Go Beyond MLS » WordPress Plugins

Optimize Your WordPress For Smart Phones With WPTouch

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:55:04 +0000

The cell phone I currently have is not exactly what you can call a “smart phone”, but every so often I like to check and see how my websites and blogs look on my phone. According to Google Analytics, I am not the only one to try and access my blog on my cell phone. During last year there were 83 attempts to access Go Beyond MLS using number of mobile devices:

While the above numbers are not something to brag about, I still was surprised to learn that there were attempts to view this blog on mobile devices.

I am sure that the experience of the above users was not the best one. Navigating this blog from a mobile device has probably proven to be a complete nightmare… Until a few days ago that is.

If I have implemented changes correctly, this blog is now optimized for mobile browsing and users should see it in manner shower in the picture to your right. How did I do it? Simple. I used a plugin called WPTouch (developed by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey of BraveNewCode). You can also download WPTouch at WordPress plugin repository.

The reason I decided to go with WPTouch is that it offers easy way to customize the feel and look of the “mobile version” of your WordPress, if you like to keep the color scheme that resembles your website for example. Currently the plugin allows you to customize colors of title, header, sub-header and links. I wish however the developers would also allowed changing the background image/color right from the plugin’s dashboard:

The plugin also offers an easy implementation of AdSense mobile ads. Just enter your AdSnese publisher ID and your AdSense channel and you all set:

Your AdSense ads will be published on every “single post” of the “mobile” version of your website:

WPTouch is the most advanced way to optimize your WordPress for mobile phone users and visitors that I have seen so far. It does not seem to conflict with any of the other plugins I use on this blog. The developers, however, included a list of plugins that are not supported and may not work well with WPTouch- you can see that list in the plugin’s dashboard.

A special thanks goes to Zac Johnson for introducing me to WPTouch.Similar Posts:

20+ WordPress Plugins I Use And Recommend

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:38:58 +0000

I may have inspired Andy Beal to start using TweetMeme plugin on Marketing Piligrim, but he certainly inspired me more. Every time I come across a great plugin I promise myself to give credit to the plugin’s author as well as share with my readers how a particular plugin helped. Of course day passes by, then another and after a few days my desire to write about particular plugin slowly withers out. “It just a plugin”, I tell myself -”some one has already written about it anyway.” The truth is however that many of the plugins I use on my blogs make my life so much easier.

So here are some 20+ plugins that help this blog tick….

Akismet- some say this is the best anti-spam plugin. I use this plugin, however I will always miss Spam Karma. Unfortunately Aksimet relying on “collective intelligence” has flagged on occasion people whom I would never consider spammers.

WP Audio Player – this is a nice little plugin that allows you to embed audio files into your posts and pages making them playable. I think many podcasters use this plugin. While I love this plugin, I have it on my blog only because of one particular post. I still recommend it.

Broken Link Checker – this plugin might be very useful if you are worried that some of your old links point websites that no longer exist. Yeah, I know! But you would be surprised. I actually downloaded this plugin to test it and see if it would find broken links in the comments (authors url + urls in comment’s content)- unfortunately it does not do that, it only checks for broken links in the posts, pages, blogroll and some custom fields. So for now it is disabled- but I will keep an eye on it. I really would love it to be able to check for broken links in the comments.

cforms – if one of the best form builder plugin I have ever seen! This one is a must have!

Contact Form – a plugin that allows you to publish (in a post or a page) a contact form. I used it on all of my blogs before I became acquainted with cforms. If you do not need complicated forms but would like to offer your visitors and easy way to contact you this plugin is just for you.

Dean’s Code Highlighter- nice little plugin for some of us geeks who like to show off and tell you how much better we are than rest of you by pulishing tidbits of code.

Do Follow – enough said. This plugin magically attracts swarms of spammers both automated and human. But it rewards nicely those who have something good and valid to say on my blog.

Google XML Sitemaps - this plugin helps me to keep the big 3, but mostly Googe, informed about my blogs.

Maintenance Mode – I love this plugin. It creates a splash spage for those times when you are making major changes to your blog- such as testing new plugins or new theme. Visitors see a page that explains to your visitors that your website is undergoing maintenance/updates. Logged in users can see the the blog as usual.

NextGEN Gallery- is extremely useful plugin for those who like to take a lot of pictures. It maybe difficult to get used to it since the WordPress’ default media library has been improved over last few years. But NextGen Gallery offers features as tagging your images, giving them descriptions e.t.c. Among many cool things it also creates an additional RSS feed of your pictures.

