Technology Nerd » Best WordPress Plugins

Who Sees Ads: Decide Who Sees Ads on Your Blog Using this WP-Plugin

Abbas — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:58:26 +0000

Professional bloggers rely on the revenue from ads on their respective blogs. However too many and jazzy ads can irritate the readers which eventually forces them to look away from the site.

While there is no other option but to show ads a blogger has to maintain a fine balance between showing and not irritating the the regular readers at the same time.

There are quite a few WP-Plugins which help you show ads based on defined criteria. I will discuss one such plugin called “Who Sees Ads” (click here to download) in this article which I think is the BEST among similar plugins and cannot get any better (maybe)!

It leaves total control in the hands of the bloggers in terms of who sees ads and who does not. The plugin lets you pick from the existing rules or define your own rules to show ads.

The Image below shows you the pre-defined rules which can be used to create context. I’ve created a context to hide a huge block of ad between the title and the article from the readers who come to TNerd.com directly or through any other referral other than a search engine and the second rule shows ads on the old content only, in this case content older than 2 days is considered old.

Once the Context is created, all you got to do is copy the line of code and paste it in your template or within the article.

The video below shows you how to create a context and place it on your template. (Watch the video full-screen for better viewing)

Once this plugin is active you will certainly see some loss in revenue but that’s totally worth it as your regular readers will be happier to see the content without any ads.

Alternatively this plugin can be used for any coded that you want to show to a selective group of users. For example if you want to show a particular discount coupon only to registered users, you can place the image coded using this plugin and select the rule to show it only to logged-in users.

Click here to download Who Sees Ads for WordPress (Tested on WP 2.7.1)

Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, Who Sees Ads, WordPress Plugin, WP-Plugin

Moderator: Now moderate wordpress comments right from your desktop

Vivek — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:25:33 +0000

A blogger’s life can get really messy with whole lot of things. On a daily basis, the administrator probably has to login to moderate comments more often than any other activity like writing and publishing post. So this post will focus on how to reduce the time on moderating comments. Moderator is a wordpress plugin and an Adobe AIR application that sits right on your desktops and allows you to moderate comments. Sounds like saving a lot of effort and time if you use this application.

This is the first release and hence only allows you to moderate comments. In this version however you cannot reply to the comments. However, the developer of this application Daniel Dura has plans of adding this feature for the up comping release. As of now following are some of the features of this application.

Viewing unmoderated comments.
Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments.
Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.
Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment.

In order to use this plugin you should be using wordpress 2.6 or above. You’ll also need Adobe AIR which you can get from here.

Installation

Download the current plugin bundle from here. (moderator_plugin.zip | 72KB)
Unzip the contents of the archive and place them in your Wordpress install directory under {wordpress install}/wp-content/plugins. You should now have a directory called
Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, Moderator wordpress plugin, WordPress Plugin

Zemanta: Smart Blogging Tool for enhanced blogging and SEO

Vivek — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:32:24 +0000

Is extension the next wave of admin plugins for CMS platforms like Wordpress, Joomla and others. I am sure you might be amazed at what I am talking about. I am not talking about blog editors like scribefire. No doubt that these Firefox extensions are highly useful and have been very popular, but they don’t add to the way you blog. I am talking about extensions that could seriously enhance and make your daily blogging activities easier. And my argument is that because the admin based plugins are only required for the admin area, they can be kept away from being uploaded on your hosting and then every time retrieving them to do a task.

What I am talking about is localize such plugins and make them part of your browser. If you think that it’s not possible then think again. There’s a wonderful Firefox extension that just takes your blogging capabilities to a new level. This extension is called as Zemanta. Zemanta is a such a wonderful piece of utility for a blogger. As your write a post, based on the keywords and your settings it can show you images related to the post and also other blog stories which are related to the post you are writing.

And this is not it, you can insert those images with a single click and add the stories as related stories in your blog post. Zemanta sits comfortably in your wordpress or other blogging platform’s dashboard and provides you with the following features:

1. Related Photos: The photos are shown in the zemanta side bar which sites in your dashboard. All the pictures are very relevant to the blog post that you are writing and best part is that all these images are copyright cleared. That means you don’t have to worry about the copyright. The images can be dragged and dropped or just clicked to get them inserted in your post. You can also filter the available images based on specific keywords.

