Once it is installed it works automatically in the background and basically its aim is to remove unnecessary data from images and reduce them to the smallest file size possible while still retaining the quality. Recommend by Yahoo itself in the Yahoo exceptional performance series this plugin is a must have.

It works by stripping out small, if not minute, pieces of code in the images that have no real need to be there or which are unused and also may suggest converting the images to gifs, if required, although caution should be taken here incase quality is unintentionally affected.

Author: Dialect

Download the Smushit Plugin for WordPress.

This isn’t good for two reasons.

Firstly, it won’t help search engines find the pages on your site because they are set in series by this method, therefore to get to the earliest posts the search engine spiders will have to follow and scan, follow and scan follow and scan in this method.  Cumbersome and not very friendly. Secondly, visitors will work in the same way.  They have no desire o cycle though 12 pages one at a time to reach a desired post.

What WP Page Numbers does is add a line of numbers (surprise surprise!) in one of 5 styles you can choose from, to the bottom of the page allowing spiders to reach all the following pages from one place, effectively opening up the site in a friendly manner and allowing them to search and scan in parallel rather than in series.

This is the same for visitors.

They can simply click the page numbers and skip to that page immediately rather than being forced to cycle through all the irrelevant content they have no interest in.

Not all themes will need this plugin, but if you realise that you do, it will require a little editing in the theme code in order to work so you may need som help to sort this out. Definately worht it on a search engine level and a usability level.

Author: Jens Törnell

Download the WordPress Page Numbers Plugin.

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

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.

WordPress Backup makes this possible. Installing it is simple and it includes an option to have the backup files emailed directly to you for saving on your local computer but this may prove impossible as the file size grows.

Do not get caught out, back up your files!

Author: Blog Traffic Exchange

WordPress backup Plugin information:
Download the WordPress Backup Database plugin.

This distinctive green button is essential as it allows visitors to ReTweet your post or information in a single click, with minimal effort to their network on twitter.

As well as this it also serves to offer an idea of how important or popular visitors have deemed your post to be as the count of ReTweets is displayed in the button itself, the higher the number the mor e likely the next visitor will deem it as valuable and ReTweet it accordingly.  Tweetmeme also serves up, on its homepage, a list of the most ReTweeted and popular articles of the day, http://tweetmeme.com/ and this is an excellent method to generate traffic.

Bear in mind though that it only generates traffic and users will ultimately on ReTweet (RT) the information if they deem it as quality, you cannot manipulate this in effect, by automation or other means so the contetn better be good.

Simple to install, it also has a option to add in your own twitter name in the settings section so once someone hits the ReTweet button you will be notified via Twitter, via an @yourname, allowing you to respond to the person who ReTweeted your post appropriately with a thank you, or in some form of engagement, response, commentary or conversation.

Author: TweetMeme

Download the Tweetmeme plugin for WordPress.

With a more “upfront” display manner it is very customisable in managing the order of the icons to display and even the selection of what networks to include all managed by a simple tick box display.

Another customisation you can perform includes changing the images you wish to display for the network icons but this requires so coding and imaging skills.

Author: Joost de Valk (now managed by Blog Play)

Download the Sociable Plugin

The simple icon image represents a single person or entity being the focal point and link to or connect with two other unique bodies to represent the process of having the same information being given to separate places.

Setting up Share this is relatively simple but in order to customise the plugin and display it in an effective manner you need to login to the Share This website, create an account and then edit the plugin to have it include the networks you want in the positions you want.

The system is very intuitive however and the setup will not take you long.  Once you have it configured on the website you are offered some code that you copy and paste into the plugin settings page, configure some other placement options and its done.

Author: ShareThis

Download the Share This Plugin.

When you create a post it will usually end up looking something like this:

http://www.justinparks.com/a-social-media-consultant-to-you

What SEO Slugs does is strip out the words in the URL that are generic and hence meaningless.  These are the words such as “and”, “a”, “to” etc. Thus the URL will look like this:

http://www.justinparks.com/social-media-consultant

Notice when you compare the two addresses that the new one has no “a” or “to”,“you” as SEO slug has removed them.

Now maybe your wondering why this is or would be any use.  Its actually quite logical.

The title URL you have is also a direct reference to the title and keywords you use in your post. By including “and” or “a” in the url you are needlessly lengthening it and “diluting”, for lack of a better word, the relevance of the other keywords which are more important.  In this case, the reminaing words in the title URL : /social-media-consultant

Once you install and activae SEO Slugs it begins to work automatically, you need do nothing else but post as normal.  If however you do, for whatever reason, wish to edit the URL/Address and include more words, then SEO Slugs will not overwrite them after you save your edit.

Author: Andrei Mikrukov

Downalod SEO Slugs WordPress plugin

This feature will (as far as I know) become standard in the wordpress core system in the future but until that time this plugin will manage the issue and resolve it so until then use it!

Simple to install it also has a range of customisable features that do require some coding knowledge to implement but it is not essential to make the plugin function. Upload, install it and activate and your done.

Author: Andy Skelton

Downalod the MediaRSS plugin for WordPress.