What makes WordPress even better is the great variety of high-quality plugins that add all sorts of increased functionality to your website.  WordPress.org hosts a great database of thousands of plugins you can install with one click on your own site.  Most plugins are created for free by awesome coders helping make the world a better place.  They deserve serious thanks.  (So if you are a coder who has created a free WordPress plugin – THANKS!)

In my use of WordPress to create websites that connect my clients and their markets I’ve come across a few that are indispensable.  These plugins can be added to your site whether you are a professional developer or hobby blogger.  These plugins stand out to me because they:

• Are easy to add to the site
• Have customizable options
• Integrate seamlessly with the WP admin panel
• Are easy to add custom design to
• Are easy for clients to understand and use (when needed)

(see this article about what makes a good plugin in general)

So, while not an exhaustive list, here are some of my favorite plugins:

Akismet

Somehow the evil spam robots of the universe have even figured out how to leave spam comments on blogs.  This can get annoying if you are constantly being bombarded with comments that aren’t real.  Akismet is the fastest way to shut off the spam-flow.  After installation I’ve never seen a spam comment get into the system.  Nice!

Google Analytics

Okay, I honestly don’t use a plugin to add Google Analytics to my sites, I do it by adding code by hand.  The point is that you need Google Analytics on your site no matter how you get it there.  Analytics gives you an incredible amount of information about visitors to your site – where in the galaxy world they came from, what they were looking for, what they looked at while on your site, and much, much more.  If you aren’t getting in-depth reports on your website traffic you need to reconsider what you are even doing with your website.

Google XML Sitemaps

One key to ranking well in search engines is to make your website easy for them to crawl and index.  This plugin creates a sitemap for search engines to see what content you have on your site, then submits it to the search engines for you! How much easier can that get?

WP sIFR

The bane of website typography for designers is the fact that we’re limited to using a very small number of fonts for editable text.  sIFR is a solution that uses Flash-based fonts to dynamically replace certain text.  This increases the number of fonts you can use like, a hundred-fold.  Looks way better and stays indexable by search engines.  This plugin makes the process of adding this great functionality to your site painless.

Lightbox 2

Images opening in their own lightbox window on top of the current page is way cooler than them opening on their own blank page.  Now adding this feature is a three step process: add the Lightbox 2 plugin, add your images, tell them to open (individually or as a group) with Lightbox.

Sociable

One of the best ways to spread the word about your blog or website is to let other people do it for you.  Sociable automatically includes a widget at the bottom of your chosen posts and pages for people to share your site via social media.  You can choose from over 99 different media sites – add as many or as few as you’d like and make sharing easy on your readers.

Twitter for WP

Everyone from movie stars to soccer moms is using Twitter these days, and if you’re using it it should be included on your site.  Some Twitter widgets and plugins are big bulky things that look ugly and take up too much space.  Enter Twitter for WP – super clean, simple and small.  You can easily style your tweets to match the rest of your site and then everyone can know what you are doing!

WP List Cal

Lots of people want calendars on their site to list upcoming events, shows, or sales.  However, it can be frustrating for users to see a big blank monthly calendar staring them in the face, where they then must click on each day to see what’s happening.  WP List Cal just displays a beautiful list of your upcoming events, and adding new events is as easy as pie.  Which I think means its really easy.

WP Polls

Adding polls to your site is a great way to get visitors to start interacting with your site – and to find out what they think!  WP Polls makes adding polls to your site a snap. You can insert the polls into your blog posts, onto pages, or have the newest ones show up in the sidebar.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Keep visitors on your site longer by referring them to other posts that they might enjoy.  YARPP uses an algorithm developed by Martians that displays a list of recommended similar posts to the one your visitor is currently reading.  Giving readers more of what they want, and giving you more reads – everybody wins!

So, there you go – my favorite WordPress plugins.  Are you a WordPress user?  What’s your favorite WordPress plugin?

Or, read one of these:

1. WordPress Training
2. Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8
3. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress

Good

Might as well start with the best of the best.  Clean and simple display of the content, with elegant and perfect design.

The Art of Catalin Bridinel

This site is a great reflection of the artistic content.  The work is given plenty of room to breath against a watercolor-paper background.

Design by Slint

What?  The layout on this site is incredible!  Muted colors make help this complex site not become to cluttered.  Simply amazing.

Web Designer Wall

You’ve probably seen a design similar to this by now.  Unfortunately it has been copied over and over, but this is the orginal big artistic header.

Digital Photography School

A rich magazine style site, DPS makes great use of colors.   The ways you can access their best content in the 3 lower blocks is very well done.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre

The background and image borders set a great stage for this fantastic art.

