Royce Tivel asked:


It’s soon going to be time to redesign my web site for the “Web 2.0 Age.” I have seriously looked at two platforms, Drupal and Joomla, with which to accomplish this.

Drupal and Joomla offer comprehensive packages that, in the case of Drupal, includes a blog and forum as core modules. Theming these platforms can be accomplished through both CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and PHP (Personal Home Page or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) code modifications. However, these platforms are complex and learning enough to install, manage, and customize these platforms can be a daunting task.

After studying the two platforms, including using them both on my test bed platform and on the Internet, I decided to take a look at WordPress as a possible solution to my future Web needs. I was surprised to discover that the latest version of WordPress is easy to install, easy to use, and easy to theme.

In this article, I will describe how to customize WordPress 2.5.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE JAKOB DESIGN

The current design for my personal web site, SelectDigitals.com, is based on work and philosophy of Jakob Nielsen , http://www.useit.com/. Nielsen’s work has been dedicated to making usable web sites that deliver content that is easy to find and easy to read.

The design of Nielsen’s site (and my site, by permission) is elegantly simple and has the primary goal of delivering content. WordPress also has the primary goal of delivering content. So, my first WordPress design will endeavor to maintain the look and feel of our sites with the added feature of visitor interactivity. I will refer to this as the Jakob design.

There are six major components that make up the look of the default WordPress blog:

1. Header Graphic,

2. Blog Title,

3. Tagline,

4. Page,

5. Background,and

6. Footer.

In order to make the Jakob blog load quickly, I decided not to use a header or footer graphic; and since the design will essentially be the default WordPress theme with a new coat, only a little graphic design work needs to be done. In fact, I only needed to create one graphic to to generate the blog page with it’s two column effect. The blog page will “float” centered in a dark-blue *body* background that will serve to frame the page.

Creating the Graphic

A look in the image directory for the default WordPress theme shows the default images used for the Kubrick look. For now, there is only one file of particular interest: kubrickbgwide.jpg. For the Jakob design, the other Kubrick images are not needed but will be needed for the “Fancy”, more complex design.

The blog’s page will be created from a “slice” through the center of the new design. The slice is a narrow image the width of the blog page.

I began my design by laying out a basic page (760px X 600px) in Adobe Illustrator. I like using Illustrator for artwork of this kind, although other programs could be used, too.

I filled the basic page with the page’s background color (not to be confused with the dark blue *body* background). The light background color will will “show-off” colored text, such as the blog’s title and tagline.

I overlayed the page with two rectangles, or “columns.” The left-hand, 510px-wide column is filled with a pastel yellow color; the right-hand column, 230px wide, is filled with a pastel blue color. The two columns fit within the basic page with a 10px border of page background around them.

In Illustrator, I then placed a 760px X 40px rectangle on the page and used this to make a slice. A slice is nothing more that a representative piece of a larger image, in this case, of the blog design. I saved the slice as kubrickbgwide.jpg. Kubrickbgwide.jpg will be used to generate the blog-page background. As new content is added to the blog page, copies of the slice will be stacked vertically to “grow” the two-column background. This is the only image needed by a browser to generate the blog’s home page. The Blog will, therefore, load very quickly.

Pretty easy so far, right? The rest of the design is accomplished through the theme’s CSS file and/or through the WordPress administrative interface.

CSS Changes

The default CSS file is in the wp-content_themes_default directory. The CSS text below shows the code changes to style.css. Before making any changes to the default CSS file, I always make and save a copy of the original. The CSS file can be opened and modified with any text editor. Text to be deleted will be shown within square brackets. New or modified text will be shown without brackets.

