In the spirit of Dirty Harry, and in honor of Clint Eastwood's birthday, I say this... "Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one". "Essential WordPress plugins" -lists are no different. So here's my opinion on it.

Anyone who creates a list of 20 or 30 WP plugins and calls them "must-have" or "essential" is, for the lack of a better word, a moron. You know: "30 must-have WordPress plugins" ...really? MUST. HAVE. ...pfff

Publishing such posts shows that the author has no idea what they're talking about when it comes to WordPress and they just made the list as link bait. I'm sorry for all you so called "blogging / WordPress experts", but you should title your posts properly...

For me, essential plugin means "a plugin I must and want to install to each and every WordPress blog" -or- "a plugin does something that I must do better or easier than I could do it by hand". You can have a huge list of "great plugins" or "plugins I use and like", but essential... the max is 10 in my mind.

My recommended WordPress plugins -list now has 8, with couple of arguable choices there as well. I complement the list with additional 7 I really like, but I do not call them essential.

Truly Essential WordPress plugins?

Luckily, there are exceptions - I really liked this demonstration / speech by Jonathan Dingman (@Dingman on Twitter) from WP Vibe showing his non-bloated list of WordPress plugin choices. (The presentation took place in WordCamp Orange County 2010)

What made this different from most other such presentations and lists, was that these plugins actually can be considered essential or "must-haves", and not just cool plugins the author happens to like (with couple of exceptions, but that's cool).

Anyway, here is the video from Jonathan Dingman: Essential WordPress Plugins & Optimization (the presentation itself takes about 14 minutes, and continues for about 35 minutes from there with Q&A, which is good stuff too):

And here are the slides from that Essential (WordPress) Plugins and Optimization Presentation:

6 Awesome WordPress -plugins

Here is the edited list (by me) of the plugins from the presentation and the slides with some highlighted benefits if you're too busy to go through the video or the slides:

1. SEO Smart Links
   • In-post, relevant links to posts and categories
   • Automatic cross-post linking
   • Custom keyword linking (optional case-sensitive), e.g. Affiliate links
   • Limitation options
   • (I haven't personally used this, as I've been doing internal linking and affiliate linking manually, but naturally it makes sense to automate it)
2. Google XML Sitemaps
   • Great for SEO
   • Lots of options
   • Easy to use
   • Updated regularly
   • (This is one of the plugin I put on every single WordPress blog I've ever setup and each blog I will setup in the future. Beyond awesome.)
3. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
   • Great for SEO
   • Users can see related content that they may like, making those links more "relevant" to the page
   • (This plugin has caused some issues before on performance, but I haven't seen any problems on my own blogs. Great plugin.)
4. Redirection
   • Track the number of clicks
   • Affiliate links
   • Links you don't want to pass "juice"
   • Be able to change where a link goes later on
   • Track how often a link is clicked on
   • Disallow all outgoing links (SEO reasons)
   • (Awesome plugin. I'd add that it also tracks 404s, which is great for spotting bad links for example)
5. W3 Total Cache
   • By far, the best caching plugin.
   • (This plugin is one of the enablers for speeding up WordPress to load under 2 seconds on shared hosting)
   • CDN options, Minify options (HTML/css/js), Memory caching via Disk/Memcache/APC)
   • (Do not use both this and WP Super Cache. If possible, use this, if not good on your hosting, use WP Super Cache)
   • Check my W3 Total Cache guide for step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure W3 Total Cache
6. Google Analytics for WordPress
   • Easy to use
   • Lots of options (advanced)
   • Updated regularly for improvements and security
   • (I recently opted to use the highly Optimized Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code instead, just because it's SO FAST *and* I don't need the options this plugin has. But it's still AWESOME plugin that I might go back to one day)

The above is ripped straight from the slides, so give credit to the @Dingman. Jonathan also lists these two, which are awesome plugins, but not essential in my mind:

• WP Super Cache
  • Focuses on utilizing file caching
  • Only use if you can't get W3 Total Cache to work
  • (Do not use both this and W3 Total Cache!)
• Tweeted
  • Easy way to embed (single) Tweets from Twitter to a post or page!
  • (A little self-promotion from Jonathan, which is OK, since the plugin is good for what it does, but not needed by everyone)

On the Q&A part of the video, Jonathan also mentions other great plugins, like Contact Form 7 which I use on my contact page, Viper's Video Quicktags, which is an awesome plugin if you're using a lot of video, either your own or embed other people's content to the blog and Yoast's Breadcrumbs, which I run here on my blog as well. (All awesome plugins to recommend, but not quite for each and every blog)

Summary

All in all, great list with 6 truly essential WordPress plugins and great presentation by Jonathan Dingman (check his WP Vibe -blog as well!). When I think of it, it's not that far from my list of plugins...

