Localizing images on your wordpress blog often times is a tedious task, but something you need to do if you want to avoid hotlinking images in your blog.  I hate hotlinking to images for several reasons.  The first and foremost reason is it is bad form and impolite if you don’t have permission.  The second thing is you have no idea when, if or how that file might change.  This is less of a problem these days since disk space is cheap and people are often using image hosting services such as flickr.  In the old days though it was not uncommon for perverse webmasters to put up pornographic pictures using the same title that was being hotlinked too.  I remember seeing several business meetings go awry from this and learned quickly just how bad this practice can be.

Do I still hotlink even knowing the potential dangers?  The answer is yes and no.  I often times grab an image on the fly when I am posting, especially if I’m using Scribefire or Windows Live Writer and not working directly with the wordpress interface.  That said I never do it for very long, usually long enough to get back to my desk and work on my blog properl, never more than a day.

There is a way to easily fix your hotlinking problems with wordpress plugins once you sit down to do it.  To make the most of this process you will need an ftp program and for windows users I recommend FileZilla.  The two plugins you will want to have are Hot Linked Image Cacher and Velvet Blues Update URLs.

The first step  is upload the plugins and install both plugins.  You will either need to use your ftp program or file management system on your server to create a directory upload in the Hot link Image Cache plugin folder and set the file permissions to 777.  Your first time running the HLIC plugin you will want to run it with the all setting to cache every static image you are hotlinking too.  After this time you can run for individual posts by simply using the post ID number.  The downside to this plugin is it puts everything in its own upload directory rather than the standard uploads directory.  On the plus side of this plugin it leaves any link you had associated with the image intact so you don’t have to worry about affiliate links getting broken.  This was my original intent in using the plugin, a program I run on another site requires me to host all the images and one post had ninety seven separate images linking to the advertiser page.

The second step is move the image files to your uploads directory.  The safest way to do this is download the contents of you HLIC plugin upload folder, then upload the contents to your uploads folder.  The big reason for this is when you go to export and import the data from another site the automatic uploading of images only recognizes the /wp-content/uploads/ folder when importing imagesm using a 755 permission set it is also a more secure directory.  You could simply use your FTP program to move the directory contents but should something go wrong with the url changes you could find yourself having problems.  When the folder contents are uploaded it is time to run the Update Urls command.  Start by inserting http://myblog.com/wp-content/plugins/hot-linked-image-cacher/upload/  then changing it to http://myblog.com/wp-content/uploads/.  It is a simple efficient process and I have never had a failure when changing this, but never think it can’t happen to you.  The downside of this plugin is it doesn’t alter the data in your meta data fields, which can be problematic if you have changed domain names and link through the meta data fields to such niceties as thumbnail images for every post.  The plus side is it makes updating any and every url in your blog extremely easy.

My last word on hotlinking is if you are worried about your original images then you should be using some for of hotlinking protection.  There are a couple of wordpress plugins, but most effectily are your server side options.

In my quest to provide an every better experience for all my readers I have added a new feature in the way of the WP Link Directory. This handy plugin allows site owners to make use of the constant flow of internet traffic. Whether you are actively promoting your wordpress based site or not, this plugin also comes with some handy searchable identifiers. Like CommentLuv, NoFollow Free and KeywordLuv blogs using the WP Link Directory can seach out blogs using it by searching for “Powered by WP Link Directory“. If you don’t want potential spammers finding you that way their is the option of removing the text link. There is also the option of requiring a reciprocal link for sites of a designated page rank to increase your own backlinks and a nofollow option. Post Origin: Local News and Newspapers Click this link to get your own syndication code. Update:  Be advised Wordpress 2.7 beta 2 has problems displaying this plugin.  It works but the display is kind of screwy and it hangs up on the scripting a bit.

I was going through my Woopra stats not so long back when i noticed something very exciting and very unexpected.  My political blog, Brad’s Tiny World, was receiving a lot of traffic from CNN and within a few days of watching that incoming traffic I started noticing them coming from The Wall Street Journal.  When tracking down this traffic I found it had come in the form of a sweet little plugin I had accidentally left on when I was testing what did and didn’t work with the new theme tools and WordPress  2.6.  I had long known Sphere Related Content plugin existed, in fact the version I had in the plugin directory was a few versions out of date, but I never really expected much from it and as such never used it.  What a mistake that was.

While the traffic generated was small, it was all relevant traffic and directed at specific stories.   To get those links I was citing and linking to stories on the major sites.  This was usually an excerpt with a backlink.  it was a small common courtesy, but well worth it.  That new traffic which fades after a story is no longer popular, does bring you people willing to give relevant comments and more important, it increased my social bookmark submissions.  I can’t promise you will gain anything from this plugin, but I also know it doesn’t take up very much room either.  Add it and comment on sites using it and see what happens for yourself.  You too might just find links from unexpected places.

Homepage
Download: Sphere Related Content

There were several old combinations that worked well together but since WordPress 2.3 came out many of them stopped working properly or stopped working altogether. Fear not there are replacements out there. Unlike many of the regurgitated idiot lists currently out there, everything I list will work in WordPress 2.5 the only version of the blog software you should be running.

