I gave a talk the other night at the Boston WordPress meetup about how I use shortcodes to enable my clients to create better looking content. A problem I was having was people were paying me to set them up on WordPress so they can take control of their content and then they were paying me even more to edit the content for them to “make it look pretty”. I guess if you need the business this isn’t a problem but I like to avoid small jobs, like manipulating content, so I can focus on my bigger projects and plugin support.

Pros and Cons of WordPress Shortcodes

Themes vs Plugins

The most popular implementation is currently in premium WordPress themes as a means of creating better looking content that matches the look and feel of the rest of the site. The problem then becomes you are tied to that theme if a majority of your site is relying on theme shortcodes to lay out your content. This won’t be a problem if you plan on rewriting your content but definitely something worth keeping in mind. It’s best to take functionality out of your theme you would like to be theme independent and put it in a functionality plugin.

My problem with using formatting shortcodes in a plugin as opposed to a theme is your content is less likely to match the look and feel of the rest of the site. That’s not to say their aren’t some great solutions out there and ultimately using a plugin will keep your content theme independent.

Usability

One of the obvious problems with shortcodes is if you’re taking the time to learn them, you can probably just learn HTML and CSS. I find this is true in most cases but not all. A shortcode is still easier to to use if you find the Visual/HTML editor confusing. You also don’t have to muck around with CSS.

One thing I think helps tremendously is the presence of a user interface to assist in the creation of the shortcodes. Most of the time this is in the form of a button on the visual editor that provides a popup with more options. There is no standard implementation of this so you won’t always have the luxury. More important is you now know it’s possible and can keep an eye out for how themes approach this problem. Most premium themes in ThemeForest do a good job of this.

Speed

If you don’t have to use shortcodes, just don’t use them. We’re talking milliseconds here in most cases so it really doesn’t matter too much. One problem with shortcodes is you cannot detect if a shortcode is being used in your content from your header so you can conditionally load javascript. You can however conditionally load javascript in the footer but it can be kind of a hack.

Resources

Code Snippets

• 10 incredibly cool WordPress shortcodes - Cats Who Code
• Mastering WordPress Shortcodes – Smashing Magazine

Advanced Development

• How to load JavaScript like a WordPress Master – scribu
• Make Shortcodes User-Friendly – Gary Cao

Plugins & Themes

• Styles with Shortcodes for WordPress
• ElegantThemes
• JShortCodes
• HubSpot for WordPress
• ThemeForest

Slides from Boston WordPress Meetup

[slideshare id=8441481&doc=wordpressandshortcodes-110627214435-phpapp02]

I used the [slideshare] shortcode to display the slides!

Come to Boston WordCamp

I’ll be speaking more about shortcodes again at Boston WordCamp so be sure to go and sign up. I’ll be showing different examples of how businesses can use shortcodes to create better looking content. There are a bunch of other great speakers with some very interesting topics lined up. It’s sure to be a great time and an awesome place to get brushed up on all the latest WordPress tips and tricks.

What Are Your Options?

Google +1

The Google +1 button essentially socializes your search results and keeps tabs of your personal +1′s on your Google profile. If you needed proof of social signals affecting search results this is it.  A link in your search engine results will get a little boost if someone you know +1′d that link or if a large part of the general population +1′d that link.

This button is still pretty new but you will certainly see it often. This is Google’s direct answer to the Facebook Like button so expect to see the two together.

Facebook Like

Facebook has changed the way you share content a few times however the Facebook Like button is their most recent toy. It makes use of the open graph to identify and connect your liked content to Facebook pages, activities, music, movies, etc.

From the AOL/Nielsen Content Sharing study, we know people prefer to share content with friends and family. That makes Facebook an important place to make your content easily shareable on. Make sure to make use of the open graph to fine tune how your content is shared and to claim your stake in the open graph.

Twitter Retweet

Twitter didn’t always have it’s own retweet button. In the beginning there was TweetMeme. A few tried to copy what Tweetmeme had created however only BackType and Topsy succeeded where others failed. Finally Twitter released it’s own button that gives you the option of choosing a Twitter profile to recommend after a user shares your content. Each retweet button has it’s perks but make sure you display one on your site.

LinkedIn

The LinkedIn button is still fairly new but a great way to easily enable readers to share your content with their relevant networks on LinkedIn. This button will probably perform best with business, marketing and assorted internet related sites.

Email

That AOL/Nielsen Content Sharing study mentioned earlier stated 66% of the population use email as primary method of sharing. Offer an easy way to share your content via email because people seem to like doing that. I’m not fully convinced you need to display a button or link to encourage sharing over email because people are probably already used to just copying and pasting into email. However it never hurts to make things easier.

Social Bookmarking sites

I personally get waves of traffic from Stumbleupon and Reddit and some steady traffic from Delicious. Look at your analytics to figure out which sites your content is getting shared on and only display social bookmarking buttons that are performing well.

Some sites to consider are:

• Reddit
• Stumbleupon
• Digg
• Delicious
• Sphinn

So Which Buttons Should I Use?

Most sites seem to stick to Facebook and Twitter because the share counts are traditionally higher because of the nature of the services. You might also want to experiment with LinkedIn and the Google +1 button as they increase in popularity.

I suggest only using buttons that display share counts. Displaying buttons with higher share counts creates a form of social proof that might encourage other readers to share your content. Also, displaying too many buttons can slow down your site which can in turn result in readers leaving your site while waiting for the page to load.

Socialize WordPress Plugin

The Socialize plugin for WordPress is a social bookmarking plugin that makes it easy to insert popular social sharing buttons into your content. The plugin is unique in that you can easily select which button to display on a page to page basis as well as rearrange the order of the buttons on that page. The plugin also encourages using actionable buttons recognized by the community as popular methods of sharing content. The plugin includes the new Google +1 button, 4 Twitter buttons, 2 Facebook buttons, a custom Delicious button, the LinkedIn button and a few more widgets and buttons from popular social media sites. Learn more on the WordPress plugin page.

Useful WordPress Page Templates

1. Full Width Page Template

   This is probably the most widely used page template. It’s popular for landing pages on business sites and sometimes just an easy way to make extra space for a large graphic.

