When updating the site and doing my research into how to improve it’s functionality, I came across a number of great WordPress Plugins (and associated WordPress Widgets) that were easy to implement for beginners and instantly improved the overall user experience of samueljellis.com. I thought I should share my efforts:
1) Add Link to Facebook
I mulled over whether I should link this blog to my personal Facebook page for quite a while. I’ll elaborate on why I didn’t in a separate post, but instead I created a specific samueljellis Facebook page, where my posts will be linked through to. I understand that different people find content in different ways, and having some kind of Facebook presence was important. So now my WordPress posts and a short excerpt should end up on my Facebook page each time I post.
2) All in One SEO Pack
Does exactly what it says on the tin, improves SEO performance of any blog out of the box. It has a frightening number of advanced settings, which I’ve decided to stay well clear of for now!
3) Contact Form 7
A couple of people recommended that you should never put your email address on a page of a site, or it will just get picked up by bots and spammed to death. Instead, I’ve built in a special contact form with CAPTCHA tech built in i.e. those hard to read letters to confuse rogue computers and avoid me getting unnecessary levels of spam. It also allowed me to play around with the copy of the automated emails it sends out, which also provided 10 minutes amusement and some bizarre responses for people who make an error on the form!
4) Digg Digg
I first saw something like this used on Mashable, but to be honest, I’m not 100% convinced and it’s currently turned deactivated on my site. It provides a scrolling social vote button system down the left or right hand side. I’ve been having a bit of trouble implementing it well, but I can see the value if you can get it to work properly. Not that I could.
5) Disqus Comment System
We used the Disqus commenting tool when we revamped the website at my previous agency, Crayon. I was always really happy with it, so thought I would add that in as well. If it’s good enough for Engadget and The Independent, it’s good enough for me! Not that I am expecting many comments, but still! It includes Akismet tech directly built into it (though you can download Akismet solus as well here), which helps to filter out spam comments, so far pretty successfully. It also links directly into the WordPress for iOS app, i.e. for iPhones and iPads, so you can approve/delete comments on the move.
6) Google Analytics for WordPress
Part of my reasons for blogging was that I wanted to feel more comfortable analysing search marketing information. Adding in full Google Analytics functionality was key, and I’m planning on playing around with my free £50 Adwords Voucher to get a better understanding of how to link Adwords campaigns back to performance and goals on site.
7) Google XML Sitemaps
I decided there wasn’t much point blogging if no-one could find my site! This plugin simply tells Google (and other lesser search engines, like Bing) that my site exists, rather than letting them try to work it out for themselves, and indexes it properly so it’s easy for people to find.
8) Jetpack by WordPress.com
I was a bit undecided about this, but after realising that moving from
Wordpress.com to WordPress.org had actually lost me some functionality, Jetpack (by WordPress themselves) seemed an easy way to get some of it back. Bits I am using include:
- WordPress.com Stats
- A very simple analytics package. However, it provides a great snapshot of the basic numbers (visits, page views, traffic sources etc), and the data is viewable through the official WordPress for iOS app – handy when you just want a quick visual overview.
- Subscribe
- I’m a prolific user of Brand Republic’s email bulletins at work, and as so much of our work at LIDA is CRM based, I wanted an email sign up for blog post alerts. I doubt many will use it, but still, people consume content in different ways, who am I to judge how they want to get the nonsense I write?
9) Really Simple CAPTCHA
Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be accessed by other plugins. It was originally designed to work with the Contact Form 7 plugin, which is how I’m using it as well.
10) ShareThis
A key part of blogging is getting your content shared. If content is hard to share, in my experience, it usually won’t be. ShareThismakes it easy for people to share any of my posts via the usual channels – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and a whole host of other systems supported by ShareThis that frankly I’d never heard of. It also allows me to track how and where my content is shared, which I thought was pretty cool.
