Finally Week 2 is Done!
Table of contents for Seven Week Project
I’ve been neglecting my little demonstration and learning site that I was creating as part of Drew’s ( www.mrgpt.com) Seven Week project.
It seems to me that Drew’s falling behind too, so I can do a quick catch up maneuver here. Hopefully he’ll be out with Week Three RSN (Real Soon Now … that’s software developer talk).
To review the bidding, I have the site up with the theme working well and it’s time now to install the recommended plug-ins. Here’s Drew’s recommended list and my comments/alternatives/suggestions.
All in One SEO Pack - Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your Wordpress blog. This will help increase your traffic from search engines.
Absolutely. This is one of the most useful plug-ins I know of for WordPress and it needs to be right up at the top of your list. Google and other search engines do pay attention to title tags and meta keywords, regardless of what anyone says (You can become a dominating expert on this stuff with the SEO Book) and the All in one pack does a lot of this for you. Big tip of the hat to Uberdose for this one.
Askiment - This help prevents spam comments on your blog. You’d be amazed how much wonders this can do. This already comes installed by default when you first install Wordpress.
Absolute recommendation here. Simple, does it’s job without complaint and is well needed. It may confuse first-timers to be required to get and copy in an API key, but just go to www.wordpress.org (note, not .com) follow the simple steps and save the funny looking piece of text and numbers you get. You’ll need it later for at east on more plug-in I recommend.
Dagon Design Form Mailer - This is what I use for my Contact page. It’s a simple mail form that your visitors can use to contact you.
Having a contact page is distinctly important, in my view. especially on a site where money is involved … and we certainly hope it is involved on this one. When I see offers, recommendations and such on a new site, I look right away at the "About" page and/or the "Contact" page. If there is nothing there and the site owner is trying to be anonymous, I usually don’t even click on the link.
Google Sitemaps - Sitemaps are very important to search engines, especially Google. Sitemaps help ensure that all pages get updated, and when search engines should crawl your site again. This plug-in will create a sitemap.
I agree with Drew here on the need for sitemaps, but I definitely prefer a different plug-in. I use Sitemap Generator Plug-in for Wordpress, also by Dagon Design. I find the maps it produces more visually appealing … making the site more useful for visitors seeking information as well as the robots of the engines.
Got Banners - This is what I use to rotate the 125×125 buttons up and down the page. It’s very useful and easy to use.
I downloaded and installed this one. I have no experience with it yet, instructions and usage instructions will be along in the weeks that follow.
Popularity Contest - Ever wonder which posts are most popular? This plug-in will help tell you exactly that. You can also display them in your sidebar or on a page.
This is a very useful and popular plug-in from Alex King. Because I’m more familiar with it, I have chosen to load and use LesterGamzr’s also excellent WP Post Views instead.
Related Posts - Related Posts will help display a certain amount of posts that are related to the current page your visitors are viewing. This will not only help them find more information on the topic, but also get these posts indexed by Google.
A must-have in my view, but also one of the trickiest features to make work right in WordPress. We shall make this one (by Wasabi) work right in this installation, or we will make another one work … this may well need another blog post all on its own. meanwhile, the link in Drew’s article doesn’t seem to work, the plug-in he was pointing to is here;
WP-Ads - This is what I use to rotate the 468×60 ads on the top right of the site. This will be one of your good sources of income. For me, I am able to make $75/month in total for the five slots I sell on MrGPT.
Again, this is one I have downloaded and installed, but not activated. We have no ads (except the AdSense built into the template I am using) to run, as of now.
WWW Redirect - This is a simple plug-in that will just redirect all users that go to http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com. This helps to keep the PageRank pointing at one domain instead of splitting them between the two.
The explanation says it all here. I must admit the continual keeping track of www versus non-www has become quite a nuisance to the neophyte and expert alike. this plug-in seems to do the job, we shall see.
Three more that I definitely recommend and am using:
WordPress.com Stats
… there is some argument that with a money generator site like this project we are building the only stats that will count are the dollars as they flow in. But I find this plug-in and the service on WordPress.com that it ties you to is very valuable. I no long bother with Google Analytics, 103bees and several other tracking services I used to use. With WP stats you get near real time visits, referrals, search terms and … very kewl for the income generation crowd … links that your visitors clicked on. Recommended.
Word Press Automatic Upgrade
No matter what you are using a site with Wordpress installed for, you need this tool. When a new version of WordPress comes out … sometimes on short notice in order to fix dangerous exploits that have been discovered .. this tool let’s you upgrade in a few seconds with just a couple key strokes … it also manages and enforces backups to your computer or some other off-website location …. you are backing up somewhere aside from the server you are running the site on, aren’t you?
OK, that’s enough for now. Get that special site up and running, WordPressed and plugged-in. The real fun times are coming.
Related posts:
- Seven Week Project — Week 2 (Almost)
- Seven Week Project — Week 3 (Underway)
- Seven Week Project — Thoughts On Competition
- Seven Week Project — Week 2 (Still)
- How To Be Psychic
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
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