2. Related Articles: The related articles are from the top 300 odd media sources and hence are very relevant and authentic.

3. Automatic Links: Once you have finished writing a post you might want to link to various important keywords. This can be done pretty easily as well. Just click the links which Zemanta has automatically identified and the links get inserted in your blog corresponding to the keywords. It looks something like this:

4. Automatic Tags: How about some SEO and ways to build traffic. Automatic tags is another smart features which automatically picks up words to create tags for various keywords in your blog post.

Let us now see what platforms are supported by this wonderful tool.

Because Zemanta is semantically so very smart that it even keeps tracks of what you have posted using Zemanta and in future will recommend your post to other bloggers who blog on a similar topic. Another great way to build your back links.

What are the ways to use Zemanta?

Well there are more than one. You can install the Firefox extension which is compatible with Firefox 2 and 3. You can also download the plugin available for Internet Explorer 6 and 7. If this is not enough you can get the platform independent plugins for your CMS (but I don’t think this is the best option as it has to contact your host and work like a normal plugin.

Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, Bloggin Tips, FireFox Extensions, Plugins, zemanta

5 WordPress Templates Worth Spending Money On. Simply Eye Candy!

Abbas — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:29:17 +0000

I worked with at least two very well known WP Theme designers to design a custom theme for TNerd.com but things didn’t work out because I didn’t see a creative design come together. A creative, user and search engine friendly design is what matters to make a brand, especially when you are paying huge money.

The best themes are not about best graphical representation but also the small little features which make browsing and navigating through the site a pleasure.

I thought I’d give another try and see if I can find better designers and guess what! I found a few. The themes I have listed below are one of the best themes I have seen in a long time, they are well optimized, offer features which are not common and certainly help you grow your blog.

Remember the best things in the world come for a price. So, if you are serious about your Blog and brand, it’s worth spending on one of these themes.

All of these themes are very well priced under $80, money spent on these themes is money well spent.

Let’s start with my favorite..

On Demand and TV. Elements are developed by Jason Schuller at Press75.com. These themes are developed for video blogs or vlogs as you may call it. These themes are so well designed and visually appealing that when I saw them I just couldn’t wait and sent an e-mail to Jason appreciating his work.

On Demand: This theme is a perfect solution for a vlog. Inspired by Hulu.com’s design, It is very specifically designed keeping in mind all the required features and options a video site would need. It can embed any video from any site including Youtube or Blip, etc.. and is capable of handling video formats up to 1024px.

Other features include:

4 Configurable Sidebars
Stylish social links on each of the videos
Each video offers embed code
Option to include self-hosted FLV files

View On Demand Live Demo Here

Pricing:

Single Site License $75

Multi Site License $150

Developer License: $250

TV. Elements: This theme comes from the same author but the design is entirely different. As name suggests this theme is for blogs offering video content to their users. This theme is tested with most of the popular video sharing sites including including Blip.TV, Flickr, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube and just like On Demand theme this theme works with almost any embeddable video on the internet.

Other features include:

5 configurable Sidebars
Stylish social links on each of the videos
Each video offers embed code
Option to include self-hosted FLV files

View TV. Elements Live Demo Here

Pricing:

Single Site License $50

Multi Site License $125

Developer License: $225

CelebrityPress: This Wordpress theme is available at PlugandPress.com. This Wordpress template is best suited for a fashion magazine, health and fitness, gossip or may be just a girly blog.

This template comes packed with 5 design samples, 2 with plain background, 3 with patterned background and 1 which lets you upload your own logo.

This template is truly loaded with features you can’t resist. In author’s own words…

CelebrityPress is packed full of features, a Theme Options Interface where you can manage your own advertisement campaign, a video rotator where you can just copy and paste the share code from YouTube, Daily Motion, Metacafe , etc.

IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera compatible
XHTML and CSS Valid
2 Colors (Black & White)
2 background samples
Ad your Adsense or Image Link Code
Turn all-or-individual banners on/off
Quick Post – No need to put an image
Image Auto Resizer
Random Video Rotator (copy/paste code)
Flickr Integration
Build your Own Menu from the Theme Options
Photo Gallery
Drop Down Menu (Build your Own)
Customized Error page with sitemap
Unique Post Randomizer
Gravatar Support
Stylesheet switcher

View CelebrityPress Live Demo Here

Pricing:

Single Site License $79.95

Multiple Site License $179.95

Developer’s License $279.95

F8 Remixed (GraphPaperPress.com): This theme is for bloggers who interact visually with their viewership. It’s a photo and media rich content. Compatible with iPhone and very well optimized for search engines.

The template offers Galleria support of images, Gravatrs, auto or manual thumbnail control and lots more.
The best thing I like about this template is that it’s simple, easy to navigate and strait forward. It’s a perfect template for a media site because there are no loud graphics or designs on this template which will take anything away from the pictures that will be added to the blog.

View f8 remixed demo here

Pricing:

Single Site License: $75

Developer License: $199

Arthemia Premium (Colorlabsproject.com): This is very well made colorful theme which offers total control over all aspects of the template without getting into the code part of the template.

This template offers a unique combination of a blog and magazine design which make it even more desirable for bloggers.
Template offers support for Dropdown menus, colorful categories, adsense optimized, Gravatar, Sidebar and Footer Widget, Automatic Thumbnail Generation and lot of other features which makes this one of the best themes available.

Template offers well SEO’d code for proper optimization of the site and has cross browser support which ensures that your site display will be as you see it on all browsers.

View Artemia Premium Demo here

Pricing:

Single Site License $70

Multiple Site (5 sites) License $140

Developer License $240

Note: For the fact that I am promoting these themes so much, I should also mention that TNerd is in no way affiliated with any of these themes or benefited in any way from promoting these themes.

Tags: Arthemia Premium, Best WordPress Plugins, Blog Designs, CelebrityPress, Download WordPress for iPhone, F8 Remixed, On Demand, TV. Elements, WordPress Exploit, Wordpress Themes

WordPress for iPhone goes live! Download it now!

Abbas — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:35:39 +0000

Download WordPress for iPhone NOW!! WordPress team yesterday announced that they have finished the first version of WordPress for iPhone App and the application was uploaded on iTunes store for review. The world was waiting for the approval.

Now! the good news… App is approved and is available for downloads from App Store. WordPress for iPhone is designed to work with both, selfhosted and WordPress hosted blogs. It only works for blogs running WordPress version 2.5.1 and above.

Blogosphere is about to see a blogging of a new kind where more and more bloggers will start updating their blogs live. This application will be one of the most used applications on the iPhone as it makes it real easy for bloggers to blog for anywhere without carrying their laptops, notebooks or tablets around.

Resource Links to WordPress iPhone App (Download Here)

Site: http://iphone.wordpress.org/
Blog: http://iphone.wordpress.org/blog/
Gallery: http://iphone.wordpress.org/gallery/
Download here: App Store on iTunes

Watch this Video to see a demo of how the application works on iPhone.

Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, Download WordPress for iPhone, iPhone WordPress App, WordPress iPhone App

24 Wordpress Plugins I Use on Technology Nerd – Must Have!

Abbas — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:11:03 +0000

This post is based on a long pending request of one of TNerds regular visitor and a good friend of mine Kumar. He wanted to know of all the WordPress Plugins I use on TNerd.

I use close to 24 Plugins on TNerd, I’ve tried to categorize these plugins so that its easier for the readers to understand what plugins do I give more importance to. I try to keep my plugin list as short as possible because plugins do have an effect on the sites performance, especially if they are user facing plugins.

Plugins have been categorized in the following categories:

Content Management
Content Promotion
Administration
Readers Feedback

Here you go! Lets start with the first Category……

Content Management Plugins for WordPress

Editor Monkey

Author Description: Turns the normal WordPress textarea into a WYSIWYG editor using TinyMCE or FCKeditor. Also integrates spell checking into the editor interface using the FCK Speller Pages plugin and ieSpell. Supports custom dictionaries. By Raj Prasad.