/* Begin Typography & Colors */

body {

[background: #d5d6d7 url('images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg');]

background: #636f89; /* Set the Body background color to blue */

}

#page {

[background-color: white;]

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border:none;

}

[#header {

background: #73a0c5 url('images/kubrickheader.jpg') no-repeat bottom center;

}

#headerimg {

margin: 7px 9px 0;

height: 192px;

width: 740px;

}]

#footer {

[background: #eee url('images/kubrickfooter.jpg') no-repeat top;]

background: #fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

}

h1, h1 a, h1 a:hover, h1 a:visited, #headerimg [.description] {

text-decoration: none;

[color: white;]

color:red; /* Make the title red */

padding-bottom: .5em; /* Put a little space between the title and tagline */

}

.description {

text-decoration: none;

color: blue; /* Make the tagline blue */

text-align: center;

}

/* End Typography & Colors */

/* Begin Structure */

#page {

[background-color: white;]

background-color: fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border: none;

}

#header {

[background-color: #73a0c5;]

background-color: #fffef2; /* Very light yellow */

}

/* End Structure */

After making and saving these changes to the style.css file, the newly designed blog page is accomplished.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE FANCY DRESS DESIGN

Although I like the simplicity of the Jakob blog design, it will not appeal to everyone. Lots of people just love “glitz.” The price of a fancy WordPress dress is often a slower loading blog with no increase in usability. However, for those who want to “dress up” the appearance of their blog, here are additional ways this can be accomplished.

First of all, it should be noted that the background of the default WordPress page uses header (kubrickheader.jpg) and footer (kubrickfooter.jpg) graphics. These graphics are not filled with a solid color, as in the Jakob design, but with gradients. There also appears to be a very small drop shadow under the page.

Because of the complexity of the default page, additional graphics are required and, thus, more slices will be needed. Additionally, when a more complex body background is desired in which to “float” the page, a “seed” image for this might also be required (this is what the kubrickbgcolor.jpg image is for).

As before, I created a drawing of the blog page in Illustrator. The page, with rounded corners, floats on the default WordPress background, has a yellow gradient, and has a small drop shadow.

I first created a 760px X 600px rectangle on the Illustrator artboard. I filled this rectangle with the background color (C:8, M:6, Y:6, K:0).

Next, using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, I drew a 736px X 584px rectangle and filled it with the yellow gradient. Essentially, I made the page as large as possible within the background while leaving enough room for the drop shadow.

Finally, I gave the rounded rectangle a small drop shadow.

In order to insure that the slices will merge perfectly into the *body* background, I created a 60px X 60px square of the same background color (C:8, M:6, Y:6, K:0) and saved it as kubrickbgcolor.jpg. The small image will be used to “paint” the body background. This is an important step as the background used for the body and the background used for the page must match perfectly for the Fancy design.

Creating the Slices

Using the Rectangle Tool, I placed a 760px X 200px rectangle on top of the layout described above. I positioned this rectangle at the top of the layout and used it to make a slice for the header graphic. Before doing this, I disabled stroke and fill.

I saved the slice as kubrickheader.jpg.

I created the footer and page slices in a similar fashion and renamed them as kubrickfooter.jpg and kubrickbgwide.jpg, respectively. Kubrickfooter.jpg is 760px X 63px and kubrickbgwide is 760px X 40px.

There are two other Kubrick images in the images directory: kubrickbg-ltr.jpg and kubrickbg-rtl.jpg (left to right, and right to left). These images are the same as kubrickbgwide.jpg. So, I made two copies of kubrickbgwide.jpg and renamed them accordingly.

CSS Changes

The default CSS file is in the wp-content_themes_default directory. The CSS text below shows the code changes to style.css. Square brackets show which code to delete and new code is shown without brackets. Before making the change, I copied and saved the original file. For the Fancy design, the CSS changes are minimal.

/* Begin Typography & Colors */

body {

[background: #d5d6d7 url('images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg');]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg’);

}

#page {

[background-color: white;]

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

}

#header {

[background: #73a0c5 url('images/kubrickheader.jpg') no-repeat bottom center;]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickheader.jpg’) no-repeat bottom center;

}

#footer {

[background: #eee url('images/kubrickfooter.jpg') no-repeat top;]

background: #e7e7e7 url(‘images/kubrickfooter.jpg’) no-repeat top;

}

h1, h1 a, h1 a:hover, h1 a:visited, #headerimg [description]{

[color: white;]

color:red; /* Make the blog title red */

padding-bottom: .5em; /* Put a little space between the title and tagline */

}

.description {

text-decoration: none;

color: blue; /* Make the blog tagline blue */

text-align: center;

}

/* End Typography & Colors */

/* Begin Structure */

#page {

[background-color: white;]

background-color: #e7e7e7;

[border: 1px solid #959596;]

border: none; }

#header {

[background-color: #73a0c5;]

background-color: #e7e7e7;

}

/* End Structure */

After the design and CSS work, the WordPress shows it’s new clothes to the whole Internet.

