Fourth Lesson - Publishing With Wordpress

How are you? Well we're winding down to the end of this short course. But we still need to go over a few things so that you can start publishing your own content using WordPress.

Today we are going to talk more about using Plugins to make your website more functional. We are also going to take a look at some of the best free Plugins that you can use.

As we have discussed before, WordPress Plugins can greatly improve how your website looks and performs. Plugins have the ability to help you make your website into virtually anything you want it to be.

In your last lesson we talked a little bit about how to install and activate Plugins. Let's recap;

- First, log in to your WordPress admin area. - Choose "Add New" from the sidebar menu under Plugins.

From there you will have the option to either upload a plugin you have on your computer or search through the WordPress plugin directory. After you have installed your chosen plugin go back to the sidebar and choose "Installed Plugins" then activate your new plugin.

When it comes to managing your new plugin not all of them are created equally. You will notice that some of them will create a menu tab on your sidebar that will allow you to input data and customize the plug-in to suit your needs, while others won't need any customization at all. When in doubt you can always visit the plug-in website for help. You will find that link next to the plug-in on the Installed Plugins page.

Now let's talk about some of the best free word plugins that you can use for your website. These are all plug-ins that I have tested and used myself.

- All In One SEO Pack

This is an incredibly valuable free plugin that automatically creates search engine friendly post pages including meta-tags. It also allows you also to pre-establish meta-titles or meta-tags for your entire website.

- Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your website.

- Sociable

This handy plugin automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites, so that your readers can share your posts with others quickly and easily.

- Akismet

This plugin usually comes pre-installed and is probably the best plugin when it comes to spam protection. It is also the most popular and most effective.

- Contact Form 7

This powerful plugin can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form to meet your needs with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and more.

- Feedburner FeedSmith

Is one of the best RSS feed managers, it takes care of your RSS feeds without any hard coding.

- Global Translator

This plugin will automatically translates your blog in the following 48 different languages, so that you can reach people across the globe.

- NextGEN Gallery

This is a fully integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slide show option.

- SEO Friendly Images

Is a Wordpress SEO plugin that will automatically update all of your images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images don't have ALT and TITLE it will add them according the options you choose

- WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of the heavier WordPress PHP scripts.

- Google Analytics

Is a must have WordPress plugin that allows you to track your website easily from your Google account.

- Add Link to Facebook

It automatically add links to posts or pages that are being published to your Facebook wall, pages or groups. It has a very simple one time setup.

- BuddyPress

This is another powerful plugin that lets users register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more. A social network in a box, it literally lets you build a social network.

These are only a few of the WordPress plug-ins that I have found to be useful. When it comes to choosing plugins for your website it really just comes down to a matter of personal preference. With literally thousands plug-ins available for you to choose from it's important to use your better judgment, look at the ratings and remember you can just as easily deactivate a plug-in as you can activate one, so feel free to test as many as you'd like.