Ultimate Tag Warrior hasn’t been supported by the author since WordPress 2.3 came out. Many of its features and those of Bunny’s Technorati Tags, Jerome’s Keywords, and other tagging programs are easily replaced in better plugins. The All in One SEO Pack can even be replaced now.

The new power plugin combination consists of Headspace2 and Simple Tags. Between these two plugins you can hand every task that you used to require half a dozen plugins and tweaks.

Simple Tags takes over most of what was done by most of the old tagging plugins did. While it alone doesn’t do everything UTW did that can be handled by Headspace2. There are two more tagging plugins you may wish to consider as options. Gormful’s Technorati Tags will give you another formatting option. Tag This will allow users to add/suggest tags at will or with the parameters you set.

Headspace2 while a more complicated option than the much love All In One SEO Pack, is simply a more powerful tool and one you would do well to learn. Mani at the Daily SEO Blog has a very good tutorial on Headspace2. He also confirms my suspicion if you are using Google XML Sitemaps you can’t use both Headspace2 and AIOSP without causing plugin clash. This video will give you a nice look at Headspace2.

The two standard plugins most people list and I will confirm is the default Akismet for spam control and Google XML Sitemap plugin for indexing. Both of these are pretty standard among power WordPress Bloggers because they work. There are other options like GT Site Crawler that may be better for indexing your site if it contains more than just a blog.

The next problem one faces with their blog is linking. In my opinion if you are using a good spam plugin like Akismet and practice good comment policy like requiring name and email and a previously approved comment then turning off the nofollow will gain you more than you lose in time. I have used the DoFollow plugin for some time but have just recently started looking at the more customizable NoFollow Free. Either way you go the plugin works well in WP 2.5, but don’t use them both.

Once you decide which nofollow plugin to use. You need to think about how the nofollow and duplicate content affects your SEO. To clue you into this plugin I give you the words of Andy Beard the plugins creator.

“This plugin is intended to be used in advanced linking structures such as those described in Wordpress SEO Masterclass For Competitive Niches

Rather than blocking duplicate content pages, they can be used to your advantage…. (NFTD) has a method of channeling “Google Juice” away from pages that are receiving the majority of links, to pages that you wish to rank well, and also to your homepage to enhance monetization.”

For the record I recommend Wordpress SEO Masterclass For Competitive Niches wholeheartedly.

WordPress comes with the Tiny MCE editor, but the Tiny MCE Advanced plugin will greatly expand the functionality to almost the point of being as good as MS Word for features. The good thing is depending on the kind of blog you run most of these features are useful and easily added or removed.

The next three are really optional plugins, but I have included them because of how useful they are. First as a writer and avid reader I like two spaces between sentences. This is what you get with the Extra Sentence Space plugin from Coffee to Code. The Disable wpautop, removes WordPress’s automatic paragraph formatting. This is useful for those who wish to have more control of elements from their style sheet. Excerpt Editor does a great job auto-generating your excerpt and can easily be customized. This is important for your front page SEO and channeling Google Juice to the right places.

Along with post style controlled from your style sheet I believe that most of your image and video styling should not be plugin control, but rather be a function of either WordPress’s native image/video functions or controlled from your CSS. There are a few image video plugins that I do find handy though. The only Image related plugins I use at the moment is Flexible upload and SEO Friendly Images. Flexible upload handles some of issues that were present in 2.5’s first release. SEO Friendly Images takes care of some of the extra bits like image description and alt info automatically.

Last but not least important are your social plugins. The first one to mention is the LiveJournal Cross Poster (LJXP) I am hosting the hacked version of this that is friendly to both 2.3 and 2.5 installs. If you still have friends there or want to simply post excerpts with links back into some of the promo communities this plugin will be your best friend. You can also download the excerpts from LJ and post them to any number of other blogs easily enough. I aggregate all 4 of my blogs LJXPs on WordPress.com. You can also snatch the HTML code from the LJ post and post it to a fair number of other blogging communities like Blogger and MySpace.

(There is a MySpace crossposter but I have never made it work and no one I have ever met has been able to either. If anyone gets it to work please let me know)

The next group of social tools includes Twitter Tools which is very good about posting your blog post updates to twitter, but it sucks for posting your tweets on your blog. For tweet posting I prefer MyTwitter which will allow you to hard code your tweeting and place it anywhere you want on your blog. You can also use the hard coding methods described on your Twitter account. The one thing you do need to know about twitter tools and the 2.5 widget layout. You have to uninstall the plugin or change themes to remove the widget.

The plugin I feel you almost certainly need to have if you are a serious blogger is a social bookmarking plugin. I prefer Share This for two reasons. One it has a small footprint and can be hard coded for exact placement. Secondly it has tracking available for your blog. If you want a bigger selection of Social Sites on hand, especially if you are using non US English sites I suggest using Sociable. You will have a bigger footprint and its gaudy but it gets the job done.

