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The Best WordPress Plugins for Bloggers of the Future

Nur — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:37:53 +0000

Thanks to the WordPress for modification through thousand of the Plugins available. It doesn’t matter what you want to accomplish on your blog, here is the fuel for excellence that will give you an edge over other blogging platform, these WordPress Plugins are the key for the birth and success of blogs. Every Blogger from beginners to more experienced webmaster can modify blog and can get access through highly sophisticated and powerful publishing tool and by implementing these WordPress Plugins you blog will get more success and power.

1. Tweet Blender

Author: Kirill Novitchenko

Better than Twitter’s own widgets – Tweet Blender is tag-aware and has support for multiple authors, lists, hashtags, and keywords all blended together. The plugin can show tweets from just one user or a list of users (as all other Twitter plugins do); however, it can also show tweets for a topic which you can define via Twitter hashtag or keyword. But there is more! It can also show tweets for multiple authors AND multiple lists AND multiple keywords AND multiple hashtags all blended together into a single stream.

Download | Plugin Homepage

2. Facebook Dashboard Widget – a plugin for WordPress

Author: Chris Chrisostomou

If you’re like me, you’ll like to keep up with what your friends are up to but don’t always have time to check Facebook. Or maybe you’re just somewhere where access to the Facebook site is blocked. Work, school, etc.
This is a simple solution to bring the Facebook data to you. Using the dashboard widgets available in WordPress 2.5, this plugin will process your Friends status updates, posted items and/or your Facebook notifications RSS feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard. So now you can keep up with whats going on in your friends lives from anywhere without needing to access Facebook!

Download | Plugin Homepage

3. uQuery iPhone App Widget

Author: RADSense Software

Tired of copying and pasting iPhone application details in your blog?
Just simply click the new button that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the application ID or url to uQuery application into the prompt box; easy as that. You can configure the widget to display a uQuery search bar and you can use your own referral ID from Apple for the ‘buy from Apple Store link’.

Download

4. WordPress Mobile Pack project

Author: James Pearce, andreatrasatti

The dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog.
It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

Download | Plugin Homepage

5. Google Analytics for WordPress

Author: Joost de Valk

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your blog easily and with lots of metadata. It adds the asynchronous tracking code for Google Analytics and automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It’ll add custom variables while tracking to show you pageviews per author, post type, category or publication year. It’ll also allow you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, ignore certain user levels, and much much more: this is simply the Ultimate Google Analytic solution for WP!
Download | Plugin Homepage

6. Smart Youtube

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Smart Youtube is a WordPress Youtube plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos/playlists into your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources.

Download | Plugin Homepage

7. A Better Tag Cloud

Author: Nicolas Kuttler

I was pretty annoyed with the default tag cloud widget. It does a lot of things wrong, like inconsistent HTML markup and hardcoded font sizes. So I wanted to write my own. Digging through the code I found out that the wordpress wp_tag_cloud() function is pretty powerful. In fact, it could do almost everyhing I want. So I abandoned my plan to rewrite everything from scratch and added a nice admin interface to my tag cloud widget.

Download | Plugin Homepage

8. WP-PostRatings

Author: Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan

All the information (general, changelog, installation, upgrade, usage) you need about this plugin can be found here: WP-PostRatings Readme. It is the exact same readme.html is included in the zip package.

Download | Plugin Homepage

9. Flickr + Highslide

Author: Pim Linders

This plugin displays flickr photos using highslide.

Features
13 unique ways of displaying your photos
8 different gallery styles
Displays photos from a photoset
Displays all of a user’s photos
Displays photos in latest or random order
Ability to change the size of images and thumbnails
Ability to seperate photos into pages
Displays photo titles

Download | Plugin Homepage

10. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Author: mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.

Download | Plugin Homepage

11. MP3 Player Plugin for wordpress

Author: Thomas Norberg, Premiumbeat.com

This is a great way to get your music out there either through just listening or having some music on your site. Check the screenshots for more examples of usage. Check this page for usage for embedding into posts/pages Test MP3 Player.

Download | Plugin Homepage

12. WP-DBManager

Author: Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan

Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

All the information (general, changelog, installation, upgrade, usage) you need about this plugin can be found here: WP-DBManager Readme. It is the exact same readme.html is included in the zip package.