OIOpublisher Direct 2.0(aff link) – this is a paid plugin I use on this blog to manage advertising purchased directly from me. This is not a free plugin, but if you use my affiliate link you may get some discount!

Redirection- allows you to create different redirects without need of modifying your .htaccess file. One of the cool features of this plugin is that it can automatically create a redirect if you need to modify post’s slug. I found this plugin to be extremely useful if you need to move a blog to a new domain. You can create hundreds of redirects in spreadsheet and import them using the plugin’s import/export feature.

SEO Title Tag – this plugin takes care of the title tags allowing you to have to have different title tag and post title.

Similar Posts- This plugin allows you to display related posts and pages. It is highly configurable, but it needs another plugin called Post-Plugin Library to work.

Subscribe To “Double-Opt-In” Comments – allows people to follow the conversation on desired post. It attempts to solve the issue you might have with sending unsolicited e-mails as it requires confirmation before updates are sent out.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – this plugin makes it easy to share posts on Twitter via TweetMeme Button which you can see in the top left corner of every post on this blog.

Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger – this plugin replaces the built-in ping/notify functionality. Pings only when publishing new or future posts, not when editing.

WP Greet Box – This plugin recognizes where do your visitors come from and displays a customized message. For example if some one visits your blog from Twitter, you can configure the greeting to say something like this “Hey Tweep! Would you mind following me on Twitter?” or something like that. You can customize each greeting to different visitors the way you find it fit.

WP Super Cache – for this plugin I will just rip Andy’s description- is all about “legalized speeding”. I may also add that WP Super Cache can save you some Cash…

So there you go, my 20+ plugins. Do you use any of them?

Similar Posts:

Testing BuySellAds.com Advertising Marketplace.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:31:22 +0000

Having tried a dozen of different ad managing systems, ranging from WordPress Plugins to Google Ad Manager I am giving BuySellAds.com a spin.

BuySellAds.com is an advertising marketplace for small to medium sized website owners and publishers. Once approved, which takes about 24 hours, you can create adzones for your website or blog and add them to your website by simply copying and pasting code. If you blog or website is powered by WordPress, you may also consider using BuySellAds WordPress Plugin by Thaya Kareeson of Omninoggin.com. I personally have not tried the plugin myself yet, however I am considering using it in the future. The plugin includes ati-adblock measures to prevent AdBlock as well as other similar software from blocking advertisements from Buy Sell Ads.

The user interface on BuySellAds.com is rather straight forward and it took me no more than 20 minutes to create and implements ad zones for this blog. Visit Go Beyond MLS ad listing page on BuySellAds.com to see more details about ads available on this blog. The listing page provides some useful information for potential advertisers, such as Alexa Traffic Rank, Compete Rank, Twitter Subscribers etc.

One of the reasons I have decided to try BuySellAds.com is that they have decent marketplace which is very easy to use by potential advertisers to find and purchase ads on desired websites and blogs.

Should you decide to give BuySellAds.com your payout will be 75%. For example if the cost of your ad is $10 ($10 is the minimum you can price your ads by the way) your pay out will be $7.50. You can choose the payment option to be PayPal, Check or Wire Transfer.

If you have used the BuySellAds.com for your website as well I would love to know your experience with them, so don’t be shy – leave a comment! Similar Posts:

Spice Up Your Listing’s Photos With NextGEN WordPress Plugin

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:14:22 +0000

[slideshow id=2 w=300 h=200]
Photo Ceredit:
The Harriman Team of Wallingford, CT
Besides branding themselves with a watermarks on pictures they never took, your local MLS is probably resizing the images you upload to accompany your listing, messing them up in the process or at least greatly affecting the quality of your pictures. Fortunately many agents today have their own website and at least one place where they have control how the photos will appear.

If you are operating a WordPress powered website, you might want to take a closer look at NextGEN WordPress Gallery Plugin by Alex Rabe. This plugin has already been integrated into variety of WordPress themes and even other plugins. There is a learning curve in in figuring out how to use this plugin effectively. But it is well worth the trouble.

Possible Problems With Installing and Configuring NextGEN Plugin.

Not sure if any one else experienced the similar problems, but when I attempted to install NextGEN plugin uploading it via FTP client, it would never work properly. I believe it may had something to do with file permissions (CHMOD) configuration of the particular files withing the plugin folder. Apparently my FTP client messes them up. If you come across the same problem, consider installing the plugin through the user interface of your WordPress (presuming your are using WordPress 2.7 or later). Installing the pluging through the WordPress interface fixed my issue and as you can see in the upper left corner of this post, NexGEN plugin is working well.

