Best Wordpress Plugins 2012

Every website owner and bloggers face serious problems on their sites and one of the most annoying things that they can find on their pages are spams. Many solutions have been formulated to effectively get rid of spam comments but only a few really work. Akismet is a web service that can help you save time by automatically identifying trackback and comment spam. You have two options in using Akismet—first, through pre-built plugins such as the WordPress Akismet plugin and the second is through the API. API (Application programming Interface) provides you with direct access to the Akismet service. Whichever you select, you must first register an API key which is a string of numbers and letters which act like your password or username. The API key will allow you to login to the service. Just like any other passwords, you must keep it secured and private to keep hackers from meddling with your account.

Things You Need to Know about Comment Spam!

Spam are annoying enough to make your head hurt or spark your irritability. To know which ones are more threatening over the others, you must familiarize yourself with some points about these horrible things.

1. Comment spam is different from e-mail spam- The former wants your readers to buy their products while the latter wants you to purchase theirs.
2. Web spammers make advertisements on your site- They can attract buyers and keep all the profits to themselves.
3. Web spammers escape your attention- They want you to believe that they are real people with real comments and they want you to publish their comments on your blog.
4. Backlinks are used by web spammer to sell products- They do this on your blog by tricking your readers into visiting their own sites.
5. They employ humans- Spambots generate spams but many spammers are real people who write and post comments on websites and blogs.

By learning about this, you will have a better understanding of the need to have Akismet.

How Akismet Works

This web service runs hundreds of tests whenever new comments, pingbacks or trackbacks are added to your website. It also returns thumbs up or thumbs down rating on these. You no longer have to waste your valuable time sorting and getting rid of spammy comments on your website or blog. Akismet also tracks millions of forums and blogs to watch the tricks and methods used by these sinister spammers in real-time. It will warn you when a spambot or human spammer is trying to sneak their filthy comments into your page.

Features of Akismet Web Service

Akismet 2.5 has the following features for your website:

1. Comment status history to make you easily see the comments cleared by Akismet and which were unspammed or spammed by one of the moderators.
2. Automatic retry option when your web host cannot reach Akismet servers,
3. Highlighting links in the comment body to show misleading or hidden links.
4. You can see the number of comments that have been approved for each visitor.
5. Unspam and Spam reports have been improved for accuracy.

This is a must have if you own a WordPress blog. You can download akismet by clicking here.

A new seo plugin   from an accomplished and honest internet marketing expert,  Brian Johnson.   We really want to only recommend plugins from people that have a track record, are knowledgeable, and are honest and will stand by the product for the long term.  Brian is someone that is all those things.

He has taken his many years of experience and put everything he knows about Search Engine Optimization and what he really wanted in an Seo Plugin for WordPress into his Pushbutton Seo Plugin.

The good news is that he has a lite version for free and  a comprehensive  full featured plugin that has many very attractive features and performs a great many invaluable seo functions.

I like the full featured plugin and you should not hesitate in buying it and trying it  as it does come with a thirty day money back guarantee but he has a lite version that is free and stands on its own merits.   I would recommend you try the free version and if you like then consider upgrading.  You can get the free version here.

Watch the videos because he provides a lot of good tips and information.   Join our email newsletter and we will keep you informed of the best new plugins and links to free plugins we think are worthwhile.

Have you observed that many of your friends who own blogs are using WordPress to power their websites? If you ever wonder why WordPress became very popular, the answer is the plug-ins being offered by the provider. The plug-ins extend the functionality of the platform beyond the CMS, hence, it has the edge over any other alternatives. Plug-ins were created to help webmasters and web page owners like you to manage your sites better and to aid in generating income if your blog is designed to become a money-making project.

Some users recommend using not too many plug-ins but the number of plug-ins running doesn’t matter. The nature of the plug-ins themselves are what’s important. If your plug-ins are bloated, huge and poorly-written, you will encounter problems by just running two or three.

If you’re planning to enhance your blog or website, you have two options—install a plug-in or directly add the functionality by adding the functions to the templates. You won’t have any problems if the plug-ins you install are properly coded. By using a plug-in, you can switch off specific functionalities on your site whenever you feel like it.

The Search Regex plug-in, for instance, adds a powerful replace and search capabilities to your site. WordPress SEO helps create improved titles and blocks duplicate pages. Other important and useful plug-ins that you can use for your WordPress blog include the following:

1. FB Open Graph – inserts the Open Graph meta tags to the header to improve the appearance of your blog posts.
2. SlideShare – this helps you embed SlideShare presentations in posts with the aid of sort codes.
3. W3 Total Cache – considered as one of the best caching plug-in that could help improve the website’s performance in terms of page speed.
4. WP Optimize – you can use this to clean up your database tables by getting rid of post revisions, spam comments and also to optimize MySQL tables.
5. WP-DBManager - this plug-in helps to create backup of your WP database.
6. Debug Queries – if your blog is taking too slow to load, you can use the Debug Queries plug-in to identify the MySQL queries which are taking too long to execute.
7. Regenerate Thumbnails – this can be used to regenerate thumbnails having new dimensions.
8. Google XML Sitemaps – allows you to generate an XML map to enable Google and all the other search engines to index your blog.
9. Auto Post Thumbnail – this plug-in creates thumbnails for old posts.
10. Template Tag SC – helps you insert the template tags directly in pages or blog posts.

It’s important to take note that not all plug-ins are created equal. Some are flawless and seamless while others are imperfect and defective so make sure that you do some research before settling for particular plug-ins. Don’t be discouraged from installing a new plug-in just because you think you already have too many of it installed. Also, don’t install one that promises to deliver more features that you need because most of the time, you can attain what you really want with just a small piece of code.