Huzzer » Best For Blogging

10 WordPress Plugins That Can Make a Huge Difference to Your Blog

huzzer — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:23:09 +0000

WordPress is the most popular blogging software in the world because of its open source capabilities. Anyone can program a plugin for WordPress, so there are thousands of options out there for any budding blogger. The list has been culled, and here are ten of the best WordPress plugins that can make a huge difference to your blog.

1. SEO Smart Links

This is a great solution to interlink your blog posts, getting the most out of your SEO. SEO Smart Links will automatically take the keywords and phrases on your blog and link them to the relevant categories and tags. Increasing the number of links within your blog has a chance to boost your page ranking and page views.

2. Subscribe to Comments

Keep your readers informed with a link to subscribe to comments on your posts. Readers are notified by email about further entries to a post, enticing them to return to your page and respond to the response. Commenters have plenty of options available to them: they can block the notifications, unsubscribe to posts, and even change the email address to which they are notified.

3. Top Commentators Widget

Top Commentators creates a widget in your sidebar to show who is commenting the most on your blog. There are options and customizations for this plugin that make it even easier to use.

4. Mingle WordPress

Mingle WordPress changes your WordPress blog into a social water water cooler. The plugin allows for Profile Pages, Friending, Friend Activity Pages and a Full Member Directory. Instead of having ‘just a blog,’ you can develop a full blown community with this plugin.

5. Headspace 2 SEO

With Headspace 2 SEO, you can integrate Google Analytics, Feedburner Stats and most of the other popular tracking applications into your WordPress blog. You can also apply SEO techniques to the configuration of meta data for your site on posts, pages and author pages.

6. Akismet

Akismet captures spam and allows you to review it in the ‘Comments’ area of your administration screen. This plugin is one of the best spam fighters that WordPress has to offer, capturing at least 90% of the spam that comes to your blog. The curious can get statistics on how many spammers have been thwarted.

7. Broken Link Checker

Broken links are a thing of the past with Broken Link Checker. This plugin will immediately scan posts that are made, reviewing them for missing links. Any broken links that are found go to your dashboard for correction or removal. Editing or unlinking of the links can be directly accomplished through the plugin’s page, eliminating the need for manual link editing.

8. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps will automatically generate a sitemap of your blog for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask to crawl. The plugin will automatically ping the search engines when you change your content, allowing the crawlers to see what you have to offer.

9. Polldaddy

Do you want to know what your readers think about the news? With Polldaddy, you can create polls and surveys for your readers to keep them engaged. Polldaddy allows ratings on your blog so that your readers can rate your content and elevate your thoughts to the stars. This plugin also allows you to let others see what the results of the poll are.

10. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery lets you create sortable photo albums for any images that you want on your WordPress blog. You can edit your pictures using JavaScript Effect, creating popular effects like Lightbox, Highslide or Thickbox. Plenty of features are offered for this plugin and is definitely worth installing, especially if you plan on building a portfolio.

WordPress is a powerful blogging tool that allows you to transmit your thoughts to the world. Enhancing your blog with some great plugins can change the readers’ experience from being merely okay to absolutely awesome.

James Adams is a full time staff writer at Cartridge Save where he writes about and reviews items such as HP 351 ink.

Know How Awesome Your Blog Looks On Ipad with iPad Peek

Admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:29:41 +0000

I am sure that most of us know about the new iPad that has just been launched recently. Looks cool right? But have you ever wondered how will our WordPress blog looks when it is being browsed through iPad?

Will it looks like in the iPod touch or iPhone?

For those who are interested to know, there is actually website that will let you know the rough idea of how your WordPress blog will look in iPad. I have checked mine, it is still looking great while in horizontal and also vertical position .

By the way, the site is called iPad Peek.

The sole purpose of this site is simply to give the ‘peek’ on how will your blog will look in iPad. There are no advertisement banners or even about page which make I love the site. However, do keep in mind that this site is not functioning exactly like iPad as there is no Flash for iPad. So, to get closer ‘iPad’s experience’, I would suggest you to disable Flash in your internet browser.