   • (Example)
   • (Code)

2. Site Map Page Template

   A sitemap could be generated by a plugin but themes can often display them much more elegantly.

   • (Example)
   • (Code)

3. Gallery Page Template

   A gallery page template could pull all images attached to a post and display them in an organized manner with some flashy effect. Also keep the new post formats and gallery shortcode in mind when creating galleries on the fly.

   • (Example)

4. List Subpages/ChildPages Template

   This page template display links of its subpages. Comes in handy more than you would think. This makes it easy to generate press release and news archives without using posts.

   • (Code)

5. Team/Author Page Template

   A team/author page template could display a list of employees at your company or authors of your blog by pulling from registered WordPress users or a custom post type.

   • (Example)
   • (Code)

6. Social Stream Page Template

   Why not have a page template that lays out all of your social streams in an organized manner.

   • (Example)

7. Logged In Page Template

   A logged in page template is an easy way to restrict access to only logged in subscribers of your site.

   • (Example)
   • (Code)

8. Widgetized Content Page Template

   This template would turn your main content area into a sidebar so you could load widgets where your content usually is.

   • (Code)

9. Portfolio Page Template

   This could display images similar to the gallery page template or it could have its own custom post type to pull from.

   • (Example)

10. Redirect Page Template

    This is a simple page template I’ve seen in a few popular premium themes. It’s basically an easy way to do a 301 redirect on your website without using plugins.

    • (Code)

11. Contact Page Template

    Some themes go as far as integrating custom form builders. You should at least look for good contact page templates. It’s also just an easy way to insert contact forms into pages.

    • (Example)
    • (Code)

12. Blog Page Template

    A blog page templates displays your blog posts. Some themes will give you a few different display options.

    • (Example)
    • (Code)

13. Custom RSS Page Template

    This page template makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any page.

    • (Code)

14. Redirect to Child

    Sometime you might have several subpages grouped together but no need for the parent page that holds them. This page template automatically redirects to the first child page.

    • (Code)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You could have custom page templates for videos, testimonials, services pages and more.

Let me know of any other page template ideas I should add to the list and maybe any themes you think are using WordPress page templates in cool ways.

Video of Socialize 2.0 Settings

More Placement Control

I cleaned up the stylesheet a bit to play nice with certain buttons, Facebook Like, and created a new option to display your buttons horizontally. The stylesheet can also now be disabled so you can create custom code.

Sorting

I’ve wanted this one for awhile. What sets Socialize apart from the rest is the ability to selectively display the buttons of your choice on different posts, pages, etc. The only thing missing was the ability to easily rearrange the order of the selected buttons.

Well now rearranging buttons is as easy as dragging them around and saving your post. You can also change the order of the default buttons being displayed in the same manner.

Open Graph Integration

Open Graph meta tags help your site become a rich object in a social graph. Facebook and other sites use this data to learn more about your site and the page being shared.

You can now easily associate your Facebook Like button with a Facebook page using you App ID.

Bitly Integration

Bitly is a great way to get simple click data about a link all the while keeping the link small and friendly for the internet. You can now insert your Bitly username and API key to generate Bitly links you can track.

More Design Control

While I was updating the Socialize plugin, I began adding more means of controlling the looks of the share buttons. I ended up with a whole new page in the admin with complete control over every button in the Socialize plugin.

I also revamped the Call to Action area, allowing you to edit every aspect of how it’s displayed. You can change the border size, color and style as well as use template tags to change the HTML within the Call to Action area.

Custom Post Type Support

Finally, I added better Custom Post type support to the point where you can disable and enable the socialize plugin on specific post types.

The Future

I had a lot planned for this release but time forced me to trim some of the fat. I won’t give up on some of my ideas tho and here are some features to keep en eye out for:

• Mobile integration
• Shortcodes
• Developer API
• Front End editing
• New/Custom Buttons

… and some secret awesome stuff you’ll just have to wait for.

What Is Socialize?

The idea was to create an easy to use plugin that allowed bloggers to selectively add social bookmarks to their post. Furthermore I wanted to only use actionable buttons with counters because I believe displaying a posts social activity gives it positive social proof and can lead to more shares and more views.

This plugin also includes what I like to call an ‘alert box’ that is selectively displayed below posts and pages to encourage comments and sharing. You can also insert buttons into this post to increase the sharing potential.

The plugin is designed to make it easy for readers to share your content and give you full control of what is displayed where.

Download Socialize

So go check out the plugin page and try it out.

Remember if you are upgrading, be sure to deactivate the plugin first and reactivate it once you have uploaded the files.

A New Resource For Businesses on WordPress

I’m starting a newsletter aimed at helping businesses get the most out of WordPress. It’s free to subscribe and I’ll be creating original WordPress plugins as exclusive gifts to my subscribers. You can find more information at WPBusiness.info.

Plugins For Business Websites

Working with WordPress should be easy. What started out as simple blog software is now a powerful content management system with a growing list of community generated plugins to help you get what ever functionality your company needs on your website. Below is a list of plugins I think all businesses should be aware of. The goal is to minimize the amount of time needed to manage your site so you can focus on your business. Every business has different website goals so choose the ones that are best for you.

HubSpot for WordPress

This plugin from HubSpot helps you manage popular functionality on business websites like your team page and contact page. It also helps you manage calls to action across your site so you can track online campaigns and optimize your actions as needed.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO helps avoid duplicate content issues and encourages common SEO best practices when creating and editing posts. You could get by without an SEO plugin if you really wanted to as WordPress does a great job by itself and your content is really all that matters.

Gravity Forms

This plugin solves one of WordPress biggest shortcomings, the lack of a form generator. There are a lot of plugins that do a great job but Gravity Forms is the easiest to use. Just drag and drop the form elements you want and easily configure and insert into posts. Like I said, your WordPress site should work for you, not the other way around.

(I only endorse a few premium plugins and this is one of them. This is a paid link so if you like it please use it.)

Subscribe2 HTML

It’s important to keep your subscribers coming back to your site. If you are regularly blogging and posting valuable content you should allow visitors to subscribe via email so they can get future articles delivered to their email.

