WP Minder

WordPress Plugins

Friday Link Wrapup – Free Images, 301 Redirects, Caching

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Finding the right images to support and enhance your written content can be a time-consuming process. Here’s a new free plugin called WP Inject (not the most encouraging name, but anyway…) that helps you search for and insert CC (Creative Commons) licensed images without leaving the editor screen. Here’s a review of the WP Inject plugin. I haven’t used this yet but it looks to be a big time-saver.

If you’ve migrated from another platform to WordPress, or done a major overhaul on content, you might be dealing with tricky 301 redirect issues. Here’s a guide to fixing 301 redirects that might be hurting SEO on your site.

Finally, here’s a guide to WordPress caching plugins. Caching pages can improve load times for site users – in some cases. This guide can also help you determine whether or not you really need that caching plugin. I personally like WP Fastest Cache best because it’s very lightweight and simple to set up.

Friday Link Wrapup – Search, Google Analytics, Content, Page Builders

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

WordPress search has room for improvement. Here’s a great post that provides examples of four powerful ways to improve WordPress search:

  1. Faceted search
  2. Using a more powerful search algorithm
  3. Upgraded search for BuddyPres or Multisite
  4. Providing a better search experience

Doing your own SEO? Here’s a big comprehensive guide from WPMUDEV on using Google Analytics to understand your WordPress site’s traffic.

Going along with that theme, here is an older but still very relevant post on content and usability in writing for the Web.

Finally, if you’re a fan of page builder plugins, here’s a review of seven of the author’s recommended plugins.

Get Rid of The Yoast SEO Nag

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If you’re like me you like Yoast SEO (one of the most popular SEO plugins) quite a lot – but you don’t like all the extra junk it comes with, such as this irritating little nag that appears with every update:

Yesterday I found a wonderful plugin called SO Hide SEO Bloat that can handle all these unwanted extras for you, like the nag and the cartoon ads and the tour notification, etc. This plugin gives you a lot of options on what you’d like to see or prefer to hide, including:

  • The sidebar ads
  • The nag bar
  • The SEO score, title, description, keyword columns in Posts and Pages
  • The SEO dashboard widget
  • Featured image size warning
  • and more…

Give this plugin a try and you may be happier with Yoast SEO.

Quick Plugin Review – Menu Social Icons

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Last week I needed to add some icons to a client’s menu in a commercial theme. Knowing this can be a little tricky if the coding is odd, I went looking for a quick fix and found one in the form of Menu Social Icons.

This neat little plugin uses Font Awesome social icons in place of social links you put in your menu. How to use it:

1. Install and activate the plugin as usual.

2. In your menu, add a custom link to your social network of choice. At this time the plugin supports the following:

  • bitbucket.org
  • dribbble.com
  • dropbox.com
  • facebook.com
  • flickr.com
  • foursquare.com
  • github.com
  • gittip.com
  • instagram.com
  • linkedin.com
  • mailto:(email)
  • pinterest.com
  • plus.google.com
  • renren.com
  • stackoverflow.com
  • trello.com
  • tumblr.com
  • twitter.com
  • vk.com
  • weibo.com
  • xing.com
  • youtube.com

3. Save the menu. The plugin will automatically replace the link text in the menu with the corresponding social icon from Font Awesome.

That’s it. The only complaint I had was that no icon was available for RSS feeds yet but it sounds like the developer adds new icons from time to time.

Friday Link Wrapup – Calenders, Premium Themes, Local SEO

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Yesterday I was researching calendar plugins for a client project – there are a lot of them out there. This guide to WordPress event and calendar plugins was one of the better resources I found.

What did I use? I wound up going with All-in-one Event Calendar. The reviews are mixed, but don’t let that throw you; this is still a really good plugin with lots of features (I’ve used it many times in the past). The main features we liked are the widgets that you can customize to display specific categories, and the event list feed that can be used on pages and posts.

If you’re looking for a commercial WordPress theme instead of a custom solution for your business, the premium themes directory is a good place to start.

Are you lucky enough to blog for a living? If you are, here are some tips on staying productive when working at home.

Finally – if you have a brick-and-mortar location and are interested in getting started with local SEO, here’s a detailed guide for setting up the commercial Yoast Local SEO plugin.

Friday Link Wrapup – Bulk Edits, Mailchimp and Featured Images

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

For the WordPress newbie – how to save time by bulk-editing page and post details, like Author, category and publication status.

Using Mailchimp for your newsletter marketing? Good for you – I am too. Here’s a guide to integrating Mailchimp and your WordPress site, including adding a registration form that gets new subscribers into your selected mailing list(s) automatically.

Last but not least – if you use Featured Images to liven up archive pages, you know it’s a pain to have to open a post in the editor to see what image is being used. This plugin, Post List Featured Image, helps by adding a Featured Image column right in the Posts page.

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