Below screen cast will show you how well the site is being built to give the rough idea on how will your WordPress blog looks on iPad.

10 Seconds Secret in Getting Fresh Blogging Idea

Admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:44:56 +0000

I am sure that most of us do agree that getting fresh blogging idea and updates are important to maintain the excitement in our WordPress. Unfortunately, the process in getting those can be hard as it is hard to get control on news that being published every second through blogs and Twitter.

Previously, I have share with you on how to get fresh and new blogging idea through Tweetdeck. In case you have missed the post, you can read the post through below link.

Generate Fresh and New Blogging Idea through TweetDeck.

However, the drawback of this method is it will only cover news and buzz from Twitter. How’s about those articles from the million of blogs which not being tweeted yet?

Google – Goldmine of Bloggers

For today post, I would like to share with you the method that I am using for most of the time at the moment. This method will not only cover any news from Twitter and blogs, it will only cover everything that has been indexed by Google.

First of all, let’s assume we want to know what is going on with the new Google Nexus One so that we can blog about it and give the latest update to our blog readers. However, there is always news about it being released and a lot of site claim that they have the latest leaked information about it and there is high chance that we will miss it.

So, how can we know every sites that have such information?

The best way that I can suggest you is through Google. However, it is not simply search and click because the results that will come out are not necessarily the latest one as it is depends on the relevance. Do you want to blog and share with your readers the last month news? I guess not…

When you get the search result for the term that you are searching (in this case, Google Nexus One), you will get roughly the same screen like below.

And to get the any latest news that has just been released, you have to click on the ‘Show Options’ link and click the ‘Latest’ link which you can find at the left hand side.

Right after you click the ‘Latest’ link, every blog posts, website pages and even tweets that have published for the last one hour will appear in your screen. The parts that I love most are it covers almost entire major source of information especially Twitter and the search result page will be kept updated with latest news and tweets as long you keep the page opens in your internet browser.

How can you make full use of this secret?

Especially for those blog which main purpose is not giving latest news and updates to your readers, you can make full use of this great feature by simply creating a new category for your blog specifically. The category will be specifically for latest news and developments.

For example, if your blog is about making money online, you can use the category to give your readers update on any latest news and development that will directly and indirectly impact your readers such as the FTC rules. By doing this, instead of only giving tips which almost all the blogs within you niche do, you can add some variations to your blog by providing latest news which will have impact on your readers.

I am sure your readers will love it.

If you plan to give daily updates, you simply have to click on the ‘Latest’ or ‘Past 24 hours’ links and if you plan to give weekly updates, you can simply use the ‘Past Week’ link. How convenient right?

And to make it easier, simply bookmark the search results page. So, each time you want to get the latest updates, you can simply the button and do not have to keep doing the same process all over again.

What is your secret?

I have shared my secret. What do you think? Will you use it to help you to prepare blog post in future?

And, how about you share your secret on how you get the materials for your blog post? I am sure everybody will be excited to know it.

Cheers!

Coupon for Bloggers – Best Way to Save Money for WordPress Bloggers

Admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:43:23 +0000

For those who just started blogging, the cost of setting up WordPress blog can be pretty high for some of us. Bloggers that will definitely feel the impact are especially for those who want their WordPress blog looks great but at the same time, they are in country which the currency makes them to be at the losing end.

However, in this internet age, it is almost possible to get something at a lower cost if we know the way. Rather than have to pay the full price, we can at least save few dollars which can be used for the purchase of other products, for example.

Online coupon site – The best place to start

For those who do not know, there are a lot of online coupon sites which you find discount coupons for most of online products in the internet. The most popular online coupon site is RetailMeNot. For your information, I have saved a lot from the coupons that I found in the site.

However, to find online discount coupons that are related to WordPress can be tough as in the site such as RetailMeNot have no specific area allocated to WordPress. So, it can take a lot of our time to find discount coupons for WordPress related products from what RetailMeNot claimed, 50000 online stores.

