Plugins are a big part of the WordPress community. Over the years I have used many of the best WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction. There are in total 4,245 plugins and these have been downloaded 22,152,788 times.

18 most downloaded WordPress plugins

This post is a tribute to the top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever (Akismet is not included as it comes with the default WordPress installation). Each of these 18 has been downloaded a minimum of 200,000 times.

• All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) – Downloads 1,603,368

• Google XML Sitemaps – Create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog – Downloads 954,459

• NextGEN Gallery – A full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option – Downloads 715,819

• WordPress.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system – Downloads 712,71

• WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files – Downloads 492,637

• Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible – Downloads 393,916

• Wordpress Automatic upgrade – Allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one – Downloads 288,600

• Sociable – Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed – Downloads 284,117

• Viper’s Video Quicktags – Allows easy and XHTML valid posting of videos from various websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and more – Downloads 254,807

• Simple Tags – The successor of Simple Tagging Plugin and is THE perfect tool to perfectly manage your WP tags – Downloads 254,353

• WP-DB-Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database – Downloads 250,795

• Google Analytics for WordPress – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics – Downloads 239,837

• Google Analyticator – Same as the one above, enables Google Analytics tracking - Downloads 229,970

• Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and over 100 more – Downloads 226,056

• WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can also easily add a poll into your WordPress’s blog post / page – Downloads 222,196

• Sidebar Widgets – Adds “Sidebar Widgets” panel under Presentation menu – Downloads 221,024

• podPress – A dream plugin for podcasters using WordPress – Downloads 207,491

• WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog – Downloads 204,005

Wisdom of the crowds?

“Wordpress Automatic upgrade” and “Sidebar Widgets” are the classics which are no longer needed as they are a part of WordPress now.

From the top 18 plugins I currently only use Google XML Sitemaps, WP Super Cache and Contact Form 7 on my blog. All in one SEO Pack and Google Analytics are also very important but my Thesis theme has these functions built-in.

What do you think about the wisdom of the crowds in case of WordPress plugins? Are these the best plugins? Do you still use any of them?

Many people have asked me for my list of top WordPress plugins. Of course I’ve written quite a few WordPress plugins myself, but I’d thought I’d share with you what I think are the best WordPress plugins out there.

1. FeedBurner FeedSmith
   I use and love FeedBurner, even though it goes awry every once in a while, and the best way of using it is with FeedSmith, which I’ve been using since before it was “acquired” by FeedBurner. Just install, enter your FeedBurner ID and activate. That’s it, you’re done.
2. HeadSpace2
   Anyone who has been following me for a while knows I’m a huge fan of John Godley’s plugins especially HeadSpace2 and Redirection. HeadSpace2 takes care of all my meta tags and inserts my Mint code. If you don’t need fancy things you can use it for Google Analytics and other trackers too!
3. Lighter Menus
   The WP 2.5 and 2.6 backend is a bit “heavy”, lighter menus turns the menu into a drop down and saves a LOT of space in the top part of the interface. Check out how cool my admin looks now (click for larger image):

   

4. pageMash
   My site uses a lot of pages, and sometimes you want to move around some pages. The default WordPress way of doing that is hard (you have to give each page a menu order by hand) but pageMash is excellent for that, with a nice Ajaxy interface in which you can just drag and drop pages. Have a look (click for larger image):

   

5. Redirection
   WordPress doesn’t do any 301 redirections by itself when you, for instance, change the slug of a page (the part of the URL that identifies the post). Redirection does do that for you though. You can also add your own redirects in the very user friendly admin panel, that’s why it takes care of all my redirections, and does so wonderfully.
6. Search Excerpt
   WordPress Search by default sucks. Fixing it takes a bit of work, but the heavy lifting is done by this plugin. If you want to know what I’ve done with this blogs search pages, read my post on improving the WordPress search function. The results are very cool, as you can see in this search, for instance.
7. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
   WordPress upgrades quite often. Which is both a good thing, and a pain in the backside because of all the work involved. This plugin takes care of that, and even though I’ve heard of people having problems with this one, for me, it has always worked amazingly well. I’ve used it to upgrade all of my WordPress blogs and sites to the latest version for at least 6 months now.
8. WP-DBManager
   Not only is this plugin perfect for doing automated backups, it can also do things like database optimization and the admin pages for it allow you to do the occasional query from within WordPress!
9. WP Security Scan
   Even when you update to the latest version all the time, there’s still this slight chance of you getting hacked. WP Security Scan helps you minimize this chance by pointing you right at all the vulnerabilities in your blog.
10. WP Super Cache
    I can’t imagine running this site without caching, although I have it turned of 98% of the time, I do turn it on whenever I’m about to hit Digg / Reddit / StumbleUpon, and it has saved my “life” a couple of times. WordPress has a tendency of becoming slower when you make your themes more complex, and when you add a lot of plugins. This plugin allows me to still have both and keep my readers happy.
11. MobilePress
    While the majority of your site’s visitors will be using a normal web browser, you do want to make mobile users as happy as possible too. This plugin helps you do that, by serving up a cool interface for iPhone and iPod Touch users and other mobile phone users, that looks approximately like this:

    

In this article, we take advantage of the merits of learning by way of watching video tutorials and screencasts. Video tutorials allow you to learn by following along with the instructor in real-time – a format that’s very effective for many people.

