Archive for the ‘Plugins’ Category

A Review on Facebook Social Plugins for the Benefit of Active Facebook Users

Friday, June 4th, 2010

There is no limit to the offerings of Facebook for its users with different purposes and from different walks. Facebook is up with a palette of social plugins to let bloggers and business site owners make the most of its sharing functionality. If your site has its own Facebook profile and Facebook following base, get your content shared among the Facebook users and their followers, get the content voted, liked and commented on by them through the use of these social plugins from the Facebook store. Implementing the plugins is fairly simple though understanding their applications is a little confusing.

Activity Feed

The Activity Feed plugin shows the latest activity centering around your site on Facebook. It also delivers data on the number of times your content hosted by Facebook has been liked and shared by the Facebook users. Displaying a steam of activity from your Facebook contacts and highlighting their content is another application of the Activity Feed plugin. When you are logged out, it will feature recommendations from the site of yours. This powerful tool will let you know how hot your content is and what is hot on Facebook.

Comments

The Comments Box another Facebook social plugin will your friends comment on the link or content that you have posted to your Facebook profile. The plugin appears like a box in which the Facebook users can enter their comments on their followers’ articles, webpages, photos or their Facebook status. The users are allowed to leave their comments with links that get published back on their Facebook profiles and in their friends’ streams. The Comments Box is a high-end comment system with link sharing potentiality.

Login with Faces

The Login with Faces one of the useful Facebook social plugins will display the profile pictures of your friends who have joined or liked your site on Facebook. It lets you specify the number of rows to display the faces in. The plugin customizes the rows according to the number specified by you. If you are on lookout for more users to join your site and share your content, using this particular social plugin is a recommendation.

Like Button

The Like Button is a most simple Facebook social plugin to vote for a product, an article, a webpage, a link or a photo by clicking once on “Like”. Using this one-click icon, your friends express their liking for your content posted on Facebook and share it back to their Facebook followers. If any of your friends is logged in, the button will highlight the users who have already given like for the content. This plugin is useful particularly for media sites, e-commerce sites, software application sites and blogs.

Like Box

Akin to the Fan Box, Like Box is an updated Facebook social plugin. It features the Like button and displays a gallery of the users who have clicked the button to like a particular piece of content. A single click on the Like button will include you among the followers of a Facebook page. Then onwards, you will be receiving updates from the page to your newsfeeds. This plugin acts like a promotion tool using which you can gain likes for your product or site featured on your Facebook page.

Live Stream

The Live Stream is a great Facebook social plugin to let the users stream a live event. A great application for real-time comment and chat on Facebook, it will let your friends visit your site, share your content and comment on your activity in real-time environment. It works best when you run a live streaming video for speeches, concerts or webcasts.

Recommendations

The Recommendations feature a list of the content that has been mostly liked by the Facebook users. It is almost akin to the Activity Feed. However, the latter offers a more dynamic social experience to the users. The plugin generates recommendations for the most liked content from your site. The Recommendations is an alternative, not a complement to the Activity Box.

Have a Curb on Comment Spam to Keep the Search Engine Ranking of Your WordPress Blog Site Intact

Monday, April 12th, 2010

The internet teems with comment spam just as a warehouse stuffed with goods crawls with rats. The most widespread across the World Wide Web affecting is blog comment spam affecting WordPress based sites and their search engine rankings. It has been the bane of WordPress bloggers. WordPress is fast-growing blog publishing software. To prevent link juice from passing to the spammy inbound links, Google had introduced the ‘rel=no follow’ option for hyperlink in 2005. Sadly and surprisingly enough, blog comment spam is still in action. The failure of your efforts to get rid of comment spam is not the end of the world. Take heart and go through my blog on how to protect your WordPress blog against comment spam using the available resources.

Detrimental Effects of Spam Comments on the SEO of Your Site

The intensity of a detrimental effect determines the necessity of an action. Know the possible harmful effects of blog comment spam, if it remains uncontrolled. It stains your blog posts airing quality and valuable content, and thereby decreasing the popularity of your blog site. Low quality comments by spammers filling in your blog site’s comment field will get normal visitors distracted. The visitors will shorten the duration of their stay on your site and label the site as spammy. Apprehending the links that spammy comments contain to be malware, they will say no to visit your site in future.