My Comments: I haven’t used many content editors that’s because I never felt the need to as Editor Monkey had all the features I needed and is really easy to use without any errors or bugs. Download Link: http://www.rajprasad.net/plugins/editormonkey/

Note: Author of the plugin has discontinued this plugin as he was not very happy with the changes in WordPress. So unfortunately this plugin is no longer available. Other options are “Dean’s FCKEditor”, “Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit”.

Note: Once installed, default formatting options on WordPress 2.5 Stop working.

Force Word Wrapping

Author Description: Prevents long sentancesconstructedlikethis from horizontally stretching the page. Ported from the phpBB MOD of the same name – Force Word Wrapping. For support / comments / whatever, visit the support forums. By Jim Wigginton.

My Comments: You will not notice this plugin much in action but it does the work quietly. Keep your articles and comments in shape.

Download Link: http://www.frostjedi.com/terra/scripts/wp/wrap.zip

Google XML Sitemaps

Author Description: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

My Comments: A must plugin for every blog. It makes it really easy for search engines to index pages from the blog. It also offers a lot of control over the XML sitemap in terms of the URL, Build Mode, number of posts in sitemap, memory assigned to Sitemap, Page Priority, etc..

Download Link: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/

Head META Description

Author Description: Insert HTML META description tag: excerpt/content brief for post/Page, description for category, and blog tagline for everything else. By Kaf Oseo.

My Comments: It’s a good plugin for modifying your header information based on the article. It also address the issue of supplemental results (which no longer exist as per Google) to an extent.

Download Link: http://guff.szub.net/head-meta-description/

Links-NoFollow

Author Description: Add rel=”nofollow” to any link present in comment By Alex Concha.

My Comments: It’s a good plugin which does not encourage link spam as it adds nofollow tag to the links in comments automatically.

Download Link: http://www.buayacorp.com/archivos/plugin-rel-nofollow-para-wordpress/

WP-PostViews

Author Description: Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. It will not count registered member views, but that can be changed easily. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Plugin helps in keeping a track of how many times the article has been visited by the users. This plugin can prove to be a good morale booster for new bloggers who like to see how many users have read the article.

Download Link: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-postviews.1.20.zip

WP-PostViews Widget

Author Description: Adds a PostViews Widget to display most viewed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostViews first. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Adds a nice little widget which will sit on the sidebar showing the top viewed posts.

Note: This is part of WP-PostViews Plugin

WP-Sticky

Author Description: Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.

My Comments: Certainly helps brining good articles on top. It also underlines the importance of the article if its set to sticky and offers more control on your articles.

Download Link: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-sticky.1.10.zip

Content Promotion Plugins for WordPress

Comment Relish

Author Description: Increases your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘thank you’ relishing type message to users when they first comment on your weblog. By Justin Shattuck.

My Comments: This is an excellent plugin which helps in increasing the RSS readers for you blog. Once a new reader comments on any of the articles it sends an automated e-mail to the users, thanking for the comment and requesting to subscribe to the feed.

Download Link: http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish/

Digg This

Author Description: Adds Digg story link on detection on digg referer By Aviran Mordo.

My Comments: You must have seen this plugin on lot of blogs and sites. I uses the text version of this plugin which shows up only if the article is digged by a user there after users can dig the article from your site itself. The plugin offers the image version as well.

Download Page: http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/

Related Posts

Author Description: Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov, Mike Lu & Jon Bourne.

My Comments: One of the best plugins ever! Returns unbelievably related posts on the single post page. This plugin can drastically improve your page views if placed correctly on the page.

Download Link: http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

Modified versions of the same plugin: http://peter.mapledesign.co.uk/weblog/archives/wordpress-related-posts -plugin http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/

Simple Tags

Author Description: Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3. Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.

My Comments: The best SEO plugin. Instantly increases the page count in any search engines index thus improving your sites chances of showing up on search results.

Download Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags

Zazz Post Ticker

Author Description: Creates a fading ticker to display your recent blog posts By Stew Houston.

My Comments: It acts as a banner showing of your latest articles. This plugin is very similar to the banner offered by Feedburner, the only difference is that if users click on Zazz Post Ticker Link it takes them to the post page directly but Feedburner banner takes them to the RSS page.