I think the plugins on my list, like WP-DBManager for backups and WP Smush.it for automatic image optimization deserve the "essential" stamp on them. Currently I use All in One SEO for SEO-stuff (HeadSpace2 is the other option) and Akismet for Spam protection but I'm constantly refining the list...

And with combination of these plugins listed by Jonathan and from my own list of essential WordPress plugins, my short list of recommended WordPress plugins is getting better and better - but that's just my opinion :)

So... What WordPress plugin(s) would *you* call a "must-have"?

1. The 6 most essential WordPress plugins
2. Experimenting Different WordPress Plugins
3. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How many “must-have” WordPress plugins can there be?

So yes, I'm a plugin junkie and I love great WordPress plugins, but I'm more and less settled for the list of essential WordPress plugins I have now. But every now and then such a great plugin comes up that I just have to try and this time, it stick and I already added it to all my blogs..

Some of the best plugins in my mind have been created by Joost de Valk, who has created many great plugins, with over 1 million downloads in total. These plugins include such masterpieces like Google Analytics for WordPress and Sociable.

But this post isn't about Joost's plugins, but the SmushIt for WordPress -post he wrote to his blog at Yoast.com, a post about an automatic image optimization plugin called WP Smush.it, written by Alex Dunae. As mentioned, this plugin quickly made it to my list of essential plugins for WordPress, and I think you should install it too, if you use images on your blog (and you do, right?)

What is Smush.it?

Performance just got a little bit easier. Optimizing images by hand is time consuming and painful. Smush it does it for you. (Smush.it)

Yahoo's excellent Exceptional Performance series recommends optimizing images in several lossless ways:

• stripping meta data from JPEGs
• optimizing JPEG compression
• converting certain GIFs to indexed PNGs
• stripping the un-used colours from indexed images

Smush.it offers an API that performs these optimizations (except for stripping JPEG meta data) automatically. (WP Smush.it -plugin page)

What is WP Smush.it?

WP Smush.it the plugin integrates the Smush.it image optimization with WordPress.

Every image you add to a page or post will be automatically run through Smush.it behind the scenes. You don’t have to do anything different. This is the easiest way to optimize one part of your website, the images.

Image optimization?

In short, you should make the images you display on your blog or anywhere in the web, as small as possible, without reducing the quality. It is possible to compress the images further, reducing the size even more, but at this point you can lose some quality, and usually you don't want that. And this is all you have to know about, as the WP Smush.it -plugin does all the job for you, so you don't have to patch process your images on your computer and then (re-)upload them back to your blog.

How to use WP Smush.it -plugin

After installing the plugin (by going to Plugins >> add new >> search "smush.it" >> install), go to the Media gallery, by clicking the Media-tab on the sidebar (if you're using 2.7+ WP). You'll see a new column there for WP Smush.it - click on the Smush It! link and the image is automatically optimized (reducing it's size to the smallest possible without losing the quality).

Go through all your uploaded images like this and it's very likely you'll save a lot of KBs on the process, making your blog run just a little bit smoother. After you've done this once, the plugin automatically "smushes" the images you upload to the Media gallery, so you don't have to *use* it after this.

Reducing the size of the uploaded images

The images I've uploaded reduced 15% in size, totalling in over 100 KBs. And I don't even have that many images uploaded on my blog. If those images would be loaded a thousand times a day (which they are not, as they are all around the site on individual posts, not all getting thousand hits a day, but anyway..), we're talking about hundred megabytes here - How long does it take to download 100 megabyte? Exactly! That is how long the visitors are "standing on line" and waiting to get in my site,until now, thanks to this wonderful plugin..