WordPress Portfolio Plugin

This post is about keeping your site easy to manage and making it work for you. Showing off your work is essential for a lot of business sites so you need an easy way to manage it. Enter WordPress portfolio. Easily group projects and display them on your site for the world to see how awesome you really are.

Events

This plugin is great for scheduling events to be displayed on your site in the sidebar or on its own events page. Events can be recurring and can link to external registration pages.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Retaining your visitors by recommending related content is an easy way to increase time on site and your odds of converting the visit into a lead.

WPtouch

The rise of the smart phone has raised the demand for mobile enabled websites. The great thing about using WordPress to manage your content is you can easily install a plugin to make your site mobile ready.

WP-Stats-Dashboard

Back to this posts mantra, “making your site work for you”, your site data should be readily available as soon as you log in so you can gauge its success. This plugin lets you display the stats relevant to your business on your dashboard so you can be up to speed on your sites metrics in seconds.

Easily navigate pages on dashboard

While we are making things easy, I’ve used this plugin on several business sites to create a one click access point to pages from the main dashboard. It’s also an easy way to see your site’s layout without having to dig.

J Shortcodes

This plugin allows you to easily create customized styled web elements like buttons, content boxes, tabs, accordion panels and more. It’s an easy way to help content stick out without having to know CSS or HTML.

Custom Admin Branding

Last but not least you should make your website yours. Branding WordPress is easy with the custom admin branding plugin.

-

Your business site should be easy to manage and deliver results. You should be able to easily track those results and make changes as needed. Experiment with different plugins and look at what others are doing. Make your website work for you.

- Header photo by vladislav.bezrukov

Gravity Forms

Gravity forms makes it incredibly easy to create web forms for your site. Some things I liked about it were the conditional form fields and the ability to monitor and export data. If you can’t shell out the money for Gravity Forms, Contact Forms 7 is still a suitable alternative.

Google Analytics for WordPress

As far as Google Analytics plugins go, this one is the best. Not only does it assist in adding the Google Analytics tracking code but it can also track outbound links and insert itself in the header or footer.

WordPress SEO

WordPress SEO is the most complete search engine optimization plugin you will find. Not only does it assist with titles and meta information but it can create XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs and much more.

Open Graph Protocol Tools

This plugin adds meta information to your WordPress header to enable your web page to become a rich object in a social graph. The Open Graph Protocal is used on Facebook to enable any web page to have the same functionality as a Facebook Page. If you’re having problems with Facebook or Digg using the wrong image when you try and submit your posts this plugin might help.

Socialize

I have a few plugins in the WordPress plugin repository but this is the only one I think people really need to know about. It allows you to selectively display the most popular social bookmarking buttons on your website. It also provides a call to action area at the bottom that you can edit for specific posts to request further action from your readers.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is the fastest caching plugin for WordPress and is used by a lot of popular websites.

WPtouch

WPtouch is the most popular plugin for making your website mobile ready. The plugin detects mobile browsers and styles your site accordingly.

Secure WordPress

Secure WordPress allows you to selectively turn off WordPress functionality that poses a threat to your site.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

A great way to keep people on your blog is to recommend similar blog posts when they have finished reading the current one. The plugin has a bunch of settings making it easy to customize for your blog.

WP-DB-Backup

This one is straight and to the point. Back up your wordpress site so if something goes wrong you don’t kill yourself.

Subscribe to Comments

This plugin goes on my list of essentials. It’s the easiest way to get repeat visits from your commenters. It basically allows commenters to subscribe to all future comments on a post.

WordPress Blog Stats

I use this in conjunction with Google Analytics for two reasons.

1. I like having stats integrated into my dashboard.
2. I like being able to use that data with other plugins.

It’s not like the data is collected any faster than Google Analytics as both have a decent delay however it’s nice to see what another service has to say about my websites traffic.

Akismet

This one’s simple, it marks spam as spam for you so you don’t have to.

If you know of any other cool plugins that make use of the WordPress dashboard please share in the comments.

WP-Stats-Dashboard

Display your blog’s stats graph plus your blog traffic, social engagement and social influence directly in your dashboard. See how you’re ranking on Alexa, check out your Technorati authority, monitor your ranking across multiple sites and much more. Once you install this plugin you’ll wonder how you ever managed to track your social media worth without it.

WordPress Stats

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics about your visitors. However I found that even though something like Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface.

Easily navigate pages on dashboard

Display a folder tree of your pages that is easy to expand and contract on your Dashboard. Designed for people that use WordPress as a content management system.

Facebook Dashboard

This plug-in addes the Facebook for iGoogle gadget (published by Google) to your WordPress dashboard.

Meet Your Commenters

When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network.

List Rank Dashboard Widget

Displays the rankings of a configurable list of sites in a dashboard widget. Includes a shortcode to display individual rankings in post, pages and sidebar widgets.

WordPress Easy ToDo

Create a To Do list on the WordPress Dashboard. This tool is very interesting if you’re writing posts with several authors.

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This is just a small sampling of plugins that add widgets to the WordPress dashboard but I thought they were plugins worth noting.

The best part about finding new WordPress themes through these lists is you will discover even more cool new themes as you begin to click through to the individual theme developers pages.

… explore and enjoy!

Free WordPress Themes

Premium WordPress Themes

Elegant Themes

Theme Forest

StudioPress

WooThemes

iThemes

More Premium Themes On WordPress.org

Let Me Know What You Think!

Please share your favorite WordPress themes or even just your favorite place to find them in the comments.

The purpose of this post is to educate my clients and readers on some of the best practices concerning HTML in their WordPress posts and pages. Sure you can just write blocks of text and hope the content is compelling enough to stick but knowing a little HTML can go a long way in making your posts easier to read.

Learn Basic HTML

Paragraphs and Line Breaks:

The WordPress editor automatically removes <br> and <p> tags that don’t have any attributes and  replaces them when your WordPress theme displays your content. This causes a lot of confusion when people who already know some HTML start trying to use the WordPress HTML editor and their paragraph tags keep disappearing. WordPress interprets a single line break as <br> and a double line break as <p>.

