend to feel better about them.  Almost every woman has a killer dress or man a sharp cut suit, that puts an extra bounce in your step when you wear them.  It might be the crisp lines, a body hugging shape or even a particular shade of color, but something about it elevates everything around you a notch or two.

The same principle applies to cars, homes and even websites.  My previous layout was the bastard lovechild of Geocities and Livejournal.  Here’s a pic in case the nightmares had faded.

I was happy with the content and this theme got me up and running while looking decent, but it was missing the polished appearance I always wanted.  My previous theme clocked in at over 1 MB (just by itself) and wasn’t as optimized for speed as I would have liked.  That coupled with too many widgets/plugins/etc, made this site run as gracefully as a beaten donkey.  Even with this kind of bandwidth (jealous RetroHack?), it was taking too long to load.  Like my first car, this sucker had taken me as far as it could go and I needed to put it out of its misery.

After much debate, I bit the bullet and snagged the ever popular Thesis theme.  A clean, sharp, dead easy to customize WordPress theme with thousands of community members freely sharing their collective wisdom on.  For a code moron such as myself, I found the countless tutorials simple to follow, allowing me to achieve stunning results with NO heavy lifting.

It’s not cheap, especially when comparing it to all the FREE themes out there, but honestly, it was either shit or get off the pot for me.  Was Cuban Nomad going to be a serious effort or another half-assed, failed attempt on my part to be a creator instead of a consumer?  I’ve had a good run with this blog so far, in spite of all the “real life” crap in the background, and I know I have a lot more left to say, so forward was the only direction I could go in.

What this site will become, I still have no idea (that’s another post all together), but I will continue to pour myself into it, stirring the pot until something bubbles up.

Has taking the extra effort to make something look better helped you reach your goals?  Did it coincide with truly getting serious about achieving them?

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A while back I went over some of the plugins I use in the running of this blog (Cuban Nomad: WordPress Plugins).  Since then I’ve had more time to interact with the blog, both locally on my PC and remotely via my Blackberry.  Along the way I’ve picked up several additional plugins that make running the blog easier and accessing it remotely much, much smoother.

• MobilePress – I came across this fantastic plugin by visiting “A Dribble of Ink” through my Blackberry.  It loaded super fast (which is amazing on the BB web browser) and was ridiculously easy to read.  Even images embedded in the post come up smoothly.  With no configuration necessary, it’s a breeze to deploy.  Here’s a quick screenshot of what a blog looks like with this plugin.

• WPhone – Reading a blog via phone and administering same said blog via phone are two completely different experiences.  The iPhone has an app that can do that, but for Blackberry and other smartphone users there is no built-in app.  Here’s where WPhone comes in.  Yes you can access the WordPress Dashboard via normal browser, but it looks like crap and is far from user friendly.  Just install this app (no configuration necessary) and your interface now is ten million times easier.
• WP-Ban – As good as Askimet is at blocking SPAM (and it’s fantastic), you still have to wade through the comments in order to delete them.  I always hoped for something that would prevent the SPAM-bots from making the comments in the first place.  Thanks to Terry Atkison’s great post I found that answer.  This dead simple plugin lets you pop in IP addresses and bans them from accessing your site altogether.  It’s easy to harvest the offending IP’s from Askimet’s interface.  As of writing this post, WP-Ban has prevented 114 access attempts from blocked IP’s.  That alone is worth it’s weight in gold.

Hopefully these useful additions to any WordPress blog will make your little slice of the Inter Webs easier to manage.  What kind of plugins do you use on your WordPress blog?  Share your horror stories, triumphs or favorites in the comments.

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Over the years I’ve indulged in many different blogs, some personal, most irreverent and all hosted by someone else.  Geocities, LiveJournal, Blogger, the list goes on.  Every attempt cloaked under a pseudonym, they all eventually ran out of steam.  It was either writing in a vacuum that caused the demise or lack of desire.  Some folks love having a little soapbox from which to rant and rave about the most miniscule of things, but I always wanted to write things worth reading not useless word vomit.

When I finally got the kick in the pants I needed to get me going again (here), I made the decision to approach this endeavor differently.  First, I would use my own name.  No more handles, nicknames or masks.  Second, I would host the blog myself, exerting complete control over the design and functionality.  Without a sense of ownership, I felt the words wouldn’t carry the weight I wanted them to.

