12 WordPress Plugins That You Must Have

I’m often asked for advice and help from both experienced and new WordPress users and the questions mostly involve themes and plugins.  In this post I’ll  give my top 12 plugin picks.  My favorite plugins are always changing as I learn of new ones and find that I cannot live without them.  Plugin needs also vary depending on the project.

Plugin Central

To me this is the one essential plugin that every WordPress installation MUST have. In fact, it should be your very first plugin and the only one you need to install via FTP. Why? Once you install this plugin, you never need to use FTP again to install plugins. I realize that WordPress 2.7 has some functionality to automatically download plugins, but it doesn’t compare to Plugin Central.   Plugin Central is very simple and straightforward.   You simply enter the name of the plugin you wish to install and that’s it.  Plugin Central does all of the heavy lifting by downloading and installing the plugin for you.  You do need to get the name right and you also need to go to the main plugin page once the plugin is downloaded and be sure to ACTIVATE it.

Plugin Central

You can enter as many plugins as you want in the form and all will be downloaded and installed at the same time. One great feature is the ability to list all plugins (or active plugins) in your WordPress installation. By doing this on existing installations, you can simply copy and paste the names into a new installation to get all of your favorite plugins downloaded and installed at one time.

WP-DBManager

When I first discovered this plugin I was amazed it was free. If you don’t already have it RACE to download and install it immediately. WP-DBManager essentially does what the name implies — it manages all aspects of your WordPress MySQL database. The plugin allows you to optimize, repair and drop tables, backup the database to a directory and best of all, send you a backup copy on a scheduled basis. The backup can be compressed at your option.
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Made it to the Winner’s Circle at Santa Anita

picture-1I took the family to Santa Anita this weekend with our good friends Marshal and Julie.  Marshal often invests in racehorses and showed us around the track.  The guys who he invests with had a horse running in the 10th race — Hard Bill —  and we visited the paddock, met the jockey and owners of Hard Bill.   (more…)

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Dropbox – a Rare Software Utility that Just Works!

Dropbox.com

Dropbox is a backup and synchronization tool that combines a web-interface with a local client.  Sounds a bit geeky, but in a nutshell this is an almost perfect piece of software that everyone can benefit from.   I’ve been using Dropbox for a few months now and am extremely impressed.  It’s become a critical piece of my daily arsenal right up there with Google, Firefox and WordPress.

Dropbox can be downloaded for free at getdropbox.com.  It works with both Windows and Mac computers and will install a “DROPBOX” folder in your MY DOCUMENTS directory under Windows or under PLACES on a Mac.  Once installed, any file you save in this directory will be automatically backed up behind the scenes to a folder on the web under your account.  Sounds fairly basic?  Well, here’s where the fun begins.  You can install Dropbox on several computers you own such as your office computer, your laptop, your home computer, etc.  These computers can be both Mac and Windows systems. It doesn’t matter. All files in your Dropbox folder will be replicated and synchronized on ALL computers and that’s just the start. (more…)

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How to Have Homes in Beverly Hills, New York City and San Francisco

Black sand beach at Wainapanapa, in Maui. Phot...
Image via Wikipedia

Why stop with these three cities?  What about Maui, Miami Beach, Pebble Beach?  You can live everywhere and anywhere all at once.  Sounds too good to be true?  Well, it’s not if you know a little secret.

Take a look at susansworkreview.com.  Notice anything odd? Look more closely in the right column ‘about me’ section. Still don’t see it? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Susan is living in the very town where you are sitting right now. Am I right? I know this because her website tells me that she’s living right down the street from me, and it also says she’s down the street from you.
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WordPress – What is All the Fuss About?

Category:Wikipedians who use WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

WordPress is a free blogging platform used by millions of people.  According to this CNET article, 0.8% of all internet sites are powered by WordPress.  Wow.  That’s a lot of sites.  Have you jumped on the WordPress bandwagon yet?  Perhaps you’re not a blogger or if you do blog you’re happy with sites like blogger.com.  Well let me let you in on a little secret.   WordPress is a heck-of-a-lot more than a blogging platform.  Sure, it’s a great blogging tool, but it’s also a wonderful platform for any small to medium-sized website.  Let’s take a look under the hood. (more…)

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Linkbaiting – Generating “Honest” Links on the Web

Linkbaiting.  Sounds like another one of those nefarious techniques employed by slimmy web-spammers used to fool Google into believing that a site has more links than it really should with the goal of getting better rankings.   In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.  Eric Ward has an excellent post which explains it in depth (note: Eric is a true pioneer who I worked with many years ago on some web press releases through his URLwire service and received excellent results for my projects!).

Linkbaiting in a nutshell is a way to generate what I call “honest” links.   Other folks will link to you because they WANT to link to you, not because you are paying them to link to your site, spamming them with comments or agreeing to exchange links.

Sounds pretty straightforward, but you might be wondering “why would someone want to link with me?  What do I have to offer?”   Well boys and girls, you need to give people a reason to link to you.  (more…)

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