The NextGEN also requires JW Image Rotator – an important component for the sideshow function of the plugin. You should follow carefully the instructions on how to tell NextGEN plugin where to find JW Image Rotator- another problem I ran into trying to configure the NextGEN plugin properly.

Have you used this plugin? What do you think about it?Similar Posts:

Facebook Connect Solution For Your Blog

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:37:04 +0000

Ever since I saw the implementation of Facebook Connect on TechCrunch, I wanted to look into implementing it on my blogs as well. However since I was not very active on Facebook, I did not start digging into it until a few days ago. There are are number of solutions available for bloggers today should they decide to take advantage of Facebook Connect.

For now I have settled with the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin by Sociable. The Sociable plugin requires Facebook API so before you start using it, make sure to create new application in Facebook developer section of your account. You may also want to hack this plugin- see in the bottom of the post where described how I did it.

Once installed and configured the Facebook Connect plugin will allow your visitors to logging into your blog using their Facebook credentials. They choose to allow the Facebook Connect application (your blog), to post the comments they leave on your blog to their Facebook account as well.

The Facebook Connect plugin by sociable has a widged that you can place in the sidebar of your blog where the visitors can login as Facebook users. Once logged in, they will also have an option to invite their friends to visit your website without actually leaving your blog.

Another unique feature the plugin provides is the community page, which is hosted right on your blog.

There is however one huge downside wit the plugin. It does not word that well with WP Super Cache plugin. Unless of course you can hack WP Super Cache plugin in such a way that it would serve dynamic pages to Facebook users once they’ve logged in on your blog. If you come across such a hack, please let me know.

Hacking the plugin to display the facebook login button somewhere around your comment box.- do this at your own risk.

Another shortcoming of the Facebook Connect plugin by Sociable is that the sidebar widget is the only place where the login button is displayed. Unfortunately the sidebar is not exactly the first place your visitors might examine when visiting your blog. They many leave a comment without realizing they could have shared it on Facebook. Placing the Facebook Connect login button in vicinity of the comment box can serve as a reminder that they could use their Facebook ID to comment on your blog. Unfortunately I had to come up with my own hack to accomplish that- copy and paste to code below into your comments.php file:

echo "\"".$loginbutton."\" onlogin=\"window.location = ‘".$uri."’;\">\n"; ?>

This is how my comment box looks now with the code above inserted:

It is probably my worst ever attempt to hack anything. Hopefully some one can come up with a better hack. With the above hack, after successful login, the page if refreshed on the very top. Bringing the visitor back down to the comment box would be so much better- but as I said, I suck at coding.

For the list of other Facebook Connect plugins and solutions for other blogging and content management platforms make sure to visit Facebook Connect Plugin Directory.
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Formbuilder Plugin for WordPress- A Must Have Companion For Real Estate Websites

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:00:07 +0000

If your real estate website is powered by WordPress, chances are you have been looking for a good way to implement contact froms on your website. There are number of plugins that can help you with this task. However one particular plugin deserves special attention- Formbuilder Plugin for WordPress.

Unlike other plugins, the Formbuilder gives you the freedom to create contact forms where you can customize every field to your liking, while giving you complete control over the number and the types of the fields you want to use in a contact form. With Formbuilder you can also create number of different contact form that would serve completely different purpose. For example you can have one form designed to capture buyers, another one to capture sellers yet another one to capture renters. Which can be very useful in creating separate landing pages for each of the above mentioned groups.

The plugin also allows you to create auto responders that can be linked to a particular contact form.

The form you see bellow was created in under 10 minutes. It is fully functional and you can take if for a spin if you wish. The form is linked to an auto responder, so if you decide to use the form you will get a feeling how the auto responder works as well.Similar Posts:

Twitter Tools: Synchronize Your Twitter With Your WordPress

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:55:42 +0000

Twitter users may find Twitter Tools very useful. It eliminates the need of services like TwitterFeed, and offers array of other feature that will help you to synchronize your Twitter activity with your blog(s).

Once installed you can configure the plugin to do following:

Create a tweet when you publish a new post. For me this eliminated the need for TwitterFeed, and is probably the only option I will use for now.
Create a blog post from each of your tweets.
Create a daily digest blog post from your tweets
Create a weekly digest blog post from your tweets

In addition it has a widget you can use on the sidebar of your blog which you can use to create new tweets.

If everything goes well and I have configured this plugin properly, it should notify Twitter about this post. If you are using Twitter Tools already, let me know what is your impression about this plugin in the comments below.Similar Posts:

WP Super Cache Can Save You Some Cash!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:26:03 +0000

About over a week ago Go Beyond MLS was down for several days. In fact my entire hosting account was suspended. Evidently my websites were overloading the server and exhausting the server resources.