Coupons for Bloggers – Online coupon site for bloggers

For your information, there is new online coupon site, Coupon for Bloggers that has just been launched by the owner of WpRecipes.com, Jean-baptiste Jung. The best part is the coupons that are being listed are only for blogging related products. So, it would be easy for to find any interesting coupons which can save a lot of money if know how to use it well enough.

For your information, the coupons are being categorized into 5 groups. They are:

Hosting – For those who are planning to buy new web hosting for their WordPress blogs

Domain names – For those who want have new domain names for their latest blogging project

WordPress – For those who are looking for premium WordPress themes and plugins to make their blog looks and works better

Ebooks – For those who want to broaden their knowledge and skills on blogging

Blogging tools – For those who are looking for blogging tool such as Aweber for newsletters

Need other alternative?

Besides the normal online coupons site like RetailMeNot to get bargain on blogging related products, there is also another online coupon site that you can go. It is called Theme Coupons.

As compared to Coupon for Bloggers, this site focuses on more specific area i.e. premium WordPress themes. However, this site is still new and not many coupons that are available for the users. I expect that this site will grow bigger and have more coupons in few months time when the site gets the attention of the WordPress communities.

Have you use online coupon site?

Do you usually visit online coupon sites first before making any online purchase? Which site that you usually go? And what do you think about the two new online coupon sites which have been set up specifically for bloggers?

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences. I am eager to know more about them.

How to make landing page in your Facebook fan page?

Admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:55:34 +0000

Facebook has now become a really important platform and social media site for WordPress bloggers to expand their networking and get quality incoming traffics.

It is because, rather just having personal Facebook profile, we can also make a fan page for our WordPress blog which our readers can join and interact with us. Therefore, instead of mixing fans from different sites to one personal Facebook profile, we can separate them up into groups based on interest.

So, it would be easy for us to build relationship and post something which will only suit our Facebook fan’s interest and needs.

Make full use of Facebook fan page

Due to the flexibility that Facebook offers through the development of applications, we can expand our Facebook fan page towards different kind of directions. For this post, I will guide you how you can use one of its application i.e Facebook Static FBML to build a landing page for your Facebook fan page.

For those who never use this application, this application will let you to bring html element into your Facebook fan page. Therefore, you can put in images, forms and links into the fan page which is the important elements of good landing page.

By having landing page, you can easily ‘influence’ your readers to subscribe your blog or newsletters, promote the best sections of your WordPress blog and promote them to join you in other social networking sites such as Twitter.

With this tutorial, I am going to show you how can you let the landing page to appear first instead of the fan page’s wall when someone comes from your fan page’s link. To give you rough overview, image below is my landing page for my latest project – Kissing Crust’s fan page.

The steps are…

Actually the steps that you have to take to create landing page for your Facebook is simple. You just need to follow below steps.

First, after you have formed your Facebook page, you have to go to its “Edit Page” section to install the Facebook Static FBML application.

Then, you have to go straight to the end of the page and you will find ‘More applications’ section which will recommend to you application that you will probably interested with. Usually, there will be Facebook Static FBML application.

Then, click on it.

You will be directed to the application page. At the side of the application’s page, you have to click on the ‘Add to my Page’ to install the Facebook Static FBML application into your fan page.

After you have installed the application, you need to edit the application and put in your html code for your landing page. You can find the edit link in the ‘Edit Page” section.

For me, for the image that I put in the FBML page I designed using free open source editing software – GIMP and then, I uploaded them into my WordPress’s blog.

For the arrangement, I simply use table function in the ‘Add new post’ page. In case you don’t have the table function, you probably have not install TinyMCE Advanced plugin in your WordPress blog.

After you satisfy with its arrangement and design, you just need to simply copy the html and paste it into the FBML box.

After you have decided the name and saved the changes that you have made in the Static FBML page, you need to head to ‘Edit Page’ section again but for the last time. Click on the Wall settings and change the ‘View Settings’ for ‘Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else’.