You can use these video tutorials a couple of ways: to learn about WordPress yourself or to send to your not-so-technology-inclined clients as a reference to help them get started. You’ll find the tutorials organized into several topics that include theme development and customization, site administration, beginner’s tutorials, and using some WordPress tools.

WordPress theme development

Designing for Wordpress

See Chris Coyier’s (of CSS-tricks) process for designing a WordPress site in this three part series. Also check out part 2 and part 3.

Creating a WordPress Template

Here’s a tutorial series (also see part 2 and part 3) for creating a WP template using a variety of free tools such as MAMP (for local machine development) and TextWrangler (a text editor).

Hodgepodge of WordPress Tricks

You’ll see a variety of useful WordPress theme customization tips and tricks through this video tutorial.

WordPress as a CMS

Learn how to create a WordPress site that’s more of a fully-featured content management system (like Drupal or Joomla) rather than a blogging platform using a few tools at your disposal such as the SimplePie WordPress plugin.

Install WordPress Locally

Learn how to run WordPress using a WAMP setup on your local machine for development and testing.

How to Modify WordPress Theme

In this tutorial, you’ll learn about some Theme Template tags in WordPress.

Add a Twitter Field to Your Form

Learn how to install and set up the WP Twitip ID plugin to integrate Twitter into your WordPress site.

How to put a Custom Header in your WordPress Blog

Replace the default WordPress header to a custom-made header so that you can quickly get started with your WordPress blog.

Create your first widget

This video tutorial shows you how to create a theme widget for WordPress.

How to make a WordPress plugin

Learn how to create a WordPress plugin that follows the WordPress plugin development guidelines.

Administration

How to setup PrettyURLs on WordPress

Learn everything about permalinks (including how to set it up on your WordPress site) in this video tutorial.

Setting up a member/user directory in WordPress

This video tutorial shows you how to create a member/user directory listing page to display member information.

Lost Password, Update User Info

This helpful tutorial teaches site administrators what to do in case a user loses his or her password.

Enable HTTPS

Learn about HTTPS as it pertains to the security of your WordPress site in this insightful video tutorial.

Best Practices for Upgrading WordPress

Upgrading WordPress is a simple task but there are some steps you should consider before proceeding with a major upgrade (such as backing up your WordPress database). In this tutorial, you’ll learn about a good way of safely upgrading your WordPress installation.

Moving your Blog, changing your domain name

If you need to move your WordPress installation to another location on your server or web host you should check out this general tutorial on the steps involved in relocating your existing WordPress site.

Import and Export WordPress Data

Learn everything about exporting and importing your WordPress data by viewing this excellent screencast.

WordPress blog admin settings

Get a run-down of useful WordPress admin settings to help you properly administer your site.

WordPress User Roles Explained

There are several user roles that you can assign to members of your WordPress site – this thorough video tutorial teaches you the difference of each.

Getting started with WordPress

Creating the Database for your Wordpress Installation

One of the first steps involved in the installation of WordPress is the creation of a database. This tutorial shows beginners how to create a database for WordPress using phpMyAdmin, a freely available web application that most shared hosting plans have.

Creating a Sitemap using the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin

Improve search engine results using the Google Sitemap plugin – this tutorial shows you how to install and set up the plugin.

Getting Started

Geared for beginners, this tutorial is a great general introduction to blogging and WordPress.

Wordpress installation and theme tutorial

Get up and running with a WordPress installation, as well as learn the basics behind WordPress themes, by following along this video tutorial.

How to Upload PDFs

WordPress users that want to learn how to upload PDFs to share to their audience might find this short video tutorial useful.

Photo Captions

Captions describe the photos displayed on a post and in this tutorial you’ll see a method for adding them to photos of a blog post.

Simple Page Edit in WordPress

This screencast shows beginning users how to edit a page in the WordPress admin section.

How do I create a picture gallery in my blog post?

This tutorial shows you how to put together a picture gallery post in WordPress.

HTML & QuickTags vs. Visual Editor

Learn the difference between editing content through the Visual Editor (the built-in WYSIWYG editor in WordPress) and good old-fashioned HTML.

WordPress tools

Using Windows Live Writer

Set up Windows Live Writer for WordPress so that you can let authors write blog posts offline.

How do I write WordPress blog posts with the ScribeFire Firefox add-on?

Make blogging hassle-free with ScribeFire, a Mozilla Firefox browser add-on that let’s you update posts on-the-fly.

This is their dedication expressed in words. In the meantime those comments adds more value to the posts thereby making it more informative for the future readers. Lets see how we can encourage our readers to Comment more on our blog posts

1. Commentluv: This plugin fetches the last blog entry of the commentator(provided he/she has a blog). This is very attractive for the bloggers who visit to your site. It encourages them to comment on your post just because they will get something in return i.e a meaningful backlink.

Download link | Installation Instructions | FAQ

2. MBLA: This plugin helps you to show the avatars of your blog commentators. This helps the commentator show his/her own identity in a distinct way. You can easily switch between MyBloglog & Gravatar.

