MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes. The plugin also allows specific themes for specific devices / mobile browsers, such as iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows CE Mobile and other generic handset browsers.
The plugin also allows WordPress theme developers to create custom mobile themes for WordPress blogs using the MobilePress plugin. Therefore, theme designers can create specific iPhone themes or generic themes.
MobilePress also features Mobile SEO which detects Google and Yahoo mobile search bots. These mobile search bots will see the mobile version of you blog which allows your blog to optimized and indexed on Google and Yahoo mobile search.
There are so many sites out there that are based on Wordpress and have numerous writers, including Crenk. Here at Crenk we sometimes find it hard to keep track about what sites to write about and who is writing about these sites. Previously we used Our To Do List Wordpress Plugin to keep track of these tasks, but since Wordpress 2.7 launched we have had numerous issues with this software and we are interested to find out if there is an alternative.
With the Our To Do List Plugin we are currently finding that we can add new tasks but when it comes to removing or editing these tasks it just does work.
Are there alternatives to the Our To Do List Plugin?
I adore WordPress, so much so that I use it to design websites that don’t even require a blog, just solely based on the CMS, ease of installation and abundant supply of options and plugins available for it. With all that being said, now and again I run into an issue with some stupid coding somewhere along the lines that won’t let me do exactly what I want. Today I ran into a problem implementing a plugin that would allow me to place a Google Maps map onto a client’s website. Google is nice enough to give the code out to hard code their maps into any site, but it requires the iframe tag which does not play nicely in WordPress.
After 10 minutes of searching the web and three more failed map plugins, it dawned on me that this was really stupid, I should be able to use whatever HTML code I want in WordPress, including the iframe tag. This is how I found the EmbedIt Plugin. According to their site, EmbedIt is a,
simple plugin that allows you to embed any html code in a post, deciding precisely where to embed it, allowing you freedom of coding your html without being annoyed by the wysiwyg editor.
- embed Youtube videos into wordpress
- embed ustream into wordpress
- embed a custom Google Map into wordpress
- embed whatever html code into wordpress
- embed specific Adsense code into wordpress posts deciding WHERE it should go inside an article
The appeal to this plugin is that it will allow anyone to use any code they want without a funky plugin or breaking the framework in their WordPress theme. EmbedIt utilizes the custom field in WordPress and is fully documented with screenshots on the official page.
My only complaint about this plugin is that you must submit a valid email address which grants the publisher of this plugin to send you an email now and again about new WP plugins he is working on. I got the email instantly which has the link to download, but I still don’t like it. I fully understand people take time to create these free plugins and never really get a lot of credit, but I think he’d be better off allowing free downloads and putting a Paypal donate button on his page instead of collecting email addresses.
Wordpress has to be one of the most popular if not the most popular blogging software in the world today. Due to its popularity there are thousands of developers all over the world who are building plugins to add to the platform. Thus, I thought I would put together a short list of my favourite plugins, so here is my top 20.
- Akismet
The must have spam catcher. It’s already present in your default wordpress installation, if you haven’t activated it, please do it before those spams accumulate.
- All in one SEO pack
(Inactive)This is an great plugin that will help you manage the meta tags for articles enabling them with unique meta and titles.I use an even better plugin now (Headspace2), which is AllinSEO x 10 times. So this one is inactive. You may want to use it if you are looking for a hassle free and easy meta tag management.
- Feed copyrighter plugin
This one is reposible for throwing up those copyright statement at the end of the feeds in RSS readers. It is one way of fighting the scrappers, not sure how effective it is, but it is indeed one weapon we hve right now.Bad thing – The credit link will appear on all RSS footers.
- Better comments manager
This is one of the best plugins I’ve always cherished using. It enables easy management of comments, lets you reply to them easily, mass edit/approve them. And yes, this is from Keith and team. His plugins have exceptional quality after all.
- Comment Luv
This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing – To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
- Duplicate sidebar widgets
This plugin helps you to duplicate the widgets modules to drag and drop on the sidebar. Ex: If you want two instances of the random posts widget, this one replicates it.
- Enhanced Contact form
This plugin is responsible for all those contact forms appearing in the pages.
