Plugins to make your WordPress blog more social

Over the past years, WordPress has been gaining popularity as a blogging platform. With this development, the need to make blogs more social and its content easier for sharing. Beyond commenting, today’s web users are looking out for social networking and interaction on blogs. As such, we have created a list of plugins below to help you improve the social aspect of your website.

Sociable

Allows you to add a variety of social media buttons – Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us, to name a few – to your posts. Not only simplifies the task of adding social media to your blog, but also adds aesthetic value to your website with pleasing social media buttons.

Bookmark Me

Enables you to add social bookmarking buttons to every post. Stands out from other plugins of its kind as it allows you to add bookmarks of sites not written in English.

Bookmarkify

Adds social bookmarking links to your posts to help your readers promote and increase traffic to  your site.

ShareThis

One of the more popular plugins. Lets you add the “Share This” button to your articles, allowing your readers to easily share your articles on other social media platforms or via email.

PingPressFM

Allows you to spread your blog over 30 social networks via Ping.FM. This WordPress plugin enables you to submit your posts to this service.

Obsocialbookmarker

Adds user-submission links at the end of each blog post for a range of social bookmarking sites.

iBegin Share

Completely open source plugin which allows you to share and spread your articles with great ease and full control.

I Love Social Bookmarking

Uses a clean drop-down list of appealing icons to allow your readers to submit your content to social media services.

Social Bookmarking RELOADED

Adds various graphic links at the end of your articles to help your visitors share them.

Social Bookmarks

Provides you with a range of 50 bookmarking submission icons to add to your blog.

Social Dropdown

Enables you to display social bookmarking options in a dropdown format to reduce the page space they consume.

SociBook

Use this to add bookmark links to your WordPress blog. It also allows you to select the services you want to include and specify your icons.

SocioFluid

Adds the buttons of various popular bookmarking sites to your site. Unique selling point: big and clean icons.

WP PunchCard

Allows you to install PunchCards to WordPress with great ease, as well as shrinkage of space taken up by social media on your website.

ComplexLife

Enables lifestreaming of your WordPress Site.

Follow Me

Allows you to show all the links to your social media profiles under just one banner.

LifeStream

Displays all your photos, postings and feeds from other social networking sites.

SezWho

Make your online business card using this WordPress plugin. Also links to your social networking profiles.

Column shortcodes

To Do List when changing WordPress themes

WordPress is a very flexible CMS with an easy 5-minute installation system which makes it the most preferred CMS on the web. Without requiring knowledge of CSS/HTML to change and install themes, it is easy to understand WordPress‘s success among web beginners. However, it is also for this reason that changing themes can sometimes be viewed as intimidating or confusing for the average user.

In this entry, we have included a few things to consider when changing WordPress themes so as to make the switch less challenging:

Change Admin Password

WordPress provides a password that is probably impossible to memorize upon installation. As such, the first thing you would want to do is to change the admin password to a memorable one.

Back up Existing Theme Folder

We cannot stress the importance of backups enough. You never know what may go wrong when changing to a new WordPress theme, so always create a backup before doing so. This way, if anything goes wrong, at least you can restore the old theme.

Rectify Broken Links

Make sure to check for the broken links and rectify them upon installation of the new theme as links are crucial to the functioning of your website.

Check for Security Loopholes

Some theme designers encode their websites (especially the footer links) in such a way that users are unable to remove the sponsor’s link. There is a risk that a malicious script may be encoded here, so always check for security before your website goes live.

Ensure RSS Subscription Link is Correct

Default feed links are available for all themes. Ensuring the feed links are correct is an absolutely necessary step to guarantee your subscribers receive your content and that all new and available feeds are automatically detected by their RSS readers.

Page Listing

Different themes display the pages in a different manner. Make sure to check that all the pages are listed correctly, not jumbled up after the theme change.

Reset Stats Tracking Code

Most of blog owners use stats tracking scripts like Google Analytics, Woopra, 103bees, etc. These scripts work by introducing a snippet of code in the header or footer. Every time a new theme is loaded, it is necessary to reset the stats tracking code as it will be overwritten by the new theme. Read more on installation of new WordPress themes.

Check Browser Compatibility

Ensure maximum compatibility with different web browsers by loading the website using IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, the most frequently used web browsers.

Verify Sidebar Content

New themes may be accompanied by unwanted links in the sidebar which you may want to remove. If you added codes to the previous theme manually, then make sure to add these to new theme as well.

Reassess Plugin Usage

Not every plugin you install is used. The more plugins you install, the more time is taken to load your website. So reassess your plugins often and remove those you don’t need.

Reset Ads Code

If plugins are not used by you then the ads code must be put back manually.

Matching Favicons

Favicons should match your new WordPress theme and the logo of the blog. Always remember to check for consistency when you change your website theme.

How to Eliminate Spam from WordPress

Nobody likes spam. Yet with all the new technologies developed to combat spam, they still continue to appear in our emails, blogs and websites. And of all places on the web, WordPress blogs are among the most highly affected by spam messages. So how and why are blogs affected by spam?

One of the primary ways spam appears is through comments. Usually, spammers have special automated routines built to scour the Internet for codes similar to the coding of the comment box in a WordPress platform. Another way spam enters the system is through the registration process, often used as a means of moderation by webmasters before allowing people to comment on their blogs. By discovering how to get past the moderation, a spammer can become a member of your website and so send you spam messages.

Now that we are aware of the common sources of spam messages, let’s take a look at the methods for successfully eliminating spam messages from WordPress blogs.

Admin Panel Options

The admin panel in your WordPress platform offers you a number of options to eliminate spam:

• Navigate to Settings > General from your admin panel. Here you will find a list of options, one of them being Membership along with a check box stating “Anyone Can Register”. If the box is checked, you are effectively allowing not just regular users, but also spam bots to register at your website.

• From your admin panel, enter Settings > Discussion. Here, you will find a list of options to help you control the steps users need to follow in order to comment on your blog. You can prevent people (and spammers) from commenting on your website by unchecking the box “Allow People To Post Comments on New Articles”. Of course, this would mean that you lose interactivity with blog readers.

• Another method to avoid spam on your website: enter Settings > Discussion. Firstly, check the option to disallow people from registering on your website. Second, check the option for “Users must be Registered and logged in to comment”. By checking these the two options, you will be able to control which comments are added to your website.

• The Discussion section in your blog offers you a range of options to control the number of people commenting on your blog. You can also restrict the spam volume in your website this way.

WordPress Plugin

WordPress also offers the Comment Spam Stopper plugin to prevent identified spam bots from commenting on your blog. The plugin also helps in reducing comment space to avoid detection by spam bots.

CAPTCHA

One of the most commonly used method on the web to prevent spam is the CAPTCHA code. While genuine commenters will not find it a hassle, manual spammers will be turned off by the need to fill in a CAPTCHA while spam bots are unable to fill CAPTCHAs. In this way, CAPTCHA is one of the most useful ways to prevent spam.