Category Archives: Wordpress

This super platform for managing and maintaining a blog. Wordpress is the business for easy and efficient use of any blog.

WordPress plugins for Greeting Visitors

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I absolutely adore this plugin. Greet Box is exactly what it says it is, a box that greets your visitors.

The beauty of this plugin though is that it can see where your visitor has come from and presents them with a greeting related to the site they originated from. For example, if a visitor has come from Twitter, the icon displayed in the box will be the twitter icon and the message will read:

“Hello fellow Twitter user! Don’t forget to Twit this post if you like it, or follow me on Twitter if you find me interesting.”

The great thing about this is it adds a little magic to the greeting by recognising where the visitor came from but also, because the messages are fully customisable you can change the greeting to suit your site and make the whole thing a lot more personal, allowing the visitor to feel just that little bit more special.

Greet Box Placement in Posts

One bit of advice I would give here is regarding the placement of the Greet Box.  Many people will be inclined to place the greeting at the top of the post due to the format of the message it contains but I would suggest that you use the options to have the box appear at the end of the post allowing the visitor to read your information and make a decision rather than asking them before they have even begun reading.

I think it is a little obnoxious to ask people to subscribe to your RSS based on the quality of the article before they have had that chance to decide from themselves, but thats only my opinion.

Simple to install and configure, this plugin is a no brainer!

Author: Thaya Kareeson

Download WordPress Greet Box plugin.

WordPress Super Cache Plugin for fast loading blogs

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WP-Super-Cache is probably one of the most widely used plugins ever created.

Recommended by the likes of Matt Cutts right down to yours truly, it is the essential tool to safeguard your site when it comes to managing and maintaining site stability when your traffic is high and your server resources are being stretched to the limit.

If, during the life of your site you should gain a traffic surge, for example you write something very in depth or challenging or insightful and your visitors decide to use the Digg button a lot, hence driving more traffic your way quaikly and in bulk, the PHP scripts that access the MYSQL database that your site runs off, will be stretched to and possibly beyond, breaking point and there is nothing worse than a dead site for new visitor!  The reason for this is that each time someone visits your site the page is served or “called” from the database on the request of the visitor via PHP.

Database Caching Explained

With a traffic surge or even consistently high traffic, this puts a lot of pressure on the database as it continually serves the page to each new visitor.  Imagine it like a restaurant that’s got one waiter and suddenly it fills up with a queue outside, each person must be seated, the order taken, served fresh food, which is freshly cooked and then shown out. The waiter would in this example be your blog and the cook or chief would be the PHP scripts. That’s not really the best way to run things is it and the inevitable outcome is disaster!

Now imagine that the waiter and chief where prepared in advance with a set menu and 1000′s of plates all ready to be handed out immediately.  There is no expiry date on web pages so don’t worry about hygiene or food poisoning :P. People would be surging into the restaurant and the chief and waiter would be able to manage and serve all their requirements, not without strain or pressure but certainly with more efficiency, speed and less chance of a meltdown.

WordPress Super Cache is Essential

That’s exactly what this plugin does for your blog. In technical terms it creates a cached version of your page in HTML without accessing the PHP allow your site to say live, serve visitors and do it quickly and with minimal problems.

Just to clarify, even if your site hasn’t got massive traffic, speed loading time is still a major factor and using this plugin will make the pages appear faster regardless of server load or the amounts of visits you have so even on a low traffic site it is still worth using.

Author: Donncha O Caoimh

Download the WP Super Cache Plugin

WordPress Database Manager Plugin

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I haven’t mentioned Lester Chan much at this point, undeservedly so.

One of the most prolific and professional wordpress plugin developers his work is excellent and the WP DBManager is only one of a selection of plugins hes created that is absolutely fantastic.

A compliment to the WordPress-Backup plugin this is much more extensive at it serves to backup your whole database and not just the images, plugins and themes covered by WordPress backup.

Installing this particular plugin is a breeze (as usual) but the configuration does require some file moving and server administration to permit access to files and folders, so if you are unsure about this, hire someone to sort the plug-in out.  It goes without saying that you should be hiring a trusted professional as you will be allowing them access to moderate your server files, so expensive should not be a factor if you want this done correctly, its worth it.

The plugin itself covers allows you to optimize, repair, backup and restore the database, as well as delete the backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Most importantly for you, once it is configured it will run an automatic schedule to backup the database every 24 hours, ensuring that, in the event of a disaster, you will not have lost a massive amount of your time, effort and work.

Author: Lester Chan

Download the WP DBManager Plugin.