Category: Technology

Must-have WordPress Plugins

Recently I was asked to consult with someone developing a website for their small business. We discussed their goals, developed requirements and at the end settled on WordPress for the content management system. As the individual was developing the site they became familiar with the feature of plugins and asked what would be some essential ones to include in their site. I sat down and put this list together and I’d like to share it with you.

In no particular order, my favorite and most useful WordPress plugins.

Advanced Blogroll – For links to other sites or other online presence (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) you create links in what’s called a blogroll (The name is a holdover from the early days of WordPress.) The default WordPress configuration displays them in alphabetical order. This plugin allows you to arrange them as you see fit. You can see how “Latest” comes before “Elsewhere” on the navigation to the right. ->

WordPress Database Backup – Lets me sleep at night. Since WordPress stores all of your pages and post content in a database, keeping a backup is a smart idea. I have this setup to email me once a week with a zip file of my database. It’s a small little email and I have Gmail set to filter it out of my inbox automatically.

Jetpack – What once was a gathering of separate plugins is now a super kung-fu collection of some great features. Two of my favorite features are the WordPress Stats and After the Deadline. The stats gives you near real-time feedback on traffic to and from your site. Popular pages, keywords and links displayed automatically in your dashboard. After the Deadline is a super grammar, style and spell checker that uses artificial intelligence to make you sound more-than artificially intelligent. That’s just two of the many features of Jetpack.

Update: I can’t recommend Jetpack highly enough. It’s continued to become the most awesome plugin for WordPress that I’ve ever used. The just recently added a CSS editor that lets you customize your site design without modifying your theme, new comment capabilities (including login using Twitter or Facebook) and Retina support for images!

Akismet – Comment spam blocking magic. Spammers target popular content management systems like WordPress in an attempt to trick site owners into allowing spammy comments. Akismet sits in the background and filters these fake comments without any interaction. According to my stats it’s blocked over 17,000 spam comments with a 99.87% accuracy over 6 years. Not too bad.

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is the most powerful web tracking tool out there. Coupled with WordPress and a good email campaign tool (like MailChimp) you can track your readership with great detail. I could spend hours just going over how useful good web metrics are!

WP Super Cache – This is just incase you suddenly get hit with a million visitors. Normally, WordPress dynamically generates each page and post, which causes a lot of requests for information in the database and all the pictures and styles in  your theme. This plugin uses a complex set of rules to create a static version of your page, making the load on the server much less. There by allowing for many more visitors at the same time.

One last recommendation is not a WordPress plugin but a web service called if this then that. ifttt allows me to glue things I do online together. For example, when I post a photo to Instagram ifttt automatically creates a new post on my site and posts the picture. It can greatly help in automating posting to a lot of other web services, which allows you to spend more time writing content and growing your business than messing with tech stuff.

I hope this helps you firm up your WordPress site and please leave a comment if you have a suggestion of your own.

Update: Two other great plugins I’ve come across since writing this list:

Admin Quick Jump – From the horse’s mouth, “Admin Quick Jump is a very simple plugin that adds a drop down list to the admin edit-post area.” Very handy for moving between posts while editing. Here’s a little screenshot showing how simple it is.

Advanced Custom Fields – This one is definitely more on the geeky side of things (if that could be possible given the topic we’re discussing) but it’s pretty amazing. This plugin allows you to create super extensible custom fields that can contain any number of things. I friend of mine showed me how he’s using it for a site with staff profiles. Each element in the profile (position, title, and other bio information) can easily be edited in a custom field and populated into a formatted template. Easy for users to manage.

Secrecy & Delight

Two of the major talking points about Apple as a company and the products they create are their near CIA-level of secrecy and their unabashed predilection to create products that delight those who use them.

The secrecy part, in large, is described as a strategic way to have an advantage over other companies. Companies who would love to beat Apple to market with their knock offs interpretations. Secrecy prevents Acme Company skipping the months or years of development and research, in which Acme saves a ton of money and beats Apple to market with an, admittedly, mediocre product.

Apple is often heralded (and mocked) for its claims of delight and surprise. Upon its initial unveiling, Apple described the  iPad as being “magical”. Apple products continuously rank high on Consumer Reports and other customer satisfaction charts.

There’s another part to secrecy that I think ties into the idea of delighting someone. In our hyper connected age where sharing information is approaching diarrhetic levels, the idea of being surprised about anything is becoming rare. Running robots? Boring. Traveling to the depths of the ocean? Yawn.1 Apple uses their secrecy to actually deliver the delight and surprise, not just predict and pontificate on what might happen. Most product launches are quickly followed by the product being available. Not a watered-down version of a prototype, but the actual device down to the silicon.