Headers:

Headers are a great way to tell your readers (and search engines) what the next block of text is about. Us humans have become accustomed to scanning posts rather than reading every little word. For this reason headers are a great way to help a reader find exactly what they’re looking for within your post.

<h1>Most Important Header</h1>
<h2>Second Most Important Header</h2>
<h3>Third Most Important Header</h3>
...
<h6>Least Important Header</h6>

I usually try to pick up where my theme left off. So if my post title is using <h2> tags I will use <h3> tags to punctuate my main points in my post.

Images:

I personally think images are the most important part of a post next to its content. You are best off using the Upload/Insert functionality in your post editor. If your theme supports featured images you should most definitely be using them.

One of my WordPress image pet peeves is when people don’t use the built in CSS classes to align their images to the content.  These are classes that the WordPress post editor uses by default and most quality themes will support.

A basic left aligned image in WordPress would look like:

<img src="example.jpg" class="alignleft" />

And there you have it. I’ll talk about the importance of additional tags like Alt and Title in a bit. For now let’s move on.

Lists:

Lists are a very important part of making your post scannable. I try and use them whenever I want to highlight key points because I know the reader is more likely to read them. There are two types of lists; ordered and unordered.

Ordered lists are exactly what they sound like:

1. First
2. Second
3. Third

And alternatively, an unordered list looks as follows:

• Something
• Something Else
• And More

Your sidebar and navigation menus are most likely already making use of lists because of their ability to efficiently organize information. The basic syntax of a list is pretty straightforward.

First you need to declare what type of list you are using

• <ol> – Ordered List
• <ul> – Unordered List

And then you need to wrap your list items with the <li> tag.

A completed unordered list could look like this:

<ul>
<li>Something</li>
<li>Something Else</li>
<li>And More</li>
</ul>

Formatting:

You’ve got your main points highlighted with headers, lists and images to draw your readers eye. Now you can run though your post and do any additional needed styling to accentuate any remaining key ideas.

<strong> – Makes your content bold. Use instead of <b> to help search engines give extra weight.
<em> – Makes your content italic. Use instead of <i> to help search engines give extra weight.
<a href=""> – The anchor tag can be used to link to other websites or within your site. The href attribute specifies the destination of a link.
<blockquote> – Most themes will indent and emphasize blockquote text so this is a great way to emphasize chunks of text and quotes.
<pre> – By default, this tag maintains a text format. Good for bits of text where you want to preserve line breaks and spaces.
<code> – This tag distinguishes text that is computer code from normal language
<del> –  This tag is useful for chunks of text you want to delete after a post has been published. Most browsers will render it as the original text with a line through it.
<ins> –  This tag is useful for chunks of text you may want to add to your post after it has been published. Most browsers will render it as the original text with a line under it.

Accessibility

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities via Wikipedia. WordPress recommends that you use Alt and Title tags on images as well as Title tags on links.

Example:

<a href="example.html" title="Example"><img src="example.jpg" alt="Example" title="Example" /></a>

Using The HTML Editor (Video)

Conclusion

This is only a small sampling of the HTML tags you can use based on the ones I thought were most important. All of these HTML tags are either built into the WordPress editor or supported by popular WordPress themes. Of course focus more on the quality of your posts than using as many HTML tags as possible. Look at some of your favorite blogs to get an idea of how you might want to structure your posts. With a better understanding of whats possible you can create a more personal style.

Further Reading

Here are some sites and posts worth checking out to learn more about HTML and blogging on WordPress.

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts
• http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
• http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/20/basic-in-post-html/
• http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/quicktags/

- Image by cdsessums

Download Now

How much different is this version than the last? Well here is a complete list of the latest changes:

• Commented out javascript
• Added security to page meta box
• Added Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz buttons
• Removed custom Facebook button and replaced with official Facebook Share button
• Created Delicious button with save count
• Provided options to float in-content buttons to right or left
• Provided options to display buttons on different pages
• Added option to hide alert box on specific pages
• Fixed CSS
• Plugin now updates upon activation and keeps record of version
• Buttons can now be displayed in feeds

Highlights

New Buttons

I’ve added Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz due to popular demand. I also went ahead and changed the old Facebook image I was using and replaced it with the official Facebook Share Button.

My favorite addition is the new delicious button. It was the only button without an official or nice looking share button with a save count. So I made my own, hope you like it.

New Position Settings

You can control whether buttons are displayed on posts, pages, archives, search pages and even your feed. You can also control if the buttons are displayed on the left or right side of the content.

Fixed JavaScript and CSS Problems

I took care or several problems where JavaScript was being displayed on pages and buttons weren’t positioning correctly.

What Is Socialize?

The idea was to create an easy to use plugin that allowed bloggers to selectively add social bookmarks to their post. Furthermore I wanted to only use actionable buttons with counters because I believe displaying a posts social activity gives it positive social proof and can lead to more shares and more views.

This plugin also includes what I like to call an ‘alert box’ that is selectively displayed below posts and pages to encourage comments and sharing. You can also insert buttons into this post to increase the sharing potential.

The plugin is designed to make it easy for readers to share your content and give you full control of what is displayed where.

Download Socialize

So go check out the plugin page and try it out.

Remember if you are upgrading, be sure to deactivate the plugin first and reactivate it once you have uploaded the files.

Keep in mind that these are the basics and this is not a guide on how to develop themes for public release.

What You Will Need

• An XHTML web template
• A WordPress install
• A text editor (Like Dreamweaver or Notepad++)
• An FTP client (Like Filezilla)

Getting Started

First, let’s set up our theme files.

Prepare your files

For this tutorial we are going to use the minimum number of theme files needed to create a functional WordPress theme. Your existing template files should include the following:

• An HTML Template File
• A CSS Stylesheet
• An images folder

You should rename your HTML Template File to ‘index.php’ and your CSS Stylesheet to ‘style.css’. This is important and is how WordPress knows which files are which.

