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Top 30 plugins

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There’s a great article over at Staska.net that lists the top 30 WordPress plugins. The list describes each plugin and gives the reason why it made the list. Often it’s place on the list has to do with a poll that was given to readers to find out how many were using each plugin.

I’ve used a number of the plugins that made the list and agree that many should be on the list and should be used by even more WordPress bloggers.

If I were creating this list a few of the plugins that are listed would have been given a much higher spot on the list than they are currently placed.

Go on over and have a peak at the list. I’ll bet that you find a great plugin to use.




Are you looking for a new WordPress Theme?

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I was reading the BloggingPro blog earlier today and found a couple of new wordpress themes that I think I might try with some of our blogs. One that I downloaded – the Blogging Pro theme – will likely be used on this site. I like this theme, but it’s a bit too dark for my taste.


Speaking of themes, I also came across a post that said that HongKiat.com has a list of the 49 most downloaded WordPress themes of all time. Since I’m looking for new themes for three or four of our sites I mossied on over there to have a look.

I’m not sure that I want to use the same themes that everyone else is using. I’ve always prided myself on altering and customizing the themes that I choose to use to give our sites a unique look and feel. Well, I used to do that. I haven’t had time to customize a few of the themes I’ve been using on some of our sites lately and as a result of not customizing them I’ve grown tired of the themes rather quickly.

The list of the 49 most downloaded themes shows an image of each theme, which is nice if you are seriously looking at the list to find a new theme that might suit your site. Some of the themes listed are quite old and possibly might not work with WordPress 2.1.

Go have a look at the themes listed at HongKiat and don’t forget to visit BloggingPro too as it has some great web related information in it’s posts that I’m sure you’ll find useful.

Aligning image and video code in blog posts

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Earlier in the month I did a series of posts about preparing and adding images to your blog posts. I think the only thing that I failed to discuss in much depth was the tags that you can put around your image or even embedded video code.

WordPress has to modes – Visual (Rich text) and Code (plain text). You can add images to your posts while in either mode. However, you should only add embedded video code or even javascript code (say for a blogroll) while in code or plain text mode as it messes up the code when in rich text mode.

For the purpose of this discussion I’m going to discuss the coding that you can added around embedded images, video and other code while in plain text mode. I will just say that it’s easy to center or move an image to the left or right while in visual or rich text mode simply by clicking on the alignment icons near the top of your wordpress post writing area.

To center an image in your post you can use this code (removes spaces):

< p align=”center” > image code < /p>

and to have a photo to the left or right of a paragraph have the paragraph tags around the particular paragraph that you’re sticking the image in:

ie < p >text of paragraph < /p>

with your image code beside the first paragraph tag

< p > < image code > text < /p>

Unfortunately you need to do a little bit more to the image code to make the text of the post wrap around the image. With the code that I’ve listed above the image will still be higher than the text. However, if you want to have the text wrap to the right or left of the image simple include:

align=”left” or “right” near the img tag like this:

< p > < img align=”left” rest of image code ….> < /p>

radia_phone.jpg To illustrate the full code, in order to place this thumbnail image to right of this text, and have the text wrap evenly around it I had to use the following code. Remember, you must remove the spaces for this code to work on your site. I’ve only put spaces between the code here so that I could actually demonstrate the code:

< p > < img align=”right” src=’https://thewebfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/radia_phone.thumbnail.jpg’ alt=’radia_phone.jpg’ / > < /p>

Stat Counter

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There are a number of sites on the internet that will provide you with statistics for your site. Some are free, or offer limited stats for free, and others only offer their services for a fee.

One of the free site statistic websites that I use is StatCounter. They offer both free and paid services. The free service will keep track of the stats for your last 100 visitors. Since this site doesn’t get a lot of daily traffic yet that’s fine with me.

I can visit StatCounter and see which domains the majority of my visitors have come from, what search engines sent them and what search terms they used to find my site.

Another thing that I like at StatCounter is that it keeps track of the total amount of visitors to the site. I put the code at the bottom of the sidebar, and I occasionally peek at the numbers to see how many visitors have stopped by The Web Files since I started the site.

I’ve never had any problems with the Statcounter service, so if you are looking for a free stats program for your site check it out.

Blog Flux

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If you write a blog or any kind of website for that matter, I can’t stress how important it is to not only create good content for your site, but to promote your site by listing it in as many search engine listings, and directories as you can.

The more listings you have the more visitors you’ll eventually get. This of course is of particular importance if you are trying to monetize your site. Visitors mean money – eventually.

One of the sites that I would recommend that you list your sites on is Blogflux. This site isn’t only a directory in which you should list your blog, it has a number of other features that you can put to good use on your site as well.

On the Blogflux site you’ll find:

  • A Button Maker – makes 80×15 or 88×13 buttons with a few clicks.
  • LinkLog – Track what links are being clicked on by your users, how often they are clicked, and what pages they are clicked from.
  • MapStats – The best way to keep track of your visitors. Not only does it provide the normal statistics found with other stat counter sites, it meshes up with Google Maps to show where your visitors are coming from.
  • PageRank Checker – Google’s PageRank is a way of ranking how important a site is. Check and show off your PR to your site’s visitors.
  • Pinger – Pinging other sites one by one can be a chore. Just enter two fields and hit submit to autmotically ping a dozen sites.
  • Polls – Instantly create AJAX-driven polls that also let you map vote results to Google Maps.
  • Quick RSS Links – Reduce the clutter on your blog. Use blogflux’ link to provide users with quick links to various feed subscribers or email subscription option.
  • Scramble – Protect your email from spamming spiders. Javascript protection to foil them all.
  • Subscription Service – Keeping track of all your favorite blogs can be a hassle and time consuming. Get a daily email that lets you know which of your subscribed blogs have updated posts.
  • Suggest – Finding blogs that you want to read is not easy – too much noise out there! Blog Flux Suggest makes finding interesting blogs an easy and quick experience. Best of all – no spam
  • Themes – Find and download themes for all of the popular blog software packages.

