7 Superfly Plugins for Wordpress

So you're in the web provision game, and you're too much of a big shot to use WordPress, right?
If you're doing multi-user, community-based, advanced website features then I can understand that. For a pretty-boy website and a heavily branded product, you don't want WordPress. If you're building the next Facebook, or setting up a web solution for The New York Times, this is not the tool you need.

But if you are doing a bit of blogging and want to put in a few ads here and there, or run a newsletter, a RSS feed, a poll and an occasional blogcast, then WordPress is perfect.
It's low-maintenance, set-up is quick, updating and customizing is a snap, and non-techies will find the back-end content management intuitive and hassle-free.

But the best thing about WordPress, as everyone knows, is the sheer weight and quality of plugins to extend this cuddly Micro CMS. Here's a few of the best.

1. PodPress.

An outstanding blogcasting solution, PodPress takes your interviews/bizarre rants/drunken ramblings and brings them from the desktop to the whole wide world with a couple of clicks. (Which may not always be a good idea…)

PodPress also embeds audio and video files easily into posts, adds items to RSS and other feeds, and optimises for iTunes categorization.

If you want to podcast premium content, you can do that by enabling password protection. If you want to hide it from iTunes, go right ahead. Use the Podcast module that pops up in your “Write” page to manage size, permissions, and other features.

See a video demo here.

2. WP-Polls Widget.

Polls, plain and simple, are on offer here. Ajaxy, customizable to the hilt; pretty and functional.

Configure your poll from the menu and provide the usual information (how many questions you want to ask, whether multiple answers are allowed, whether users can vote more than once). Pick from a number of poll templates (fully customizable from the source code), and you're ready to go.

When you're done, slot in the poll as a sidebar widget. Stats and archives of polls are also available.

3. Adsense Manager.

There are dozens of Google Adsense plugins for Wordpress, and a lot of them are a bit half-arsed.

Adsense Manager is a good'un, though. It renders your Adsense code as handy widgets which can then be easily managed for use in the sidebars.

Get your code, pick out your account number, and stick it into the relevant field on the ad management interface. Select colors, size, channels, whether you want inline ads or not; preview, then wrap up the whole thing into a drag'n'drop widget that can be managed like any other.

4. Adsense Injection.

Puts Adsense ads into the main body of your content “without a lot of f**king around.”
It can be a bit messy, but there's no other obvious way of putting Adsense in the main body without ugly brute-force editing of the CSS stylesheet. So although it takes a bit of getting used to, this plugin is one you are probably going to want.

5. All In One SEO Pack.

One of the most popular WordPress plugins, and rightly so. Add meta title, description and keywords to your posts. Right there in your “Write” screen so you can just copy and paste relevant information from the body of your post in no time at all. A pre-requisite for WordPress bloggers.

6. Google XML Sitemaps.

7 Superfly Plugins for Wordpress

\n\nSo you're in the web provision game, and you're too much of a big shot to use WordPress, right?\nIf you're doing multi-user, community-based, advanced website features then I can understand that. For a pretty-boy website and a heavily branded product, you don't want WordPress. If you're building the next Facebook, or setting up a web solution for The New York Times, this is not the tool you need.\n\nBut if you are doing a bit of blogging and want to put in a few ads here and there, or run a newsletter, a RSS feed, a poll and an occasional blogcast, then WordPress is perfect.\nIt's low-maintenance, set-up is quick, updating and customizing is a snap, and non-techies will find the back-end content management intuitive and hassle-free.\n\nBut the best thing about WordPress, as everyone knows, is the sheer weight and quality of plugins to extend this cuddly Micro CMS. Here's a few of the best.

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