It differs from other “Related posts”-plug-ins, which are based on automatic content analysis. What ever the content analysis algorithms are and how ever the configuration options used,  resulting related post lists are mostly just a bullsh$%.  That’s is understandably, then these plug-ins have same problem like search engines and other content analysis tools . In the reality of our age (It is 2009 A.D.) – computers cannnot understand any semantic of human written articles.

So what is the solution for an good Related Post Plugin? Of cause simple to do it manually!

You say it much work?  No!, with Micrkid’s Related posts Plugin, which  provides very comfortable AJAX driven interface, it becomes fun! It’s becomes so easy and quick as providing tags. You decide what is related to the actual post by creating meaningful related post list.  Try it out!

Why the movement

Primary it had to be done because of some problems with hosting service provider. But that is a long story, which I won’t tell you here. However ORG domain is much nicer? What do you think?

wPopularity Plug-In

Please excuse me for not maintaining it. I just have time to keep this site alive, not really for a writing Plug-ins i free time. But I promise i try to find some hours in the winter holidays, to answer all your questions and maybe even to release new version. Thank you for you patience.

I have fixed this problem now. Please use newest version of W-Popularity Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

No other functionality was changed in this release.

Social networking fatigue is appears when people are tired to register new accounts and create their adentity over and over again. It’s of cause funny that there is already a word for it. But the reality behind that word phrase is not so cool. Personally I’m also really tired to register myself in every web2.0 service.

That is one of the reasons why I have installed wp-open Id plugin. E.g. you do not need register on this blog for leaving some comment. You can just us your Open ID link. I think Open ID could be the answer to the problem. What do you think?

Further more I consider to implement some support for my Open ID identity on this site. I’m sure it should be possible somehow.

While the Popularity Contest Plugin does not support widgets natively, you need to code your templates to show most popular list of post on the Sidebar. My Widgetized Popularity Contest Plugin – short W-Popularity solves that, by providing dynamically widget for it.

Here are the features of the first public version of my W-Popularity Plugin:

• Enables Most Popular Widget
  • Configuration of several parameters
• Compatibility to Popularity Contest Plugin Database (if Tables are already there, the plugin work on them).
• Better performance through small improvements

I do not intend to change calculation logic in the near future, so that is stays compatible, but some other improvements. Please let me know if you desire some…

Download it directly from here Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file. or from download page .
Then enjoy the easiness

One of the Important aspects is properly made page for the search engine optimisation point of view. I don’t wanna cover these point in this article, if interested, you can read Wordpress SEO – The Beginners Guide by Joost de Valk’s, which is good introduction in the theme. I just wanna cover one of the aspects of good page and that is Meta-information.

Every page of your blog has to provide title attribute and meta attribute keywords and maybe even meta description, which helps Search engines to better “understand” what is on that page. Unfortunately there is no adequate support for meta description by default in Wordpress. So we need a Plug-In.

HeadSpace2 – Plugin

The HeasSpace2 PlugIn homepage is one of the popular in that field. The installation is easy, no template hacks are needed, copy and activate as usual. The configuration is done in “options” -menu. It may be helpful to read the description and concepts on the Plug-In homepage, before starting configuration.

There are four main configuration tabs:

• Page Settings (shown on image)
• Modules
• Options
• Import

Page Settings

Crucial are Page Settings, that are default settings for different parts of Wordpress like Archives pages, post pages, main page and so on.

In Page Settings dialog it is possibly to configure default tags for all of them, of cause with support of predefined variables. It is possibly that you have to play a little bit around until you get desired effects.

But before you start check your templates header file. Inspect how title is created. It is crucial because some template authors use wireds things for creating titles. You are well advised to use something like this:

<title>

<?php wp_title(‘ ‘); ?> <?php if(wp_title(‘ ‘, false)) { echo ‘ : ‘; } ?><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>

</title>

This, will enable by default right presentation in title, first the title of Post then Blog name separated with “:” like on my blog. Works fine without Headspace2 PlugIn ant with it. By usage with Headspace2 use empty string as separator in the configuration of “page title” in the Modules Dialog.

Modules

Modules has two sections, top and bottom. Top section allows you to define the presentation of meta tag description fields in Post and Pages Editors and also in the Page Settings dialog. And that are so called Page Modules. Here is also “page title” module which is mentioned before.

In the bottom you will find the Site Modules configuration. In the main Site modules could be selfcontaining Plugins. But here they wrapped as modules. Most of them are some Statistic analysers like Google analytics, but what what i found interesting is Google Section Targeting Module. Google targeting allows you to demarcate adsence relevant html>body area of your blog, read more about Google section Targeting (in German).

Warnings

Be careful with the Modules, i have switched something wrong there, and that broke the output of that site, so only admit are worked well. therefore I didn’t notice anything fore more than ten ours. You may be notified strange downtime of my site in the last week?

Conclusion

All in one, Headspace2 seems to be nice Plug-In. use it with care in it will serve you well. Questions are welcome.

Top 10 Plug-Ins

1. Askimet
2. DoFollow
3. GoogleAnalytics
4. GoogleXMLSitemaps
5. Instant Upgrade
6. Simple Database Bakup
7. Simple Trackback Validation
8. Similar Posts
9. 404-Notifier
10. Share-This-Classic or similar Social book-marker.

Description

• Askimet should be nothing new for every blogger.
• Else DoFollow. I see often that bloggers are to lazy with “nofollow” problem. Read why “nofollow” attributes should be used wisely.
• GoogleAnalytics provides easy way to add your google analytics script for your blog. It’s in any case better to use this Plug-ing and not to hack the blog template, cause templates can be switched and therefore need to be updated one every change. With that Plug-In you just forget such issues.

• GoogleXMLSitemaps is more that just adding a script. It generates a sitemap.xml file for your blog or even whole site. Meanwhile it is highly configurable and mighty Plug-in, that provides the needed flexibility. It is suitable for blogs with just few articles but also for blogs with many of them. And of cause it automatically ping Google Webmaster Tools site.
  
• Instant Upgrade and Simple Database Backup were already explained in previous post.
• Simple Trackback Validation helps to protect your form Spamer Trackbacks.
• My Similar Posts Plug-In is not so long in use like the other in the list, but i like it already. It provides widget that contains list of similar post to the current, that allows users to find quickly more interesting stuff they look for on your page. The default configuration may be not very suitable configured for concrete needs of your blog, so i would say, every body has to play around and define what similarity criteria are important for him. E.g. one can say that similar Posts has to have not only similar words, but also be in the same category.
• 404 Notifier, notifies you every time when something was not found on your blog. OK, it can be to much sometimes, when every time favicon.ico is not found, cause you don’t provide it. But you don’t have to send mails. You can configure such 404 to a feed. And reed it with the feed reader.
• Share-this-Classic Plug-In enables this green Button on the bottom of every post , which contains short links to well known social communities. Normally it works like pop-up layer, but with my new template it opens new page. I have to figure out why.
  

Conclusion

Some cool Plug-ins are presented in that list, but not all I use, cause there are some I’m unsure whether they are really useful or I have used them not much. I’ll write about these Plug-Ins in my future posts, i promise.

Of cause you are welcome to comment and please give me a hint on other cool and useful plug-Ins you have not found in presented top 10.

How to install? Bea do not provides an updatesite at the moment, so that you have to download and unpack that plugin manualy.

And of course BEA WebLogic Server Tools are available free of charge to all licensed WebLogic Server users.