There are over 6500 plugins available for download at WordPress.org – so how do you choose which ones are best for your blog?  It all depends on the purpose, content and style of your blog.  There are shopping cart plugins, gallery plugins, advertisement placement plugins, video plugins, and much more.

I have compiled a short list of the more administrative type plug-ins I use and recommend to my clients. These are the tools that make your blog easier to manage, more search engine friendly.  Regardless of the nature of your blog, these plugins are great tools.

All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO Pack is an awesome plugin that automatically generates Meta tags and optimizes your titles OR gives you the flexibility to override your titles and META tags for each individual post or page. The bottom line is, it gives you more control over your blog and can help you achieve higher search engine rankings.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful website traffic analysis tool. Monitor traffic, page views, referrals, bounce rate and so much more!)   Once you sign up for your free Google Analytics account you can used this plugin to easily add the code to your all your WordPress Blog.

Twitter Tools
Twitter tools is a plugin that allows you to connect your blog with your twitter account.  Automatically tweet new posts or compile your tweets into a new blog post.  Use this with the Facebook Twitter application and automatically update twitter and Facebook every time you add a new blog post!

Akismet
Akismet is a must have WordPress plug-in. That is of course, unless you love sorting through a bunch of spam comments.  Akismet helps you manage the spam comments and will save you plenty of time as your blog becomes more popular.

Feedburner Feedsmith
A great feed management tool that will help you track all your RSS subscribers.  Feedburner also offers some nifty tools for publishing your feed to another website, or offering email updates of your RSS Feed.

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Major WordPress supporters/developers are reporting “attacks” on older versions of self hosted WordPress blogs.

If you are running an older version of WordPress, (anything other than version 2.8.4) you should upgrade your installation immediately.

For more information on the attack, upgrading or WordPress security:

• Mashable: WordPress Attack underway: WordPress Users Must Upgrade
• Old WordPress Versions Under Attack
• How to Keep WordPress Secure

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Oh!No! You accidentally deleted or over wrote your WordPress page or blog post and lost all your content and now you are panicking wondering how to get it back.

Don’t fret! There is a super easy way to recover your WordPress page content or blog post to an earlier version of the page.   While in the edit page or post screen, scroll down and you will see a page revisions section.

Select a revision date (by clicking on it) prior to when you lost your content or made your unwanted changes.

This will take you to a page that shows the last version of the page in HTML. Just ignore that HTML gobbly-gook and scroll further down.  You should see a whole bunch of restore dates.

Select the date that you want to restore and then click the restore link and say the magic words, “Alla-Peanut-Butter Sandwiches!”.  And Presto! Your content is back, baby!

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If you have a WordPress blog you probably learned the hard way that pasting from word can create a mess of your template unless you use the “Paste From Word” button.  I have  a few clients that are new to WYSIWYG editors and blogging in general, so I created this video tutorial to help show how to painlessly paste from a word document to a WordPress post.

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I am excited to announce the recent launch of FraserValleyPulse.com. I have worked with Kristi Ferguson, the founder and editor of FraserValleyPulse.com, for several years now, so when she came to me with a new project I couldn’t wait to get started!   Her enthusiasm for her new venture was contagious and it became my responsibility to bring her vision for the site to life.

Kristi wanted a vehicle for promoting the exciting and wonderful businesses, events and overall community of Fraser Valley and because she is a DIY kind of gal, it was important that she be able to update the site regularly and easily herself.   Design-wise Kristi wanted something that was fresh, contemporary, fun, funky yet professional and oh yeah, something that appealed to both men and women. She also wanted to incorporate music and different pictures on each page header. (I know, she doesn’t ask for much does she?!)

After reviewing her “wants”, Kristi and I discussed the options and we decided to use WordPress as a CMS platform so that she could manage updates online and use the actual blog functionality for the Weekly Pulses.  We integrated many WordPress plug-ins that enable Kristi to manage advertising, search engine optimization, social networking, and more!   I am happy that Kristi is enjoying much success with the new site and am always thrilled when she shares the fantastic feedback she is receiving.

If you are from BC or plan on visiting be sure to check out the FraserValleyPulse.com!

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