If you are an avid blogger, you probably are always looking for ways to be more productive.  Doing the mundane tasks of moderating comments, managing post entries, etc.  While wordpress works just fine on it’s own, there are several plugins that can help you get more done in less time.  I will start with 5 today.

1. WP-Chunk - This nifty plugin will take all those long url’s that your readers love to post in their comments, and gracefully shorten them
2. Subscribe to Comments - A plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. This is especially useful when readers wish to be notified of any answers to questions they’ve posed within your blog’s comments.
3. Create N Place - With this plugin, you can write new blog posts right on the front page of your blog — there is no need to log into the admin system to write a new post.
4. Edit N Place - A free Ajax powered plugin for WordPress, that lets you edit your post right on the front page of your blog. The plugin now includes quicktag buttons like bold, italics, link, img, and more.
5. Better Comments Manager- A plugin which allows you to reply to comment from within the admin panel. It uses Ajax to respond to comments so you do not have to leave the comments page while commenting. This will prove useful to bloggers who simply can’t keep up with the number of comments they face. Luckily, this plugin is also compatible with Brian’s Threaded Comments.

Feel free to add your favorite productivity plugins in the comments, my next post will be based on reader submissions and will include a link to your site as well as to the plugin you recommend.

This is yet another one of my favorites, and super simple. The plugin helps you manage a series of posts on that topic. The part I love is that it auto adds the newest post to the oldest post, with a ‘table of contents’. See the picture below, this ‘table of content will show at the bottom of every post in the series, and when you add another (I’ll show you how in a minute) it auto appends the post to every other post.

Ok, so now that we know what the plugin outputs, we need to know how to make it preform. Luckily, once you download and install it, there is not much to do. First you download it from the plugin page, then activate it like any other plugin. Now head over to your ‘write post’ page, somewhere on the right hand side there will be a menu called InSeries (see pic below) this is very simple, if you have already started a series you will see it in the dropdown box. If not, you will type it in the box and save the post as normal.

As far as the “Start” and “End” option there, all it means is “where do you want this post, at the beginning (take over the first post) or end, and append that post to the end of the series.” (End should be the only option you need. )

series, table of contents, chapters, plugin

These two plugins are going to change the way you blog, I promise. The way the wordpress admin panel is set up is time consuming, you have to click on options, wait for that to load, then click on what you need, unless of course it isn’t there and you have to go to manage instead. You may not know it yet, but the minute you install these plugins, you will understand.

The first is “Tiger Style Administration” they finally made it to work with the newest versions of word press, so if you liked it before, you can now get it again. Just like any other plugin, you need to download it and upload it to your wp-content/plugins folder, go to the plugins page a hit activate and you will see part one of a beautiful admin area.

That is all there is to it, but wait, you still have to click on the ‘Options’ tab to get to the ’second level’ options. Well, thats where the Admin Drop Down Menu comes into play. Simply download it just like any plugin, go to the plugins page and you get all pretty drop down menus.

This will save so much time, I cant imagine not having these two. The picture belos shows the drop down plugin on another theme, it looks much better with the Tiger Style. Feel free to ask any questions, I am glad to help!

wordpress, plugins, tiger, admin, drop down, menu

Another great plugin this week, it is called ‘Landing Sites’. What this does after you activate it is highlight the search terms that the user searched for on your site. It works with several search engines and will make the visitors you get from search engines be able to find what they are looking for alot easier.

As an example, if you do a google search for Home Business Blogger, you will see my blog as the top result:

If you click on that result, you will see the words home, business, and blogger highlighted:

Read the rest of this entry »

What would he do? He would make it super easy for a new visitor to be welcomed and subscribe to his blog. See, the title is actually the name of a plugin, strange name, great plugin. This plugin uses cookies to determine if they are a first time visitor and then shows a text box (like the picture below) With a brief welcome and a reminder to subscribe to the RSS. To see it in action visit either one of my Blogs, Confessions or Home Biz.

The plugin is extremely easy to set up, you can download it from this link. Once you have it uploaded to your host and activated, you are set. (If you need help in downloading/uploading/activating, please reference this post. Once it is activated all you need to do is customize the options page, which you can get to from your wordpress admin panel > Options > WWSGD. If you use feedburner for your feed, you will need to change the address in the text box to your feed address. You can also customize what is said, just be sure everything is within the paragraph tags - <p></p> If you wanted to you could also change the number of times it displays.

There you have it, you are doing What Seth Godin Would Do! Let me know if you have any problems, we are here to help!

plugin, wwsgd, What Would Seth Godin Do, wordpress, first time visitor