And the best part is that I don't have to do anything from now on but upload normally and WP Smush.it does all the work in the background and reduces the size of the uploaded images automatically.

Just like Joost at Yoast.com, I'm making WP Smush.it a great addition to my list of of plugins I install every time I set up a new WP blog, right there with Google XML Sitemaps (read How To Add a XML Sitemap for your blog if you're interested in that) and All in One SEO Pack. Definitely an essential WordPress plugin.

Install Smush.it now, work through your uploaded images and you can forget it and it'll help your blogs performance a great deal on the pages those images a loaded on.

WordPress Theme Optimization Tip!

Consider going through and compressing all the images in your blog with Smush.it, the web service. Or use a free tool like RIOT. It is possible that the theme designer has been smart and compressed the images already, but it is possible that you squeeze some percentages out of them.

Each 0,01% counts, because the images on your theme are loaded every time someone comes into your blog, and making your blog load up faster might keep the impatient visitor on your blog, instead of hitting back button because of long load time. For info on evaluating the performance of your blog, read this earlier post of mine: Blog Performance Evaluation.

Right now, I feel like smushing some more images, how about you? Optimize images you already have in your blog and use Smush.it to optimize all the ones you upload in the future, automatically.

1. The 6 most essential WordPress plugins
2. Experimenting Different WordPress Plugins
3. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Automatic Image Compression with SmushIt for WordPress

This is my list of essential plugins, originally the five most essential, later updated to 6. There are so many plugins out there that it wasn't easy to pick "just" six, but I managed to do it! Can you? If you have your own plugin preferences that is OK, and in that case check the quiz at the end, but here's the list and how to install these plugins.

The Most Essential WordPress Plugins

Each and every blog will benefit from these plugins, so install these and look for more later if needed.

These plugins will be the backbone of your blog, taking care of:

• Search Engine Optimization,
• Comment spam control,
• Backing up your data,
• Creating XML sitemap for search engines, and
• Speeding up your blog (via cache and image optimization).

1. All in One SEO Pack

Convenient and easy search engine optimization. Optimizes the canonical URLs (even better than the default functionality included since WP 2.9), simplifies handling the descriptions and title tags of different posts and pages and all this within simple interface.

2. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is better than WP Super Cache and handles much more than just page caching, like minification, database caching and making CDN usage easy.

3. WP-DBManager

You MUST backup your blog, both the database and the files. For the database, set this one up, schedule the automatic backup and optimization and you're done.

4. Google XML Sitemaps

Generates and submits a XML sitemap of your blog to the search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). Greatly enhances your blogs SEO and search engine visibility.

In case you don't have comments and you don't images on your blog that's it. But every blog has comments and images, right? So go on...

5. Akismet

Akismet handles comment spam. You can use additional plugins, but always have Akismet on. As mentioned, the only case you don't need AKismet, if you fully disable comments and trackbacks on your blog.

6. WP Smush.it (added)

Automatic image optimization plugin, read the story here: Blog Image Optimization. If you don't use ANY images on your blog, you don't need this one.

How To Install The Essential Plugins?

First of all, AKismet comes pre-installed since WordPress 2.8, so you don't have to worry about that, just activate it and do the configuration (check instruction below). In case you don't have it on your WP install for some reason, install manually.

Here's how you can install plugins with the latest WordPress versions, 2.7.x and onwards:

1. go to the Plugins section,
2. click “add new”,
3. search for one plugin
   • "All in One SEO Pack"
   • "WP Super Cache"
   • "WP-DBManager"
   • "Akismet"
   • "Google XML Sitemaps"
   • "WP Smush.it"
4. click “install”
5. activate the plugin after successful install.

Or you can install the plugin manually if you’re running old version of WordPress, or find uploading multiple plugins via FTP simpler than using the GUI on Dashboard:

1. Download the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory
   • All in One SEO Pack
   • WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache
   • WP-DBManager
   • Google XML Sitemaps
   • Akismet
   • WP Smush.it
2. Upload the plugin to the plugins -folder with ftp client, like FileZilla
3. Activate the plugin from the plugins -page in WordPress dashboard

After you've installed, you should go and...

Adjust the Essential Plugin Settings

With All in One SEO Pack, no need to do anything. If you want to adjust the settings, you can, but you don't have to, they are good as default.

