It’s been a while since I shared a couple of Wordpress Plugins with you. In fact, my Last Post on the subject is almost a year old at this point (ok, its 11 months today). On this list of five, only one from the original post makes a reappearance. Yes, I’m still using the other plugins listed in that post, but only one of them is going to be covered today. Mind you, this list isn’t in any specific order, I don’t think any one of these plugins is greater then another, but they’re all ones you should have on your site.

• Add To Any – This plugin is a social media godsend and a must have for ANYONE who wants to benefit from Twitter, facebook, myspace, stumble, etc.. What it does is place a simple link at the end of the post which enables a user to send the post title and url to twitter, facebook, stumble, etc. with out leaving your site. Its brilliant and an easy way for your readers to share your post.
• All in One SEO Pack – this little gem was on the list of ten last March and its still here. It makes my page titles look so much prettier (it puts the article title before the blog title) as well as some other cool stuff with the meta tags and descriptions that the search engines so love. If you’re trying to get your site out there, this is a must have.
• Push up the web for wordpress – Nothing sucks more then having your site designed with all the latest bells and whistles only to have readers who are still on IE6 (or worse) and unable to see it. Push up the web works to solve that problem by helping users upgrade their outdated browsers. If you’re not using this plugin, you’re part of the problem!
• TwitMe automatically tweets your posts in the format you desire when you hit the publish button. Twitter has become one of the leading drivers of traffic at the moment and twitme helps make it automatic for you. Once its setup, you can basically forget about it unless you want to go and retweet one of the last five posts you’ve posted. Its a plus for those who use twitter.
• LinkWithin parses your site and ads a series of suggested posts at the end of your post that the reader might like. I’ve seen traffic stay on the site up to 50% longer through the use of this plugin as people discover older articles that apply to the same topic with out having to search for them. The suggestions are based off of tags and categories so the results vary from time to time but its a good way to keep your readers on your site

So that’s my five, if I had to give out a bonus this post, I’d have to say the ASMW plugin. Amie Street Music Wednesday is a seldom participated in meme (its like me and one or two other people) where every wednesday we post our favorite find from Amie Street. This plugin allows me to embed the preview of the song I’ve chosen along with a link back to Amie Street in case you decide to purchase it. Its a pretty cool idea and a good way to find new music.

If you have a plugin for wordpress you think I’d like, let me know, I’m a Plugin Junkie and always up to try something new!

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So I’ve been playing with the new theme a little more (in case you haven’t noticed). In addition to adding more of the ads back, I’ve added a couple of cool hacked up widgets thanks to the PHP Code Widget and a super cool article that I found at SmashingMagazine.

If you peruse the right side, you’ll notice to new additions to the list. Upcoming Posts and Past Year. Upcoming Posts is just that. Posts scheduled to be published sometime in the future. Could be tomorrow. Could be next week, could be in 2011. Whenever. It simply displays a list of the posts scheduled to be posted. Its pretty cool and for things that you want to have auto posted and you want your readers to know is in the pipe, it works well.

The code is simple and is making good use of the query_posts loop in word press. See?

<?php query_posts(’showposts=10&post_status=future’); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<span class=”datetime”><?php the_time(‘j. F Y’); ?></span></p>
<?php endwhile;
else: ?><p>No future events scheduled.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

Granted, I cleaned it up a little and made some formatting changes to fit, but it works wonders.

The second one is the Past year articles. This one actually functions differently then I had expected. It figures out the date and it published the articles published on the 10th (for example) of the month for the past twelve months. You could modify it of course, to give you almost anything else or limit it to one post. I made a change to clean it up a bit and actually link to the article. Here’s my code:

<?php
$current_day = date(‘j’);
$last_year = date(‘Y’)-1;
query_posts(‘day=’.$current_day.’&year=’.$last_year); ?>
<ul>
<?php
if (have_posts()):
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><strong><a href=<?php the_permalink();?>><?php the_title(); ?></a></strong><br>
<span class=”datetime”><?php the_time(‘j. F Y’); ?></span><br>
<?php
the_excerpt();
?></li>
<?php endwhile;
endif;
?> </ul>

Which is a little different then the code provided in the article and I’m still tweeking it a little bit.

Its amazing what you can do with WORDPRESS! Its almost easier then driving an rv.

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