Read More

3. Comment Relish: This is a plugin developed to send an automatic e-mail message to users who comment on your website for the first time. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment etc.).

Download link

4. Thank Me Later: This is a plugin is much like the Comment Relish plugin. This is very helpful in reminding them of their comment on your blog. This is a great way to attract “one-time visitors” and remind them to keep coming to your blog

Download link

5. Subscribe to comments: This plugin notifies the commentator on a particular post about the follow up comments by shooting an email to him/her. This helps the discussion going on.

Download link

6. Nested comments: This is a great plugin if you have lots of comments on your blog. This plugin shows the comments in a very neat nested manner.

Download link

7. ajax Edit Comments: This plugin lets your commentators to edit their comments in case they need to edit their comments(before moderation). This saves the time for the commentators because they don’t have to post twice in case they have made some mistake.

Download link

8. Top Commentators widget: This is a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP blog. The concept is an adaptation of the Show Top Commentators plugin. But this is easier to manage. You can select the duration of the calculation. Set it for a month or week for best results.

Download link

9. Moojax Comment Posting: This AJAX plugin allows the comment to be posted without reloading. It helps in getting your readers less annoyed.

Download link

10. Most recent comments: This plugin displays excerpts of the most recent comments and/or trackbacks that have been posted to the articles in your blog. Gets the attention of the readers to the posts where the discussion is going on.

Download link

So These are all the resources you need to encourage Visitors to post Comments in your Blog. Make sure you post a Comment here ! Happy Blogging!!

It really helpful for you and your visitors if your blog have well managed comment space. In which a reader can find various details about past and present comments which can improve the appearance of comments, and add more value to your posts.

This article focuses on organized collection of Most Wanted WordPress Comments Page Hacks which helps you to create a user-friendly interchange between you and your readers.

One of the greatest things about blogging is the immediate feedback a blogger can get from his or her readers. Still it’s often possible that your readers don’t give you a wink about their likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, there is no way for you to find out about visitors thinking towards your blog or its design. It always essential to play safe and give others what they like. Out of many solutions the inspirational one is only promising and optimistic way to achieve desired changes. Below we present over 30 excellent WordPress Comments Page Hacks which will definitely make your blogging life easier.

Most Wanted WordPress Comments Page Hacks

01. Styling Your Wordpress Comments

A fun part of customizing WordPress themes is designing a comments format which complements the rest of the site. Darrenhoyt has shared his three examples from recent projects, including code samples and downloads to the original .PSDs on ‘Styling Your WordPress Comments’. All of them looks stunning, are you ready to customize your comments template now?

Click Here for More

02. Alternating Colors For Comments

You might want to have alternating row colors for your comments, to make a clearer separation. Alternating rows make it easier to distinguish different comments. Doing this is relatively very easy.

Click Here for More

03. Styling Author Comments

An often-used feature in WordPress blogs is the ability to style comments made by the post’s author differently from the others – helping replies to stand out. Here, are few example of editing the default WordPress to add some subtle styling to author comments.

Click Here for More

04. Highlighting Multiple Author Comments

Have you noticed while visiting some of your favorite blogs that many author comments are styled differently to help the authors comments to stand out? This is something that isn’t overly difficult to implement on your WordPress blog. Kyle at wphacks shows a quick how-to explaining how you can easily adjust your WordPress theme to display different styles for each author.

Click Here for More

05. Numbering Your Comments

If your blog posts receive lots of comments then it can be really useful for both you and your readers to number it. Jean-Baptiste shows a simple solution to count comments easily and efficiently.

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06. Displaying The Most Recent Comment First

By default, a typical WordPress blog will display the very first comment at the top of the comments template. But if you would like your WordPress blog to display the most recent comment to be right on top instead of the usual at the bottom of a page, Moses of WPThemesPlugin.com suggested a tricky solution to display recent comments on top.

Click Here for More

07. Displaying Total Number Of Comments On Your Blog

If you have a popular WordPress blog with good number of comments everyday, then wouldn’t it be nice to be able to display the total number of comments published on your WordPress blog since your blog launch? The kind of stuff advertisers totally enjoy.

Click Here for More

08. Displaying The Total Number Of Trackbacks On WordPress

Would you like to display the total number of trackbacks you received on your blog. Here is the code that can make it happen. It’s fair very simple and easy to implement.

Click Here for More

09. Disable Commenting On Older Posts

Sometimes, it can be useful to automatically disable commenting on posts older than X days. In WordPress 2.7 it is a feature but older WordPress does not have any built-in function to do that, but if you still like to do it, here is little help.

Click Here for More

10. Get Rid Of The Comment Section On Your WordPress Blog

Removing the comments section on a blog can sound weird at first because comments are an important part of a blog, but sometimes you just want to spread some news without getting any feedback.

Click Here for More

11. Changing The Default WordPress Gravatar

Thousands of blogs show avatars next to their user’s comments. The avatars are a great way to make things more personal and create some variety between the different comments. Over at Pro Blog Design, Michael has written a great tutorial explaining exactly how to add your own default Gravatar image, as well as provide some tips on how to make a good Gravatar default image.