Subtraction

Clean and bold, this site was another design pioneer when it first went live.

More of Me

A great ecommerce shop that keeps clutter to a minimum – not easy for many online shops.  Great name too.

Carolina Jesus

Carolina’s site is basic (but beautiful!).  Some JavaScript and custom coding make it a very unique WordPress site.

Webdesign-ne.ws

Another grid-based design, this site removes all extraneous design to let the content take center stage.  No way you could remember that address though.

The Westfalia

All about current reincarnations of the Van.  Wonderful illustration and color scheme.

Astheria

It doesn’t get too much cleaner than this.  The extra large type for the headers really draws the eye well.

Minimalissimo

Oh, maybe it does get cleaner.  Look at all of that beautiful whitespace!

Function

One huge header.  Just enough grunge on the rest of the page to balance all that black and keep things interesting.

2Fooo

A fun crafty little site.

Book Cover Archive

The blog here is nice, and built in WordPress.  The custom-coded main page is where the real beauty is though.

Leavenworth Summer Theater

…What?  I had to put at least one of my own sites in here.  Little bit of grunge, little bit of depth, this site has been featured on many showcases and increased visitor traffic significantly.

Ecoki

Another site that manages to present tons of content cleanly and neatly.

So, there you have it.  This is just a sampling of greatness – add links to your favorite beautiful WordPress sites in the comments.

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Want a beautiful website built in WordPress for your company?  Contact me and lets get started on your project!

Or, read one of these:

1. 10 Excellent WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Better
2. Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8
3. WordPress Training

You can get your own Gravatar really easily at www.Gravatar.com.  Just enter your email address, confirm it when you get the welcome email, and upload your photo!  It will then begin appearing when you enter your email address (usually required anyways) on a Gravatar-enabled website.

Here’s a video that does a good job explaining Gravatars:

Gravatars are easy to implement in WordPress.  Many new WordPress themes have them included, and you can definitely ask for them if you get a custom designed WordPress theme created for you.  Gravatars can be used to show the author of a blog post (especially helpful in you have multiple authors), display who left comments, show regular community members and more.

Designers and developers using WordPress can drop Gravatar functionality anywhere in their code with this line:

  <?php
   echo get_avatar( 'email@address.com', 80 );
   ?>

but there are also plenty of WordPress Plugins for implementing Gravatars in WordPress.  Don’t use WordPress?  Don’t worry – you can get Gravatar code and plugins for a range of other CMS platforms.

I implemented Gravatars in a variety of ways on the Wenatchee Valley Fitness Blog:

And here are some other examples of Gravatars being used nicely:

Most people just use profile pictures for their avatars, but here are some examples of a few really cool Gravatar images:

Need a WordPress blog to connect with your current and potential customers?  I can help!  See examples here or get in contact with me to get started!

Or, read one of these:

1. 10 Excellent WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Better
2. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress

First, create a new Post or Page (or open an existing one).  I’m using a new post I’m writing called “Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8″ (heard of it?).

In the editor window place your cursor where you would like the link to appear.

Click the Add Media button in the Upload/Insert menu.

Click on the Select Files button.

Find the file on your computer that you’d like to upload and link to and click Select.

WordPress will upload your file.

In this final step you will add the Title – this is the text that will be the link in your post.  For the Link URL make sure you click the File URL button so that the Title will link to the file.  Lastly click Insert into Post.

That’s it!  You’re done!  If you’d like to change the text of the link, simply select the word or phrase and type in the new content.  Here’s what the final link looks like on my site: download the PDF

Follow these steps to link to Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and more.  WordPress makes it super easy to post all the information your visitors want and need!

Looking to build a custom website in WordPress?  That’s what I do!  Get in touch and let’s talk about how simple and affordable the process can be for you.

Or, read one of these:

1. WordPress Training
2. 10 Excellent WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Better
3. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress

I spent a day earlier this week training Neff Co on how to update and edit the website Apt Design just finished building for them. Well, didn’t actually spend a day.  The training only took about 10 minutes.  At the end they said, “Wow.  That was easy, wasn’t it?”

Yes, it was.  Yes, it is.  If you are looking for an intuitive, easy-to-use, scalable, powerful blogging platform and/or Content Management System (yes, it can do both), WordPress is our preference. The community around WordPress is huge, and I’ve found themes, plugins, and widgets so easy to work with.

Simple + powerful = WordPress.

Or, read one of these:

1. Uploading and Linking to a PDF in WordPress 2.8
2. 18 Beautiful Websites built with WordPress
3. 10 Excellent WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Better