This is an example of what your theme folder should look like

Add WordPress Theme Info (video)

This is where your WordPress Theme gets your theme name, description, author link, etc. All you need to do is create a commented out area at the top of your stylesheet as follows:

/*
Theme Name: Rose
Theme URI: the-theme’s-homepage
Description: a-brief-description
Author: your-name
Author URI: your-URI
Template: use-this-to-define-a-parent-theme–optional
Version: a-number–optional
.
General comments/License Statement if any.
.
*/
CSS Goes here…

Adding Template Tags To Your Theme

Template Tags are bits of code that WordPress uses to populate your website with content. Different tags display different bits of information from the WordPress database. These are the main tags needed to make your WordPress theme work.

Page Title – (video)

Change whatever is within your <title></title> tags to:

<?PHP wp_title(”); ?>

Stylesheet – (video)

We are going to need to swap out the call to our stylesheet with:

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?PHP bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url’); ?>” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />

Plugin Hooks – (video)

Next you will need to add Action Hook Template Tags so WordPress plugins can access your theme. All you need to do is add:

<?PHP wp_head(); ?>

to your header (Usually write above the closing </head> tag).

Then you should add:

<?PHP wp_footer(); ?>

to your footer (Usually write above your </body> tag).

Media and Script Paths – (video)

By default, your paths will most likely reference your site root. You will need to point all of your multimedia, scripts and stylesheets to your new theme folder within the WordPress file structure using:

<?PHP bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>

The easiest way to do this is to do a search and replace for ‘src=’ and add the appropriate template tags. This is not fool proof as not all template structures are created equal but it will work a majority of the time.

Search and Replace to change paths to WordPress theme paths

Adding The WordPress Loop

The WordPress loop is what handles all of your websites content. Its main components are:

• A header
• A permalink
• Some Content

First you will need to identify where your content starts/repeats (if it repeats). The easiest way to do this is to look for your content’s header and begin The Loop there. The Loop will usually end immediately after your content unless you are displaying extra information below your entries. You will also need to identify where your content begins and ends. Scroll to the end of this section to view some example code.

The Loop Code – (video)

Beginning:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

End:

<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

Template Tags Within The Loop – (video)

The Title:

<?php the_title(); ?>

The Permalink

<?php the_permalink() ?>

The Content

<?php the_content(‘<p>Read more</p>’); ?>

Example Code

So this becomes this.

Navigation – (video)

Most themes will have the navigation within an unordered list. This makes things easy for you. All you need to do is replace the list elements (everything between the <ul></ul> tags) with the following:

<?PHP wp_list_pages(‘title_li=&depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&exclude=’); ?>

This is the most basic of menus and wont display child pages. You can exclude pages by simply adding the page ids separated by comas after “exclude=”. Learn more about wp_list_pages().

Upload and Activate Your Theme

Now all you have to do is upload your theme folder which should now consist of:

• An index.php file with custom code
• A CSS file with header information about the theme
• An images folder with all of your images

If all goes accordingly you should have a functional WordPress theme that allows you to add new pages and posts as well as use most popular WordPress plugins. It is important to note that you will not be able to add widgets to your sidebar and people will not be able to comment on posts. There may also be some other limitations due to the themes simplicity.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to learn how to bring your theme to the next level with a sidebar, comments and other interactive elements.

More Resources

• Theme Development
• Stepping Into Templates
• WordPress Theme generator

If you don’t know about Thesis yet, check out my post about why I am such a fan.

The following plugins all make use of the Thesis framework to make their installations extremely painless. Most make use of Thesis additional WordPress hooks to display content in places that were previously inaccessible. I’ve yet to find a solid list of Thesis ready plugins on the Internet so I took the time to put this list together for whoever is curious.

Thesis OpenHook

Thesis OpenHook takes the process of modifying Thesis and simplifies it! I couldn’t properly make a list of Thesis ready WordPress plugins without including the grandfather of them all. This plugin lets you take full advantage of Thesis additional hooks.

Thesis Import/Export

With this plugin, you can download individual data files for Thesis Options, Design Options, and all OpenHook content.

Yoast Breadcrumbs

Automatically add breadcrumbs to your site with no Template tweaks as long as you are running Thesis.

Thesography

The purpose of this plugin is to make displaying EXIF data as convenient as possible, while using as much of WordPress’ native image handling as possible. It can be inserted automatically into the Thesis theme.

Javascript Nofollow Links

This plugin replaces the standard anchor tag for comment author links with a bold tag and adds javascript behavior on the new tag to allow it to be clicked. It contains code for Thesis theme users to remove the redundant link on comment avatars.

PixoPoint Menu Plugin

Adds an SEO friendly, accessible regular or dropdown menu to your WordPress blog. Uses wppagemenu() which is also used by Thesis so no extra steps are needed after installation.

Commentwitter

Gives commenters the option of Tweeting their comments with a link to your post. Uses Thesis hooks to automatically display necessary code below your comment forms.

Visual Recent Posts

This plugin gives the look of a magazine-style website with thumbnails and excerpts in a clean layout. Easily place your Recent Visual Posts by simply inserting your desired Thesis hook on the settings page.

FV Descriptions

Simple plugin which allows you to mass edit the description fields of your choice

Honorable Mentions

These plugins don’t use the Thesis framework like the plugins above however were developed with Thesis in mind at some point during their development process.

• Results Count Remix
• WordPress Menu Creator
• Ajax Edit Comments
• WP Greet Box
• Subscribe to Comments

It’s important to note that most other plugins would work just as well with Thesis than with any other theme. This is only a list of plugins made with Thesis in mind. If you know of any other WordPress plugins that make use of the Thesis framework, please share them below.

Disclaimer: All links to Thesis from this blog are an affiliate link. If you purchase the theme through one of these links I will receive a percentage as commission. This is the first (and probably only) product I would ever endorse for money.