STYLING WORDPRESS — THE NO-GRAPHIC DESIGN

Nothing every goes wrong when a browser loads a page from the Internet, right? Even if this were, in fact, the case, it is still wise to consider how a page will display in case the graphics can’t be found.

In the case of the Jakob design, if kubrickbgwide.jpg did not get downloaded, for any reason, the page would not display acceptably. Because of the light background used for the header and footer, they display normally on the dark-blue background assigned to the body. However, the page content becomes difficult to read: it almost gets lost in the dark-blue background. A lighter background for the body might have been a much wiser choice.

The creator of the Kubrick design solved this problem by assigning alternate background colors to be used if the graphics were not available. The assignments are made within the style.css file:

body { background: #d5d6d7 url(‘images/kubrickbgcolor.jpg’); }

#header { background: #73a0c5 url(‘images/kubrickheader.jpg’) no-repeat bottom center; }

#footer { background: #eee url(‘images/kubrickfooter.jpg’) no-repeat top; }

If the images are not available, the alternate RGB color value will be used.

If the graphics are not available, the default WordPress blog is still presentable and usable. For an initial page redesign, starting with the basic Kubrick design, without graphics, might be a good place to begin. This can be accomplished by simplifying the statements above:

body { background: #d5d6d7; }

#header { background: #73a0c5; }

#footer { background: #eee; }

The colors can then be changed to try out various blog color schemes. Just change the RGB color codes, save the CSS file, and refresh the browser to see the changes immediately.

Yours for a more successful blog,

Royce Tivel

Alex_Sysoef asked:


Expert WordPress is a new blogging system that allows bloggers to save time and get more done after they create a blog. Not only that, but the system is actually a full on blogging suite with your own WordPress theme, plugins, video tutorials and instructions, all packed into one. Expert WordPress was created for the WordPress community to counteract the limitations and problems they usually face when they want to create a blog.

The Expert WordPress system takes you by the hand and explains in detail what you need to do and when. Setting up a blog couldn’t be easier and more straightforward than this. Since WordPress is the number one choice blogging software on the market, most bloggers will eventually migrate to it, even if they first create a blog with one of the dozen of the free blogging tools available on the market.

You can choose Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal and even the free option of http://WordPress.com for your blog, but none of them will give you the benefits and choices of the WordPress software that runs on a self hosted domain.

Self hosted WordPress blogs are by far the best blogs for search engine optimization, great placement and the ability to monetize them in many possible ways. Smart Internet marketers have recognized this fact a long time ago and wouldn’t ever go back to whatever they used prior to hosting their own WordPress blog.

Some features that really make the WordPress software stand apart from the others is the versatility of it. There are just so many options in which we can build WordPress blogs and with a bit of coding knowledge in HTML and PHP, anybody can actually design their own WordPress theme.

There are plugins, widgets and many other pieces of coding than can be integrated into WordPress. Best of all, nothing is set in stone. If you ever wanted to change the look of your WordPress blog you can do so easy with a few changes in the stylesheet.

To make the process of starting out to create a blog, by moving to your own self hosted WordPress blog a lot easier, Expert WordPress has been designed for you.

It is the system if you are sick of trying to lean code or spend hours finding the right plugins. The creators of the software have actually built in the required plugins to help you with your search engine rankings. All you need to do is activate them with a few clicks. This will not only save you a lot of time, but you won’t have to worry whether the plugins you use are the right ones.

Another benefit of using Expert WordPress opposed to doing it yourself is the fact that is comes with its own support forum. Should you ever get stuck you won’t need to purchase expensive eBooks or even search for answers online. You’ll have your very own help support community right at hand.

