Five Top WordPress Addons You Gotta Use

The daily read on this blog is more of a journal which offers ~~little or no~~ only a bit of use to the average reader; after a couple of my fellow bloggers in Derek Baker (5 Reasons the Top Bloggers Are Successful) and Thomas Sinfield (5 Reasons You WILL Fail at Blogging), this University student thought that it was finally time to post up something useful. Here’s the top five addons that I found of most use for my blog, and any blogger, whether new or old should consider getting these up if you haven’t already.

1) Subscription Tools

Now, this technically counts as three, but as they all fulfill the same function I’ll add them under one header. I have three ’subscription tools’ on this website- the RSS feed count, the Subscribe by email box and of course the small line of text at the end of each of my posts asking y’all to subscribe. The former two are available at FeedBurner.com; now whilst most people say not to show your FeedBurner count until it reaches a high level, I feel the opposite- if you write decent posts, it doesn’t matter whether you have 1 or 1000 RSS subscribers; people will subscribe if you can deliver quality content. As for the reminder at the bottom of each post, that’s the WordPress plugin Subscribe-Remind; if you read someone’s posts enough, eventually that line of text is going to get so annoying that you just gotta subscribe. Three definites for a blog; they allow easier ways for people to have your posts delivered into your inbox every single day.

2) Contact Us Form

When you’re a blogger with any kind of views whatsoever, you’re always going to find people wanting to discuss them- whether they think your opinion is the best in the world, or that you’re a cunt that should never use a keyboard again, they’ll want to sell you about it. Now posting your email on your website can work; however, this will almost certainly be picked up by the spam bots and inevitably lead to the 1000s of Viagara emails in your inbox; the best way to give your readers a way to contact you and avoid the above is by implementing a Contact Us Form. The contact form for this website is located on the Contact page while the plugin for WordPress can be downloaded here.

* Just took a look and it seems my contact form died. Guess I look like a total doofus now eh, will ask one of the tech gurus I have on MSN to help me get it back up *

3) MyBlogLog Recent Readers Widget

Now I don’t really like social networking websites; I find Facebook and Myspace a waste of time and not useful for any serious networking. When I came across MyBlogLog I was pretty skeptical; now that I’ve got it up, I’m glad I’ve done so. MyBlogLog allows you to network with fellow bloggers and build relationships that will last you a long time; their Recent Readers addon also allows you to ~~stalk~~ see who’s visiting your website and of course return the favour. Via MyBlogLog, I’ve come across loads of insightful posts; ones that I probably would not have discovered otherwise, and with the plenty of features it offers, I’ll be looking at promoting this website with them quite a lot more in the upcoming weeks.

4) Top Commentators

Everyone loves being part of a community, and what better way to be recognized for it than being shown as a top commentator. I do not use Blogroll links as I find them not very helpful; the combination of the Top Commentators plugin and of course MyBlogLog mean that only those who post comments and/or those who read the blog get a link back to their website/profile on the sidebar. While link exchanges are always good, and will get you the backlinks (this is why I have a seperate page for links) I feel it’s a lot better that those who take an interest -whether they are one of the top commentator or take a five minute glance- get recognition for their participation.

5) Google XML Sitemaps

One that will help you on the technical side of things, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a must have for WordPress blogs. I’m not going to pretend I know how it works; anyone that’s ever spoken to me on MSN/Yahoo will know that I’m one of the biggest tech newbs around, which is why I won’t try and go indepth; however, the plugin helps you get indexed in Google quickly (The University Kid was indexed a couple days after I added it) and allows various search engines to crawl your website. I’ve found this easier and quicker to use than submitting your website to hundreds of search engines at the beginning; as said, this is faster and of course it helps you to avoid the sh*tload of spam that a few less reputable search engines cough *Jayde* cough will send you. For the tech-explanation of Sitemaps go here; to download the plugin, go to this website.

Now that I’ve tried to be serious, time for the usual update on my day; I’ve gotten three signups with the Text Link Ad Network using a devious way I’ve told a couple of you about; if they get credited to my account I’ll spend a bit of money promoting them. While their payouts have not done too well for me, as I have no idea how to use them (my rarely updated PR2 Soccer Specifics website is on course to earn a massive two bucks from them this month) their commission of $25.00 a signup is pretty decent; as said, if credited, full steam ahead.

A small update on the Thousand Dollar Guide; it’s received mostly positive feedback; those of you will frequent Digital Point will know about the cunt that’s trying to halt sales but don’t worry too much. I’ll say one thing- the controversy in that thread has actually doubled the amount of sales, as it looks like people don’t mind spending $10.00 to see what the fuss is all about; there’s no such thing as bad publicity, eh? Thanks to all that stood up for me; it’s greatly appreciated. As for the guide itself, I’m thinking of holding on to it; sure, the $925 bid offered is a tasty dangling carrot but I’m going to keep it for a couple weeks, look at marketing away from Digital Point and take it from there. At the end of all this I will look at selling off full rights, but only for a figure upwards of $1000; I may also decide to keep it and use it to entice all y’all to sign up to a ~~spammy~~ newsletter filled with a few insightful ideas.

I did a Google Search a while back for contest pictures and found something that I’d forgotten about; if you want to have a small laugh at something I did because I was in a hurry, check out this picture. Cool, heh?