There will a drop down menu that lists all of your Facebook fan page’s tabs. You have to select the tab that have the name of your Static FBML page that you named earlier on.

By selecting that page, the Static FBML page will be the first that appears in your Facebook Fan Page instead of your wall.

And now, you have your own landing page for your WordPress blog’s fan Page. The steps are easy and straight forward right?

Your thoughts and opinions…

Do you have Facebook fan page for your WordPress blog? Does it help you to build closer relationship with your readers?

And what do you think about this tutorial? It is important for WordPress bloggers to know it?

Feel free to share thoughts and opinions. I am eager to know more about it.

WordPress Freelancer: Get Hourly Rate Using FreelanceSwitch Calculator

Admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:09:37 +0000

Rather just being only WordPress blogger, some of us have gone further up by becoming freelancer after gathering enough skills and knowledge on the topic that they are blogging about.

They are also WordPress bloggers who take WordPress project as they are have familiar enough with WordPress and believe that they have enough knowledge to take up simple WordPress project at early stage.

What is the best pricing approach?

However, it is crucial for us to know what is the hourly rate that we should charge on any project that we are going to take. It is because we must balance up between profits that we decide to earn and the customer’s bargaining power as there are probably a lot of people out there that offers same service at cheaper price.

We should think what is the reason customer will choose us as compared to others and priced our service accordingly.

Freelance Swith Calculator – Simple tool for freelancer

FreelanceSwitch is a site that is specifically being set up for freelancers which has blog, forum, job board and freelancing resources. Among the freelancing sources that it has is tool that can give freelancer rough estimate on hourly rate that freelancer should charge.

The tool is called FreelanceSwitch Hourly Rate Calculator.

This is the quote from the tool page:

We have developed this hourly rate calculator to give you a guide based on your costs, number of billable hours and desired profit. It is a simple tool for you to play with.

The way how it calculates the hourly rate is consisted of four elements which is business cost, personal cost, number of hours we can actually bill and amount of profit we would like to have.

What you should know about this tool is you will only you the benchmark i.e. rough idea on hourly rate that you should charge your client. The rate should be adjusted accordingly depends on market demand and complexity of the project for example.

Personally I think this is a great tool as rather just take only business cost into account, it also takes into consideration the personal cost that we incur which we should considered before taken any freelanced project. I also love for the fact that it will give us two final hourly rate figures which are ideal hourly rate and hourly rate to breakeven i.e. cost equal to revenue.

Few screenshots of the tool:

What do you think?

Have you used this tool before? What d you think about it? Does it help you to get rough idea on the hourly rate that you charge your client? I am eager to know more about it.

Cheers!

Google Adwords Keywords Tool : Secret of WordPress Blog Post’s SEO

Admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:11:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has a special place in the development of WordPress blog as if it is succeed, you can help us in generating huge incoming traffics from search engines. Without knowing the basic idea of SEO, it can be pretty tough for our WordPress blog to get the traffics that it deserves.

Keywords – Key of search engine optimization (SEO)

As most of us know, the best way to ‘SEO’ing our blog post is by inserting keywords that not only related to our WordPress blog but has huge users/searchers that attached on the particular keywords.

It is because in general point of view, by taking into account both aspects, it will bring our whole blog further up in the search engine results as the same keyword will be repeated in every blog posts which therefore give strong ‘relationship’ between our WordPress blog and the keywords that we decide to use.

In more specific point of view, by using keywords that have high search volume, it can help our blog post to have better rank in the search engine result and therefore bring huge incoming traffics on that post.

However, it is important for you to know that the keywords that we have chosen suit our readers and search engine such as Google i.e. well blended into the blog post as if not, it will highly likely irritate your readers and do not stuff in the keywords which make it looks like you are spamming your own blog.

How can you know high volume keywords?

There are a lot of tools out there, free and paid that offer the service of providing you the figure of search volume on any keywords that we would like to know.