It’s up to you whether you want to create a blog the traditional way, or use Expert WordPress and fast track your blogging experience to something more pleasant. Either way, WordPress is the software to choose for sure.

IC asked:


WordPress 2.3 was released Monday 24th September, bringing major advances to the engine that powers many millions of blogs. Slated as a release candidate, this version has been thoroughly tested and is already featured as the latest stable download.

This release isn’t just an incremental update with security patches, it includes a host of new features such as native tags, core and plugin update notifications, enhanced entry management and improved handling of draft entries, native support for canonical redirection, atom feeds, and a bunch of other updates too numerous to mention here.

Tagging Your Posts

With the explosion of sites using tags to search for content, Technorati and Flickr being two obvious examples, it was only ever a matter of time until WordPress joined the club. Version 2.3 sees the first implementation of tags by the development team, although in true WP style, they tell us they haven’t implemented tag management yet, so no editing or deleting, they want to assess the need for this before committing extra code to the base.

Inexperienced users might grumble about this, but one of the strengths of WordPress is the range of plugins available, and several tag plugins already exist, it won’t be long until v2.3 management of tags is accomplished. The plugin route may be preferred by many users anyway given the range of customization options that are a typical feature of third party plugins. The tag functionality built into 2.3 works well, tags are displayed along with the entry and clicking the tag link displays all entries with the same tag.

Webmasters with existing tags using ‘Simple Tagging’, ‘Jerome’s Keywords’, ‘Bunny’s Technorati Tags’, or ‘Ultimate Tag Warrior’ are able to convert their tags to v2.3 using the Import function found under the Manage tab in Dashboard. Converting your existing WordPress categories to tags is also possible for user’s who want to remove categories altogether.

Update Notification in Dashboard

A significant addition to v2.3 is the core and plugin update notifications that have been added to the Dashboard. Long overdue, this feature, not without controversy over privacy issues, is likely to become the main selling feature of WordPress 2.3 as users realize they no longer have to search for plugin homepages or latest versions to ensure their installation is uptodate.

Here’s how it works. WordPress is configured to automatically contact the WordPress servers, api.wordpress.org and query for updates to core files or plugins registered in the WP plugins repository hosted on wordpress.org. When new updates are available, these will be displayed in Dashboard with a direct link to the files or download page. A notable absence is the ability to automatically install the update, although rumors abound this may be included in future versions.

A criticism of the update notification service has been leveled at the ‘always on’ nature of the feature. Privacy and potential hacking scenarios have been raised, along with request that the service be patched to allow an opt in/opt out mode. It will be interesting to see how the developers deal with this issue in future releases given their rationale that it is better to reduce the volume of support queries and insecure installations by providing the notification service.

Enhanced Post Filtering and Improved Draft Entry Management

This is a welcome addition for any blogger with more than a handful of posts. WordPress aficionados should immediately notice the enhanced filters in the manage posts page. Posts are now filterable by status, month and category making it much easier to find specific posts to edit.

The status dropdown is particularly welcome with options for selecting published, draft, scheduled, or pending review. Managing unpublished entries has never been easier in WordPress.

Native Canonical Redirection

Any WordPress webmaster familiar with the duplicate content penalty arising from www or no www, will be delighted with v2.3′s native support for canonical redirection. Simply enable this from within wp-admin, under Options to experience seemless redirection, most users will never even know that they’ve been redirected unless they look at the address bar. This should make it easier to track SERPs on WordPress powered sites.

Richard Taylor asked:


is simply the best blogging platform on the planet! Being open source software, developers around the world have produced hundreds of plugins to enhance its basic functionality, as a result blogging has never been easier, and the search engines love it!

Blogging with WordPress offers two huge advantages:

1. It’s FREE to download and use

2. The Search Engines, in particular Google, love WordPress blogs

WordPress is open source software, which means it’s free to use. When you choose a hosting account, try and choose one that uses a control panel called “CPanel”, because installing WordPress becomes as easy as clicking a handful of icons, it really is simple!

