Wordpress is a fantastic platform to blog and build websites. As you may or may not know, wordpress has the ability to ‘plugin’ programs into it that make your life as a website owner a whole lot easier. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different plugins available to use with your WordPress site. Out of all of those choices, here are my top ten Wordpress Plugins:

1. All in One SEO: this is one amazing and powerful plugin. It provides automatic SEO just with one click! The plugin comes with default settings (recommended by the developer) that can be changed depending upon what you want to do/tweak on your site. I pretty much leave the settings on default as they cover everything that I need. With the All in One SEO plugin you can – eliminate duplicate content, add keywords, change permalinks to search engine friendly formats, and add descriptions which also helps with SEO.

2. Google XML Sitemaps: another plugin that I can’t operate without. This will generate a sitemap.org compatible site map of your WordPress site. This format is supported by Google, Yahoo, Ask, and MSN/Bing. It is called Google XML sitemap because it was Google who first developed this protocol for use in its search engine. This plugin will automatically generate a site map and notify the above mentioned search engines when you activate as well as every time you update your site. When I use this plugin, my sites get listed in these search engines usually within 24 hours. Amazing!

3. Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email – this plugin helps readers/visitors share information they found with others via email, bookmarks, or any of the social media outlets (Facebook, MySpace, etc.). This plugin is valuable because it makes for easy content distribution, doesn’t add a lot of clutter to your posts/pages, has Google Analytics integration. Try it out and see for yourself – it is located at the bottom of this post!

4. WP-Spam Free- nobody likes spam. When your blog/site increases in popularity, the amount of spam increases exponentially. This plugin eliminates virtually all spam from your comments. It works silently in the background so there is no need for CAPTCHA’s or anything like that. This spam blocker also is very light on the CPU/bandwidth front. Unlike some other spam blockers, this one won’t slow down the load times of your site.

5. Google Analyticator- this was the first Google Analytics tracking plugin for Wordpress.  As such, it is the most popular as well. It supports all of the tracking mechanisms that Google Analytics supports such as external link tracking, download tracking, tracking without counting administrative users, and any other advanced tracking the user wishes to add. Google Analyticator works with a majority of themes as long as these themes provide the proper plugin hooks.

6. Date Exclusion- this is a handy plugin that eliminates the date/time stamp from your posts after a decided time period. Nothing like having  an ‘out dated’ post on your site!

7. Easy AdSense – if you’re into using Google AdSense then this is the plugin to have. It makes setting up, placing ads, and inserting code a snap.

8. WPtouch iPhone Theme – this plugin rocks! It is much more than a plugin – it is a complete theme generator that transformers your WordPress site into a slick looking and operating site for not only iPhones but also works on all wireless devices like the BlackBerry. I’ve also found that sites (when viewed on a mobile device) load extremely fast. Awesome!

9. WP Follow Me – is a plugin that allows you to add a Twitter follow me tag to your site. You can change the colour of the badge as well as its position within your WordPress site. Great for those of you who love to tweet.

10. Shadow Box JS- this plugin allows users to display a large assortment of media in all major browsers without having the viewer navigate away from the linking page. It is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is very customizable. I like using this because it works and it adds to the visual appeal of my sites.

There you have it – my top ten Wordpress plugins that I cannot live without!

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Wordpress is a fantastic software package to build websites. Did I say websites and not blogs? That’s right. Building websites with Wordpress is very easy to do and preserves all the great reasons that makes it a great blogging platform.

Here’s the way to make Wordpress look and feel like a regular website:

I’m assuming that you have a domain name and have uploaded/installed wordpress already. If you haven’t done so yet, I found that GoDaddy is a great place to buy your domain and that HostGator is a great hosting company to use. With HostGator
all you have to do is to click one button to install Wordpress – it couldn’t be easier.

To make Wordpress to function as a ‘normal’ website you first have to designate a page as your “Home” page. Right now, the home page in Wordpress is a page that displays your posts (blogs). The front page that you will create will be static – with a welcome message or some sort of content that doesnt’ change. Luckily, Wordpress makes it very easy to do this. All you have to do is to identify the page that you want to be your ’static’ page (Home page).  Log in to WordPress administration page and click ‘Settings’ then “Reading”. Select the “A Static Page” button, then choose which “page” you want to use as your home page. Then click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page. That’s it! If you want your dynamic content (fancy way of saying the page where your blog postings will show up) to show up on a specific page, then (on this same page) choose which “page” you want to use as your posts page. Click save. Now you have a static home page and a page where your posts will appear.

