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.
PayPal Payment Terminal WordPress
( The Best Web Hosting Service)-Websites are now a main source of income for many, which are either by blogging, selling stuff, or providing services. Some even ask for donations on their blogs. If you are one of these people, or is still planning to do such, then isn’t it a hassle when you have to manually process payments and such?
Now, we already have a plugin or script to facilitate payments made through PayPal within WordPress blogs. You can also control the transactions within your plugin dashboard itself. This plugin is called PayPal Payment Terminal.
This script can actually be put on your sidebar or anywhere in your site where people would just have to type the amount they want to send you, choose whether for what payment will it be (or maybe donation) and then click Pay Now! Your customers no longer have to go through many pages and windows before they can finally send you the money. And this is better too if they are just making donations to your blog, at least you will spare them of the trouble.
Anyway, this is a secured script that offers unlimited services to you. It is fairly easy to install, just about 2 minutes, and there goes your own transaction page on your dashboard, just like an online banking or PayPal account. You can also do filtering of transactions by date period, so you can monitor the financial activity of that specific blog. There are also many options to sort and search through the transaction lists, so it is very user friendly.
It works just like the ordinary transaction done through PayPal website, and both of you – you and the customer – will receive notifications in your emails, depending on your PayPal configuration.
The script can be added as a widget, which is customizable in terms of its area fields to fit with your layout and theme. The buttons and boxes are actually very simple and lightweight, and doesn’t require much bandwidth and resources to run.
You can set up a default currency supported through PayPal. In the configuration page, you can also set up a thank-you message for all your customers after they do the transaction. Note that this is of course different from the email notification your customers will receive after the payment. Transaction IDs are also displayed on the transaction list, so it means it is basically connected with PayPal itself.
GD Star Rating
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- Rating blogs are now becoming popular lately. I think it is mainly because the owners know that ratings mean their users will get involved in their posts, as they will give rankings on their posted topics and share their views on it, whether it is a movie, a program, or any download that are reviewed on your site.
In case you plan on adding this feature on your blog, a recommended plugin to help you is GD Star Rating. It enables the user to choose from 8 different rating types and synchronizes all reviews accurately with comments, pages and posts. The ratings can be displayed as stars and posted as widgets for the top ratings and statistics. The rating system is highly customizable on the setting panel.
The different types of rating are as follows:
- Article rating based on posts and pages voted by users
- Article reviews
- Comments rating – rating of each visitor’s comment by other visitors
- Comments review rating – users vote a comment review
- Multiple rating – can be a mixture of different features and elements
- Multi ratings review – based on reviews and article rating per element
- Article thumbs rating – based on thumbs up or down (like or not)
- Comment thumbs rating – based on comment ratings by other users
GD Star Rating plugin also supports cache plugins for a faster loading of data. It also supports the new features in Google called Rich Snippets, a rating system that users can see when searching for a product or service. Widgets can be configured to work with GD Start Rating too to display average rating of blog posts or comment posts.
A custom GDSR button can automatically integrate and synchronize results in a page with other rating results, in real time. So it means all ratings are displayed as what they really are in the current time. One can also use templates for easy layout display of the ratings, as well as custom graphics to change the default stars and icons.
The plugin is also currently available on different languages such as English, Serbian, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, and much more. One can also integrate the rating system in the RSS feeds for a real time update to your subscribers. IP blocking and data importing/exporting is also a great feature of this plugin. It uses Ajax for dynamic loading and each IP data is saved whenever a user vote.
GDSR is also a great plugin that is consistently getting updates to improve performance, so you can expect more features coming in shortly.
Check out the GD Star Rating plugin here.
Tweet Blender – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- A proven way to increase traffic to your sites is by effectively marketing your link through Twitter. That’s why you basically have to have a tweeting system linked to your blog, in case of WordPress, it usually comes as a plugin. One such thing is called the Tweet Blender, which doesn’t just provide tweeting service.
Tweet Blender provides a good tweeting service for those blogs with multiple authors. It can also be used to catch up tweets made with various lists, hashtags and keywords. It can be modified to show tweets from either a main author or even for a group of users, as well as tweets defined by a certain topic keyword or tag.
The latest version of Tweet Blender plugin can now show tweets defined by multiple criteria described above altogether in a single stream – whether it be multiple authors, multiple lists, multiple hashtags and multiple keywords. That’s why it becomes different amongst other plugins of the same kind.
Also, this version has a new widget that will also suggest relevant tweets to certain blog posts that will be posted as tags and keywords, and will still appear on Twitter search. This is pretty good for SEO, as appearing in Twitter search engines is still another added way of promoting.
The plugin is also localizable and is available on different languages and translation. Even non-English hashtags and words can be used to filter lists and tweets. Caching is also done for faster loading of former tweet searches and filters. Custom texts and custom names can also be added for unique display of tweet results.
There is also an option of bookmarking or keeping Favorites of tweets. Display of mentions can also be turned off, as well as users’ photos and display pictures. Automatic refreshing can also be configured depending on your preference.
Aside from the sidebar, one can also put the widget in posts and pages or both. Yes, it supports multi-widgets that can be displayed on different parts of the page. Tweets by private accounts can also be blended if authorized by the account owner. It also connects differently from Twitter API to its own server so that it can keep up with your tweets even if the main Twitter site is down.
This plugin apparently offers lots of features to begin with for that cool multi-user experience. It is essentially helpful for community blogs, so that they can all keep up with each other and relatively keep their networking to a higher level.
All in One Shortcodes – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- All in One Shortcodes plugin provides a lot of functionality for an easier WordPress experience. It lets you add an unlimited number of shortcodes for you to use to customize and control the contents of your WordPress site within matter of seconds. Imagine having 10 blogs that you have to put at least 10 posts and then modify each, utilizing shortcodes is totally a blessing.
If you have no idea what shortcodes are, shortcodes are basically special tags (usually enclosed in a bracket) you write on posts for a specific content. Once the post gets published, it is automatically loaded and transformed into that icon or button it represents. For example, you set up a tag or shortcode “[adsense]” for your Google AdSense string code. You no longer have to copy and paste the whole code to your sidebar or to your main template. You just have to type [adsense] and once the post gets published and updated, your Google AdSense ad will now appear. Definitely saves time and effort for repetitively creating that.
Now, All in One Shortcodes plugin lets you choose with over 90 built-in shortcodes having various sizes, colors, and icon mixtures. These shortcodes can be configured to represent any content such as:
Google maps
Google charts
Dark and light icon buttons
Social bookmark sharing for Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus
Slider gallery
Video integration via Youtube or Vimeo
Colored buttons and boxes of different shapes
jQuery powered tooltips and toggles
password protected boxes
Columns and tables
Quotes
Add custom URLs
With this functionality, you will no longer have to copy-paste, copy-paste, or copy-paste repetitively over pages or posts having the same formatting. It would be a hassle-free content updating if you get used to the shortcodes.
Apparently, shortcodes are already allowed by WordPress by default, however they still need to be coded to work. With this plugin, you will no longer have to manually create the codes, you just have to fill some data on the configuration page of the plugin. It’s that simple. Also, when you are in the process of doing the post or page, you don’t have to manually type the shortcode itself, you can just click the icons that will appear on the kitchen sink of the visual editor. Definitely a time-saver.
More functionality is equal to less time and effort to finish a task. With this All in One Shortcodes plugin, you will definitely have more time to focus on gaining and producing contents for your blogs rather than wasting time having to manually copy and paste long and complicated codes upon each set of post or page.
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