First off, we have an excellent article by Devlounge which poses some great questions:

• Things To Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS

Next we have a series of articles from Noupe convering some excellent WordPress as a CMS plugins, techniques and unique uses:

• 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress
• 40 Exceptional “CMS Enabling” WordPress Plugins
• 25 Unique uses of WordPress as CMS

Now WordPress isn’t the perfect CMS solution right out of the box, so NoScope.com discusses it’s shortcomings and some possible improvements:

• 10 Changes To WordPress That Would Make It A Killer CMS

It would also be nice if you took the time to keep your WordPress CMS somewhat user friendly so we’ll turn to Stylizedweb for that:

• 10 Steps to a Client Friendly WordPress CMS

And finally, a few lists of plugins that can help you successfully turn your WordPress blog into a fully functional content management system:

• 31 WordPress CMS Plugins via Jon Bishop (me)
• The Autopsy Of WordPress As CMS With 25 Great WP Plugins & Designs via Onextrapixel
• Use WordPress As a CMS: Plugins, The Bare Minimum via Themeshaper
• Top 10 WordPress CMS Plugins via Blueprint Design Studio

Get Strategies, Tips and Free Plugins to make your WordPress site perform above all the rest. There are plenty of tutorials to get you started using WordPress, but what are the next steps? Lean how to optimize your time and your website within the WordPress environment by subscribing to a bi-weekly newsletter made for business owners with little time to manage and learn about WordPress. It’s a one top resource with actionable topics that will help your site become more successful.

Did I mention it’s Free?

Subscribe Now

So I decided to put together a list of plugins that can help you turn WordPress into pretty much whatever you want it to be. All plugins link to the WordPress plugin repository and have been updated within the year. This list differs from previous plugin lists because of it’s depth and thought that went into comprising the list. I was very careful to not just repeat what other blogs have posted and hope you find something new and useful here.

SEO

HeadSpace2 SEO

HeadSpace2 is an all-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site. The is by far the best SEO plugin I’ve seen for WordPress. Makes it easy to manage meta data across the entire site or for specific pages/posts.

Redirection

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

Image Editing

Scissors

This plugin adds cropping, resizing, and rotating functionality to WordPress’ image upload and management dialogs. Scissors also allows automatic resizing of images when they are uploaded and supports automatic and manual watermarking of images.

Contact Forms

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

MM-Forms

MM- Forms is the easiest form builder I’ve come across in the WordPress Plugin directory. It’s simplicity is no testament to how powerful it actually is which makes it the perfect add-on for any WordPress blog.

Search

Relevanssi

Relevanssi replaces the basic WordPress search with a partial-match search that sorts the results based on relevance. It is a partial match search, so if user inputs several search terms, the search will find all documents that match even one term, ranking highest those documents that match all search terms.

Search Everything

Search Everything expands WordPress’s built in search functionality to also include tags, categories, revisions, images, attachments and more.

Admin Enhancements

Custom Admin Branding

The Custom Admin Branding Plugin allows you to re-brand the WordPress login screen, the admin header and footer with your own custom images.

MailPress

With this plugin you will be able to send beautiful and styled html and plain text mails based on dedicated themes and templates for any e-mail notification issued.

WP e-Commerce

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

Events Calendar

Events-Calendar is a versatile replacement for the original calendar included with WordPress adding many useful functions to keep track of your events. The plugin has an easy to use admin section that displays a big readable calendar and lets you add and delete events.

Magic Fields

Magic Fields allows you to create new “write fields” as the author calls them. This basically means you can create additional types of content like pages, posts and links.

WP-CMS

WP-CMS is a plugin for WordPress that changes the functionality of the WordPress admin backend to act more like a CMS. The blog functionality becomes optional and the focus is on writing pages to make WordPress as user friendly for you and your clients as possible.

WordPress Admin Quick Menu

This simple WordPress plugin allows users to add quick menu items to the WordPress sidebar. It’s designed to help webmasters have easy access to external pages such as Analytics and shopping carts in their WordPress admin panel.

User Management

Role Scoper

Role Scoper is a comprehensive access control solution, giving you CMS-like control of reading and editing permissions. Assign restrictions and roles to specific pages, posts or categories.

User Access Manager

With the “User Access Manager”-plugin you can manage the access to your posts, pages and files. You only create a user group, put registered users to this and set up the rights for this group. From now on the post/page is only accessible and writable for the specified group. This plugin is useful if you need a member area or a private section at your blog or you want that other people can write at your blog but not everywhere.

Content Enhancements

TinyMCE Advanced

This plugin adds 15 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras

WP-CMS Post Control

WP-CMS Post Control builds upon the new controls in WordPress 2.7 to give you complete control over your write options. It not only allows you to hides unwanted items like custom fields, trackbacks, revisions etc. but also gives you a whole lot more control over how WordPress deals with creating content! This helps you use WordPress more like a CMS, alowing you to totally customise what your authors see and us

More Fields

More Fields is a WordPress plugin that adds boxes to the Write/Edit page. These boxes contains input fields, so that additional (more) fields can be added to a post. For example, if you write about books, you can add a box where you can enter title and author, etc. The boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left on the Write/Edit page.

Side Content

Side Content enables you to define a set of widgets which are effectively placeholders. Each one is empty until you assign content to it when editing a page. This enables you to extend the content of the page into the sidebar

Page Blocks

The Page Blocks plugin extends your WordPress pages by combining the dynamic content of widgets with the static content of pages. Up to four “blocks” can be added to each page (two above and two below the page’s content), and widgets can be added to each block in the same way they are added to sidebars

Page/Post Management

My Page Order

My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface.

Dashboard Pages

Rather than have a majority of the dashboard widgets focused on new blog posts and comments it puts the sites page listing front and center in the dashboard for easier and quicker content management.

pageMash

Customise the order your pages are listed in and manage the parent structure with this simple ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface with an option to toggle the page to be hidden from output. Great tool to quickly re-arrange your page menus.

Navigation

WordPress Navigation List Plugin NAVT

The plugin gives you the ability to create unique site navigation from your pages, categories and users using a Drag ‘n Drop Interface; arrange the items within a group in any arbitrary order. Navigation groups may be composed of any combination of pages, categories, Authors, (Editors, Contributors, Subscribers), internal/external links and list dividers.