Blog comment spammers use automated bots to create automatic comments. If you turn blind to this issue, the spammers will affect much of your MySQL database. Worse will be the consequence when you will find the site down to your utter amazement. You will experience the worst of it, when it will take a toll on the search engine ranking and visibility of your site. Your site’s tryst with the search engines will come upon a rock, if the search engine bots find the site infested with oodles of spammy comments.

Comment Moderation – an Anti-spam Application of WordPress

Comment moderation is a useful application for the use of WordPress bloggers to keep blog comment spam in check. Enabling it will curb the immediate display of spam comments on your website. Comment moderation is available with the latest version of WordPress that is 2.9.2. By means of this WordPress resource, you can restrain the spamming activity of spammers and hold their spam comments for moderation. It will seek your approval for the display of any comment on the site. The following are the steps to enable the application –

• Log in to the admin panel of your WordPress blog site
• Make your way to ‘settings’ under Dashboard
• Make a click on ‘Discussion’
• Use ‘check only’ option on a few specific items

WP-Spamfree Plug-in to Restrict the Spamming Activity of Spammers

Rolling with the punches, spam bots have become smarter to defy the restrictions of comment moderation applications. Deleting a bulky volume of spam comments on a regular basis is really annoying. If Akismet does not work because of hosting restrictions, you had better take turn to using WP-Spamfree plugin. It works in a limited hosting environment where Akismet fails to operate. The procedure to install the plugin is as follows –

• Log on to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/
• Download and save the folder on your desktop, and unzip it
• Upload it to the WP-plugins directory in the WordPress server
• Log in to the admin panel of your WordPress blog site
• Move to the plugins section and activate the downloaded plug-in

The upside of using this plug-in is that you are not required to input a captcha and it traps almost 99.99% of the total spam comments. You can trace the WP-spamfree statistics in the WordPress dashboard. Let the plug-in be configured by default. It will let you implement the rel=nofollow tag in your blog’s comment field. Discourage the spammers by letting them use no keywords or site URLs in their comments. Maintain a comment policy in the comment field and let them agree to it. This way, your WordPress blog site is safe from spammers.

Promote Your Social Media Profiles Using these WordPress Plugins

Friday, March 5th, 2010

In the present era of social networking, one’s social media profiles bears evidence to one’s online identity. Product promotion, brand visibility, business publicity, blogging, networking, fun and gaming are the bread and butter applications of social media. That is why; promoting social media profiles is an unavoidable issue. The use of WordPress plugins makes it easier to perform the task by integrating your social media profiles with your WordPress blog. WordPress is two in one – a blogging platform and a content management system. Promoting your social media profiles using WordPress plugins is as important as promoting your WordPress blogs using social media applications. I have assorted a few highly innovative WordPress plugins for your benefit.

DandyID Services – with a support for nearly 330 social networks, the DandyID Services is the most useful WordPress extension. You can integrate any of your social media profiles with your WordPress blog using this plugin. It requires the user to create a free account with DandyID. The plugin is customizable.

Social Media Page – This WordPress plugin comes handy for social butterflies. It is supportive for near about 140 social networks. It lets you integrate your social media profiles with any page or post. Using the plugin, you can link to your social networking profiles instead of cramming the sidebar with multiple icons.

Social Profilr – Though not all inclusive, this plugin is useful for WordPress bloggers with 14 important social media profiles. The Social Profilr works with a simple line of code (HTML or non HTML). It integrates the social media profiles with the WordPress About page.

FriendFeed Activity Widget – It is a popular lifestreaming plugin, convenient to use. What you need to use the plugin is a FriendFeed account. You can set it up simply by logging in to your account. It allows you to keep Twitter @replies hid on your WordPress blog pages. It is easy to use because of its minimalistic design.

Lifestream – This plugin offers an independent use. It does not entail a third party account to keep your social media profiles in tune with your WordPress blog. You can utilize it either as a sidebar widget or an icon on a WordPress page or blog post. Lifestream too comes with the option to hide Twitter @replies from the stream of your social media activities.