The same goes for WP Smush.it - it works automatically when you upload your images (through WP interface, not FTP).

Google XML Sitemaps takes care of itself. Of course, you can go and set the settings if you don't want something to be "mapped", like certain categories, but other than that, install, activate and forget it.

For W3 Total Cache, if you choose that over Super Cache, read my detailed step-by-step W3 Total Cache guide to learn how to install and configure the plugin for the ultimate speeding solution.

With WP-DBManager, go to Database >> Backup, check that everything is "green" which means that the plugin has successfully created the directories it needs. If everything is OK, the plugin will tell you so. Create your first backup now.

Next - to automatically backup and optimize WordPress database - click yourself to DB Options. Check the email at automatic settings, set the schedule (usually weekly is good, and 3 days for the optimization). Click Save Changes. You will now receive weekly backup of your WordPress blog to your email where you can automatically archive them or save them to a safe storage of your own.

For Akismet, you will need the WordPress.com API Key, which you can get if you have WordPress.com account or you can go create it now (it's free). After getting it (instructions in the API Key -link), go to Akismet settings (Plugins >> AKismet Configuration) and enter the API Key there.

I hope you found this list to be useful. If you're seasoned blogger, it's likely that you are using these already or some other, very similar plugin. If you are just starting out, make sure you get these.

You should always keep your WordPress updated to the latest version, unless you have really good reason not to update.

The Essential Plugins Article Quiz!

Answer in the comments or do your own list and trackback

What are *the* plugins you would install, if you could only install 6 or less?

p.s. Check my resources -page for the full list of recommended WordPress plugins.

1. How many “must-have” WordPress plugins can there be?
2. Experimenting Different WordPress Plugins
3. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
The 6 most essential WordPress plugins

I've been especially fond of the plugins found at the Yoast.com by Joost de Valk. The plugins are super quality and do exactly what they are meant to do and they do it efficiently. With that said, for Social Bookmarking, I use the Sociable -plugin (also from Yoast), which does a great job at adding those little social network and other useful icons (like "make a pdf", "email" or "print") at the end of the post and is very versatile and configurable.

In the recent update of the plugin, "RSS" was added to the available sites list, but that used the default feed of the WordPress. As I use feedburner to manage my feeds, I wanted the RSS link to take the reader to feedburner feed, so I edited the sociable.php and added the site - if you want to do the same, I'll show how you can do the same (it's quite easy, if you just dare to go and edit the sociable.php)

How To Add Feedburner RSS Feed to the Sociable Plugin

1. Update to the latest version of Sociable before you edit anything.
2. Go to /wp-content/plugins/sociable -directory.
3. Open sociable.php.
4. Find the array called $sociable_known_sites.
5. Copy / Paste the code from 'RSS' (use find in the editor).
6. To keep the list alphapetical, find a spot for your code (I used "Subscribe to my RSS Feed", so after StumbleUpon was correct place for me).
7. Replace (in the new, pasted code) 'RSS' with 'Subscribe to my RSS Feed' (the name will show up as tooltip for the new icon, so you might want to go for similar).
8. Change the value of url to the submit URL for your Feedburner Feed.
9. Leave the favicon as it is, unless you want to replace it with something (for me RSS standard icon was ok).
10. Save the file.
11. Go to the Sociable plugin settings and click the checkbox for the new "site" you just added.
12. Save Settings.
13. Done!

When editing, make sure you don't leave the commas out, as you are editing an array there.

To give example, the code I added to sociable.php was like this (copied from the 'RSS' line and edited the name and the 'url':

'Subscribe to my RSS Feed' => Array(
'favicon' => 'rss.png',
'url' => 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/Zemalf',
),

When updating Sociable, your addition might go missing, so remember to check if and when you update to a new plugin version.

For adding any site you want to Sociable, use the similar method, or check further instructions from Yoast and Sociable - Sociable Bookmarking for WordPress -homepage.

If you are interested in more great plugins and how to utilize them to the max, check my earlier posts about Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog using Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin and how it is utilized when you want to Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics.

At the end of this post you see the "Share and Enjoy" social network icons, along with the "pdf", "pring" and the new "Subscribe to my RSS Feed" icons by the Sociable plugin (taking that the plugin is still active when you read this).