So you’ve bought a domain name, found a hosting company with CPanel and installed WordPress on your new domain! In theory you’re ready to make your first post! But before you do, read on!

Before you post, you need to configure your blog and optimise it for the search engines, doing this before you post makes life a lot easier for the future.

As WordPress is open source, developers around the world have written literally hundreds of plugins that enhance the functionality of your blog, and again the majority are free to install. Take a look at WordPress.org where you’ll find hundreds of free plugins. Ones I recommend are:

- Installer (install this one first, simplifies plugin installations)

- All In One SEO Pack (optimises your posts)

- Adsense Manager (adds Adsense blocks to your posts)

- Google XML Site Maps (creates a site map for your blog)

- Ultimate Tag Warrior (essential plugin for managing tags)

- Sociable (assists with social bookmarking)

Next, within your dashboard, select Options in the menu and then Permalinks. You need to change the settings on this page in order to optimise your post’s url for the search engines, this change will ensure your keywords appear in the url. In the Custom Options box, insert the following text:

/%category%/%postname%/

Typing this will optimise your posts, but you must be careful only to ever select one category per post in the future, and not change a post’s category after you’ve published it!

When you post with WordPress, it automatically notifies (known as pinging) blog directories of your new content, they index it based on the tags you assign. The search engine robots regularly visit these directories, and as a result your new post will be indexed by them very quickly. Rapid indexing is one of the huge advantages of blogging!

In your blogs configuration, you should add as many directory sites as possible to ping, in addition to the default url. Simply search on the web for “ping list”.

Finally, you need to optimise the appearance of your site. You don’t want to use the basic template that comes with WordPress. If you do a search online for WordPress themes, you’ll find hundreds to download for free.org again in their themes directory. Whilst there are hundreds of free themes around, I never seem to find one that perfectly meets my needs, so I often end up buying one!

Once you’ve installed the theme of your choice, activated all of your plugins, and made the configuration adjustments I’ve recommended, you’re ready to post, so what are you waiting for!

IC asked:


With the addition of the Plugin Update Notification into WordPress 2.3, it is now more important than ever before that plugin authors maintain and update their plugins on a regular basis. Failure to do so may see their plugin dropped from wordpress.org while user’s migrate to other more up-to-date plugins.

Some of the most popular WordPress plugins have already been tested and listed as WordPress 2.3 compatible plugins. Sadly many will never be compatible as their authors have given up development.

Developing a successful and popular blog or website is made easier by using WordPress, even more so now that canonical redirection and update notifications are included by default. Bloggers wishing to grow their site, increase traffic, manage content, and monetize their pages will however need to install some of the excellent plugins available. Here’s a short list of must have plugins:

“Akismet v2.02″, without this many bloggers quickly become bogged down in dealing with spam. The Akismet plugin sends a query to the Akismet servers with every comment posted and checks the users email address and their comment for spam. Akismet will automatically reject spam giving webmasters peace of mind and restoring ‘blogging innocence’.

“Backup WordPress”, the easiest and quickest way to backup your entire WordPress install, including database, themes, uploads, in fact even the entire site with core files. We all know operating a popular site requires time and effort, and when a site goes down its good to know you have a backup.

“No follow case by case”, for webmasters who really don’t want comment authors getting any link juice from their hard won efforts to build their PR. Linking to potentially bad neighborhoods or sites that aren’t in your niche can damage our site’s SERPs, luckily the no follow tag is honored by most major search engines. No follow case by case allows you to select any comment link that shouldn’t be followed, or leave the default setting which automatically applies the no follow tag to all comment links.

“Google Sitemaps Generator”, designed to work with Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and MSN Search, this plugin will generate your sitemap in plain text and compressed format, then ping Google, Ask.com and Yahoo when you update your site. The generated sitemap will also include a priority rating for each entry based on the number of comments received.

“Mint Popular Posts” utilizes Mint, one of the best tracking packages for complete analysis of your website traffic. Find out which pages your visitors are reading, which links they’re clicking, which ad’s they’re clicking, and more.

