I did some searching for a plugin and did see one called One Click Plug-in Updater and decided against it as it required permissions to be changed (my perception was that it would be to difficult for non tekkies to sort out) so I asked around on Twitter and Rob McGuire came back to me and recommend I try that plugin out, so I did.  And it worked a treat!

Grab the One Click Plug-in Updater and try it yourself (hopefully you wont have to mess around with permissions on the server to make it work!).

But wait! Theres more!

This might be surprising to regular users of WordPress as it certinaly surprised me.  Seems it slipped though the cracks at one point in all the new upgrade notes.

Have you noticed that when you upgrade WordPress Core to a new version that there was an option to select all plugins and upgrade them simultaneously but you never knew why that option wasn’t available on the plugins page?  Well check this out.

Glenn Murray from Divine Write saw me asking on twitter about this one click upgrade and he referred my question to Paul Cunningham from Blogging Teacher who suggested I do this.

When you see a plugin or a series of plugins need to be upgraded try this

• On the left sidebar go to Tools
• Select Upgrade
• Select all plugins
• Click upgrade

Well dont I feel like a right idiot now?  It was there all along and I just never noticed it. Maybe you didnt notice it either but, hey! Now you know. A big thanks to all mentioned who helped me figure this small, but really rather precious nugget out.

Author: Jaimie Sirovich

Download the WordPress SEO Pager plugin

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.

The SEO-image plugin does this for you and once configure, sets up all the images with “Alternative” and “Title” attributes.  Alternative text in images is the small segment of text you see when you hover your mouse pointer over an image on a website and this also serves to tell the search engines what the photo or image is along with the title.

The plugin can be set up and configure in different ways to suit the requirements for your site and the plugin.

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Download the SEO Image plugin for WordPress.

When you create a post on your site it will have a URL or page address (depending on your permalink set up it will look different but this issue is the same) and after you create that post and address you need to change it for one reason or another, say for example you misspell a word in the title, but the problem is you have already added this address to twitter, or Digg or told someone to look at it via email.

If you make a change to the address this would mean that when someone clicks the old link they will instead be presented with an error page because it no longer exists. This error page is called a 404 Page and means, quite literally, that the page does not exist.

This is where the Redirection plugin comes in. Activating Redirection means that the configuration for adding a redirect to the original page to the new address is automatic. You have to do nothing (aside maybe from not making spelling erros in the first place!) and the redirect it puts in place is called a 301 redirect.

A 301 redirect is very important in internet terms because it is the accepted format for search engines as well, who will see this code and any ranking, links or PageRank you had assigned to the page will follow it and maintain its integrity.

All done automatically. The plguin also offers a range of other features as well that can be used for analysis and tracking of redirects and setup etc, incredibly useful and powerful.

Author: John Godley

Download the WordPress Redirection plugin.

The reason for this is quite simple.  It means that you can advise the search engines what pages are unique and important for them to look at and which are not through adding commands such as Index, No Index, Follow and No Follow helping to avoid duplicate content issues on search engine results page.

No need for extended explanations on how to copnfigure the plugin as Joost has done it already in this video.

How to use the Robots Meta Plugin from Joost de Valk on Vimeo.

Author: Joost de Valk

WordPress Robots Meta Plugin.

The database you use in WordPress is called MYSQL and it is here that all the information is stored for your pages, posts, images and settings and whatnot. As you update and add and change things on your blog all this information is added and subtracted from the databse accordingly and as you can imagine this leaves it looking a little messy after some time as your not tidying up behind you as you go, rather your just editing the database as you need it with no thought for its structure (naughty naughty).

The consequence of this is that, as the database becomes more “messy”, it also finds it harder to access the information making your site slower and more sluggish for visitors.  A big no no!

What the Optimise Database plugin does it fix that at the click of a single button. Yep, one single click and you only have to click it once a month. Install it, activate it and hit Optimise Now to clean up the database and your done!

Author: Joost de Valk

Download the WordPress Optimize Database plugin.

The plugin effectively adds a barrier or security gate to the administration login page which helps protect against automated attacks from robots or malicious scripts who attempt to take control of your blog by a method of “brute force” password discovery.  Basically they hammer the login panel with an automatic system until they accidentally discover your login details.

Once the plugin is simple to active, and can be configured to suit your needs quite easily. Don’t be the one who gets caught out, protect yourself!

Author:Michael VanDeMar

Downalod the Login Lock Plugin for wordpress.

YARPP

One of the most popular is YARPP or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. This gives you extensive control over the display of realted posts at the bottom of your post for things like the number of related posts to display, how to display them and also it has integration into your RSS feeds and Atom feeds and even allows you to filter out certain categories you do not wish to include.

The power in YARPP is that it scans your database of posts and attempts to match up the current post with something similar you have produced previous, helping to maintain the theme of the information and of course relate the information to something similar as the plugin name suggests.

Im not using YARPP at the moment as I am currently using another plugin called Linkwithin.

Linkwithin Plugin

This plugin has two very specific features I am currently enjoying.  The first is that it includes automatically generated thumbnails taken from the image in your posts to make the related posts look more attractive and exciting, no big deal you might think but it adds to the page and makes the link much more engaging. The other feature is that the plugin helps to generate traffic to my site by listing all the related plugins in a search engine friendly manner (meaning that the plugin itself has generated traffic to my site and im still trying to figure out how to be honest) which is an added bonus of course!

Linkwithin Author: Linkwithin

Download Linkwithin

YARPP Author: mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

Download Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

It might be different from other plugins because it has a cost involved but it is WORTH EVERY PENNY.  Its so damn good I’m recommending it as an essential purchase and am affiliated with the developers. (Just to be clear).

The forms on your site are one of the most important aspects, and lets be honest this is a no brainer.

So don’t be tight.

There are a few other forms available (if you are to cheap to buy this) and the best is probably CForms II WordPress Plugin though it is quite comprehensive it its functionality it tends to update frequently to cover errors and other issues and, in order to maintain the integrity of the plugin you should update asap every time so it can be a bit of a time sink. Aside from that it is the best alternative.

So why is Gravity Forms so good.

Its so good because it is incredibly simple to manage, setup, install and has a range of functionality and application.

Honestly, its one of those, “Can’t live without it” type plugins.  Even though it costs to buy it the added benefit is that you have dedicated support as well and an active and informed community who are helping the developers find new ways of increasing the functionality of the plugin and of course dealing with tech support issues and questions. Not something to be snubbed! All the new functionality, like most plugins, is then added on to your existing plugin and because the developers are being supported financially the updates are of a very high quality.

Using the plugin requires you to do a little messing about by inserting your personal reference key into the settings, once you install and activate the plugin, to validate the purchase and also create an account on the Gravity Forms community forums but this is, in itself,  is a simple enough process.  Once you create a new form and realise just how much and how easy it is to do you will be hooked.

Have a read through the features that Gravity Forms offers and im sure you will agree that its money well spent. (and thanks for the business if you do decide to buy it, it is most appreciated).