Lifestream.fm – This plugin offers support for the largest number of social networks to let your stream your social media activity onto your WordPress blog. You need to have an account with the Lifestream.fm. Setting it up as a sidebar widget is simple. The only downside of this plugin is the display of all your tweets including @replies.

Retaggr – Supportive for over 180 social networks, Retaggr lets you not only promote your social media profiles but also the profile information of your commenters from the tiny icon next to the comments. The social media profile information of the commenters pops up at the rolling of the mouse over the icon.

Social Profiles – This plugin is tailor-made for multi-authored blogs and sites with registered users. It lets your visitors register for your WordPress blogs to promote their own social media profiles through effective comments on your blog posts. The Social Profiles plugin provides fields for the visitors to put their usernames for ten social networks.

WP Twitip ID – It is a Twitter oriented plugin. It integrates your social media profiles with the comment form of your WordPress blog. It requires your commenters to have Twitter account. Inserting an extra line of code in the comment template file of your WordPress blog, this plugin provides a field for the commenters to put their Twitter usernames.

Tweetmeme – Tweetmeme is among the plugins to promote both blog posts and social media profiles simultaneously. Akin to the Digg style vote button, this plugin lets your readers retweet your posts easily. By default, it retweets a post as ‘RT @tweetmeme” along with the post title and URL. It is customizable in size. It comes with an option to let you select its position. It can be displayed on your RSS feed.

Hurry up to use these WordPress plugins for promoting your social media profiles and get the best of social networks. Make sure to let me know your feedback.

Use Google Buzz plugins in Your WordPress Blogs to let Visitors Buzz Your Content in their Google Buzz Account

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Almost everyone gets into a tizzy over the launch of a new internet application and feels crazy about using it. Evidently Google Buzz, a new Gmail-integrated application is the focus of attention all around. Now, SEO personnel and bloggers are making efforts to utilize the potential of Google Buzz as a web traffic resource. Buzz can be integrated with not only social networks but also self-hosted WordPress blogs. I have come across a few Google Buzz plugins and add-ons that are useful for WordPress bloggers. Google Buzz

Google Buzz Buttons

Google Buzz buttons are nifty Buzz buttons integrate Buzz with a WordPress blog. These buttons get your blog posts displayed on your Buzz homepage through links from those posts to Google Reader that is connected with the Google Buzz account of yours. Adding the button “Buzz This” to each WordPress blog post is the application the Google Buzz Button plugin. Displaying the button at the top or bottom of the post content is after your choice. The dimension of the button in height and width is customizable.

WP Google Buzz

WP Google Buzz is another useful button plugin to ingrate Buzz with self-hosted WordPress blogs. Much akin to Google Buzz Button plugin, it packs in a few more options. You can customize the appearance of the button by increasing or decreasing its dimension. The icon of this Buzz plugin is available in a variety of styles. Choose a particular style in keeping your WordPress blog setup. You can add it to your posts manually.

WP Buzzer

WP Buzzer is the most recommended of Google Buzz Button plugins for the use of WordPress bloggers. The button’s style is almost similar to that of the Google Buzz Button. The options regarding where to set this plugin are in your hand. You can make the button shine on the homepage, pages, and posts or in the RSS feed. The plugin is available both in small and large versions.

Light Social

Light Social is one step ahead of the Google Buzz Button. It takes a different approach to integrate Buzz with self-hosted WordPress blogs. It inserts not only Google Buzz but also other social share links like Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn at the bottom of each WordPress blog post. Light Social is a good use to get your blogs noticed on various social media platforms.

Buzz in Your Sidebar

The Google Buzz plugin that lets the visitors to or the followers of your WordPress blog share the posts to their Google Buzz accounts is Buzz in Your Sidebar. The biggest advantage of using this plugin is that you can display your online social media activities collectively in one place. The Google Buzz ER a cool widget can make your public Buzzes visible on your WordPress blog. You can define the number of Buzz entries that you wish to display.

Get in haste to integrate Google Buzz with Your self-hosted WordPress blog using above-mentioned Buzz plugins and let visitors to buzz your posts in their Google Buzz accounts.