The last plugin in the category I want to mention is Auto Social. This handy little plugin will automatically submit your posts to Del.icio.us for you using all your own tagging information. It makes a powerful end of day digest post when you combine it with the Del.icio.us Thingy.

There are some site specific plugin for Digg, Sphinn, Reddit, and Technorati. I however think it is far better to hand code these links for better layout control.

In the end there are other tools and new ones will come along, but with this list you can quickly turn an ordinary blog into a power blog

Sphere: Related Content

]]> http://bradtheblogboy.com/plugins/must-have-wordpress-25-plugins/feed/ http://bradtheblogboy.com/plugins/new-wordpress-25-plugins/ http://bradtheblogboy.com/plugins/new-wordpress-25-plugins/#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:55:25 +0000 Blogboy http://bradtheblogboy.com/?p=64

I hit the jackpot on good plugin finds today for all you junkines. This morning I found myself sitting face to face with a site called Coffee 2 Code and a long list of WordPress 2.5 compatible plugins. I won’t go through the whole list but here are the ones you can bet will find their way into my blogs very soon.

· Auto Hyprelink URLs. It does just what it says by coding any plaint URL from your post or comment into a clickable link. While this has the potential for abuse with spam, it does mean you can remove the linking feature from the comments that might redirect someone elsewhere.

· HTML Special Character Helper. I don’t this very often, but when I do I really hate looking it up in an external program.

· Post to Post Link. While this is easily done with some preplanning normally, the description makes it look even simpler. I haven’t gone through the full trial on it, but it looked too good not to mention.

· Extra Sentence Space. As a novelist, this is one of those things that really, really bugs me about writing online. I see single spaces between a period and the next sentence and I want to correct it, which is bad because I have been web authoring before we were even calling it the web so I should be used to it, but I’m not.

· Obfuscate Email. This is another one I really don’t need since I already use another method to prevent harvesting.

WordPress Excerpt Editor

Excerpt Editor lets you easily make post excerpts from all your posts and pages. With a host of options that will allow you to customize the excerpts including one to let you show the latest post in its entirety and the rest in excerpt or even giving you the entire home page as full posts while the rest are excerpted. There are a couple of really good reasons for using excerpts. First it will even out how your page looks when people show up on it. For those of us who are occasionally long winded and other times not so much this is a very good thing. The second big reason to use them is it eliminates quite a bit of duplicate content which is bad for SEO.

The second new plugin for me is NoFollow Those Dupes which is something that not everyone is going to need. I have actually installed it here yet as I am working on some theme upgrades before I do. The great thing is it doesn’t actually eliminate duplicate content, which just irritates the Google crawler, it turns them into nofollow links. You can easily integrate this one into your blog without getting conflict errors with your dofollow plugins, which is very nice.

if you want to see either of these in action have your browser set to show you the nofollow links and head on over to The Other Blog.

• Akismet This is the best in spam control there is hands down.
• Ultimate GA (Google Analytics) You can use the Google Analytics services without this plugin, but frankly why would you want to. It makes the service so much easier to use and, even better will write a lot of the code into your blog for you. This is a 5 star plugin and a must have.
• HeadSpace 2 is the best all around meta tool there is. It is a little harder to get setup than the All in One SEO Pack but it is a far superior plugin. Mani at Daily SEO has a really great post about getting it set up right using one of his themes, but the principals are the same no matter what theme you use.
• Google XML Sitemap Generator is the best tool you can have for getting indexed quickly and efficiently.
• CommentLuv by FiddyP is a sure fire way to get your readers involved by providing not only a link back to their site, but assuming they have an accessible feed it will post a link to their latest post too.
• Auto Social is a sure fire way to make sure your posts get to Del.icio.us Every post you makes gets submitted with your post tags. If you couple this with the post thingy that will put all your daily tagging into a single post auto post it to your blog, then you are in good shape to have a daily wrap up of everything you are doing online. See The Other Blog for an example of how I aggregate this feature.
• Simple Tags This is a plugin that has been around a long time, but one that is rather new for me. It is in a word complete tag management and may eventually displace my use of Technorati Tags once I learn to use it to its fullest extent.
  
• ShareThis Bloggers are foolish not to include multiple ways for people to add their posts to their favorite social bookmarking sites. I like Share this because of its tiny footprint, just a small green square that expands when clicked on. If you use Socialize which is probably the other one you have seen a lot of I suggest keeping the number of sites manageable and fixing the plugins ss so you have 100% opacity.
  
• Technorati Tags When set up right will use WordPress’s native tagging feature to create Technorati tags and provide the appropriate links back to Technorati.
  
• TinyMCE Advanced Last but not least getting a hold of this dynamic plugin will help you control your content far btter than the native posting interface. it is like going from MS Wordpad to the latest and Greatest version of Word in terms of features.
  

I modified the original LiveJournal CrossPosting plugin and have had it sitting on Brad’s Tiny World since the day 2.5 came out. It is a rather handy tool to have as cross posting your blog entries to your LJ page certainly brings in more traffic without any extra work. With the move going on at Tiny World I am bringing the plugin over here.

LiveJournal XP WordPress25