Once you have done the basic setup of your WordPress Website it’s time to give it some more functions by adding some plugins.
Here is my basic list of plugins I integrate in every WordPress website that I build.
Basic WordPress Plugins List
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
FD Feedburner Plugin
Flexi Pages Widget
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
My Page Order
NextGEN Gallery
Related Posts
Robots Meta
Secure Files
SEO Slugs
Subscribe To Comments
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress File Monitor
WP-DBManager
WP-SpamFree
Fancybox
WP Security Scan
W3 Total Cache
Yes, you counted right, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin you know what it takes to install all those plugins.
Search for the plugin on the wordpress.org site, click the install button, see if the installation went well and activate the plugin.
Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!
Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac and it is a great time saver.
This is always the first plugin I install by using the standerd process via Plugins -> add new -> Search -> Install -> activate process.
Once you have done the same, the magic begins. Go to the option Plugin Central in je Plugins menu.
The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field were you can paste the list shown above.
You can of course just type the names of other plugins you want to install.
Once you are satisfied with your list click the “Install Plugins” button.
Depending on your hosts security settings it might ask you for your ftp data like ftp site, username and password or it starts to work directly.
The whole process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes even under two minutes for the 20 plugins.
After the whole process ran, you need to active all those plugins which takes about four clicks.
Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin) choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.
Now all of your plugins are active, some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right of the bat.
Configuring the plugins will take some time but you just saved a lot of time, so go ahead and set all the options that you want and need. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but for now its time for you to take action!
WordPress 2.9.1 is out and you might want to upgrade as soon as possible, but what is the easiest way to do so?
The help you do the necessary steps for a secure upgrade you can use a plugin called WordPress Automatic Upgrade.
What is does is that it upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.
- 1.Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
- 2.Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3.Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4.Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5.De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6.Upgrades wordpress files.
7.Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8.Re-activates the plugins.
The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step, but I prefer to have more control and it is as simple as clicking through the next step and downoad the backup files as the plugin suggests to do so.
So this website is upgraded to version 2.9.1 in about 5 minutes without leaving the WordPress Dashboard and without writing down which plugins were active and which were not active and even without doing any FTP uploads etc, etc…
So if you want to have your website down and upgraded in a minimal amount of time, use that plugin for a fast and easy upgrade to WordPress 2.9.1
WordPress › WordPress Automatic upgrade « WordPress Plugins
If you are building your wordpress website you want it to be found be the search engines right?
Well one thing that you need to think hard about is the title of your website. That title will show on every search engine search result page that shows the link to the homepage of your website.
The title should not only contain the keywords you want to target, but it should also invite searchers to click on that title.
The WordPress Title
Most themes will show the title as the title of your post or page, with or without the title of the site as you have set it under -> Settings -> General.
What I use for most of my and my customers sites is a pluging called Headspace2 which give you the possibility to write different “HTML Titles”. Those HTML Titles are the titles that are shown in the title bar of your browser and are also the ones used by search engines.
With Headspace you can set different titles for your homepage, and for several other pages like archive and category pages. It shows a separate field under your writing panel where you can put that special title.
On this page you see the title “Use the Right Title in Building a WordPress Website” but if you look at the top of your browser you see the title “The Importance of Using the Right Title when Building a WordPress Website”.
The WordPress Theme Header
But there is a little catch for Headspace2 to work the right way…. you need to check the way you theme uses the Title function in you header file.
To check that go to Appearance -> Editor > Select the file called Header (header.php) and look for coding like:
<title><?php if (function_exists(‘seo_title_tag’)) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(”); bloginfo(‘name’);} ?></title>
In the example above you could use a plugin called seo title tag that will do the same as Headspace2, but has some limitations. You can also see that the name of the site is appended at the end of the title. You need to change that code for optimal use of Headspace2 and you need to replace it with:
<title><?php wp_title (”); ?></title>
For branding purpose you could add something extra in the that code like <title><?php wp_title (”); ?> | WpSiteBuilding.com</title> where the last text is always appended to the title. The only problem with this is the fact the the title will get to long for the search engine listings. Search engines will cut the title at this moment to about 60 positions.