Click Here for More

12. Use Twitter Avatars In Comments

Do you enjoy Twitter? Yes, so what about displaying Twitter avatars in your comments, instead of gravatars? It’s fairly easy to integrates Twitter avatars on your comments.

Click Here for More

13. Editing Comments

It displays a link to edit the current comment, if the user is logged in and allowed to edit the comment. It must be within The Loop, and within a comment loop.

Click Here for More

14. Paginated Comments

Paginated Comments is a WordPress Plugin that gives you the ability to break your comments into a number of search engine optimized pages. You can create pages based on size of comments (so that no page of comments is greater than a certain file size) or you can create pages based on number of comments per page (100 for example). Although Wordpress 2.7 have built-in function to do that.

Click Here for More

15. WP Ajax Edit Comments for WP 2.5+

WP Ajax Edit Comments allows users and admins to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments. It’s a pretty nice feature for a community website or a blog.

Click Here for More

16. Improve Comment Follow-Up With The Subscribe to Comments WordPress Plugin

Subscribe to Comments is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

Click Here for More

17. Display The Most Commented Posts Of 2008

Do you want to display a list of the 10 most commented posts of 2008 to your readers? That’s obviously a great way to give a second life to your old posts.

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18. Comment Validation Hack

Comment Validation Hack is first step against spam. The system uses what’s known as a Turing number, named after the mathematician Alan Turing. If you have ever signed up for an e-mail account at yahoo or gone to e-gold’s website, you know what I’m talking about. More info here.

Click Here for More

19. Preventing Direct Access To Comments.php

comments.php is meant to be included in a post page, not separately. You could consider this a security measure. Inside the statement, you could insert any message you’d want to be displayed to the person viewing the comments.php file, preferably a die statement.

Click Here for More

20. Identify Authors With Gravatars

As title says you can use gravatars to identify your authors. Many blogs have a couple of authors and many times the blogs link and present the author of the respective contribution. Now with this feature you can do a lot more.

Click Here for More

21. Adding Form Validation To Comments Using jQuery

When it comes to simpler user experience, having your form validation happen instantly on the same page is a lot cleaner than reloading pages and possibly losing some form content. This tutorial at NetTuts, shows how to use jQuery to do some instant checking on an example comment form.

Click Here for More

22. Styling Individual Comment/Posts Using the_ID

How many times have you typed up a post and published it, only to wish that you could style that post just a little differently than the others. With the help of post IDs and comment IDs you can style any specific post or comment.

Click Here for More

23. Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks

Trackbacks are the messages displayed in the comments list whenever another blog links back to one of your posts. If you use trackbacks on your blog, it is best if they are not mixed with the comments. The comments are a conversation between real people. Having machine-generated links in the middle of that will only serve to disrupt the conversations.

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24. Prevent Author Impersonation In WordPress Comments

This modification to WordPress prevents unregistered comment authors from using the names or email addresses of the registered authors on your site. It does this by first checking to see if the comment author is logged in. If they are not, it compares their name and email address to the registered author data. If there is a match, the comment is blocked and a custom message is displayed.

Click Here for More

25. jQuery Reply To Comment

Add “reply” and “quote” features on each comment list. If you have jQuery installed on you blog, this Plugin add two link in each comments list (on single page). This plugin can auto include jQuery from Google Ajax API repository.

Click Here for More

26. Displaying The Allowed Tags

Gilles Maes at NetTut shows how to display the code that visitors are allowed to use in their comments. It takes only one line of code in comments.php and you’ll simply get a list of the tags that are allowed in your comment.

Click Here for More

27. Comments RSS Link

When a post have lots and lots of comment, it can be hard for your readers to stay on the conversation. Most WordPress users don’t know it, but WordPress have a built-in function for providing rss feed for the comments of a specific post.

Click Here for More

28. How to Remove rel=’external nofollow’ from Comments

For those of you who wish to join the I-Follow Movement and have WordPress blogs on your own domains, good news is that the rel=”nofollow” attribute can easily be removed without the need for additional plugins or software. In fact, it only takes about 5 minutes and one line of code but keep in mind that this can result in increased spam attempts.

Click Here for More

29. User Contributed Link Feed with WordPress Comments

Collis shows how to built a link feed with just WordPress comments contributed by visitors. This is a cool feature to offer blog users to submit links and to create a public link feed out of it.

Click Here for More

30. Full-featured comments.php Template For Wordpress

Christian shares his fully featured and well commented comments.php file (with some modifications to make it even more flexible). This comment.php have lots of hacks already applied which can save a lot of your time.

So as a sequel, here’s another 30+ Wordpress tricks and hack. If you are wondering how some bloggers add those cool functions, mods or displays on their Wordpress blog, be sure to run through our list. You might just find the solution in here.

More Wordpress related articles we’ve previously written:

• Most Wanted Wordpress tricks and hacks
• 49 Most downloaded Wordpress themes
• Wordpress themes for Video Blogging
• 16 Wordpress premium themes that don’t suck
• 20 Desktop blogging clients
• You’ve Installed Wordpress, So What’s Next?

Full list after jump.