11) Skimlinks Affiliate Marketing Tool
A slightly more unusual one this, but I’d read a couple of articles about Skimlinks, and wanted to test it out. Essentially, if I write a review or recommend a product (which I plan to in the coming months) and someone then goes on from my site and buys it, I would get an utterly minuscule cut of the sale price. It’s subject to a load of caveats (the main one being the need to buy it from a site affiliated with Skimlinks), but I think if I influence someone to buy something, why not take a small cut of the sale? Will be interested to see if it works, I doubt I’m that influential!
12) Social Media Mashup
A very simple RSS style stream of my social media content, largely going via Twitter, on the right hand side of my pages/posts. It’s linked up with ShareThis as well, so I can track where things end up.
13) Social Media Widget
Until the Easy Mashable Social Bar is back up and running, I’ve installed this so people can easily find my various social presences. It’s actually pretty slick, and I really like the inclusion of a one click ‘Email me’ button.
14) W3 Total Cache
I literally have no idea how this works, except it makes my site load faster (apparently) on both desktop and mobile browsers. I’ve not noticed a difference, it’s got a bewildering list of scary options that mean nothing to me, but everyone said I should have this or WP Super Cache, and 919,176 people at last count can’t be THAT wrong…
15) WordPress Backup to Dropbox
Leaving the safe harbour of WordPress.com means that you lose a key bit of functionality – proper backups of your blog. This plugin just syncs my entire site to my personal Dropbox once a week, making it hard for me to lose any content if the worst does happen.
16) WP to Twitter
For broadcasting general comments and thoughts, you can’t beat Twitter. Large chunks of things I read now more often than not come from my Twitter feed, so with this simple plugin I can tick a box and update my Twitter account immediately with my latest blog post. I’m currently looking for something similar for Google+, but I’m not sure it exists (yet).
17) WPtouch
This plugin came highly recommended, and I’m happy to do the same. It basically creates a mobile specific version of any WordPress site. It’s incredibly simple to use. I got my site up and running for mobile devices in literally minutes. It even looks ok straight out of the box. Love it.
18) Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
A plugin likely to become more useful down the line if I ever get round to creating a lot of content, this just drags in other related posts from my blog to the bottom of any posts. Anything to make my blog a bit more ‘sticky’ works for me.
Best of the rest?
I looked at quite a few other different plugins and widgets, but none were quite up to scratch. I quite fancied a Foursquare location tracker, but none of them looked great. The WordPress Quora Badge plugin didn’t work, which was a shame, as I’m using it more and more and wanted to display that content.
As I mentioned before, I really wanted the Easy Mashable Social Bar plugin, as it integrates one click follow/like/+1 for people signed into Twitter/Facebook/Google+ respectively. Unfortunately the developer is having some issues so it was pulled from the plugin store just before i could install it. Hopefully it will be back online soon, as I will definitely include it. There is also a good Popular Posts plugin that I liked the look of, quite similar to the Related Posts functionality I already have on there, but still useful.
I can’t decide whether I should include my personal photos on the site. They are all in Picasa at the moment, so it’s an option, but I’m just not sure that it’s relevant – my personal Facebook seems the most obvious place for most of my photos. I found a great Lightbox Gallery plugin for images as well, but at the moment, not sure I have any use for it. I also hate Lighboxes on mobile (they never work on my iPhone), so I would need to test it rigorously before I activated it.
If I ever get around to imbedding any video, I’d probably look at Vimeo or YouTube, and I’m also debating to include some of my work presentations via Slideshare or Prezi, though would want to voice over them, so might need to have a think if they are the best tools for the job. Any advice gladly taken.
I also looked at Get Satisfaction plugin, but I’m not quite sure it’s that relevant for a personal blog. If someone doesn’t like the site, it’s easier just to tell me via email! I’m quite interested in how Get Satisfaction runs generally though, so I might install it anyway just to get a feel for it and how the functionality works.
I might also include the odd poll from time to time if I start getting regular users, to get a better idea of what actually interests people about my blog. I’ve been recommended WP-Polls. I might not listen, but always good to know people’s thoughts! I also found a slightly odd plugin called Nofollow Reciprocity, which seems a brilliant way to be very petty online!
That’s your lot. Hope my painstaking research is of use to someone else!