1. How to show feedburner subscriber & Twitter follower counts
2. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog
3. Experimenting Different WordPress Plugins

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Add Feedburner RSS Feed to the Sociable Plugin

If you don't have a Google Account already, go create one right now (you'll get access to GMail, Google Docs and much more with it). If you have a Google Account, but you haven't used Google Analytics yet, go set up Google Analytics account for yourself now.

Setting Up Google Analytics for WordPress Blog

The best way to add Google Analytics tracking code for your blog, is to use Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin.

Unless you have some very good reason, do not go editing your WordPress theme and add the tracking code manually. And even with that very good reason, think again, and just install this plugin.

You don't need to do anything else but

• install the plugin and
• add your Google Analytics Account ID to the plugin settings.

Everything else is in order by default (advanced settings are there for advanced users).

How to Install the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin.

Installation and Activation

with the latest WordPress versions, 2.7.x and onwards, the plugin installation system simple and easy:

1. go to the Plugins section,
2. click “add new”,
3. search for “Google Analytics for WordPress”
4. click “install”
5. activate the plugin after succesful install.

or you can install the plugin manually if you're running old version of WordPress:

1. Download the plugin from the Google Analytics for WordPress at WordPress Plugin Directory
2. Upload the plugin to the plugins -folder with ftp client, like FileZilla
3. Activate the plugin from the plugins -page in WordPress dashboard

For detailed instructions, check the author's plugin page:

• Google Analytics for WordPress -homepage

Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin Settings

The property ID you need for plugin settings can be seen inside Google Analytics after you've created website profile there. (Here's my tutorial for setting up Google Analytics account, if you need help with that):

Insert the property ID to the plugin settings. Outgoing links and downloads are automatically tracked if you leave the option on.

1. Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics
2. How to set up Google Analytics
3. Optimized Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog

In this article, I present the one plugin, AdRotate, that I'm currently testing in this blog. I'll tell you:

• What the AdRotate plugin is
• Examples on how you can use this plugin for many different purposes
• Step-by-step tutorial to set up ads with AdRotate, AdRotate 101 if you will, with screenshots

AdRotate is free plugin under GPL license, so you don't have to pay anything for it. And with this guide, you can set it up in matter of minutes + the time you use to set the ads up and set the placements for the ad groups you create. After that, you just have to watch and AdRotate displays your ads, at random if you configured it that way, and track clicks to boot - so you can focus on writing or whatever aspect of blogging you enjoy the most.

Like said, I'm test running the plugin at the monent and from what I've seen so far, I like it. I wanted to share these experiences with you, so if you want to find out more, read on...

What is AdRotate plugin and What You Can Do With It?

AdRotate is one of many plugins that you can use to manage ads and advertising on your blog.

With AdRotate you can:

• Save advertisement and/or affiliate codes and images to the plugin,
• set scheduling and expiration for the ads (nice if you sell direct advertising),
• set clicktracking for the ads and display the ads in many different ways, and
• display the ads anywhere in the blog, utilizing post tags, widgets and php code
• display random ads from set group (e.g. display random 468x60 banner in set area)
• display randomized or configured blocks of ads (e.g. block of several 125x125 ads that are very popular on blogs nowadays)
• and much more.

AdRotate comes with built-in widgets you can use to display the ads on sidebars or any other widget area your theme supports, which makes displaying the ads very easy. Also adding the ads to a post is very easy, for example if you do affiliate marketing article, you can set spesific ad for that article and track the displays and clicks of the ad from that one article.

The possibilities are very nice as the pluging is very flexible, so you can you it to "non-advertising" links too, just for fun or to track some spesific links. Also if you set a group of normal text links as AdRotate group, you can easily display random set of those links in your sidebar or just display all of them. Of course you could just list the links as "links" in WordPress, but with AdRotate you can set "featured link" if you like, which would display one link from your blog (perhaps some of your affiliate promotions) on top of your blog or sidebar, or whatever placement you like.