1. Apple Flashy Accordion Sidebar

   Use the Accordion plugin in jQuery UI to create an Apple-alike Wordpress sidebar.

   

2. Adding Tabs to Sidebar

   Creating tabs on Wordpress sidebar with Yahoo! UI Library

   

3. Sidebar With Dynamic Contents

   Every blog visitor has different habits, but many tend to ignore sidebars because they are always the same. Mixing things up and keeping the contents of the sidebar relevant to the post can make them a bit more likely to be noticed.

4. Allow Users To Submit Blog Post

   This plugin allows you to add highly customisable forms to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit posts.

   

5. Paginated Comments

   Give you the ability to break your comments into a number of search engine optimized pages.

   

6. Image Caption

   Extracts the title or alt attribute from images within your blog post and generates a neat caption directly underneath those images. Supports custom CSS styling for captions.

   

7. Random Redirect

   Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.

8. Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

   Easily integrates the Google Syntax Highlighter by Alex Gorbatchev into WordPress. Image below show how codes look like in Wordpress with Google Syntax Highlighter.

   

9. Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) for Wordpress

   FLIR allows you to convert text and title into images (better display quality) on the fly without hassle. Now this FLIR Wordpress plugin make things even easier for bloggers.

10. del.icio.us for WordPress

    del.icio.us for WordPress displays your latest del.icio.us bookmarks in your WordPress blog.

11. Create Your Own PopURLs Within Wordpress

    Like the way how PopURL display contents? Now you can create similar inside Wordpress.

    

12. Exclude certain categories from being displayed

    2 ways to hide posts from certain categories to be displayed on the blog. You can either put this code inside the loop

    <?php
    if ( have_posts() ) : query_posts($query_string .'&cat=-1,-2'); while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
    ?>

    or you can use Advanced Category Excluder.

13. Another Date Image Hack

14. Create a calendar view of your article post date.

    

15. Styling Individual Posts

    Styling one post a little different from the rest with the use of the_ID.

16. How To Avoid Duplicate Posts

    Duplicated contents are pretty bad and they somehow affects how search engine weights your site. Here’s how you can avoid getting duplicated contents on your blog.

17. Wordpress ‘Page Redirect‘ template

    This template lets you specify a single URL as the page content, then as the page loads, the template automatically redirects the page to this new location, and that includes category or any tag pages you specify.

18. Delicious Save Buttons

    Add badges that encourage people to bookmark your website or blog

19. DesignFloat Buttons, Website & Blog Integration

    Give your website or blog visitors the option to submit your stories to Design Float and “Float” them

    

    <script type="text/javascript">submit_url = 'Your URL Here';</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.designfloat.com/evb/button.php"></script>

    

    <script type="text/javascript">submit_url = 'Your URL Here';</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.designfloat.com/evb2/button.php"></script>

    Read here for more.

20. StumbleUpon Buttons & Tools

    Add a Stumble It! button to your site to make it easy for your visitors to submit your content to StumbleUpon.

    

21. Dynamic Highlight Menu

    This allows you to theme/style and control the currently selected menu tab in CSS by adding a class="current" on it.

    <ul id="nav">
      <li<?php if ( is_home() || is_category() || is_archive() || is_search() || is_single() || is_date() ) { echo ''; } ?>><a href="#">Gallery</a></li>
      <li<?php if ( is_page('about') ) { echo ''; } ?>><a href="#">About</a></li>
      <li<?php if ( is_page('submit') ) { echo ''; } ?>><a href="#">Submit</a></li>
    </ul>

    Line 2:

    If Home, or Category, or Archive, or Search or Single page is selected, class="current" will be included in <li>

    Line 3,4:

    If Page with page slug about or submit is highlighted, class="current" is added.

    If you are looking at putting categories as menu tabs, here’s how to make the menu dynamic:

    <ul id="nav">
      <li<?php if ( is_category('css') ) { echo ''; } ?>><a href="#">CSS</a></li>
      <li<?php if ( is_category(showcase) ) { echo ''; } ?>><a href="#">Showcase</a></li>
    </ul>

    Line 2,3

    If category with category slug of css or showcase, class="current" is added.

22. DZone Buttons

    Let your website’s users vote for our links on DZone without leaving your site.

    

    <script type="text/javascript">var dzone_url = '[url]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_title = '[title]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_blurb = '[description]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_style = '1';</script><script language="javascript" src="http://widgets.dzone.com/widgets/zoneit.js"></script>

    

    <script type="text/javascript">var dzone_url = '[url]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_title = '[title]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_blurb = '[description]';</script><script type="text/javascript">var dzone_style = '2';</script><script language="javascript" src="http://widgets.dzone.com/widgets/zoneit.js"></script>

    More on DZone Buttons, Tools and Widgets

23. Reddit Buttons

    Similar to the rest, place a reddit button on your site to promote blog post.

    

    <script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='[URL]'</script><script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='[TITLE]'</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

    

    <script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='[URL]'</script><script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='[TITLE]'</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=2"></script>

    

    <script type='text/javascript'>reddit_url='[URL]'</script><script type='text/javascript'>reddit_title='[TITLE]'</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reddit.com/button.js?t=3"></script>

    Source.