Download | Plugin Homepage

13. SEO Friendly Images

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.
TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

Download | Plugin Homepage

14. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

Author: Arne Brachhold

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Download | Plugin Homepage

15. Sidenotes

Author: Stephan Lenhart

This plugin provides the possibility to simply add short side notes to your WordPress blog, showing the date of publication, a title and a description. In addition the plugin provides a link to the site the side notes refers to. Simply activate it and add new side notes within the “Tools” admin panel. To show off your side notes just put in your template. For easy syndication this plugin provides an additional RSS feed too. Enjoy!

Download | Plugin Homepage

16. Theme switch and preview plugin

Author: Nicolas Kuttler

The plugin is great for theme development as you can tweak the template online without breaking stuff for visitors. You can also use it for presentations, to show off various templates. There is a widget and a theme cloud shortcode to make this easier.

This plugin has three basic configurations:
Only admin: This is useful for theme developers and to preview themes on live sites.
Only with passkey: Send your clients preview links. They won’t need an account on your blog for this to work.
Everybody: Theme switching for everybody.

Download | Plugin Homepage

17. Resize on Upload

Author: John Tindell

Provides the ability to set a maximum width or height an uploaded image can be, if the image is larger than the specified values then it resized. Ideal for users who wish to upload multiple files without having to resize them via Photoshop or GIMP first.

Download | Plugin Homepage

18. Cute Profiles

Author: Tejaswini Deshpande, Sanjeev Mishra

Cute Profiles is a free WordPress Plugin which will bring all your Social Profiles at one location i.e. either left or right side of your blog pages in a well decent floating manner, saving your sidebar or footer space for ads or other important data and widgets.

Download | Plugin Homepage

19. Contact Form 7

Author: Takayuki Miyoshi

Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Download | Plugin Homepage

20. StatPress Reloaded

Author: Manuel Grabowski

This plugin (a highly improved fork of StatPress) shows you real time statistics about your blog. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers, OS etc.

Once the plugin StatPress has been activated it immediately starts to collect information. Using StatPress Reloaded you can see your visitors actions while they are surfing your blog or check which are the preferred pages, posts and categories. In the Dashboard menu you will find the StatPress Reloaded page where you could look up the statistics (overview or detailed). StatPress Reloaded also includes a widget you can add to a sidebar (or easy PHP code if you can’t use widgets!).

Download

Tracking Statistics and Bringing In Visitors for Websites

Nur — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:06:57 +0000

By knowing and understanding your site visitor numbers, one can get help how to increase them. WordPress offers many tools for doing just that. Getting someone to visit your blog is half the battle; helping them get the most out of it is the other half.

You might want—and you can get—many alternatives for statistics for your blog. The built-in statistics in WordPress are probably the best quick overview you’re likely to get. If you also pay much attention to blog site statistics, though, it really does become a full-time job. That’s because increasing—let alone truly maximizing—traffic to your site is like running a rapid-response room in politics. You need to be working on an hour-by-hour basis to see what’s happening in the world, the response on blogs similar to yours, and how you can make your voice heard in the fray.

Just for your convince i have compiled a best resources, these are scripts, hacks, JQuery Plugins, WordPress Plugins, a list of Websites providing web stats included in this article. If you know any other, mention it in comment.

1. Google Analytics Extensive Tracking Analysis of Websites

I believe most of us are using Google Analytics in order to track our visitors daily. With This excellent Tool you can track and compare all your ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other search engines. Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.
Search Engine Journal has compilied a list of advanced Google Analytics tips that open up plenty of possibilities to track and evaluate.

2. Google Analytics API is Now Available to Developers

A Google Analytics API has long been one of our most widely anticipated features. Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications. For example, Polaris is a cross-platform desktop widget for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports it’s the easiest way keep your data always instantly available. The rich interface and swift navigation make it a pleasure to use.

3. Yahoo! Web Analytics – Highly Customizable & Powerful

Yahoo! Web Analytics is a highly customizable, enterprise-level website analytics system designed to help website businesses increase sales and visitor satisfaction, reduce marketing costs and gain new insight on online customers. By storing data in raw, non-aggregated form, Yahoo! Web Analytics is more than simply a reporting tool. It is a powerful, and highly flexible, data analysis tool. Both near real-time AND historical data can be segmented instantly and even visualized with advanced graphs to help marketers and site designers answer specific business questions and find new insights to improve their business.