Did I miss important plugins? Yes, what about Advertising plugins? for plugins which support AdSense, there are 2 plugins that are listed in the plugin compatibility list at the time this article written, they are “AdSense Deluxe” and “AdSense Manager”, but here is another new plugin but it’s not free (although it’s pretty cheap), “DynamicAds”, it’s compatible with WordPress 2.3 and one of the the plugin’s features allows you to control how you want to rotate your ads in various locations on your site.

Those are the essential plugins that need to be firstly installed to your WordPress website.

Gobala Krishnan asked:


If you’re blogging on the WordPress platform, I’ll bet my entire life savings that the first thing you ever did was try to install a new WordPress theme. I’ll bet my future earnings that even today you’re still occasionally changing themes and wasting a lot of time doing minor modifications that when summed up merely distracts you from blogging itself.

Yet, it’s easy to understand why themes beg for so much attention. With the correct theme, you can accommodate all the nifty little widgets and codes, and may also mean better search engine rankings and tons of fresh traffic every day.

So what factors do you need to consider to make this whole theme-hunting business easier? Here are five important ones:

1) Theme Width and Columns

Typically, WordPress themes come in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths ranging from 500 pixels to 960 pixels wide. If you’re blogging for non-profit purposes, a 2-column theme can look more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have less images of products or links to other sites to display, you can focus exclusively on the content without leading readers away from your site.

On the other hand, if you’re blogging for profit, you may want to consider a 3-column WordPress theme that will be able to accommodate your Google Adsense, Chitika and Text Link Ads codes comfortably without squeezing everything in the content area. 3-column themes allow room for expansion, but in the event that you’ve filled up all available space with ads, then it’s time you removed the non-performers and use only the advertising services that work for that particular blog.

2) Use of Images and Icons

A theme with images and icons can look good, but it rarely increases your web traffic or subscriber base. In fact, most “A-list” bloggers have plain vanilla themes with a simple logo on top. Reducing the amount of images also means faster loading time and less stress on your servers. This vital aspect of server load become apparent only if you have tens of thousands of visitors a day, but it’s worth designing for the future.

A image-laden theme also distracts readers from the content itself. This is the reason why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use images intensively in the content areas to add value to a post, but the theme itself is simple and rather minimalist.

Ideally, a theme should allow you to use your own header image for stronger branding purposes, yet replace images and icons with links and text, or just not use them at all unless absolutely necessary.

3) Compatibility with Plugins

Another time-sucking activity is installing plugins that improve the functionality of your site. There’s a plugin out there for almost everything you want to do with your blog, but while most of them are free and easily obtainable, it’s not always easy to install the plugins and insert the codes into your WordPress theme.

If your theme is too complicated, it may be a headache to even insert that one line of code you need to make a plugin work. This is often the case with advanced AJAX-based WordPress themes that have too many files and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred a simpler themes that stick to the default WordPress theme as much as possible, so I can cut back on the learning curve and just get on with my life.

Remember that the purpose of your blog is to deliver timely, relevant content to your readers, Any theme that preserves or improves the reader experience is good, any theme that subtracts from the experience is bad.

4) Search Engine Optimization

A lot can be said about search engine optimization, but at the end of the day if you have content worth reading eventually you’ll get the rankings you deserve. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need SEO; it merely means that as far as optimization is concerned all you really need to do is to make sure:

(a) Your tags are formatted properly, with the name of the post first followed by the name of the blog – some themes can do this automatically without modification to the code or use of a plugin

(b) All your blog content titles use the H1 tag, with the main keywords used instead of non-descriptive text for better SEO relevance

(b) Your theme has clean source codes, and if possible all formatting is linked to an external CSS file which you can edit independently

5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use

Can the theme be installed easily on an existing blog without having to move things around? Can the same theme be used and customized easily on your other blogs? These are some additional things you may want to consider when theme-shopping, especially if every minute of downtime on your blog may mean lost revenue.

While it’s hard to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of free and paid themes out there, it’s still a good idea to have a test blog site. Test any theme you plan on using, and make sure your test blog is also fitted with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used on your real blog. The last thing you want is for your readers start seeing weird error messages on your blog.

