WP-Polls – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)-Polls are now getting widely used by many bloggers. For the most part, it’s used to get the opinions of the visitors about certain things, their preferences, or maybe just plain answers to questions. Microblogging and sharing sites already have polls integrated on their system, so it will be easier for people to create and answer polls. However, WordPress has none, only plugins that can help you create and display polls on your WordPress site.
One such plugin is the WP-Polls. This plugin is highly customizable unlike most of the plugins of the same kind. It can be customized via templates and injected with CSS styles. There are also lots of other options that can help you customize your poll display, as well as the results page.
The main difference of WP-Polls to other poll widgets that you can use is it’s a plugin integrated to WordPress itself. You can use a widget, like PollDaddy, but it will have to take a few more steps to completely mix it with your blog. WP-Polls on the other hand, since it is completely integrated on your website and it will be easier to create polls depending on your preference straight from the admin panel.
Also, unlike PollDaddy, WP-Polls will let you edit its HMTL template fully for advanced tweaking. You definitely would want the poll to display as a part of the whole site, won’t you. Also, you can configure the CSS style of the poll you’re making based on your site’s CSS design and play with it.
Though third-party poll widgets are useful, given that they are external, you don’t actually “own” the poll. The polls you create must be within their terms and conditions, unlike if you own the poll yourself, it can be about anything and everything under the sun. For third-party solutions, you may have the dilemma of them closing your poll at any time if they wish to, and though it’s not that often, it still can impact a blogger greatly. So there goes the benefit of using an integrated poll manager such as WP-Polls.
Also, access and configuration to these polls are in your hands. You have access to who participated in your polls, their IP addresses, the exact time they voted, to name a few. This also gives your visitors the security that they will not be sharing information about themselves through a third-party application, and it reassures them that only you as the webmaster can see who they are and where they are from. The advantages of owning the poll are endless. Even php codes can be configured to work the way you want them to. And don’t forget, you won’t have to bear with the third-party site mark on the bottom of the widget (i.e. “Brought to you by WEBSITE”, or via Website.com).
Apparently, there are more advantages to having your own poll via a plugin such as WP-Polls rather than a third-party application. The only downside I guess is the fact that it will be down if there happens to be some problem on the plugin, unlike in PollDaddy where their servers are monitored. But nevertheless, any application or plugin undergoes the same, so that won’t be too much of a problem.
Check out the Wp-Polls plugin here.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)-You’re reading a certain post. You maybe have landed on that post via Google search or another search engine. However, at some point you wanted to see if there are more information on that site related to the topic you need. Would you browse each post by the owner one by one? You wouldn’t. So you’d definitely leave and go somewhere else.
If you’re the webmaster of that site, you already lost a visitor. Apparently, he/she may have not found anything more helpful than that specific post he/she went to. If only you could find a way to let them stay.
Good thing there’s plugins in WordPress which offer listing of some related posts on the bottom of each post. Your visitor would not leave once they find more information on your blog about a certain topic. Chances are, they would click on the different links posted, trying to find more and more. Very helpful, eh?
One such plugin is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP). It gives you relevant content on your whole site, whether it’s a page or a post. So how does it differ to the other related posts plugins?
It does have an advanced and versatile algorithm that other plugins of the same kind don’t have. This algorithm enables you to customize the relevance of each posts to each other, whether it’s related by title, by content, by tags, by category, or even by taxonomy. Through this, you would be sure that you only have the right posts listed on the bottom of your post that would potentially be useful for your visitors.
It does have a unique templating system that enables you to control how the related posts are displayed on your pages. Since the list would take up space on your page, you won’t have to worry about it going against your template. At most themes, you actually don’t have to do anything to tweak your theme again to work with this.
It does have caching ability that records how related posts are visited to improve performance. The more visitors come to look at your related posts, the higher chances of improved suggestion.
It has the ability to also display related posts even on RSS and Atom feeds. And the best part is, they are also completely customizable.
It offers you the ability to disallow or remove certain tags and categories from the algorithm. This basically means that the plugin would not search related posts via the disallowed tags or categories anymore, increasing the relevance of each list.
It enables you to have complete control over your related posts and pages listed, and it supports PHP5 and MySQL 4.1 or greater.
Nevertheless, YARPP or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is a favorite amongst all related posts plugin downloadable. Not only will you stay once you use it, but you’ll be amazed by its big help on your site being visited frequently every time. Not still using it? I highly recommend for you to try this.
All in One Webmaster
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- If you are a webmaster, you may have tried different webmaster tools to help you in optimizing your site for search engines and for better marketing. You may have already been familiar (or you may have tried) Google Webmaster Tool. And in case, you may have also tried Yahoo’s SiteExplorer or Bing Webmaster Central with the same purpose. These tools are used to help you monitor the indexing of your site on those search engines, and get detailed statistics for better earnings.
All-in-One Webmaster is a WordPress plugin that has the similar purpose, but without any complicated codes. Contrary to the abovementioned tools of the same kind, this plugin enables you to monitor and add all webmaster codes for the above sites. Yes, whether it’s for Google, for Yahoo, or for Bing, you can simply monitor activities through this plugin. Aside from those sites, you can also access the tracking codes on Clicky, Compete.com, Quantcast, and SiteMeter.com for advanced monitoring of your site stats.