Download Link: http://www.kingofwww.com/plugins/#zazz-post-ticker

E-mail Users

Author Description: Allows the administrator to send an e-mail to the blog users. Credits to Catalin Ionescu who gave me some ideas for the plugin and has made a similar plugin. This plugin is using PhpMailer. Bug reports and corrections by Cyril Crua and Pokey. By Vincent Prat (email : vpratfr@yahoo.fr).

My Comments: I have this plugin installed but never used it, I didn’t want my registered users to feel spammed.

Download Page: http://www.vincentprat.info/wordpress/email-users/

Administration Plugin for Wordpress

Akismet

Author Description: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

My Comments: Blog cannot live without this plugin! Install it NOW!

Downloads Page: http://akismet.com/

My Custom Widgets

Author Description: Define your own widgets and include them into your theme. By Janek Niefeldt.

My Comments: Excellent, Excellent, Excellent plugin helps you create your own widgets for sidebar without a problem. This can be used for any code.. HTML or PHP or JavaScript. Convert your Adsense Code to Widget or any other code.

Download Page: http://www.janek-niefeldt.de/blog/mycustomwidget/

Registration Blacklist

Author Description: Ban emails and domains from registering as users By Web Professor.

My Comments: It’s a must plugin for a blog where lot of spam registrations occur. You can mention domain extensions from which users will be blocked from registering, plus there are many more options.

Download Page: http://web-professor.net/

Theme Test Drive

Author Description: Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. By Vladimir Prelovac. My Comments: Without trying out a theme you cannot imagine how your blog looks like and if it’s a high traffic blog then you cannot afford to experiment on it in real time. Theme Test Drive is the best option as you can try a theme which is visible to the Admin only and make all the necessary changes to the theme before you actually change the theme on the site. Download Page: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/theme-test-drive

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Author Description: WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to Wordpress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode. By Keith Dsouza.

My Comments: Keeping in mind the number of critical updates happen for new releases this plugin comes in real handy. You can either update the WordPress package on one click or just follow the wizard to update it. Now downloading and using ftp and replacing the source files is thing of the past. It’s a must for EVERY WordPress user.

Download Page: http://techie-buzz.com/

Lighter Menus

Author Description: Creates Drop Down Menus for WordPress Admin Panels. Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, comes with silk icons, a option page, and a design that fits within the Wordpress 2.5 interface taking the less room possible. By corpodibacco.

My Comments: This plugin makes navigation within the admin panel really easy by saving a few clicks.

Download Page: http://www.italyisfalling.com/lighter-menus

WordPress Database Backup

Author Description: On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage → Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.

My Comments: Author Description says it all

Download Page: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

Maintenance Mode

Author Description: Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options → Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.

My Comments: In case you are making changes to your WordPress theme or package and you do not want your users to see some weird code on the blog, this plugin helps you by putting the blog into maintenance mode which means visitors will see a maintenance page instead of the blog.

Download Page: http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/

Readers Feedback Plugins for WordPress

WP-PostRating and WP-PostRating Widget

Author Description: Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. (WP-PostRating) Adds a PostRatings Widget to display most rated and/or highest rated posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostRatings first. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. (WP-PostRating Widget)

My Comments: It’s a very good plugin to know if the visitors like the content on the site. Rating are a very good indication of whether the blogger should bring changes to the content or revisit an older article to see what when wrong if the rating fall. The Widget helps you show the top rated articles on the site.

Downloads Page: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-postratings.1.20.zip

Comment Email Responder

Author Description: Emails commenter when an admin replies to the comment, if commenter is not subscribed to email updates via Subscribe-to-Comments. Original idea/coding by Andrew Flusche By Owen Cutajar.

My Comments: Creating a good rapport with the readers is the most important thing a blogger should focus on. Comment Email Responder is the best plugin which helps you do that. On a click of a button it sends an e-mail to the commenter along with the admins reply.

Downloads Page: http://www.u-g-h.com/index.php/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-plugin-comm ent-email-responder/

Tags: Best WordPress Plugins, wordpress, WordPress Plugins