Enhance Your WordPress Blogging Experience

November 10, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized

I love WordPress. It’s user-friendly, simple to understand and so comprehensive when it comes to managing your blog.

I’m not the only one that feels this way. In fact, WordPress is one of the fastest growing blog hosts on the web, and bloggers all over the world can easily understand why. Its interface is easy to use and there are so many things you can do, so many templates you can choose from — the list goes on and on.

Now, there are different applications and tools that you can add to your WordPress blog to enhance your blogging experience and make it even more useful and exciting for you, while helping you bring more readers into your space.

Courtesy of Brave New Code comes Crossroads, a plug-in that adds Flickr photos to your blog. One of the few drawbacks of WordPress is that it doesn’t have great photo capabilities. With things like Photobucket and Flickr out there, the only problem becomes incorporating those into your blog with no problems. Crossroads helps bring your Flickr account to your blog without any hassles. It doesn’t work on Photobucket but, then again, Flickr is the fastest growing photo host on the web right now.

Excerpt Editor is a plug-in that allows you to create and edit all of your WordPress excerpts. It also allows you to create excerpts for pages, which is something that can only be done with a plug-in. Excerpts give your readers a little taste of what they can read on your blog. WP gives you limited space as to what you’d like to include on your excerpt. With this plug-in, you have the control over what you allow your readers to see.

With the introduction of podcasting into the World Wide Web, it’s now possible to add podcasting capabilities to any page, space, or blog out there. The folks at Mighty Seek have put out a link for podPress, a plug-in that allows bloggers to share their recorded podcasts with people out on the web. Podcasts are kind of like the Internet’s version of a radio broadcast. You can subscribe to podcasts that cover everything from fishing to poetry; anything that you’re interested in, you can find a podcast for somewhere. Now with podPress plug-in, you can add podcasts to your WP blog as well.

We’ve all seen it: that Share This button at the end of a blog entry, web page, or Internet article that allows you to share it with the rest of your friends through email, social networking sites, or bookmarking. Now you can add it to your WP blog. The Share This button gives the reader options to share your blog with about 20 different sites, including Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Technorati and Google. By providing this function to your site, you’re automatically adding functionality as well as accessibility to your web space, making it more attractive to those that come see it. It’s great for blogs that are frequently updated and that have information and articles that can help many people, such as how-to and DIY blogs.

These are just a few of the apps that will enhance and improve your WP experience. You can find an entire toolbox of WordPress applications and plug-ins below.

Alexa Rank - shows Alexa rank.

Google PageRank - displays Google Page Rank.

Plug ‘n’ Play Google Map - adds a Google Map.

Google MapSearch Widget - Google Maps search.

Cool Weather - shows weather forecast.

Live Spell Checker - spell checker in admin area.

Ajax Comment Preview - preview comments.

AJAX Comments 2.0 - updates comments page automatically.

Hottaimoijiruna - adds a self-updating clock.

WP e-Commerce - adds a shopping cart.

Currency Converter - a real-time currency converter.

Crossroads - adds thumbnails from Flickr.