This plugin adds specific meta tags in the headers of your blogs, as well as JavaScript codes on your site’s footer. Apart from the above, it also enables you to create XML sitemaps that you can submit on the above sites for better search engine optimization. And if the submission failed, it will also prompt and update you. You also have the option to manually edit the HTML header and footer section to further filter your meta tags.
With this plugin installed, you no longer have to install the above tools one by one. You only need the All-in-One Webmaster plugin. That’s it. It’s a one-stop solution to meta tags integration problem. You just of course have to access the codes to be copied to the text area on the sites themselves.
The latest version of this plugin has an updated asynchronous tracking snippet as per the latest version by Google. It also has a PRO version, with the addition of the StatCounter analytics option and Facebook Insight option. The analytics options for each site – Google, GetClicky, Quantcast, and SiteMeter are present. And apart from Google, Yahoo and Bing, you also have the ability to check on your Alexa ranking and BlogCatalog, as well as Facebook Insights.
Apparently, for most webmasters, this tool is among their top ten favorite plugins of all time. Not only does it enable them to maximize their site’s potential for earning, they are also helped by this plugin to prevent wasting lots of time doing the coding themselves, especially if they aren’t knowledgeable at all with the codes and the likes. Imagine being able to optimize your site, allowing it to be indexed by all the top search engines, and maximizing your visitor count even if you are just a beginner or you have just created your site. What else? You can track everything, do more action if needed to, in order to know if you’re succeeding or not in your blogging venture. Definitely a great plugin to try. So, haven’t tried All-in-One Webmaster yet? Download it now and optimize your blog!
GoDaddy Domains – Fine By Me
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- A lot of people would be surprised that I do actually support buying domain names through GoDaddy, but that is where I draw the line. In order to find out why I don’t host with GoDaddy please view my GoDaddy review here. Despite there CEO Bob Parsons who clearly is an ego driven lunatic, who likes to kill elephants(no I am not making that up) there are couple reasons on why I feel GoDaddy domains are the cream of the crop.
For one they are dirt cheap. I have seen them listed for far cheaper than some respectable web hosting companies such as InMotion which charges 9.99 a year (however you can get the domain free if you agree to use there web hosting for a year, which I do recommend. However, if you are a webmaster and are going to operate a number of websites I just feel it is so much easier to have all your domains with the same company.
You can simply login to GoDaddy’s (kind of wonky) control panel and change you DNS to point to your servers. Note it will generally take about 24-48 hours to propagate over. Also, note that for VPS (virtual private servers) and dedicated servers it seems to take far less time to propagate over (generally 12-24 hours as long as your servers are configured correctly).
Now back to why you should purchase all your domains from one company. Simply this reason; that if you mix and match your domains with web hosting you do run the risk of forgetting to renew your domain name and jeopardizing your domain name. Granted, nearly every company does have a “auto renew” option it is just a good habit to get into. Imagine the ramifications of forgetting to renew your domain names and losing all your hard work from a silly mistake.
So just to clear things up because I have talked to a lot of different webmasters over the years and I do support buying domain names from GoDaddy. I would just recommend that you host elsewhere.
WordPress jquery slider/banner image rotator
( The Best Web Hosting Service)-A good sliding banner/image rotator makes use of jQuery, but not everyone has the ability to do the coding themselves, so there goes a plugin to help us accomplish such.
Once installed, this plugin gives you the ability to customize a part of page to have a flash slider for banners or image to rotate. You won’t need to have to study jQuery or do the codes yourself, you will just have to add images or banners and configure some settings and there goes your slider.
There are lots of jQuery image slider plugins available in the web, either free or premium, and these plugins differ mostly on their capability for support as well as the number of sliders they can provide to each blog. Apparently, jQuery slider is the most customizable and user-friendly of them. We will see why.
First of all, its simple architecture is actually based on CSS, all you have to do is to define the size of the sliders and where it will appear. You also won’t have to worry a thing about it overlapping your layout, as it can be overlaid by your existing CSS theme. The skins are by default clean and tidy and since CSS is easier to edit, you will find CSS files on the skin folders. Adding slides and images is also an easy task, you just have to put li tags with images within. It also has tooltips that could guide you along the process.
jQuery slider has about 104 slides transition preloaded giving your images and banners a unique impression at every page. The images to put on the slides will be your choice, and you can also customize their animation speed, duration, and transition type. You can also configure vertical and horizontal sectors and give each slide a different transition and a custom link.
Obviously, this plugin is easy to use and modify, while not limiting its powerful function. Multiple slides and banners can also be put on a single HTML page and give you superb and unique transition every single time. One can also use this plugin with LightBox for bigger pictures, as well as Youtube, Vime, and QuickTime. Autoplay, shuffle, delay, auto hide, and other options are also possible with the animation, and it is compatible with different browsers.
WordPress by default doesn’t give options for image rotators or sliders. However, it is a cool feature that adds elegance to the entire layout and promote your posts, so it is a cool and must have plugin.
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