- Feed footer
Adds anything in HTML to feeds appearing in RSS reader. 10 spots available, suitable for advertising and throwing up messages.
- Google AdWrap
You know about Googles section targeting right?This plugin adds the “sections” to be targeted to comments and content area thereby the ads that appear on Google AdSense will be heavily contextual to the information in these sections.Bad thing – You can’t manually add te google_ad_section code to any other place on the blog.
- Google XML sitemaps
Must have for all blogs. Generates an XML sitemap making the contents visible for search spiders.Bad thing – If you enable the robots.txt rewriting, everything you set manually on robots.txt is rewritten.
- HeadSpace2
The best meta tag management plugin I’ve seen in the recent times. No words to describe – killer plugin!Bad thing – Initially, difficult to understand how it functions and yo use.
- Homepage Excerpts
Adds a “more” link cutting posts on the main homepage within certain limit of characters. Good for curbing duplicate content on wordpress.
- I love social bookmarking
(Inactive)Great plugin that displays a pull down menu for social bookmarking on all the top social media websites.Bad thing – Serious alignment issues.
- KB Linker
Great plugin to increase the number of links within your site. It enables you to select a keyword for which you can set a link. Where ever this keyword appears, it would make it a link.Bad thing – It injects the link code even to links and in between html codes ! And you get html errors sometimes.
- Random posts widget
Throws up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available.
- Search Meter
Gives me access from the dashboard to search phrases on DailySEOblog search box. And also shows if the person who searched the phrase got the info he wanted or not. Good plugin to get an idea of topics to blog.
- SEO for Wordpress
A little outdated plugin, it says is reduces instances of duplicate content. But it doesn’t show us how and where. Otherwise a good concept.
- Shylock AdSense
The killer plugin that allows you to inject adsense codes anywhere on the post, and decide which ads to go where.
- Ultimate Google Analytics
Great plugin that will manage Google Analytics code injection and tracking a breeze. You could very well do it manually, but this one is a laymans friend.
- WP- Stats
Displays the wordpress blog stats from the dashboard. A better stats if you wat uptodate results. Analytics is a day and some hours late.
A friend with a local business came to me with a somewhat unique request. He wanted to setup a blog that only his employees and certain other people had access to for sharing information, ideas and other business concepts. I suggested Google Apps for this, but he said not everyone that would be using this would be as tech savvy to fully grasp how that works and he needed more than just a text editor and a spreadsheet.
I set off to search for a plugin that would allow me to accomplish the goal of restricting access to the entire blog, forcing a registration. After a few minutes I ended up on Viper007Bond’s site. I’ve used his plugins before, so I knew they’d be top quality. He wrote a custom plugin called Registered Users Only which, will redirect all users who aren’t logged in to the login form where they are shown a user-friendly message.
Perfect! Upload the .php to the /plugin directory on your server, activate it and tick one box in the Options screen, you are done. As admin to the blog, you create user accounts for those people you wish to give access to. Since it uses the standard WordPress login screen and user database, you can simply add them as a Subscriber and once logged in, can see the entire site.
Total installation time is less than two minutes!
While the idea of putting a blog online is usually done so that someone will read it, this certain situation started to make a lot more sense to me. WordPress offers so much more than just a blog, it’s turning into a CMS, and a tool to allow, in this case, his business to expand and grow internally. The more I thought about it the more I realized that a private blog has many other uses to it.
Parents who want to setup a blog for their children, either from day 1 in their life or as they enter the tween stage probably won’t to protect who sees photos of their kids and what activities they do.
This plugin restricts ALL pages of the site, that is the only option. This fits the goals of my friend and I think many other people. Be aware, this does not protect your RSS feeds. I would suggest deleting all RSS feeds from your WordPress install to fully protect your blog, if that is your goal.
Download from WordPress.org
Joost de Valk, a Wordpress and SEO specialist has written a basic beginner’s guide to Wordpress SEO which has to be one the best articles I have ever seen. You can find a variety of different SEO technique and it covers everything from basic technical optimisation to off site blog SEO. Make sure you head over to the site and check it out, I have already added some of the suggestion onto Crenk.