When researching self hosted options, the one that came up again and again was WordPress.  I already frequented some blogs built on the platform (Scalzi, Lateral Action, A Dribble of Ink), so I was familiar with its capabilities.  On top of that, my web hosting provider could install the software for me free of charge.  It really was a no brainer. 

The installation was painless, the configuration screens were straight forward and I was posting in no time.  Now that the foundation was laid, I could start building.  The great thing about WordPress is that it has a huge developer community behind it, making just about anything possible on your blog.  The bad thing about WordPress is that it has a huge developer community behind it, which overloads you with a gazillion choices and only a smattering of reviews to guide you. 

The Plugin Directory has roughly 5400 plugins and the more popular functionality (comments, twitter, sidebars) have multiple plugins doing similar things.  Reviews and download statistics are nice, but not the complete picture.  I searched through the directory, plugin homepages, other WordPress blogs (to see what they were doing).  After much trial and error, I found the right combination of functionality and ease of use.

To save you the time and effort, I put together a list of the plugins I’m currently using on my blog.  Hopefully this will give you a better idea of what might work with your setup.

• AJAX Comment Preview – There’s nothing worse than spending time crafting the perfect comment, only to see your HTML tags were incorrect and it looks all garbled once posted.  This plugin didn’t need any further customization after install and has been working like a champ.

• Akismet – No one likes spam.  Not in their inbox, not in a can and especially not on their blog.  In roughly a month of being up, this blog has received 30+ spam comments and that’s without any real traffic to speak of.  This is another “set it and forget it” plugin.  Once configured, it just works.

• Contact Form 7 – Putting your email out on the web is just an invitation for viruses and spam.  If you want to let your readers reach you while still protecting your email address, then a contact form is the way to go.  It’s a little intimidating to configure at first, but the homepage is pretty decent and running you through the process and the forums are lively with its discussion.  This is the top downloaded contact form on WordPress and its robustness reflects that. (Also works with Akismet)

• FeedBurner FeedSmith – This one was actually recommended within the configuration pages of the WordPress theme I’m using.  Instead of having to reconfigure your sites default RSS feeds to FeedBurner, this redirects all the traffic automatically.  That way if you ever decide to drop FeedBurner you readers won’t have to change anything on their end.

• GeneralStats – This plugin I use internally on my dashboard.  It gives me stats normally not collected such as number of words in all posts, words in all comments and other nerdy stuff.  I tend to be a stats geek so this helps scratch that itch.

• Google Analyticator – Google Analytics is the best (free) web stats application out there.  This plugin allows you to configure your WordPress blog to hook up to your Analytics account without having to mess with any code.  Its configuration may be a little tricky on the more advanced features, but their website has a forum if you’re really stuck.

• Gurken Subscribe to Comments – Sometimes you don’t want to keep hitting a blog to see if anyone responded to the comment you left.  This plugin allows you to check a box and receive any follow up comments via email.  It also allows for a double opt in method, sending an email to the reader to verify their address.  The homepage is in German, but the plugin is built on top of another well known (and in English) comment plugin.  I picked this one specifically for the double opt in feature.

• Really Simple CAPTCHA – Made to add CAPTCHA functionality to the Contact Form 7 plugin.  If you want the extra protection, slap it in.  No configuration necessary.

• SexyBookmarks – Making it easy for your readers to share your posts will make them more inclined to do so.  This plugin puts cool pop up graphics underneath your post pointing readers to 25 different methods of spreading your words (Delicious, Digg, Email, Twitter, etc).  I love the way it looks and the multitude of options it gives.

• Twitter Friendly Links – When posting a link in Twitter most people use URL shortening services like TinyURL.  One issue with these sites is that you’re never sure what you’re clicking on until you do so.  Another is that it never references your own blog’s URL.  With this plugin all the Twitter friendly link
  s to your posts are created using the domain name of your blog (i.e. http://gabrielnovo.com/32) giving potential clickers at least an idea of what they’re in for.  It also supposedly helps with SEO.  Integrates well with Twitter Tools.

• Twitter Tools – Twitter is a great alternate communication method with an extensive reach.  This plugin allows your blog to tweet every time you make a new post.  It also has a widget that displays your current Twitter stream.

• WordPress.com Stats – Sometimes you just want an easy overview of your stats.  No complex reports, no excessive options, just a quick snapshot.  This plugin provides that and integrates with your dashboard.

What kind of plugins do you use on your WordPress blog?  Share your horror stories, triumphs or favorites in the comments.

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