Comments on: 36 Great Wordpress Plugins Compatible With Wordpress 2.7.1

By: cool games

cool games — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:17:04 +0000

Cool ^^ commentluv is my favourite plugin. Now I get a lot of related quality comments on my blog and it really motivates people to comment a lot! I like it

By: Amber

Amber — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:15:38 +0000

Thanks for this useful list! I used some of them – but hadn't heard of others.

I really like the dofollow plugin — It is nice to be able to reward commenters who put in useful comments!

By: MikeHaydon

MikeHaydon — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:27:02 +0000

Glad you like the post steve

1) I don't know whether WP Super Cache has the problem. The way I found out with WP Cache was to log out of admin and post a test comment on an old post. You'll know straight away if WP Super Cache has the same problem.

2) Global translator had problems in the past (see my conversation with Nairolf above), but that has been fixed with the latest update. I've checked my logs and there aren't any 404s attributable to GT. There are a number of "network unreachables", but that could just be when GT is caching – the links in the network unreachables work for me. I know GT works for me because I see comments in German (above), Google Analytics shows pages accessed in Italian, German, French, Arabic and Polish (not by me) and I don't have any problems going to foreign language pages through the translate feature. Also, if you search at, say baidu.com, you can see my pages appear in the index in different languages (and the links work).

Hope that helps.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:01:49 +0000

Hi Mike, and everyone else!

Great post here and thank you!

I have two comments / questions please regarding your plugin suggestions…

1) I just started using WP Super Cache and am concerned about what you said about WP Cache (not the same plugin) not letting people leave comments. Do you know if that same problem happens with WP Super Cache?

2) I was using the Global Translator plugin but yanked it off all my sites when I discovered it was leaving thousands of error 404 pages and "unreachable urls" as seen when I log into my Google Account/Webmaster Tools. Have you checked your Google Account to see if GT is creating error pages yet? I Googled this issue and apparently a lot of people are having this problem yet I haven't found a solution for it.

Thanks.
Steve

By: Laura Roeder

Laura Roeder — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:21:16 +0000

Great list, many of these are new to me.

By: MikeHaydon

MikeHaydon — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:50:44 +0000

I understand where you're coming from Joergs. However:

If "building up a second navigation… leading the bot twice to the same page" caused a problem, the internet would break. Bots spider the page. If there are 2 links to the page or 200, they will count them as links, not as a duplication of content. It's pretty much an accepted fact, based on what we can gather on how Google's search engine works, that the links created by breadcrumbs won't cause a problem with a site's ranking on Google any more than having a "posted in xyz category" would.

The only plugins I consider essential are Akismet, Feedburner Feedsmith, Google Analytics for Wordpress, Google XML Sitemap, Maintenance Mode and Wordpress Database Backup. Anything else is optional if it helps your site's look and feel or useability. Using my previous template, I thought it improved the site's appearance. Using the current theme, I don't.

NavXT Breadcrumbs aren't going to hurt your site's performance in the search engines. They're not going to help it either. It is only useful if you think it will be useful for your readers (like many things). It has nothing to do with SEO. Breadcrumbs may have been created for SEO, but as you say, proper navigation should take care of that.

By: Joergs Info

Joergs Info — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:20:24 +0000

Just to specify my opinion, maybe the right things have been lost in the translation tool: breadcrumbs are – first of all – for bots. Certainly expririenced users like you and me also use them once in a while to check the page level or to navigate by them (but this is – for me – already a strong indicator that something is wrong with the 'normal' navigation).
And the duplicate content risk occurs due to the fact that you build up a second navigation somehow, leading the bot twice to the same page (via 'normal' navigation and the breadcrumbs).
At least its worth thinking of it. Usability tests have shown that breadcrumbs do nothing for better navigation for everyday users.
And the somehow artificial second breadcrumb navigation: it was a hype in the past (you need it for SEO and usability!!), but I think those voices have calmed down a lot.
Cheers!

By: MikeHaydon

MikeHaydon — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:32:48 +0000

It also depends on your theme. I find that using NavXT on some of my sites builds interactivity into the posts, giving a clear picture of where the reader is. Though I don't agree with your duplicate content argument: NavXT only adds a few words to each post, so duplicate content shouldn't even be an issue

By: Jörgs Info

Jörgs Info — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:09:23 +0000

Zur Pfadnavigation NavXT: zu Breadcrumbs gibt es mittlerweile unterschiedliche Ansichten.
Die Gegner führen an, das es aus Usabiltiy Sicht kaum Sinn macht (Otto Normaluser nutzt das nicht) und ausserdem künstlich Double Content erzeugen kann.
Deshalb verwende ichs nicht!

By: Dida

Dida — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:35:30 +0000

Eine sehr schöne Auswahl. Was mir fehlt ist All in one SEO. Auf das würde ich für einen erfolgreichen Blog nicht verzichten wollen.