Expandable menus

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Have you noticed how the menus on my side bar roll up neatly? The automatically expand when you click the + sign beside the title of the menu.

If you’re wondering how I did that simply go to the Flooble website’s script section and select the Expandable Menu script. Just follow the directions, changing the text and background colors to suit your blog and within a few minutes you’ll have the code for the expandable script to put on your own website.

You need to make a new script for each menu that you create, but once you’ve made the first one with your customized colors it’s very easy.

Adding a blogroll to Blogger

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The following instructions work for the old version of blogger. I’m not sure yet if they work for new blogger. If someone would let me know I’d appreciate it. These instructions also work for blogcharm and other HTML based templates too.

  • Go into your dashboard and make a new post (post like you would if you were blogging an entry).
  • In that post, insert the script shown for the blogroll. Publish. IGNORE errors when you publish it – because blogger will give you an error.
  • Next, grab the link to that page (go into your blog, find that post, go to the specific page – grab the permalink and copy that URL of the permalink). Take that URL and put it in your sidebar link this: [a xhref=”LINK”]name of blogroll post[/a]
  • Insert your permalink where I have LINK.
  • This will put the blogroll on a page and will not clutter up your sidebar to slow down loading time.
  • Change the date so the blogroll isn’t on your main page. Open the post, at the bottom of the text box where it says > Post/comment options – click there, change the date if you don’t want it to be the first post (backdate it).
  • Publish.

Adding a blogroll to WordPress on own domain

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These instructions are for adding a blogroll to WordPress on your own domain. At this time we haven’t figured out how to add a blogroll to a wordpress.com blog, but it’s fairly easy to add one to WordPress that is hosted on your own domain.

To put the blogroll code on a single page:

Go to the USER section on your DASHBOARD, and scroll down the user page until you find an area called PERSONAL OPTIONS – this will be in the lower left. Un-check the box beside “Use the visual rich editor when writing” and save options. You will now be writing your page in plain text.

Go back to the writing section and select WRITE NEW PAGE.

Give your page a title and perhaps use an image that might be supplied with the blogroll code that you are about to add to your site. Adding an image will create a nice looking header above the list on your new blogroll page. You can also link the image that you use to the home url of the blogroll that you are adding.

Paste the blogroll code into the page. The blogroll code will not work if you are writing in Rich Text so please be sure that you have done the very first instruction that I listed and switched to plain text mode.

Save your page and check to make sure it’s working.

You could also put the code in your sidebar:

Go into your WP admin section and select PRESENTATION, then select theme editor and select the correct theme.

Once you have opened the theme that you are using, you’ll find that the theme is open to the CSS Stylesheet file but all the other files that belong to the theme will be listed on the right.

You want to select your SIDEBAR page.

Find an appropriate place in your sidebar for the blogroll code. You can put an image header above the blogroll if you like and then past the blogroll code into your sidebar. You may have to enclose the blogroll code with list tags < li > < / li > or < div > < / div > (no spaces between selected li or div codes, blogroll code should go in the middle of either of these codes. )

If you’ve posted the code in correctly you should have a new blogroll in your sidebar. If by chance the blogroll isn’t working go back and make sure that there are no spaces in the code. Usually the only space in the code is right after SRC.

I hope that you’ve found this information helpful.

Adding a blogroll to Typepad

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I run some blogrolls of my own on my other sites and I’ve found that a number of people have no idea how to add a blogroll to their site. Even though I haven’t used all of the different types of blogging platforms I’ve learned from my blogroll members how they finally managed to add the code to their sidebar.

To make things easier for you I thought I’d post the instructions for Typepad users here.

Charles from Deuces Stay Wild figured out this one for us:

1. In TypePad, create a Notes typelist.

2. Name your list – perhaps “Wordless Wedneday” or whatever the name of the particular blogroll happens to be.

3. Next you click the “add new item” button

4. Then in the “notes” section you paste the blogroll code – that’s the code that begins with the word script.

5. Next you save the changes.

6. After saving your changes you must go to your edit design page

7. And then to change content selections

8. Once you are on the change content selections you select (check the check-box) your new typelist, which in this case is whatever you just named the new blogroll.

9. Save your changes and you are done!

I don’t use Typepad and as a result if you have further questions I won’t be able to answer them. Sorry. However, if you know of an easier way to add a blogroll to Typepad please feel free to tell me your method.

How to add a blogroll to B2Evolution

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Apparently adding a blogroll to B2evolution is a pain in the hinny. I don’t use that blogging software myself, however one of my blogroll list members was kind enough to have helped me out by giving me the instructions.

The first thing that you need to do is got to your Admin area and click on the Templates tab.

  • Then you will need to select:
  • “_main.php – This is the main template. It displays the blog.”
  • Once you are on main.php, figure out where your sidebar is located in the coding. Look for the words “START OF SIDEBAR”
  • Scroll down until you reach the end of the Side Bar Coding which often ends with an href link to B2evolution and a B2evolution image link.
  • Hit enter twice after the end of the B2evolution link code which ends with an ending paragraph code < / p>
  • Then add the following code:

    b2evoinstr.jpg

  • Save your work at that point and check your page. You should have a blogroll or whatever else (image?) that you pasted into the sidebar code area.

NOTE: If you are using a custom design you will need to edit the _main.php file in the folder that contains your skin.

I hope that you’ve found this information helpful. Remember, I do not use B2evolution so I won’t be able to answer many questions on this if you have any. I’m just trying to be helpful.

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