Multi-level Navigation Plugin

Adds an SEO friendly, accessible dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog

Core Enhancements

WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Assorted CMS Solutions

WPML Multilingual CMS

WPML makes it possible to turn WordPress blogs multilingual in a few minutes with no knowledge of PHP or WordPress. Its advanced features allow professional web developers to build full multilingual websites.

Pods CMS

Pods is a CMS framework that lets you create, manage, and display your own content types. Don’t bother hacking blog posts into becoming something they’re not. With Pods, create entirely new data structures with only the fields you need. Like Drupal CCK, you can set up relationships, allowing for a whole new level of interconnectedness.

Flutter

Flutter is a feature rich WordPress CMS plugin that focuses on easy templating for the developer and simplifies content management for the admin by creating custom write panels that can be fully customized (radio buttons, file uploads, image uploads, checkboxes, etc).

Ryans Simple CMS

Converts your WordPress admin panel into a simple CMS. This is aimed at web designers who want to provide a simple administration panel for their clients to update basic static websites.

To do this, I would need to:

• Suppress all video posts from being displayed with other posts
• Create an archive of all video posts
• Resize and place my most recent video in the sidebar

The first step was pretty easy. I just created a new category called “Video Post” and assigned it to all of my video posts. This would become a fairly intuitive list of videos people could access at their will.

Next I wanted to remove all video posts from being displayed among other posts on the home page. However, I still wanted my videos to be displayed in RSS feeds as well as archives and search pages. To do this, I just modified the default WordPress query used to pull the most recent posts by placing the following code before “The Loop”.

Be sure to change ‘-66′ to the id of whatever category you are trying to hide. How do I find the category IDs?

Also, if you are not sure where the WordPress Loop begins, it is usually located inside of index.php in your theme folder and starts with:

The last step is to display my most recent video in the sidebar. To do this I decided my best course of action was to save the embed code of my videos into a custom field as well as within the content of the post. This would allow me to easily pull the embed code and I would still be able to add text along with my video within the content.

In the example below I used the custom field ‘embed’ in my posts. Just paste this code in your sidebar where you would like your video to be displayed.

You will notice I also included a link to my last video however you can remove this or replace it with a link to your video archive. This code should work with most video embed codes. Be sure to change the width and height so everything fits nicely into your sidebar.

And that’s it. Now all you need to do when adding a new video post is:

1. Assign the post to your video category
2. Paste your embed code into the content and your ‘embed’ custom field
3. And Publish Your Post!

• SEO
• Awesome Layout
• It’s constantly being optimized

I guess what originally hooked me was the fact that most of the blogs I was reading by professionals within my industry were already on the Thesis theme. You’ve got Chris Brogan (who wrote about it here), Darren Rowse (who wrote about it here), Brian Clark (who wrote about i here), Matt Cutts and more.

So now a little about what makes it so great.

Matt Cutts recently spoke at WordCamp San Francisco 2009 where he discussed WordPress’s ability to satisfy 90% of your websites SEO. WordPress itself takes care of the obvious things like pretty URLs, syndication, interlinking pages, hiding duplicate content, etc. However, one thing WordPress does not control is the layout of the theme you are using. This is where Thesis comes in and satisfies several immediate needs:

• Cleanly laid out HTML for easy indexing by search engines
• Extra fields that allow editing of header meta on a page to page basis
• Clean, easy to read typography

But if everyone had the same theme, wouldn’t that get kind of dull?

Sure, if everyone was using the same settings. Thesis comes with two new settings pages under the appearance tab of your admin panel. You can move sidebars around, change major content area, and control all your fonts across the entire site.

Now while every other theme out there may eventually become outdated, I know I’m safe with Thesis because they are consistently releasing new versions. Their unique method for customizing the theme allows for easy upgrades and a lot more control. They have even added several new wordpress hooks that developers have already begun integrating into their plugins for easy one-step setup.

But I like it for the cutting edge look and feel

This was probably the culprit for the themes instant appeal in my eyes. Out of the box, the home page of the theme allows you to display excerpts in a slick boxlike fashion. You also get a dynamic content area in your sidebar that you can change on a post to post basis, great for promoting services relevant to the content your readers are viewing. Finally, they’ve added options to your posts and pages that allow you to display images in your posts that are automatically resized for the excerpts on the home page.

I’ve never promoted a product on my blog because I feel money can dilute an honest review by making it slightly more biased in any one direction. However, with Thesis I will make an exception. Ever since I’ve started using it I’ve been able to focus a lot more on content creation and less about SEO and blog maintenance. I very much look forward to future releases and hope you can too.

Disclaimer: All links to Thesis from this blog are an affiliate link. If you purchase the theme through one of these links I will receive a percentage as commission. This is the first (and probably only) product I would ever endorse for money.

1) Test your blogs speed first and get it primed

Use tools like iWebTool’s Speed Test and Pingdom’s Full Page test to visually see your blogs weaknesses and identify any key areas to focus on.

You should also be sure that your HTML adheres to W3C guidelines by validating your website and fixing any problems.

2) Make sure you have reliable hosting

Choose a reliable host that has the most recent versions of PHP and MYsql installed as well as enough space/bandwidth to handle large loads. WordPress has it’s own list of recommended hosts.

Here are a few others worth checking out:

• HostGator
• Fat Cow
• GoDaddy
• Lunar Pages
• Host Monster

3) Handle your images properly

Images can put a huge strain on your server’s load time if not managed properly. Your images don’t need to be any higher than 72 DPI and should be resized before being inserted into your post. Resizing images with HTML can distort the image and increase it’s loading time.

It also might be a good idea to disable hotlinking so no one outside of your website is using up your resources. All you have to do is navigate to your .htaccess file and insert the following code. (Note: If you are unfamiliar with how htaccess works, you may want to skip this step or contact a web developer for help)

It also wouldn’t hurt to cache your commenter’s gravatar images if you are currently displaying them on your site.

4) Easy with the javscript calls

Calls to 3rd party javascripts seem to be the main culprit in slowing down WordPress blogs. Between all the analytics packages available and social media enhancements you can make, their are tons of ways to slow down your blog. It really comes down to just choosing wisely. Do you really need that nifty little MyBlogLog widget? Is Google friend connect that important to your blogs strategy?