But, what if you want to create your own page and make it your home page? This gets a little bit trickier because when you create another page a s a “home” page you end up with two home pages in wordpress -the new one you created and the original. Not good and confusing for visitors to your site! Let’s have a look at how to do this and end up with only one home page in Wordpress.

First create your new “home” page – click on ‘pages’, ‘create new’, and name it “Home”. Click ‘publish’ and then visit your site. See what I said earlier – two home pages! Don’t panic, there is one little thing left to do to eliminate the original home page. Click ‘Appearance’ from the left side bar, then click ‘Editor’. You now should be looking at the code for your site. On the right side of the page, find and click ‘Header’. Find this line of code: 

<li><a href=”<?php echo get_option(’home’); ?>/”>Home </a></li>.

It is worth it to mention the value of backing up your site right now. Even if it is a brand new site do so. I’ve deleted the wrong piece of code a few times and didn’t back up. I couldn’t find the place to re-paste the code and the site stopped working correctly. I had to create a new wordpress site on a new domain name, upload the theme that I was using when I tried to cut out the line of code and then highlighted the entire ‘Header’ code and pasted it over the code that I screwed up. Not a fun experience!

Delete it. I’ve also found this line in the ‘Main Index Template’ if it wasn’t in the ‘Header’ file. Remember to click ‘Update File’. Check out your site now – there will now only be the new home page that you created!

One last thing to do – Page order. By default, Wordpress shows pages displayed in alphabetical order. Not great if you want your ‘home’ page to be at the left hand side (1st position) on your top bar and in your side bar ‘pages’ widget. FYI – By default, newly created pages have a Page Order of zero which will put them at the front of your menu if you forget to change it.

1. Locate the page you want to change the Page Order setting for in the

2. The Page Order setting is on the bottom right-hand column under ‘Attributes’

3. In the Page Order ‘box’ type the order (numerically) that you want the page to appear. If it is your home page, put in ‘1′.  Example of a typical order of  pages:

1. My New Home Page
2. Recent Posts
3. About

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Wordpress is my preferred platform/software that I’m using to use to build websites for making money online. I was torn between using software such as Joomla, Frontpage, and even BANS (Build A Niche Store). My first few sites were not going to be that extensive so I decided to give Wordpress a try. I have to tell you, I really love working with Wordpress and now use it for building almost all my websites!

Here are my top ten reasons to use Wordpress:

 1. Wordpress is free! Everyone loves something that is truly free.

2. Wordpress is  easy to install – if you have a hosting account with Host Gator all you have to do is click on a link and it will automatically install itself.

3. Wordpress Themes – you can try out 100’s of different themes. Most themes are free as well! I really like that you can preview what your site will look like with a new theme you are thinking about by just clicking on a button in the administration page.

4. Wordpress Plugins – there are also hundreds of plugins that you can instal on your Wordpress site that do everything from making adding YouTube videos on your site in one click, to making SEO’ing of your site simple. The majority of these plugins are also free (although the developers would appreciate a donation ).

5. Wordpress Widgets – widgets are like plugins but are designed as a very simple way to arrange the look of your sidebars. You can add/remove things such as pages, recently posted articles, links, categories, etc. Widgets make creating the look of your website very easy.

6. World Class Support – Wordpress support is free and extensive. There are many different forums, video’s, blogs, etc. that provide you with the support you need. If you want to get to the ‘official’ Wordpress support page then just click on the help button located in the top right corner of the administration page of your site.

7. Easy to Learn and Use – Most people new to Wordpress (with limited skills) can be up and running/publishing their website within a few hours as it is very intuitive to use.

8. Wordpress isn’t just for blogs – you can easily make ‘normal’ website with it as well.

9. Free and easy to upgrade! Wordpress will tell you when there is an upgrade available. All you have to do is click on upgrade and you’re done.

10. Amazing SEO – right out of the box, Wordpress provides very good search engine optimization. If you want to tweak your SEO than all you have to do is add a plugin like “All in One SEO Pack”.

 There you have it – my top ten reasons to use Wordpress!

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