24. Archive that works

    Noura of Noupe.com shows various ways you can style your Wordpress Archive page. Techniques and guides includes:

    • Listing all Posts
    • Display monthly or Yearly Archive
    • Archives Ordered By Category

    Read this entry.

25. Add Breadcrumbs to Your WordPress Blog

    Breadcrumb trails are a good supplementary navigation system that aid in site usability. This plugin allows you to add breadcrumbs to your theme.

    

26. Landing Sites / Pages

    When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific – often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them by showing them related posts to their search on your blog?

27. WordPress Exploit Scanner

    This WordPress plugin searches the files on your site for a few known strings sometimes used by hackers, and lists them with code fragments taken from the files. It also makes a few checks of the database, looking at the active_plugins blog option, the comments table, and the posts table.

28. Buy Me a Beer

    Allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal. Not something new, but worth knowing.

    

29. Display Feedburner Subscriber Count In Text

    How to display feedburner subscriber count in text instead of using chiklets.

    

30. Notifixious – Notify Users via IM

    This plugin allows you to notify your readers on their Instant Messaging (AIM, MSN, GTalk, ICQ…), Email or SMS when you publish new posts.

31. Installing Xampp and WordPress

    Guide to setup Xampp and run Wordpress locally on your machine. You can also install plugins, upgrade to the latest nightly and virtually anything else confident in the knowledge that if it goes wrong, there is no impact on your actual site.

    

32. Create an Ajax-based Auto-completing Search Field

    Why not helping your visitors to find what they’re looking for on your blog, by using a cool auto-completion on your search field?

    

More Resources

• WordPress Theme Hacks | Web Designer Wall
• 4 Simple Ways To Speed Up WordPress | WPCandy
• Reset your lost WordPress administrator password | village-idiot
• Optimize Your WordPress Title | hackwordpress.com
• Huge Compilation of WordPress Code | hackwordpress.com
• Backing Up WordPress | Lorelle
• Buttons, Bows and Badges for Your Blog | Lorelle
• Optimizing Wordpress and LAMP to survive the Digg effect | vallery.net
• 5 Golden Tips For WordPress Performance Optimization | taragana

This following entry comprise of nicely design Wordpress themes, magazine alike as well as high quality premium themes you don’t have to pay a penny for. This week for Wordpress, we present – 41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes.

1. RedLight

   [Preview] [Download]

   

2. FREEmium

   [Preview] [Download]

   

3. WaterColor

   [Preview] [Download]

   

4. Agregado Lifestream

   [Preview] [Download]

   

5. Infinity

   [Preview] [Download]

   

6. WP CODA

   [Preview] [Download]

   

7. Snapshot

   [Preview] [Download]

   

8. Versatility Lite

   [Preview] [Download]

   

9. CHARA

   [Preview] [Download]

   

10. Vintage

    [Preview] [Download]

    

11. Blues

    [Preview] [Download]

    

12. Deskspace

    [Preview] [Download]

    

13. Maasahan

    [Preview] [Download]

    

14. Notepad Chaos

    [Preview] [Download]

    

15. Web 2.0

    [Preview] [Download]

    

16. Zinmag Futura

    [Preview] [Download]

    

17. Mahusay

    [Preview] [Download]

    

18. Majapahit

    [Preview] [Download]

    

19. AutosSlug

    [Preview] [Download]

    

20. NewsTheme

    [Preview] [Download]

    

21. Hamasaki

    [Preview] [Download]

    

22. Small Magazine

    [Preview] [Download]

    

23. The Stars

    [Preview] [Download]

    

24. Malawak

    [Preview] [Download]

    

25. Androida

    [Preview] [Download]

    

26. Colourise

    [Preview] [Download]

    

27. Arthemia

    [Preview] [Download]

    

28. WP Gold

    [Preview] [Download]

    

29. WP Newsmag

    [Preview] [Download]

    

30. Brightness

    [Preview] [Download]

    

31. Irresistible

    [Preview] [Download]

    

32. DesignMagz

    [Preview] [Download]

    

33. Alivapress

    [Preview] [Download]

    

34. Remedy

    [Preview] [Download]

    

35. Comfy Magazine

    [Preview] [Download]

    

36. iPhone Creative Magazine

    [Preview] [Download]

    

37. ZenFresh Magazine

    [Preview] [Download]

    

38. SohoMag

    [Preview] [Download]

    

39. Nature Gift

    [Preview] [Download]

    

40. CorporateMag

    [Preview] [Download]

    

41. Magazeen

    [Preview] [Download]

    

It would be nice if we’re able to download free e-book and take it with us. That’s why we’ve again crawled deep into the Internet to compile this list of 20 places to download free e-books for your use.

1. Book of my wish pond

   Book of my wish pond is an online source of free ebooks download with lots of FREE E-BOOKS in separate categories.

   You can search and download free books in categories like scientific, engineering, programming, fiction and many other books. No registration is required to download free e-books.

   

2. 4eBooks

   4eBooks has a huge collection of computer programming ebooks. Each downloadable ebook has a short review with a description. You can find over thousand of free ebooks in every computer programming field like .Net, Actionscript, Ajax, Apache and etc.