However, not each of them can give you accurate and user friendly data.

One of the tools that I find helpful for our WordPress blog is Google AdWords Keywords Tool. I have used it for quite some time and personally, I feel that this tool is user friendly and can give rough idea on which keywords should we use and consider. Plus, it is free!

Rather simply giving you only search volume for the keyword that you have chosen, this tool will give you two groups of figure – global search volume and local search volume which you change base on your target audience.This is definitely handy for those who only target their local audience due to for example language barrier and suitability of product that they are blogging about.

What else Google Adwords Keywords Tool offers?

This tool will also provide you more detailed figures that you can use to consider other related keywords. They are:

Keywords related to term(s) entered - Add (s) on keyword that Google feels relevant
Additional keywords to consider – Give you list of related keywords that are within your keywords area

With the help of this tool, you can know roughly how many search volume that the selected keyword has and give you suggestion on other related keywords.

Therefore, if the first keyword has low search volume, you can replace it with other related keyword which has higher search volume but will not affect the blog post’s quality directly.

What do you think?

Have you use Google AdWords Keywords Tool before? What do you think? Does it work great for you in terms of incoming traffics from search engine? Feel free to share your experience and opinions on this tool.

Share Blog Post Through Email With MailCounter

Admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:50:11 +0000

Sharing blog post through email has not really get into attention among blog readers as compared to the social media site such as Twitter and Facebook.

Base on my observation, WordPress bloggers themselves are the reason as they are hardly focus on this and highlight how blog readers can share the blog post through email.

Email: Its importance for WordPress blog

I believe that it is crucial for our WordPress blog and we should ‘invite’ our blog readers to help us promote our blog posts to their friends through email. It is because I’m sure that most of us will check out inbox for at least once each day.

There will also high possibility for the receivers of the emails to do same thing if they find our blog posts are worth sharing. The reason is for me, email has closer and more personal connection with me as compared to Facebook and Twitter.

The best way is

Before this, our blog readers can hardly find the icon that let them to email our blog post to their friends due to the size of the icon. It is definitely a huge lost as email can be another great source of quality traffics.

With the influence of TweetMeme and Facebook share button which we can easily see in most of blog posts, MailCounter has been developed by The Next Web to encourage more readers of our blog to share with their friends through email.

Rather simply a sharing tool, it will also count the amount of emails that have been sent by your readers to their friends for one particular post. It will give psychological affect to your readers as if they find out that others are sharing our blog posts, they will feel that should too.

The best part of MailCounter is its simplicity. For you to have MailCounter button in your WordPress blog, you do not need to set up and install anything. You just need to have copy and paste below codes into your WordPress blog’s single.php file.

However, the weakness that MailCounter has, base on my opinion is when your readers want to share your blog post with their friends through email, they will be directed straight away to Microsoft Outlook when they hit the MailCounter button.

Unfortunately, not many of us are comfortable and familiar with Microsoft Outlook.

What do you think?

What do you think on email’s role in bringing traffics to our WordPress blogs? Will it be substituted by social media sites in terms of bringing quality traffics?

And have you used MailCounter? What do you feel about this latest WordPress tool?

Share with us. It is great to have your thoughts and opinions over Huzzer Magazine.

Bring Your WordPress Blog Closer to Your Readers with Meebo Bar

Admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:10:27 +0000

Couple weeks before, I have shared with all of you about how can you have Mashable’s ‘drag and share’ feature in your WordPress blog. In case you have missed the post, below link can be handy for you.

Mashable Style ‘Drag and Share’ WordPress Plugin

For your information, the developer behind Mashable’s ‘drag and share’ feature is Meebo.

What is Meebo?

In case you have no clue at all what Meebo actually is, basically Meebo lets users gather their friends on a single buddy list where they can talk and share content in real-time across different IM platforms, communities, and traditional social networks.

Previously, Meebo’s main focus is providing online chatting platform for major chatting services such as Yahoo Messenger, Gmail and MSN. For you information, there are about 100 million people sharing over 6 billion messages and 75 million links every month through Meebo which have made Meebo as Web’s fastest growing social media companies.