There’s something to be said for the emotional impact a surprise party has over one that has been known about for months. Don’t get me wrong, a good party is still a good party, but a good party is overshadowed by a good surprise party.

Part of the secrecy that Apple holds helps to heighten the delight. For many people, getting an Apple device at launch is an experience. Ordering as soon as humanly possible or standing in line on launch day, you know that your new Apple device literally came straight to your home mere hours after being minted. You didn’t have weeks to prepare for its arrival. Half your fiends didn’t even know a new device was being released. That’s how new it is. Only Apple can deliver on that delight and experience and largely because of their secrecy.

Nintendo, Sony, Intel, Microsoft and many other consumer tech companies share their product roadmaps months, if not years ahead of time. There’s still delight, but it’s similar to reading the Plot to a movie on Wikipedia before watching it. You might still enjoy the film, but you kinda know what to expect. Apple could do the same, but if they were to do so I think it’s no secret that we’re so jaded that no one would be delighted or surprised.

 

Siri, With Headphones On

Today I learned that when using Siri with headphones on2 she will read back any text or email messages before they are sent.

From Apple,

“When you use earphones or a headset, Siri reads back text messages and email messages that you’ve dictated before you send them, and it reads back the subjects of reminders before you create them. This is especially helpful when you’re driving and can’t see the iPhone 4S screen.”

I wish this option was the default behavior. There have been numerous times when I’m walking between buildings or to the car and want to send a note without looking at the screen and I’m not wearing headphones.

Ideas of March

I’m all for bandwagons and blogs, so here’s my entry for Ideas of March. Chris Shiflett (Obviously a member of the Chris Club) came up with the idea to encourage more people to write more frequently.

Like most citizens of the Internet, I’m a heavy reader. RSS, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Draw Something (Wait, does that count?) I’m a reader of many personal blogs of people I find to be interesting and who have good things to say about the work they do. The simple act of consuming the thoughts and ideas from people whom I respect and admire acts as a fuel to create and share the things that I have in my own world.

I know I’m no Gruber or Kottke, but that’s OK. I’m not writing for them or anyone else on the Internet. I write for myself and my close friends and family.3

Seth Godin has this to say about blogging, “what matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.” in such that the mere act of putting words to paper (or screen) is why you should write. It helps you form your thoughts around an idea or concept that empower you when conversing with others around the topic.

Writing for me is also about the enjoyment of life, the understanding of my short trip here on Earth and how lucky I am to be working in a profession that allows for such excitement and intrigue. I write because I love life and work and all the other wonderful experiences of being human.

Even if you don’t love to write, you do love something and there’s no better way to show that you love something than to tell the world about it. So write.

IT Needs to Market Itself

IT departments, in general, do a terrible job marketing their services, functions and value to the rest of the organization. While there are many business functions that an average IT shop needs to partake in, marketing is the first and most important. I’ve sat on both sides of the Marketing/IT table and have perpetually been frustrated by lackluster communication around what IT does4 (and is doing).

We’re technologists, the antithesis of the marketing person ,right? A large majority of folks working in corporate IT have more technical backgrounds which, I think, lends itself to the kind of person that either 1) doesn’t value marketing or 2) considers it a ‘soft’ skill set that 3) they often don’t feel comfortable doing.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the past paints IT folks as not being the best people persons. Now that is changing thankfully, in large part to the influx of young startups and entrepreneurs in the tech sector – people who were born into a part of the culture of sharing, collaborating and the Internet.

The “If we build it, they will come.” mentality does not work for any IT initiative. The result is adoption lacks, people don’t see the value to spending the time on ‘yet another thing’ and leadership often doesn’t put their full weight into it.

Marketing needs to be first, if we’re to operate like a business and need to be in the black.5 I think it’s tantamount that we invest in clearer communication and a little panache when talking to people about the stuff we’re working on. The value we bring as it were.

I keep hearing about this idea of commercialization of IT services as being something big shops are looking at, and while I’m not sure I buy it, let’s assume it pans out. Well, in order to get people to buy in to the service you offer you have to be able to sell them on the idea that choosing your company is a wise idea. Same thing applies to our customers – our fellow co-workers. I think some people have the idea that “we’re the IT department, we have a captive audience. They  have to deal with us.”

As we know, consummerizaiton, cheap cloud solutions and BYO movements prove that wrong. In order for IT to survive as a valued and important part of the business of any organization – regardless of size – it’s important to leverage the marketing of our services to remain relevant.

As Seth Godin puts it, “Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.” the same applies to successful IT organizations.