   

3. Free-eBooks

   Free-eBooks is an online source for free ebook downloads, ebook resources and ebook authors. Besides free ebooks, you also download free magazines or submit your own ebook.

   You need to become a Free-EBooks.Net member to access their library. Registration is free.

   

4. ManyBooks

   ManyBooks provides free ebooks for your PDA, iPod or eBook Reader. You can randomly browse for a ebook through the most popular titles, recommendations or recent reviews for visitors. There are 21,282 eBooks available here and they’re all free!

   

5. GetFreeEBooks

   GetFreeEBooks is a free ebooks site where you can download free books totally free. All the ebooks within the site are legal downloadable free ebooks.

   

6. FreeComputerBooks

   FreeComputerBooks consists of a huge collection of free online Computer, Programming, Mathematics, Technical Books, Lecture Notes and Tutorials. It is very well categorized by topics, with 12 top level categories, and over 150 sub-categories.

   

7. FreeTechBooks

   FreeTechBooks lists free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available over the Internet. Throughout FreeTechBooks, other terms are used to refer to a book, such as ebook, text, document, monogram or notes.

   

8. Scribd

   Scribd, the online document sharing site which supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and other popular formats. You can download a document or embed it in your blog or web page.

   

9. Globusz

   Globusz is a unique ePublishing house, specializing in free eBook downloads. They also provide an excellent Star Rating Showcase for new and evolving authors.

   

10. KnowFree

    KnowFree is a web portal where users are able to exchange freely e-books, video training and other materials for educational purposes and self-practice.

    

11. OnlineFreeEBooks

    OnlineFreeEBooks provides links to various ebooks (mostly in pdf) spanning in 9 big categories which are: Automotive Ebooks, Business Ebooks, Engineering Ebooks, Gadget Ebooks, Hardware Ebooks, Health & Medical Ebooks, Hobbies Ebooks, Programming & Technology Ebooks, Sport & Martial Art Ebooks.

    

12. MemoWare

    MemoWare has a unique collection of thousands of documents (databases, literature, maps, technical references, lists, etc.) specially formatted to be easily added to your PalmOS device, Pocket PC, Windows CE, EPOC, Symbian or other handheld device.

    

13. BluePortal

    

14. OnlineComputerBooks

    OnlineComputerBooks contains details about free computer books, free ebooks, free online books and sample chapters related to Information Technology, Computer Science, Internet, Business, Marketing, Maths, Physics and Science which are provided by publishers or authors.

    

15. SnipFiles

    SnipFiles offers you free ebooks and software legally by brought or attained PLR, resale or master rights to all the products on their page.

    

16. BookYards

    BookYards is a web portal in which books, education materials, information, and content will be freely to anyone who has an internet connection.

    

17. The Online Books Page

    The Online Books Page is a Listing over 30,000 free books on the Web.

    

18. AskSam Ebooks

    AskSam Ebooks has a collection of free e-books like Shakespeare, and assorted legal & governmental texts.

    

19. Baen Free Library

    

    Baen Free Library is an online library of downloadable science fiction novels.

20. eBookLobby

    Free ebooks in eBookLobby are divided into different categories. Categorys range from business, art, computing and education. Select the category appropriate to the e-book you’re looking for.

    

More Free eBook resources

1. PlanetPDF – A small collection of classic novels all in PDF format.
2. DailyLit – Read books online by daily email and RSS feed.
3. Wikibooks – Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit.
4. Dwalin – Free novels in text format.
5. Project Gutenberg – Free ebooks from producers.
6. Adobe Free eBooks – In Adobe’s Free eBooks area, you can download, unlock, and read electronic books on your personal computer or reading device.
7. Alive & Free – A page of links to some recent books from living authors available free online.
8. Franklin – Thousands of free titles in text and HTML file formats.
9. Read Easily – An ebook online library which has been designed to provide you an adaptive reading experience!
10. PDFbooks – This new site offers around 4,700 downloadable public domain e-books.
11. Witguides – An online source for a wide range of useful e-books that are completely free with no need to sign-up or buy anything.
12. Diesel eBooks -Offer free ebooks formatted for both Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket.
13. Free eBook Miners –
    Free eBooks for your education, research or amusement.
14. Planet eBook –
    Free classic literature to download and share.
15. e-Library – Plenty of free ebooks available for download.
16. BookBoon – Provides free ebooks for students and travelers in PDF format. No registration is required.

If you are looking to buy a web hosting account to host your Wordpress blog, you might wanna hold that thought first; Also if you are hosting your blog on a free Blogger, or Wordpress.com, here’s an excuse to get yourself a self-host Wordpress blogging platform. This week in our giveaway contest, we are giving out 5+1 hosting accounts (1 year) for free and you don’t have to pay a single cent for it.

This giveaway is a courtesy of WPWebHost, only for Hongkiat.com readers. And if you’ve observed closed enough, we are too hosted with WPWebHost. Details on winning the Wordpress hosting account are as follows.

In short, here’s what on the table to be won:

• 5 WP Freedom Plan (50Gb/500Gb Bw/50 domains). More info.
• 1 WP Buddy Plan (100Gb/1TB Bw/100 domains). More info.