The fact that AdRotate can easily be used to rotate anything is what I liked about AdRotate, and main reason why I'm writing this post. In fact, if you look at the top right corner, where my RSS Subscription text link and RSS subscribe -pictures are, those are both displayed by AdRotate. The one picture is displayed at random from 8 different "RSS Feed" pictures and the one link is displayed at random from selection of links with different anchor texts and such. And I did all that just for fun - but now I can see how often those links and pictures are clicked, so in theory after longer period I can decide which of the pictures and link-texts is "the most efficient" one.

AdRotate Tutorial

Installation and Activation

with the latest WordPress versions, 2.7.x, the plugin installation system is so easy that everyone can do it:

1. Just go to the Plugins section,
2. click "add new",
3. search for "AdRotate"
4. click "install"
5. activate the plugin after succesful install.

or you can install the "old-fashioned way":

1. Download the plugin from the AdRotate Plugin page at WordPress Plugin Directory
2. Upload the plugin to plugins -folder with ftp client, like FileZilla
3. Activate the from the plugins -page in WordPress dashboard

Finding AdRotate from Dashboard

After succesfull installation and activation, you can see AdRotate in your Dashboard on the left (if you're using WP 2.7.x like I am):

AdRotate on the Dashboard

There are two ways to add an ad to AdRotate (that's a lot of "ad"), by Banner Wizard or Add/Edit Banner window.

The Banner Wizard is the easiest way to add, let's say Google AdSense code to AdRotate. If you read the previous post "How To Get Google AdSense and Display Ads on Your WordPress Blog", you can now use AdRotate to display those ad units, several even, and randomize what units are being show or just who the one.

How To Add Google AdSense Code Into AdRotate with Banner Wizard

• Go to Banner Wizard
• add title of this ad and
• copy the advertizing code (link, script, etc.) into the AdRotate.

STEP 1: Adding Google AdSense Code to the Banner Wizard

• Create AdRotate Group for this ad, or choose from existing ones:

Step 2: Create or Select a Group for the Ad

• In this example, we create a Group called "468x60 Banners", as the Google AdSense code I created on the AdSense Tutorial, was 468x60 banner.
• One the last page, we can see preview of the add and the codes we can use to display this ad or the group we added the ad to.
• There's code/tag that can be copied to a post and add will display there, and
• There's the php code that can be copied to php-widget or directly into the WordPress Theme
• Or you can you use one of the 5 widgets that come with the addon, and display the ad on the widget areas your theme supports.

Step 3: Copy the AdRotate code and copy it to a post, theme php-file or anywhere you want the ad or group of ads to be displayed

Displaying the Ad in a Post

So I copied the code from the Banner Wizard, and added it to this post, like this:

Copying the code tag from Banner Wizard to a Post

Google AdSense Ad is customized to the content, but it will take some time before AdSense picks up what kind of ads it should display on your site, if you haven't used it before.

How To Add Any Link and Image Into AdRotate

There is two ways to add link to AdRotate:

• copy the link to the clicktracking/ url -field in Add/Edit Banner screen to enable clicktracking (more on this later) or,
• normal link, just like you would create normal link:

<a href="http://zemalf.com/">

There is also two ways you can display images on AdRotate:

• use the direct image source, from your own server or anywhere in the world (just like you link to a "normal" picture), or
• upload the ads to the "banners" directory AdRotate creates in the wp-content folder.

Using direct link a image is easy enough, so just create a link with img-tag instead of text anchor text:

<img alt="ad1" src="http://zemalf.com/not-a-real-link-to-any-picture.jpg">

And transferring the pictures to the banners-directory isn't too hard either, if you have used ftp connection to your domain before:

Transfering Advertising Banner with Filezillla

If you copy the pictures to the banners-directory, you can then choose images from a menu in AdRotate.

In this screen you can also copy the link to the "clicktracking/ url" -field and thus, turn on the clicktracking. If you do this, you will see how many times this ad was clicked on (very useful). I also chose a new Banner Group (300x250 Banners) I created in the Manage Groups -screen:

Create / Edit Banners Screen

As I chose to use the clicktracking and used the uploaded banner, the actual link and image in the code are done using tags: %image% and %link%, like this:

<a title="ShoeMoney Free 12 week training course" href="%link%"><img title="ShoeMoney Free 12 week training course" alt="ShoeMoney Free 12 week training course Worth $$$" src="%image%" /></a>

At any time, you can check the the banner id or group id later (for linking purposes) from the Manager Banners- or Manage Groups -page. On Manage Group -page you can also create new groups. Always create groups based on the ad shape and position. For example, create a group: "125x125 Ads", and then you can display a block of ads from this group at random (so display 8 banners from 12 total for example). And adding a block of ads to your sidebar is as easy as adding a widget to a sidebar and setting the group ID to the widget!