So, did you install the plugin and changed the title function in the header of your theme? Then it is time to read up on how you can write those great visitor attracting Title over at Copybloggers How to Write Magnetic Headlines
P.s The code wp_title is taken from your database table, if you have another table prefix you have to change the prefix to match your installation (WordPress Installation)
Brain Gardner, WordPress Theme designer extraordinary, just announced the release of a new theme specifically targeted to Real Estate Agents.
This Theme comes with some great features like automatic thumbnail creation and special pages for your real estate listing.
There are separate writing panels for your listings with fields for price and other items of the property. You write the data, the theme will handle the layout so every listing has the same layout.
For Google maps code there is a special field where you just need the location code.
It comes if four different color schemes that will give you the possibility to use the one that fits to your company. You also get the PSD files so you can have is changed yourself or you can hire the theme of AgentPress to do further customization for you.
Different ideas for usage
Although this theme was developed by Brian Gardner together with Nicole Nicolay, of My Tech Opinion, it looks to me that you can adapt this theme by some simple changes to make it work for different agents like car dealers, motorcycle companies and even Custom Car builders.
In fact every company that needs to showcase their products with several photos can benefit by using this theme.
So if you want to build a professional website for product marketing in the high end consumer market this search engine optimized Agent Theme might be just what you need.
Posted by Herbert-Jan van Dinther on October 26, 2009 · 3 Comments
I decided to move this WordPress website from the “old” subdomain located under www.hummerbie.com to a new domain and a new hosting company.
The main reason was that I am currently not so happy with the hosting provider of the main site. Recently they moved to faster servers and a better internet backbone but after moving there are some outstanding issues with other sites that run there.
The second reason is that I want to see how well Google and other search engines will pick up the 301 redirects (permanently moved page) and hold my current rankings in the search results. An other part of this SEO exercise is to see how the rankings of this site and the number of visitors are influenced by the move of a Dutch Hosting provider with servers in Amsterdam to a USA Based Hosting Company. (Geo Targeting in Search Engine Optimization)
I will write a page / post about the process on how to move a WordPress site in a couple of days after the dust settles… I already found one mayor problem that is fixed now, but I need to do some more testing and tweaking. After that I will give you a complete overview of all the pitfalls and snake holes that you should avoid in such a process and how to handle it the right way. Subscribe to the eMail or RSS updates in the right side menu to get those updates.
This website was primarily focused on how you can set up CMS Options and special Plugins to get a static website view using WordPress.
I also write about Magazine style and News style themes and how you should change your WordPress Themes to get a less dated site.
I just recently realized that the site needs an upgrade to reflect more of the process of building, configuring and installing things like Themes and Plugins.
This was not the initial intend of the site as I mentioned before, but there seems to be a clear need for that kind of information so in the next couple of days, weeks and months you will see this site grow in that direction,
It takes time to write clear and understandable articles to show you where you want to go, so please stay with me as I will help you build your website with WordPress.
There are some pages already done, a new one about The Process of Building a WordPress website that will become one of the corner stones of this site and I will create links on this page to point you to the new pages.
I want to Thank Milan for pointing out this flaw in this sites setup as it is today. I will start working to make this site one of the best resources around for Building a WordPress website.
Brian Gardner is showing off the Redesign of his Magazine Theme which is already a classic.
If you look at the new features in the header you can see why this is going to be a great theme to use for Building a website with WordPress.
The Tabs in top are great for extra pages and the category links will make it easy to “theme” your site.
Along with the magazine style :-) layout of the front page it will do just fine.
In his post he also shows the new configuration panel that will make it a lot easier to work with for not so technical WordPress website builders.
With this theme, just like the Thesis theme, there are also some extra fields in the posting panel to help writers to have a simpler method for adding images to a post in the right positions.
I guess that the new automatic thumbnail creation that is now implemented in a lot of Studiopress themes will also be part of this theme…
To be honest with you, there is one thing I don’t like about this theme…. the colors used for the links and headers. I just like blue better like on my new Hybrid Top Cars website.
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