Tuesday, December 02, 2008

WordPress Plugins to Make Your Blog More Social

A social blog is generally a blog that causes repeated visits from a user, in a regular fashion. Basically there are a couple of important elements that makes a blog social.

So it’s important that you take the necessary steps in improving your blog appeal if you want to build a community around it.

WordPress blogs are getting increasingly social, giving readers the ability to bookmark site to a number of services. WordPress being a powerful, open-source blogging platform utilizes the power of plugins extending it’s capabilities.

Plugins are basically small applications that perform a function or process. There are numerous Plugins available for WordPress, and they all serve different purpose.
Some of the social networking plugins available for WordPress are pretty nice, and you can check out right here:

1) Share This:
This plugin allows your visitors to share your content via social bookmarking sites and/or e-mailing the post to a friend. This supports the share icon project. For those who do not like using widgets, classic plugin is still available. Version 2.3, 2008-08-21 is the Latest Release of this plugin.
2) Twitter Tools:
It creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. You can pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
3)Popularity Contest:
This plugin will help you see which of your posts are most popular. Views, comments, etc. are tracked and given configurable point values to determine popularity.
If you are using WordPress 2.3 or later,you must download this version 1.3b3, 2007-12-16 .
4)Link Harvest:
This plugin will go through all of your posts and pages and compile a list of all external links. Then it will create a link roll for you based on your actual linking activity. You can have a full page display (like I do) or a little sidebar display. This is a complicated plugin, make sure you read the README, 1.0, 2007-02-26 Latest Release Version.
5)WordPress Mobile Edition:
A PDA friendly interface for your blog. You can download latest version 2.1.1, 2008-04-08 and see it in action by visiting this site in a mobile browser. If your mobile browser is not automatically detected.
6)Articles:
This plugin allows you to easily present a list of posts you select outside of your blog chronology. Very useful for featuring things that might otherwise slip into the nether regions of your archives. Download its latest release,1.2, 2007-09-27 version.
7) Shortcut Macros:
This plugin allows you to set up shortcuts that expand into longer text when you save a post/page. For example, if you link to some site (say XY) often, you might create a macro of XY. You type ##XY into a post/page and when you save it will expand to XY. You can download its latest version 1.2, 2008-03-30 .
8)Comment License
This plugin shows a license with terms of your choosing in your comments form. You can edit the terms of your license in the options page. Use its Latest Release1.2, 2008-03-30.
9)WP Unformatted
This allows you to add custom fields to a post to disable auto-formatting and/or auto-smart-quote conversion on a per-post basis. Latest Release: Version 1.1, 2007-01-24.
10)WP Since Last Visit
Shows the number of new posts and comments (including indicators showing what posts and comments are new) since a visitor last came to your blog. Latest Release: Version 2.2, 2004-07-05.

WordPress is one of the fastest growing blog hosts on the web, and bloggers all over the world understand this. Now, with the addition of different applications and tools you can enhance your blogging experience and make it even more useful and exciting for you.

A-1 Technology is a perfect destination to get the best WordPress service as we have expertise in WordPress . Our team comprises of specialists of WordPress enabling our clients to take maximum benefit in WordPress.
A1 Technology designs, builds, and supports elegant network solutions for companies and professional firms. As your technology partner, we provide you best solutions at the best prices.