As attractive as shared hosting is, keeping low prices and all, every serious web master and/or blogger needs to look ahead and plan for a dedicated server solutions… eventually.

As much as I love WordPress as blogging platform, it uses good amount of server resources to evidently cause serious enough trouble for my web host to have my account suspended. So I had to do something. Optimize my sites so that they would not over load the server or move to dedicated web hosting solution (which would cost me about $1200 a year even with the least expensive solutions out there). So I opted for optimizing my websites (at least those powered by WordPress) with WP Super Cache plugin.

WP Super Cache along with it’s parental plugin WP Cache, where aimed primarily at allowing WordPress blogs to survive heavy loads of traffic resulting from websites like Digg or Slashdot. However, as it was in my case, you don’t have to hit the front page of Digg or Slashdot to cause some server issues.

So how does WP Super Cache do it? After you install and configure the plugin, it saves individual pages from your WordPress site and serves them to your visitors as plain old html as long as they do not leave comments. Statistically over 90% of your visitors are passing by without ever leaving a comment. Therefor it is save to presume that over 90% of your visitors will be shown the cached hml versions of your pages instead of heavy PHP scripts.

I know that down the road I will have to revisit the possibility of purchasing dedicated server. But if WP Super Cache can buy me a year, it will end up saving me about $1,200.00.

Side note: If you do not have your custom (“pretty”) permalinks configured on your blog, you will have to configure them- WP Super Cache requires that configuration. It is also good idea to backup your current .htaccess file before configuring WP Super Cache Plugin should things go wrong.Similar Posts:

Dealing With Splogs: Make Them Link To You!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 19:13:52 +0000

If you are a blogger, chances are that sooner or later you will come across a phenomena called “splogs”. These blogs republish your content without your permission and without giving your a proper credit for your work. Some times they do link back to you but dressing up your links in pink colors of “nofollow” attribute. So how do you deal with them?

I came across an interesting discussion on AgentGenius.com on how to deal with splogs. Tom Royce of Real Estate Bloggers suggested a plugin called RSS footer- this plugin allows you to ad an extra link into your feed with a custom message, which can be used to expose and embarrass the splogger.

There is also another similar solution to the above plugin. I have been using it for quiet sometime without realizing it has a potential to insert additional links each of your RSS feed item- Similar Posts Plugin. This plugin undergone husge transformation since I first began using it, if you have it on your blog an kept with plugin’s updates make sure to look at every set of settings to appreciate more what this plugin can do for your blog. You can specify the links to similar post in RSS feed under “Placement” option in the latests version of the plugin.

Since many of the splogs are automated, the extra links to your website will begin to show up on these splogs. There is one more benefit from using the above described plugin- but revealing it means giving away a simple solution to the “developers” of these splogs.

So to all of you who think splogs are fun I am begging you: please go ahead and scrape my blogs.

Note: Above plugins are for WordPress.org powered websites only.Similar Posts:

30 Minutes of SEO Goodness With Stephan Spencer

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:07:55 +0000

If you have 30 minutes of free time, you can probably benefit by watching the video below from the WordCamp 2008. The presentation below is made by Stephan Spencer the founder and president of Netconcepts and the author of SEO Title Tag Plugin for WordPress, which I might add should be #1 plugin on your list to install if you are just starting to use WordPress.

(HT: ProBlogger)

UPDATE: To benefit from the above presentation download the PowerPoint Presentation that Stephan mentioned at the start of his presentation.Similar Posts:

Improving Usability Of Your WordPress Blog With Digg Style Pagination

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:00:54 +0000

I have been using the Digg Style Pagination plugin on several of my other blogs. Just two days ago I have finally installed it on this blog. If you scroll to the bottom of the home page (or any of the archive pages) you will notice that default WordPress pagination was replaced with the new (and I might say really slick looking) pagination:

In the past I was convinced that Digg Style pagination can help me in my SEO efforts. It does add extra ~~deep~~internal links to your blogs, however they link to archive pages. If you home page along with archive pages set to serve a full post instead of excerpt, you are likely to have tons of duplicate content on your blog. So all the links produced with this plugin are linking to that duplicate content.

Of course if you follow advise of SEO experts and “nofollow” the duplicate content, the use of Digg Style Pagination Plugin has absolutely no effect on your blog besides being a good looking widget and letting your readers know your blog has been around for a while. It looks that with three posts per page, this plugin shows 54 pages- starting from home page.

This plugin also creates pagination for category and tag pages. It is also worth mentioning that plugin is compatible with the version 2.6 of WordPress.Similar Posts: