WordPress, a powerful blogging platform has seen a huge development with growing technologies, large number of users and many innovative features in recent years and to grow with WordPress, we also need to fine tune those skills. It is practically not possible to remember everything through programs and coding, So we have these WordPress CMS enabled plugins which are a boon to all those who want to be updated with WordPress. Their advantage is they are very easy to use and learn, Just download and install the plugin and use it. No technical knowledge required in this case. The plugins do your job. There are specific plugins for each area. Just identify the appropriate plugin and get started with it.

These plugins help you with your content by either adding any fields or hiding it from certain users. You can set roles for each user visiting your site and set some exclusive rights for each one about how much they should be accessing your blog, some plugins help you with a smooth navigation which can be in the pages or in the sidebars which also supports the CSS drop down menus and manages you pages and posts. These plugins also help you in a case where you are too much obsessed with multi languages or find it hard to manage with more than one language.

For all those avid WordPress users, we have collected some of the most used and popular plugins which helps you grow as a professional blogger.

Easily Manage Categories, Pages and Posts

1.Idealien category enhancements

Idealien category enhancements makes the category and post templates selectable through the drop down lists as easy as page templates and includes configuration of sub-categories to inherit templates from their parent or not and applies for both category and post templates and sub-category inheritance also applies and deleting a category will delete all the record too.

2.Pagemash

The Page Management plugin images you pages by customizing the order of the pages and rearranging the page menus with the drag and drop style with AJAX interface which allows sorting and hiding easily and toggling the page to be hidden from the output making the page hierarchy very easy. Allows features quick page renaming, alternate list coloring, reordering and modifying the page by dragging a page to become a chill and toggling it from the view.

3.Yet another related posts plugin

Yet another related posts plugin gives you pages related to the current entry and other relevant content on you site to the reader which features an advanced, versatile and customizable algorithm which considers the post titles, contents, tag and categories. You can know, how your related posts and pages are displayed and caches the relates posts data which improves its performance, displays the related posts in RSS and allows to disable certain tags and categories.

4.Exclude pages

Exclude Pages adds a check box for the user ‘include the page in menus’ which is checked by default and uncheckable it makes to page disappear from the listings of pages and do not show in the menu listings and pages which come under the excluded pages or children of excluded pages will also not show up.

5.Wp no category base

The plugin WP No Category Base will remove the mandatory category base from the category permalinks and will not break any links taking care of the redirection of the old category links to the new ones. Does not require any set up and other plugins to work. Is compatible with the sitemap plugins and works with multiple sub categories making it good for SEO.

Better & Smart Navigation

6.Wp pagenavi

WP PageNavi plugin adds an advanced and numbered paging navigation . You can use this plugin to replace the Previous pages and Next ones links from the home pages. The look and feel of this plugin is adapted from the original WordPress PageNavi plugin to match the LightWord WordPress theme. Has an option to display the texts for first, last, current, previous and next pages.

7.Multi level navigation plugin

Multi-level Navigation plugin adds a CSS based, SEO friendly accessible dropdown or slider menu to your blog. Produces W3C valid XHTML and CSS. This plugin allows you to control the animation speed of the dropdown menu, mouseover delay, what type of content should be displayed, keyboard accessibility, hover sensitivity and allows to hide the delay. This plugin also has a similar functionality to the PixoPoint menu plugin.

8.Breadcrumbs

Yoast Breadcrumbs plugin allows you add to breadcrumbs in your theme for WordPress SEO here the posts, newletters, presentations everything comes under the SEO guide to WordPress. This is also decustomised for any website running WordPress and makes setting the options easy for administrator and making available a direct class for theme developers and adventurous users. Has a translation in more than eight languages.

9.Simple sidebar navigation

Simple Sidebar Navigation creates a navigation in sidebars and other pre-defined areas with a support for the CSS custom drop down menus in a much simpler way. Also adds a widget or unlimited number of navigation widgets into the Widgets dashboard without any PHP coding and conditional tags are included while specifying the pages along with an option to add navigation links with title, URL and target attributes.

Making Your Content Unbreakable

10.More fields

More Fields plugin, as the name says adds additional fields or boxes to the Edit or Site page. The fields can be input field, such as the name, work, title etc., Also you can ass check boxes, radio buttons, create archives and create buttons programmatically, add Web forms or HTML5 fields. These fields or boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left of the Write/ Edit pages.

11.Fresh page

Flutter is a plugin which simplifies the content management by creating customized write panels like radio buttons, check boxes, file and image uploads i.e. offers you all sorts of options for each of the field. Allows you to create different content on different pages. Flutter allows to modulate your themes and includes image manipulations such as cropping, resizing, editing in place, watermarking etc.,

12.Wp cms post control

Sometimes, you may feel that you don’t want to show certain items to others, in that case WP CMS Post Control plugin hides the unwanted items within the write / edit page for every user and alos gives you the complete control to create content. You can set an option of what kind of users need to see what type of content, and enable or disable the revisions, auto saves and Flash uploader.

Managing Users and their Roles

13.User access manager

The plugin User Access Manager gives you complete control to manage your pages, files and posts where you can create a group separately for readers and editors, set the rights and allow only registered users to use the group which is accessible only for the members of that group. The main advantage in this plugin is that other people can write in your blog but not everywhere.You can hide pages, limit the access to uploaded files or give access even by IP address.

14.Role scoper

Role Scoper gives you complete access in reading and editing permissions for access control and editing where you can set the access and roles to specified pages or posts or categories ie control the categories where users can post, grant access for a limited time, limit the post / page publishing dates and inherit the restrictions and roles to certain categories and exclude the un-editable post and set default restrictions for any new post.

15.Role manager

Role Manager plugin gives you the rights to define a role for each user who can have individual capabilities i.e.  he can perform a set of assigned tasks to him and he can belong only to that role. Also you can work or create multiple subscriber profiles and set controls for each role setting the access of what they should do and what they should not do like give certain user permissions like unfiltered HTML posting.

16.Member access

Member Access is a plugin for Administrator to set permissions for members to make pages and posts accessible only to logged in members i.e either you can make them globally accessible or only to the members. This plugin also let you configure the search results, archives ad RSS feeds to omit entire content available to members or include some excerpt for non-members to use and make it viewable only to members. Redirection to the login page can also be configured for non members.

17.Custom post type UI

Custom Post Type UI plugin create for WordPress 3.0 manages to create and manage the custom post types, content sorting which makes the developers work easy especially if they are new to WordPress , panels and taxonomies without any PHP coding. You can also assign both the custom and built-in taxonomies to post types and label the post types.

Having a Multilingual Site

18.Sitepress multi lingual CMS

Language support is a problem faced by many users in WordPress but with WPML Multilingual you can build multilingual sites with WordPress making the multi lingual content management easy and makes you feel like you are running the site in one language. This plugin features a Comments translation which allows you to reply to comments in your own language, a Professional translation to connect translators with the site owners. Includes CMS navigation elements to use site-wide navigation and for easy customization.

19.Xlanguage

The xLanguage plugin is for multi language lovers who love to blog in many languages and the users can select which to read. You can use this on all the blog UI elements, page, tags, categories and blog posts. The language is detected from the browser’s preferences and can also be configured to facilitate multiple fallbacks. Displays each language in a different theme and allows the user to switch the languages with the widget and template functions provided which can also be customized without the code getting disturbed.

20.Qtranslate

You may love to work in multi languages but creating a muliti linugual content is not that easy. qTranslate is a plugin which makes the multi language content management and translation very easy as working in a single language with some of the features like human and machine automated translation in 2 clicks, language customizations, switching languages with a single click and a support for multiple built-in languages and one URL for each language for friendly SEO.

Highly customizable Widgets

21.Widgets reloaded

Widget Reloaded was derived to correct the default WordPress widgets which don’t offer much control over their output on screen. This plugin replaces many of its predecessors and these widgets come with highly customizable control panels and are packed with archives, authors, bookmarks, calendar, pages, menus, tags, categories etc., This is very useful when you use a sub menu in your header using the sub menu widget area and base on Pages.

22.Flexi pages widget

Flexi Pages Widget is sidebar widget which is configurable and is used to list the pages and sub pages, also can be used in place of ‘Pages’ widget. This plugin has many features like includes a link to the home page, has an option where only selected pages and sub pages can be displayed only in parent pages and related pages and lists. If you don’t want to use the widget, then you can use the function flexipages() which can be called anywhere from the template.

23.Side posts

Alkivia SidePosts widget displays the selected category and its entries in the sidebar giving a link to each entry in the sidebar or you can set another option in this plugin which shows only the private posts which are hidden in the home page. You can choose to display the full post or the excerpt of the post, can show a link to the selected category feeds or archives page or create your own template to show everything other than the provided templates.

24.Query posts widget wordpress plugin

Query Posts Widget lets you display anything on your posts by any criteria without knowing any code. You can choose to display your posts by tag, category, author, custom field key, date / time. Also show the full post or an excerpt or show the pages and order them by any term. This widget has almost 40 options to customize the display format.

SEO

25.Google sitemap generator

Google XML sitemaps generates a special XML map to help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing to index your blog easily. Makes it easier to see the complete structure of your blog and also supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and notifies the search engines whenever you create a post and calculates a priority for each post and is available in multi languages and doesn’t require any PHP knowledge. Also has a WordPress filter which allows other plugins to add their pages to the sitemap.