Meebo Bar – Latest Awesome Tool from Meebo

This tool has been put into testing in Mashable in since early September this year which since then it is not opened for public use yet. However, this tool has just recently opened for public use.

In my first impression, Meebo Bar’s ‘drag and share’ feature performs and looks better as compared to the Mashable’s ‘drag and share’ WordPress plugin developed by Andrian Apan.

By installing this tool into our WordPress blog, your readers can easily share your blog post by dragging any pictures in the blog post.

Unfortunately, Meebo Bar only allows you to drag blog post’s picture and share it to limited sites which are Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! Updates and Email. There is no option which allows you to other social media sites such as Digg, Del.ic.ous or Reddit.

What Else Meebo Bar Offers?

Besides the “Drag and Share” feature, Meebo Bar also offers two other features. It will definitely make your WordPress blog as a great place for your readers to gain new knowledge and interact with you and other readers with the same interests.

Along the ‘Drag and Share’ feature, Meebo Bar also comes with footer bar which will always appear in your WordPress blog regardless your readers scroll up or down your WordPress blog’s page.

With this bar, it complements the weakness the ‘drag and share’ feature. You can add the button of StumbleUpon, Digg, Flickr and YouTube which your readers can make full use of them. You can also add your Facebook Fan Page in the footer bar which makes the interactions between you and your fans easier.

Meebo Bar also integrate its chatting service into the footer bar. With the chatting service in the footer bar, you and your readers can chat with friends and the best thing is you can use the ‘drag and share’ feature with it. Users just need to drag blog post’s image into the pop up chat box if you want to share blog post with their readers.

What do you think?

When the first time I heard about Meebo bar is open to public, I straight away installed it into Huzzer Magazine as I find it great.

How about you? Are you feel the same thing or have the opposite view? It would be great to know your opinions from your own point of view.

I am eager to know your feedback.

Cheers!

P/s it would be great if you can add me as your Meebo’s friends so that we can be closer and interact in better ways. Plus, what do you think with Huzzer Magazine’s new footer bar?

Analyse WordPress Blog’s Traffic Further With Clicks Heat Map

Admin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:43:28 +0000

By having and just simply looking at our WordPress blog’s traffic statistics will not bring any value to us. The things after having and looking at the statistics are the one that are important. If not, it is simply a waste of our time which we can use for better purposes.

Where Are Your Traffics Heading?

Rather just knowing from where your visitors come from and to where there heading to, it is crucial to know what area of your WordPress blog that most of traffics are attracted to. By knowing this, you can restructure your blog so that the area that has low exposure can get enough exposure that it deserves.

This can be done by installing script that will inform you in graphics which area has more traffic as compared to others. The area that has more traffic will be in red as it will be blue if it has low traffics.

What are the tools that you can use?

There are two tools that you can use for your WordPress blog – free and paid tools.

For the free clicks heat map tool, you can use ClickHeat. This tool is an open source tool and launched under GPL licence.

With ClickHeat, there is option that you can choose from that let you view the clicks heat map base on your needs and interests.

However, if you want better tools that have more features and better interface, you can give a try on Crazy Egg.

Due to the fact that it provides more advanced features, Crazy Egg will charge you on monthly basis. The cheapest plan is at $9/month that entitle you to track up to 10000 visits per month. The rate will get higher base on the visits that you get for you WordPress blog.

Which one suits you?

Personally, I think the free tool is good enough for WordPress bloggers who so not heavily monetize their blog. It is because it still can give you the rough image on the area that most of your traffics focus on.

However, if you have WordPress blog that mainly focus on selling products and want to convert most of your leads to customers, Crazy Egg is a great tool and the money spent will definitely give positive returns.

What do you think?

What do you think? Will clicks heat map help us to improve our WordPress blog? It would be great if you can share your thoughts and experience if you have tried one of these tools.

Cheers!