WPWebhost has Wordpress-savvy supports working behind both these plans, so if you come across any Wordpress technical problem, chances are, they already have a solution for you. WP Buddy Plan is specialized for Wordpress Multiuser (MU) hosting. If you are thinking of running a multi-user blog, you don’t want to miss this.

How to Win

Just comment in! If you are looking forward to win the WP Buddy Plan (for Wordpress MU) please specify in your comment.

Contest starts today, closes 24th Wednesday June. Exactly one week from now. Good luck guys

Update: Thank you for all your participation. The contest will now close and we’ll announce the winners soon!

Update (30th June 2009): We have winners, and here they are:

• Prasanth Chandra (awaiting response)dlv
• Steven
• Thefinalhome
• Chardy
• Jonathan Farley
• Boris Rorsvort (Buddy Plan)

Once again, congratulations and thanks for participating guys! More contest coming up soon.

The General Shortcuts

We’ll kickoff the list with some really general shortcuts that you often used.

• CTRL+C (Copy)
• CTRL+X (Cut)
• CTRL+V (Paste)
• CTRL+Z (Undo)
• DELETE (Delete)
• SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
• CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
• CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
• F2 key (Rename the selected item)
• CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
• CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
• CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
• CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
• CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
• SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
• CTRL+A (Select all)
• F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
• ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
• ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
• ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
• ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
• CTRL+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)
• ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
• ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
• F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
• F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
• SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
• ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
• CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
• ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu)
• Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
• F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
• RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
• LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
• F5 key (Update the active window)
• BACKSPACE (View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
• ESC (Cancel the current task)
• SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)

Dialog Box Keyboard Shortcuts

• CTRL+TAB (Move forward through the tabs)
• CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the tabs)
• TAB (Move forward through the options)
• SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the options)
• ALT+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command or select the corresponding option)
• ENTER (Perform the command for the active option or button)
• SPACEBAR (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box)
• Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons)
• F1 key (Display Help)
• F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
• BACKSPACE (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box)

Microsoft Natural Keyboard Shortcuts

• Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
• Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
• Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
• Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
• Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
• Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
• Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
• CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
• Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
• Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
• Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
• Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)

Accessibility Keyboard Shortcuts

• Right SHIFT for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys either on or off)
• Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN (Switch High Contrast either on or off)
• Left ALT+left SHIFT+NUM LOCK (Switch the MouseKeys either on or off)
• SHIFT five times (Switch the StickyKeys either on or off)
• NUM LOCK for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off)
• Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)

Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts

• END (Display the bottom of the active window)
• HOME (Display the top of the active window)
• NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder)
• NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)
• NUM LOCK+Minus sign (-) (Collapse the selected folder)
• LEFT ARROW (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder)
• RIGHT ARROW (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder)

Shortcut Keys for Character Map

• After you double-click a character on the grid of characters, you can move through the grid by using the keyboard shortcuts:
• RIGHT ARROW (Move to the right or to the beginning of the next line)
• LEFT ARROW (Move to the left or to the end of the previous line)
• UP ARROW (Move up one row)
• DOWN ARROW (Move down one row)
• PAGE UP (Move up one screen at a time)
• PAGE DOWN (Move down one screen at a time)
• HOME (Move to the beginning of the line)
• END (Move to the end of the line)
• CTRL+HOME (Move to the first character)
• CTRL+END (Move to the last character)
• SPACEBAR (Switch between Enlarged and Nor mal mode when a character is selected)

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Main Window Keyboard Shortcuts

• CTRL+O (Open a saved console)
• CTRL+N (Open a new console)
• CTRL+S (Save the open console)
• CTRL+M (Add or remove a console item)
• CTRL+W (Open a new window)
• F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
• ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the MMC window menu)
• ALT+F4 (Close the console)
• ALT+A (Display the Action menu)
• ALT+V (Display the View menu)
• ALT+F (Display the File menu)
• ALT+O (Display the Favorites menu)

MMC Console Window Keyboard Shortcuts

• CTRL+P (Print the current page or active pane)
• ALT+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console window)
• SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
• F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
• F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
• CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
• CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
• ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the selected item)
• F2 key (Rename the selected item)
• CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)

Remote Desktop Connection Navigation

• CTRL+ALT+END (Open the m*cro$oft Windows NT Security dialog box)
• ALT+PAGE UP (Switch between programs from left to right)
• ALT+PAGE DOWN (Switch between programs from right to left)
• ALT+INSERT (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
• ALT+HOME (Display the Start menu)
• CTRL+ALT+BREAK (Switch the client computer between a window and a full screen)
• ALT+DELETE (Display the Windows menu)
• CTRL+ALT+Minus sign (-) (Place a snapshot of the active window in the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
• CTRL+ALT+Plus sign (+) (Place a snapshot of the entire client window area on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same functionality as pressing ALT+PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)

Internet Explorer navigation

• CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favorites dialog box)
• CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
• CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
• CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
• CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
• CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
• CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web address)
• CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box, the same as CTRL+L)
• CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
• CTRL+R (Update the current Web page)
• CTRL+W (Close the current window)