26.All in one SEO pack

SEO is the most important part for any blog and All in one SEO pavk plugin optimizes you blog for search engines taking care of the custom Post types, supports CMS style WordPress, finetunes the navigation links, generates the META tags automatically and over rides any title and allows you to set META description and keywords, optimizes the titles and avoids the duplicate content on the blog, is compatible with other plugins because of its built-in API.

27.Redirection

Redirection is a WordPress plugin which makes it easier to migrate from an old website or while changing the directory for WordPress installations because this plugin keeps track and maintains a log of 404 errors and maps these to 301 redirection which are based upon login status, redirect based on the referrer and random pages. Maintains a log for all redirected URL’s and has a pass-through redirection which allows you to pass an URL to another website or page.

28.SEO smart links

Initially to improve ranking in search engines, a manual work was done to interlink the old blog posts to the new one but SEO smart links plugin  gets your blogs interlinked and adds links to other sites which automates SEO benefits to you site. This plugin automatically links the keywords and phrases to corresponding pages and categories in your blog and also allows you to create or set up your own keywords and matching URL’s. These changes which are done by default can also be changed from the options in the administrative settings panel.

28.Platinum SEO pack

In addition to the features incorporated with the All in one SEO plugin, Platinum SEO plugin offers additional features like adding index, meta tags, nofollow or follow, noodp to any post or page. This plugin not only automates the WordPress SEO but also provides an ultimate onsite SEO solution for the blogs. Also avoids the duplicate content, is compatible with other plugins, adds meta description and keywords automatically and generates the META tags relevant to SEO automatically.

29.Permalinks moved permanently

Migration of your WordPress blog from one permalink structure to another may result in a loss of Pagerank or traffic which accessed through the old permalinks sometimes, but if you dont want to happen this then ‘Permalinks Moved Permanently’ plugins is for you which grabs and checks the slug from the end of the request to the post with slug somewhere else on the blog. (before the generation of 404 from the old permalink) and generates a ‘301 moved permanently’ error to the visitor and forwards him to the new location.

Must Check Plugins

30.Search everything

Search Everything is a plugin which increases the search functionality by activating the Configure options Search (covers two steps) where the options (metadata) may be searching every page, tag, every category, highlighting, comments, excerpts, custom fields, custom taxonomies, exclude posts and exclude categories.

31.Subscribe2

Subscribe2 is a plugin to send email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish any new content in your blog providing a comprehensive subscription management. The emails sent can be on periodical or pre-post basis where certain categories can be excluded for individuals through a custom field. This plugin also lets you handle requests for subscription or to register with your blog by submitting their email addresses in a simple user form where the format of the email can also be customized as an excerpt or full post.

32.Exec PHP

The Exec-PHP plugin executes the PHP code in the content portion of your posts and in the excerpts which can also be restricted to certain users by using the roles and capabilities of theirs, also works in your news feeds. Updates the notifications is a new version of this plug-in is available and issues any user warnings for inappropriate blog and its settings. Supports multi languages which write the code in familiar syntax.

32.Wp ecommerce

WP e-Commerce is a shopping cart plugin which features shopping cart application used for selling your products, services or fess online can be primarily used for crafters, artists, books, DVD’sm bands & record labels. This plugin is designed for great presentation and aesthetics.

33.Next gen gallery

A fully integrated image gallery plugin, NextGEN come with a slideshow option along with role settings where each gallery has an author, sortable albums, watermark functions, option to upload pictures via a zip file, sidebar widget, tag support for images, JavaScript effect like Lightbox, Shutter, Highslide and Thickbox. Also has a multiple CSS stylesheet which gives a shadow effect for the thumbnails and a TinyMCE button for easily adding the gallery tags.

34.Contact form

Another simple and flexible plugin, ContactForm7 manages multiple contact forms which can be customized with the mail contents with a simple markup. This plugin also supports AJAX submitting, spam filtering, CAPTCHA etc. Comes with more than 35 translators.

35.Vipers video quick tags

Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin valid posting of videos with easy XHTML from websites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimoe and so on. You don’t have to copy and paste the embed HTML just click the ‘new’ button from this plugin and paste the site’s URL in the prompt box where you can configure the display option like alter the height, width, alignment and colors.

Other plugins

36.Contemplate

Contemplate plugin us manages commonly used content like text, HTML, CSS or JavaScript which appears on site pages,you can define the content template in the options page of the plugin and insert them anywhere in the site any number of times in the post, pages, widget or comments. and the change in the template is automatically updated everywhere in the site wherever defined.

37.Front end editor

Front-end Editor, a WordPress 3.0 plugin comes with fully editable widgets where you can also see the controls on the widget scree, can handle custom Post type including Posts and Pages, add or remove buttons from the settings page, double clicking in the thumbnail will display your images whatever be the overlay script. It is light and fast and compatible with any theme eliminating the need to load the admin back end.

38.Multiple post thumbnails

Multiple Post Thumbnails plugin adds multiple post thumbnails to a post type i.e. you can have more than one Featured image on your post.

If you have taken any basic HTML courses or look through tutorials you know how to build a website…. Well sort of. HTML is pretty much the first and main stepping stone of websites but it is merely the beginning. In this post I will show you a few techniques to get you stated in using PHP to make your sites more dynamic and much easier to manage.

Lets take for example you have an information site about carving spindles. Your site consists of a home page, an about us page, a contact us page, and a content page that has the instructions on creating the spindles. This is a small site and your knowledge currently is mostly only on HTML and CSS but you are tired of having to go and edit something on all 4 pages to simply make one change on the site.

Here is your current home page

 <html>      <head>           <title>Creating Hand Carved Spindles</title>      </head>      <body>           <div id="container">                <div id="nav">                     <ul>                           <li>Home</li>                           <li>Tutorial</li>                           <li>About Us</li>                           <li>Contact Us</li>                     </ul>                <div id="content">                     <p>All of the information on your home page.</p>                </div>                <div id="footer">                      <ul>                           <li>Home</li>                           <li>Tutorial</li>                           <li>About Us</li>                           <li>Contact Us</li>                     </ul>                </div>           </div>      </body> </html> 

Obviously an actual site will have much more than this but this is a very basic setup. Now, as you can see the content that falls between the “header” div and the “footer” div is content that is going to be on every site. So say you wanted to change the “Tutorial” navigation to read “How To Carve Spindles”, you would have to open each file and change the text in each individual one. In this example only having 4 pages to your site it obviously would not be a huge deal but if you had 20+ pages it would be awful. So to avoid having to make multiple changes we can use PHP include(). PHP include does exactly what it says. It will include the file that you tell it to and the webserver will display it as one file. This way you can span one simple file across as many pages as you like.

Let me break this down to show you what I mean exactly. Lets first create our header.html. To do so we will want to take all of the upper code that we want to appear on each page of the site.

header.html

 <html>      <head>           <title>Creating Hand Carved Spindles</title>      </head>      <body>           <div id="container">                <div id="nav">                     <ul>                           <li>Home</li>                           <li>Tutorial</li>                           <li>About Us</li>                           <li>Contact Us</li>                     </ul>                <div id="content"> 

You see we took all of the starting code that we need to create HTML files and went all the way to where the code will become unique for each page. I took even the ”

                </div>                <div id="footer">                      <ul>                           <li>Home</li>                           <li>Tutorial</li>                           <li>About Us</li>                           <li>Contact Us</li>                     </ul>                </div>           </div>      </body> </html> 

) div for the content div which is in the header.html. One thing that you always need to watch for when doing this is always have the same count of divs in the header as you do in the footer. This can get a little tricky if you have a design that has a lot of nested divs. Ok so now you might be wondering how exactly we would use this. So below will be our pages for this site.

index.php

 php      include('header.html'); ?>      <p>All your information on the home page.</p> php      include('footer.html'); ?> 

tutorial.php

 php      include('header.html'); ?>      <p>All your information on the tutorialpage.</p> php      include('footer.html'); ?> 

about-us.php

 php      include('header.html'); ?>      <p>All your information on the about us page.</p> php      include('footer.html'); ?> 

contact-us.php

 php      include('header.html'); ?>      <p>All your information on the contact us page.</p> php      include('footer.html'); ?> 

See now with this structure we no longer would have to change something on each page to be able to change something on each page. Say we have the first example of wanting to change the “tutorial” in the navigation to “how to carve spindles” then we would only have to change the header.html like such.

header.html

 <html>      <head>           <title>Creating Hand Carved Spindles</title>      </head>      <body>           <div id="container">                <div id="nav">                     <ul>                           <li>Home</li>  	<li><span style="color: #<span class=;">ff0000</span>;">How to Carve Spindles</li>                           <li>About Us</li>                           <li>Contact Us</li>                     </ul>                <div id="content"> 

So when someone goes to your site and the web server looks at index.html it reads the include and output the content of the file for header.html and footer.html. This makes it all look like just one big HTML file, like we started with. You can tie this in with the post here about flat file caching to not only make it so you only have to edit header and footer info in one place but you can make your site run completely off of index/header/footer by including cache files.

On thing to keep in mind is that with dynamic websites comes a lot more responsibility as well as flexibility. You will have to do error checking through the use of conditional statements. When you are using these includes if the file that you try to include does not exist then there will be an ugly PHP error on your website. Conditional statements have many other uses and are probably one of the most basic and commonly used aspects of programming languages like PHP. Here is an example as how/where you would want to use it here.

 <?php      if(!file_exists('header.html'))      {           die('Sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties.  Please come back later.');      }      else           include('header.html'); ?> 

This adds a check that the file exists so that your users will see an error message instead of seeing an ugly PHP error.

I hope you enjoyed the article. Please feel free to ask your questions in comments.