Continuing with the example, we need to check the banner id and group id, so we can link the ad to this post...

here we check the banner id ("14") from Manage Banners -page:

Checking the Banner ID

And the group id ("4") from Manage Groups -page:

Checking the Group ID

Displaying Another Ad in a Post.

After checking the banner id (14) and group id (4), we can create the banner code, and and copy the code to this post like before with the other ad code, like this:

Copying the AdRotate tag with group and banner id to a post

So we know what code to use in the AdRotate tags in the post (in my case, group="4" and banner="14").

If you like to display the same ad in a sidebar, go to "Appearance" and "Widgets", add the AdRotate Widget 1-5 to a sidebar/widget area, and configure the group id or ids and banners you want to the widget and it will handle displaying them.

Or you can add the php code directly to your theme, if you know what you're doing. I left this "advanced" topic out of this post, but if you're used to editing your theme, adding the AdRotate php-code in there shouldnt' be a problem.

For more information, check the AdRotate Manual from the AdRotate Plugin Homepage. And if you still get stuck, post into the forum in there.

Resources and links

• AdRotate Plugin Homepage @Me and my Mac
• AdRotate @WordPress Plugin Directory

I'll be looking forwards from hearing how you do, if you decide to try AdRotate, or any other advertising management systems: Leave comment and tell how you're doing with ads on your blog and how you manage your ads and advertising...

1. How To Get Google AdSense and Display Ads on Your WordPress Blog
2. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog
3. How I Made One Dollar and 88 Cents ($1.88) With Google AdSense!

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Manage Ads and Track Clickthroughs with AdRotate Plugin in Your WordPress Blog

But of course there's a solution in the wonderful open source community and WordPress plugins that utilize the power. This isn't exactly breaking news as these have been around for while, as I picked up this post:

• WordPress Support: Writing & Editing Code. At that time, Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter Google Code project was used to implement the source code highlighting feature.

I checked if this would've worked by default on self-hosted WordPress, but it seemed like it wouldn't, so I went to plugin hunt. And there seemed to be aplenty of plugins for source code publishing, some with syntax highlighting, some just making sure code displays correctly in <code> tag.

But this is what I decided to try for now and it seems to work nicely:

• SyntaxHighlighter Evolved

So whether you want to display just some html code or more advanced source code, these kind of plugins are for you. They are good for both one-two liners as they are for hundreds of lines of serious code. There's plenty of tags in use and all you have to do is enclose the code in a tag and define a language if you want. And the plugin supports a "lighter" style with no highlighting, but securing the formatting the same way.

Since writing this post I have removed the plugin, as I only post sourcecode to posts so often, and the plugin is on with the default so it puts the javascript code to every page, unless you set if off on the post window. However, if you're blog is about coding and you post sourcecode, like html, php, c, or whatever almost every post, this plugin works great (at least until WordPress version 2.7).

Thanks for all these great blogs and bloggers for helping me by providing a bunch of information on the subject:

• WordPress Plugins That Help You Write Code @Lorelle on WordPress
• Writing Code in Your Posts - WordPress Codex
• Posting Source Code @WordPress.com Blog
• Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts @The Blog Herald
• Displaying Code In WordPress Posts @ThemeLab

So if you like to read more about source code in posts, check the above for detailed info.

1. Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog
2. Bulk Edit Posts, Categories and Tags on Your WordPress Blog
3. How To Add a XML Sitemap to WordPress Blog

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Posting Source Code on Your WordPress Blog Posts

For the whole time I've been blogging, I've always been into widgets and plugins, but there really wasn't much to do inside the blogspot. While blogspot is great to start blogging, being free and very easy to use, self-hosted blog is the only option for more serious blogging and/or tech-geek like me.

WordPress (.org) as blogging platform comes with great features as default and maintaining basic blog is very easy, like with the free services. Of course, one has to take care of hosting the blog somewhere, instead of the free spot for the blog at WordPress.com or Blogspot.com.