Two easy ways to cut down on the amount of time is takes to load whatever scripts you deem are necessary is to:

• Move javascript to an external file so browsers can cache the scripts.
• Move any remaining scripts to your WordPress’s footer.php

5) Don’t load too many videos at once

Too many flash videos on one page is a sure way to use up all of someones memory trying to load your page. I worked around this problem by assigning all video posts to the same category and not displaying any posts from that category on the home page. I just placed the following code above my “WordPress loop”:

Another easy fix would be to use the <!–more–> tag above your code that embeds the video in your post. This would only prevent the video itself from displaying on your home page.

6) Control your plugins

Only make calls to plugins when you need them by only calling them on the pages they will be used on.

This code only displays “function code here” when you are viewing the “archives” page. A full list of all the conditional tags can be found here.

Also be careful not to install too many plugins in general and disable and remove any plugins that are not being used.

7) Cache Your Pages

The WP Super Cache plugin is probably the easiest way to seemingly increase your blogs loading time. It saves a copy of your website to a file on your server so WordPress only need to call that file rather than all the SQL and PHP it normally has to run. It comes in very useful when you have traffic spikes from certain social media sites.

8) Reduce SQL queries and PHP calls

Yoast has a great post that can help significantly reduce the number of calls your blog makes to your database. It also wouldn’t hurt to clean up your database either manually or with a plugin like WP DB Manager.

Another thing you can do that might speed up your database is to disable post revisions.

-

I hope someone finds this useful. Are there anymore tips you would recommend for speeding up a WordPress blog’s loading time?

- Photo by kevindean

Lijit

Wouldn’t it be cool if your search page also included relevant results from your social media accounts as well as friends in your blogroll? Seems to make perfect sense which is probably why Lijit did exactly that. They have an awesome group of people working over there with a solid product. At least give it a try.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

A great way to keep people on your blog is to recommend similar blog posts when they have finished reading the current one. The plugin has a bunch of settings making it easy to customize for your blog.

WP-PageNavi

The traditional “Previous Posts” and “Next Posts” in wordpress is unintuitive and boring. This nifty little plugin makes it easier to navigate farther into ones archives by jumping to different pages. It’s standard functionality on most popular news sites so it only makes sense you would have it on your site as well.

WP-DB-Backup

This one is straight and to the point. Back up your wordpress site so if something goes wrong you don’t kill yourself.

Contact Forms 7

You would think contact forms would be built into wordpress but remember wordpress is a blogging platform and not a CMS. However, we can turn it into a CMS by adding plugins like this. It has pretty much all the functionality you would need out of a contact plugin including extensive customization capabilities and the ability to export data in multiple formats.

WP Ajax Edit Comments

I like when sites give me the opportunity to edit my comments after I’ve posted them. I don’t think not having this functionality would prevent someone from commenting but it’s a nice treat after the fact.

Subscribe to Comments

This plugin goes on my list of essentials. It’s the easiest way to get repeat visits from your commenters. It basically allows commenters to subscribe to all future comments on a post.

WordPress Blog Stats

I use this in conjunction with Google Analytics for two reasons.

1. I like having stats integrated into my dashboard.
2. I like being able to use that data with other plugins.

It’s not like the data is collected any faster than Google Analytics as both have a decent delay however it’s nice to see what another service has to say about my websites traffic.

Multi-Level Navigation Plugin

In my quest to turn WordPress into a proper CMS, this plugin has been crucial. It’s hard to find a customizable browser compatible dropdown menu plugin, but here you go.

Akismet

This one’s simple, it marks spam as spam for you so you don’t have to.

WP Super Cache

This cool little plugin caches your posts so traffic spiked from popular social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon won’t crash your server.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin has been around for awhile and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s an easy way to take control of your XML sitemaps and encourage Google to get your site listed in their index faster.

All In One Seo Pack

Although it can be argued this plugin is not as useful as it used to be because of changing SEO standards, it makes it easy to edit the meta description and keywords of individual posts as well as manipulate the metadata of your entire site from one location.

- Photo by Muffet

TweetSuite is an excellent plugin developed by ‘social & viral marketing scientist’ Dan Zarrella. It started off as a plugin that returned all ReTweets of a post and has turned into a complete Twitter/Wordpress solution.

Features include:

• Server-side (no-JS or remote calls) TweetBacks
• ReTweet-This buttons for each TweetBack
• A digg-like Tweet-This Button
• Automatic Tweeting of new posts
• A Most-Tweeted Widget
• A Recently-Tweeted Widget
• A My-Last-Tweets Widget
• A My-Favorited-Tweets Widget

CommenTwitter

I designed CommenTwitter to both increase the quality of tweets about posts as well as generate traffic to that post. I believe people should be just as proud of their comments on other peoples blogs as they are of their own blog posts.

Basically what you do is input your Twitter Credentials before you submit a comment. This in turn tweets an excerpt of your comment along with a link back to the original comment in it’s entirety.

TweetStats

TweetStats is a nifty little plugin that works alongside the TweetBacks plugin. It ultimately allows you to add a widget to the sidebar of your most recent and most popular tweets. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a new generation of plugins working together to present the best content to it’s readers.

Automagic Twitter Profile URI

This is a great plugin that uses a commenters email address to ping the Twitter API and retrieve their Twitter username. It then “automagically” adds the commenters Twitter name next to their name in their comment.

Tweet This

I’m not a huge fan of setting up wordpress to automatically update your Twitter feed every time you post. I think it should be on the publisher to write tweets that are both personal and more attractive to draw in their followers. However I do think it is important to allow other to easily tweet your post.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is another one of those complete WordPress/Twitter solutions.

Features include:

• Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

Twitter Remote

While not technically a WordPress plugin, I’ve always been a fan of the MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget and this would be the Twitter alternative. It basically just display a list of the most recent Tweeps to visit your blog.

I think these plugins best represent the potential when discussing Twitter/Blog integration. It’s time we start working on more practical uses and stop reinventing the wheel. I hope you enjoyed my list and please feel free to add your favorite Twitter/Wordpress plugins in a comment below.