At the end of the day, a theme is just a theme. Instead of spending your time installing them, it may be wiser to outsource the task and focus more on your readers. Alternatively, you may also want to consider buying “plug-and-play” themes for a reasonable price. Dennis De’ Bernardy of ProWordpress.com has probably one of the best themes around, but if you’re short on cash there are certainly cheaper alternatives.

Jefferson Hennessy asked:


Did you know there is a new open source community project underway called the WordPress Plugin Database, located at wp-plugins.net, which is a user-friendly web site with about 2,500 WordPress plugins and counting?

“The WordPress Plugin Database is a categorized list of WordPress plugins, complemented by a WordPress Plugin Manager that allows one-click installs,” say the database developers. “For users, wp-plugins.net provides a browseable list of plugins, and RSS feeds you can subscribe to in order to get notified of new plugins and updates. For developers, wp-plugins.net makes it easy to publicize your plugin and keep users informed of new versions.”

As for us everyday non-developer WordPress fanatics who are constantly searching for cool new plugins to make our site attract visitors and earn some money, the WordPress Plugin Database is populated with plugins that can help generate web site traffic to your blog, sell your ebooks, share web site links, podcast your message, offer a public forum for returning visitors, and fight spam in the process.

Below is a short list of free plugins I discovered in this new database that can drive traffic to your blog, sell terrific products, and keep visitors on your site for a while – the perfect monetization strategy for every blogging entrepreneur.

Would you like to add a Public Forum to your blog? Simple Forum is a free plugin that is described as a “simple and straightforward forum that does the sort of stuff a forum is supposed to.” Simple Forum currently has 71 features you can use to develop a growing community of returning visitors who are encouraged to speak to each other, and who share common interests with you, the brilliant blog owner and forum manager expert. Search engine spiders love the fresh content provided by a community forum. Simple Forum can support your forum member’s comments in 17 languages: stuff.yellowswordfish.com/simple-forum/

Would you like to monetize your blog by selling your products and services with a WordPress shopping cart? The free WP eCommerce Lite shopping cart plugin is described as “an industrial strength, elegant, easy to use, fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.” You can upgrade to the eCommerce Gold plugin for just $15. If you don’t have any products to sell, you can set up this shopping cart to sell products offered by Amazon.com, Art.com, and so on: instinct.co.nz/?p=16

Reciprocal link directories create backlinks to your site that helps improve your site’s search engine ranking, and most shared link directories are not free. Plus, most blogs don’t offer a shared link directory. The free WP Link Directory is described as “the first and the only one link directory plugin on the Internet for WordPress admin to store and maintain a set of links in classified categories.” This link directory plugin can match your blog theme: alectang.com/wordpress-link-directory/

Podcasting is a web site traffic generation phenomenon that has seen over 6 million people download MP3 podcasts. That’s not including the millions of people who prefer to listen without downloading. Here’s an idea. Why not record your blog articles as a podcast, and then submit your articles to podcast directories? Even if you don’t like the sound of your voice, there are software programs online that you can use to speak your written words with a more pleasing sound.

PodPress is a free plugin described as “a dream plugin for Podcasters using WordPress,” and “a full-blown Podcasters Plugin for WordPress.” With Podpress, you can post a podcast along with your article for visitors to download, or listen to without downloading. Why not interview an expert in your niche by telephone, and post your conversation as a podcast with your article? mightyseek.com/podpress

And finally, every high-traffic blogger would love to find a way to eliminate spam. Spam Karma 2 (SK2) is a free spam fighting plugin developed by the WordPress Plugin Directory guys. SK2 is described as “an anti-spam plugin for the WordPress blogging platform. It is meant to stop all forms of automated blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters.” wp-plugins.net/doc/sk2/

By the way, don’t forget to upgrade your WordPress blog to the latest 2.3 version released in September of 2007. WordPress 2.3 offers new article keyword tagging features, which means improved search engine ranking and more web site traffic for you: wordpress.org/download/