But when you get deeper into the WordPress and start playing with themes and plugins, it gets fun. There are thousands of plugins for WordPress, most of them free, like the platform itself, so trying them all out would take a lot of time. But fortunately there are lists and review service inside the WordPress.org, which you can check here: WordPress.org Plugin Directory.

I look for plugins with great reviews and/or lot of downloads. With little experimenting, I've found about 20 plugins I use at every WordPress blog I have at the moment.

WordPress Plugins I've tried

The list has selection of WordPress Plugins, I've tried on some of my blogs:

1. Akismet
2. All in One SEO Pack
3. Analytics360
4. Blog Metrics
5. commentluv
6. Contact Form 7
7. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
8. Enhanced WP-ContactForm
9. Exploit Scanner
10. Feedburner FeedSmith
11. Google Analytics for WordPress
12. Google XML Sitemaps
13. HeadSpace2
14. Limit Login Attempts
15. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
16. No Self Pings
17. Redirection
18. Robots Meta
19. RSS Footer
20. Search Regex
21. SEO Friendly Images
22. ServerBuddy
23. Sociable
24. Subscribe To Comments
25. Use Google Libraries
26. W3 Total Cache
27. What Would Seth Godin Do
28. WordPress Firewall
29. WordPress SEO -plugin
30. WordPress.com Stats
31. WP Greet Box
32. WP Security Scan
33. WP Smush.it
34. WP Super Cache
35. WP-DBManager
36. WP-PageNavi
37. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
38. Yoast Breadcrumbs

That's not all, but that's all I remember now, so these have been useful for me. However, I don't run them all anymore. For example, with the SEO -plugins, I've tried them all, All in One SEO Pack, HeadSpace2, etc. But eventually settled for WordPress SEO -plugin, which does what the others, but also includes the functionality from Robots Meta, RSS Footer and Yoast Breadcrumbs, all stable plugins on my blogs. It also has the feature for sitemaps, but at least for now, I haven't let go of the Google XML Sitemaps -plugin.

The Best of the Best

After trying out tens, if not hundreds of plugins, I have found a set of plugins that I use in every WordPress blog I run (the essential plugins) and a set of circumstantial plugins, which are great for some blogs, but are not needed in all (e.g. simple mini-site).

The set of recommended plugins can be found from my resources page: recommended WordPress plugins. With that list, and the ones I'm using on some blogs, here's the complete list of plugins I'm using.

The essential ones are bolded and links are to the individual guides for the those plugins that need one.

WordPress Performance and Optimization

• W3 Total Cache
• WP-DBManager
• WP Smush.it
• Use Google Libraries

SEO

• WordPress SEO -plugin
  • Includes the following old favorites:
  • RSS Footer
  • Robots Meta
  • Yoast breadcrumbs
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
• SEO Friendly Images

Security and Anti-SPAM

• Akismet
• Limit Login Attempts
• WordPress Firewall
• WP Security Scan

Commenting and social plugins

• Sociable

Utility Plugins

• Redirection
• Feedburner FeedSmith
• Contact Form 7
• MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
• WP-PageNavi

Metrics and Statistics

• Google Analytics for WordPress
• Analytics360
• Blog Metrics

Other plugins

• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

Run-on-demand plugins

These plugins I have installed, but can disable and enable as needed.

• Search Regex
• ServerBuddy
• Exploit Scanner

Experimenting New WordPress Plugins

As I've been blogging for a while, I'm quite settled for a set of recommended WordPress plugins, and I'm not exactly on the lookout for new plugins. However, occasionally I find something that is actually useful, and try them out when I have time.

When I started, if I saw something cool on another blog or someone posted "50 great plugins" -list, I was there to try them out. Not the best use of time, so I wouldn't recommend you go that road, but settle for a set of proven plugins and focus on the good stuff, which is blogging and creating content.

If you do have some plugin in mind that you really like, or just want to share your experiences, leave a comment to this article.

Updates / Version History

• 2009-05-23: Post published
• 2010-11-10: Updated, edited the list of plugins

1. The 6 most essential WordPress plugins
2. How many “must-have” WordPress plugins can there be?
3. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Experimenting Different WordPress Plugins