4. How to Create a “Who is Online” Widget

A well explained and very good Tutorial written by TutorialZine on “Who is online” widget with PHP, MySQL and jQuery. This widget display the number of visitors, their country and display it in a slide out panel.

Demo | Download

5. Apigee Provides Analytics, Protection and Control for APIs

Understand customers, usage patterns and app behavior with detailed analytics and alerts on API traffic, clients, errors, and data volumes. I provide Free up to 10,000 Messages per hour.

6. Open Source Web Analytics Framework in PHP

The Open Web Analytics (OWA) framework provides a generic set of PHP and HTTP APIs that application developers can use to integrate web analytics into any application. The Framework also has built-in support for popular web applications such as WordPress and MediaWiki.

7. GoingUp – Combines Web Analytics with SEO Tools

GoingUp’s web stats features a fully customizable desktop with easy-to-read graphs and data charts. See visitors, referring URLs and even search engine traffic! Show only the data you want to see with slick AJAX interface! Set custom tracking events to see sales, downloads and subscribes!

8. Get a Full Featured Pingdom Account for Free

Pingdom is a service that monitors websites and servers from the Internet and alerts you if there is a problem. It acts like a watchdog, making sure that your website is up and running 24/7. You handle all your settings from an online control panel. No need to install anything. You can get error alerts via both email and SMS.

9. Odometer Style Javascript Counter in Mootools

UvumiTools Odometer is an odometer style Javascript counter, where you can actually see the numbers spining. It is a Mootools plugin requires no Flash, it’s all CSS and Javascript.

10. Crowd Science

Crowd Science Demographics is a new audience measurement service that gives website publishers insight into the demographics and attitudes of their audience. Focusing on more than page views, clicks and behavior, Crowd Science Demographics builds an audience profile including age, gender, income level and other demos that provide you insight to your audience.

11. Compare Traffic with Google Trends for Websites

With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites. You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites and top searches for each one.

12. Comparing FeedBurner Subscriber Numbers

A free web application that you can use for comparing FeedBurner feeds. This tool is great for checking out your competition and noticing trends in growth.

13. W3Counter – Hosted Realtime Website Analytics Solution

Demo

14. Woopra Realtime Web Tracking & Analytics Tool

Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. We deliver the richest library of visitor statistics in the industry through our innovative desktop application. But Woopra is more than simply statistics.

15. Piwik – Open Source Web Analytics

Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) web analytics software program. It provides you with detailed real time reports on your website visitors: the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, your popular pages… and so much more

Demo

16. Track, Monitor and Analysis Your Flash (SWF) with Mochibot

MochiBot give Flash developers an easy and effective way to track their Flash movies. Other tools in the market are either not made to track Flash content, too expensive, or just too hard to use.

Demo

17. Free Web Counter for Your Website from SiteMeter

Site Meter is a comprehensive real time website tracking and counter tools give you instant access to vital information and data about your sites audience.

Demo

18. Snoop Tracks Your Visitors and Events On Your Desktop

Reinvigorate measures your influence on the web in real-time. Gain up-to-the-minute insight into your audience, then adapt to meet their needs and watch your site grow.

Demo

19. StatCounter is Another Free Reliable Web Tracker

A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!

20. SlimStat – Open Source Extensive Analytics Program

SlimStat is an extensible web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, browsers versions, platforms and searches can all be taken in at a glance.

WordPress Stat Plugins

1. WassUp

This is the statistic plugin that I am currently using. It gives you real-time statistics which is the part that I really like.

2. WP-Stats

This is another great WordPress plugin for finding out your statistics. This may be the most popular one among WordPress users. But don’t think that means it is the best.

3. WordPress Blog Stats

This helps you integrate the W3Counter service into your self hosted blog.

4. Official StatCounter Plugin

If you use the great service StatCounter for getting your blogs statistics, then you will likely love this plugin. This allows you to use their service in your admin area. This means that you will not have to go to their web site to get statistics.

5. CyStats

This is another great statistic plugin that I also use. It shows you a little more information about your statistics. A lot of times I like as much information as I possibly can get.

6. StatPress Reloaded

This was made to keep the Statpress plugin alive. The original creator does not keep the original updated anymore so this was created. Also one of the most popular plugins to get your statistics.