This plugin gives you the ability to remove the link a commenter left as their URL without removing the entire comment. A link to do this is added to your new comment e-mail notifications and to the comments list in your admin area.

What a great idea. I run multiple blogs and each one has the same problem of people leaving comments with their name being a keyword phrase. It drives me crazy but this is a great way to stop those people dead in their tracks.

You can download Delink Comment Author or check out its README first if you want to learn a little bit more.

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When you are editing your “widgets”, you may have noticed that there was a “widget” that is called RSS. Well you already have an RSS button, so what could this possibly be? Well this is what can give you more content on your WordPress blog. All you have to do is activate the RSS widget to your sidebar, add an RSS feed link to it, and there you have it. You will now get more links to more content on your sidebar.

This is a great widget because it will allow visitors that come to your site to receive the information that they are looking for, which means they are more likely to come back to your website again.

The only problem however is that the content will not be on your own WordPress blog. Instead it will be a link to the original content. Now you may be thinking why would you want people to leave? The thing is you can fix it so the content opens up in another window, so when they are all done reading it, they will close that window and be right back at your website, where they are more likely to stay.

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One of the best ways to show up higher in search engines is by fixing your Title Tags. The Title Tags are the titles that show up on the very top of your browser. These titles help search engines determine what the name of you link is. So if you have a title tag that is completely opposite of your content, chances are you will not get any traffic from search engines.

So how can we change the title tags on our blogs? Well there is a great plug-in that does the job, its called SEO Title Tag. This plug-in allows you to change the title of your posts, your front page, your tags, and also your categories.

SEO Title Tag is really easy to install as well; it is just like the traditional plug-in with a little step on the side. There are two steps to installation, all you need to do is upload the folder into the plug-ins folder. After that, you just need to edit your header.php file with a little bit of text then you are done. It is simple as that.

So if you are really serious about getting better traffic from search engines, you definitely need to install this plug-in, and start naming your articles.

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Once you activate StatPress the plugin begins to store visitor data for your blog in real-time. Then you can check out information on your traffic in stats using a nice dashboard style interface (seen above).

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This plugin automatically generates a valid XML sitemap of your blog every time you add or edit a post or page. The advantage to having a current sitemap is that search engines like Google and Yahoo have a much easier time crawling and then indexing your site. The faster and easier it is for search engine to do their jobs the faster and easier it will be for your blog to start appearing on search engine results.

This plugin is a no-brainer for me and is usually the first one I install and configure when I’m starting a new blog. There are other Sitemap plugins available out there but in my experience this one is the best.

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My biggest concern with this project was that as sleek as the new 2.5 admin is there are still some slight hiccups for less computer savvy individuals. I really wanted to find a way to trim down the options available to my client when they were logged into their WordPress account.

Luckily I found the Role Manager plugin which did exactly what I was looking for. With Role Manager I can define exactly what different levels of accounts can and can not do when they are logged in to the WordPress admin.

So I took my client’s account and made him an “Editor” with the capability to only manage the individual Pages of the site. This stops him from accidentally changing any of the other parts of the site like the theme or any of the other plugins we’ll be using. It’s the perfect solution to my problem because it hides the other parts of the admin that he can’t access as an Editor.

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Web designers offering to create custom WordPress themes is something everyone is probably familiar with. I’ve noticed that you don’t see a lot of WordPress plugin creators getting much recognition in the “WordPress marketplace” for their creations and I’m not entirely sure why that is. My hunch is that it has something to do, once again, with WordPress and its strong connection to the open source movement.

Let’s put that debate aside for now and focus on what capable programmers can do to earn a few dollars using their skills. While I know of a few people selling copies of plugins they’ve written to users I think there’s probably another large market for programmers interested in writing plugins for private clients. With the incredible explosion of WordPress powered blogs and sites these days there has to be a large need for custom-built plugin solutions.

I’m sure site owners have problems that can’t be handled by the current crop of freely available plugins. If you’re a good programmer with WordPress experience it can’t hurt to put yourself out there and offer your services to see if there are any opportunities available to you.

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It’s almost impossible anymore to handle these comments without the help of a plugin.

The most popular spam fighting plugin, by far, is Akismet by Automatic. This plugin has always been my weapon of choice against spam comments because of its clever use of a centralized database.

In short, Akismet collects and categorizes comments from every blog running the plugin. It then uses rules based on the comment’s content and also how other blog owners have judged similar comments to decide whether or not the comment is spam. Akismet even works on trackbacks and pingbacks.

Akismet requires an API key from WordPress.com to run so you’ll need to make an account there first. That’s the only big hurdle in the installation and it’s worth it based on how well Akismet performs against spam. Your API key can be found on your WordPress.com profile page but if you’re having problems you can check out their FAQ for help.

Once you have your API key and the plugin is installed and activated on your own blog you’re almost ready to go. With your API key in hand, go to the “Akismet Configuration” panel available under “Plugins” on the WordPress administration. Now you simply paste your API key into the box provided and save.

Akismet will begin to automatically filter your comments, trackbacks and pingbacks as they come into your blog. Be careful though as Akismet is known to occasionally incorrectly mark valid comments as spam. You’ll have to periodically go through the comment moderation queue to look for any of these false-positives.

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I’ve used a handful of third-party shopping cart solutions in my day and I would even be interested in a WordPress plugin that ties into one of those systems. I suppose that there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to ecommerce and WordPress. It’s also interesting to me that some of the “powers that be” within the WordPress community haven’t been pushing for more ecommerce solutions.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before some established Web Design firm comes out with a really great plugin or extended version of WordPress that addresses this missing piece in the software. I think it’s an important move if WordPress is to transition away from blogging platform to a full-blown Content Management System.

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