WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE

I have 8 plugins that I categorised as ‘Good to Have’ plugins and I will cover 4 plugins in this Part 5 of my series on HOW TO START YOUR OWN SELF-HOSTED WORDPRESS BLOG. These plugins will enhance the look of you blog and might help you to earn some money.

If you missed my earlier articles on the series, here they are:-

 : 6 Steps to Identify your Niche for Your Blog
 : 3 Criterias When Choosing Domain Name and Choosing Hosting
 : 5 Important Features You must Have in a Wordpress Theme
Part 4 : 5 Must Have Plugins for your Wordpress Blog

Caution:
As I have said in Part 4, please be reminded that sometimes there are mis-match between plugins and themes so you should test these plugin individually. Some themes were written with certain code that cause some plugins unable to function. Therefore all the 13 plugins that I recommended had been tested to function with my theme but I can’t guarantee they will work with other themes.

Note:
As all of the plugins are provided free by the programmers, I will recommend that if you use their plugins, then you should try to make some donations to encourage them to write more free plugins. Usually they would have a donation button or a “buy me a drink” button in their sites.

GOOD TO HAVE PLUGINS

1. Another Wordpress Meta Plugin

Functions/Benefits

Wordpress already allow you to add tags for each post but I find ‘Another Wordpress Meta Plugin’ not only allow you to add META tags but it also allow you to input descriptions to your posts and pages. This will further improve your SEO (search engine optimisation). As we all know Meta Tags are used to list out the keywords of your posts therefore make it easier for search engine such as Google to identify your posts for listing in search query. There is no mention of the author but you can visit the webpage HERE.

Installation/Activation

Upload `another_wordpress_meta_plugin.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory and activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. Here is your download link.

2. Optimal Title Plugin

Functions/Benefits

The normal URL title arrangement is “Domain Name” then followed by “Posting Title”. In order to further enhance your SEO quality for your articles it is better to have your posting title BEFORE your website domain name. A good example is at johnchow.com website. The plugins is written by Aaron Schaefer.

 Current post will have domain name followed by article title.

 Archives post will have article title followed by domain name.

Installation/Activation

Download Optimal Title v3.0 and unzip the archive. Upload optimal-title.php into your wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate the plugin on your WP Admin Plugin page by clicking the corresponding “Activate” link under the Action column. The download link is HERE.

3. Duplicate Content Plugin

Functions/Benefits

When search engine such as Google detected multiple pages of the same content, the search engine will reduce its ranking because the search program will classify it as trying to create spams of your posting. As all blog will have links to categories and archives that are displayed on the sidebars, there will be duplicate content issues. ‘Duplicate Content’ plugin cure is a very simple and an effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing wordpress pages that contain duplicate content. It does this by adding the noindex, follow meta tag on the problem pages. The plugin is written by Badi Jones.

Installation/Activation

Download the plugin and place the file duplicate-content-cure.php in your plugins directory. By default, category pages will have the noindex tag added. Activate it on the plugins page

If you wish to allow your category paes to be indexed, just change the $index_category_pages variable in the duplicate-content-cure.php file. See the example below:
Change $index_category_pages = false; to $index_category_pages = true;

4. Dual Feed Plugin

Functions/Benefits

DualFeeds turns your feed into two separate feeds (full post and summary), allowing your readers to subscribe the feed of their choice. The plugin also works for all feeds (category, tag, author, etc) not just the main site feed. It can also use the Sidebar widget to show links for Full Post, Summary and Comments feeds. The feed requests for each of the three feeds can be redirected to the appropriate FeedBurner URL (use it with or instead of FeedSmith).

Some of your subscribers prefer having the full post to read while others prefer summaries they can skim through and follow up later. Without DualFeeds visitor can see the format that you have choosen when you subscribed to Feedburner which is either full or summary feed. DualFeeds lets you offer both formats, so your visitors can make their own choice. It was created by Stephen Cronin.

Installation/Activation

Download the dualfeeds.zip file and unzip it. Upload the dualfeeds folder to your site’s wp-content/plugins folder and activate the plugin within WordPress administration screen.

That is the end of 4 GOOD TO HAVE PLUGINS FOR YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG. The balance of the 4 Good to Have plugins will be covered in Part 6 of my series. Don’t miss it. Subscribe to my Feed. Comments are welcome.

Related Posts

• December 8, 2007 -- 5 MUST HAVE PLUGINS FOR YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG
• December 18, 2007 -- HOW TO WRITE A POST FOR YOUR BLOG?
• December 13, 2007 -- 4 MORE GOOD TO HAVE PLUGINS FOR YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG
• January 13, 2008 -- Benefit when you Join Technorati
• December 15, 2007 -- WHAT TO DO BEFORE YOU START BLOGGING?