The WPCandy post was advocating that theme designers should stop bundling WordPress plugins and other functionality which limits how easily users can switch themes, something which I feel is absolutely a good idea. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post — I want to focus specifically on the issue raised in the WPLift post — building plugins directly into themes.

The post shows you how to add the DP Twitter Widget into your theme; it’s literally a case of copying a pasting the plugin’s code into your functions.php. In fact it’s so easy that there’s no reason not to build every single widget and plugin you can think of under the sun into your theme, right?

Unfortunately it’s a little more complicated than that and for the rest of this post I’ll set out exactly why that’s the case.

Firstly, the second you build a plugin into your theme, you’re assuming responsibility and are obliged to support the plugin, so if anything breaks in future updates, you’ll need to be able to fix it. Say the plugin used Ben’s timthumb and updating was an absolute necessity, the onus would then be on you to provide the update by offering an entire theme upgrade rather than just a simple plugin update independent of the theme.

Second, what’s the point? The functionality you’re providing already exists and unless you’re significantly changing the plugin, I’m struggling to see the point of just duplicating functionality. Sure, you get to brag about how your theme has thousands upon thousands of built in widgets and it makes everything really fun and it’ll do everything you’ve ever wanted, but by just adding a plugin that already exists into your theme, you’re just adding something I can do already by installing plugins. Plus, I’ll not lose everything in two years when I decide I need to overhaul the look of my site! And hey, there are sites like mine out there which show you how to do things like building a WordPress powered email newsletter without plugins anyway!

I’m not just wagging fingers from the rooftops — this was a mistake I made when I launched my ill fated theme site, WPShift nearly two years ago. At the time having a ton of functionality in a theme was the way to go and we made a decision that we would go down the route of essentially just bundling plugins with the theme.

I’m glad to say this isn’t all the range any more, so please don’t do it, it’s just making a mess in the long run.

Once of my most recent Facebook plugin discoveries came from the developers at Premium Coding, a website which builds quite a few things, including a series of premium WordPress plugins.  The plugin I want to talk about today is called Facebook Page Themes, and the title pretty much sums up what this plugin does.  With this premium WordPress plugin users can generate a custom designed theme for your Facebook page, giving your business a professional look that promotes your product or service.

So, why would a website or business want a custom Facebook page?  To reach the average customer, having a Facebook page is just about a requirement these days, and they are completely free with a Facebook account.  The problem is they all look the same.  In order to stand out, many major corporations have decided to build custom web pages to help their product stand out.  But what about your average blogger?  Using the leverage of this WordPress plugin, you can easily create a plugin which helps promote your product or service directly to these (potential) customers.

After working with the designers of this plugin, I’m happy to report that I was able to give Facebook Page Themes a try and see exactly how easy it is to create your own custom WordPress theme.  First, here is the feature list for this plugin:

• Easy to install like any other WordPress plugin.
• Currently there are five pre-made templates available (black, grey, brown, blue, and red), but this number will continue to grow over time with new templates promised each month.
• Built using HTML/CSS making them relatively easy to customize.
• Make updates to their page directly from the WordPress dashboard.
• Plugin uses the popular Nivo Slideshow image rotator (for front pages) and Lightbox (for image presentations).
• Support for multiple templates, allowing you to use different templates for different website pages, or use one for your product and the other for your personal Facebook page.

Once you get your copy of the Facebook Page Themes plugin, you can simply unzip the file and upload to your website just like you would any standard WordPress plugin.  Once activated, this plugin has its own spot in the navigation menu called “FB Themes.”  From here you can build your own custom page through a series of menus that gives you control over how your page displays.  Options available include a traditional blog-like page (the default setup for Facebook pages currently), a home/splash page, and of course a portfolio page.

While my time with the Facebook Page Themes plugin was an overall good experience, one downside that I discovered was not actually the plugin’s fault, but instead a problem with the secure browsing Facebook uses (https).   After checking into why things weren’t displaying properly, I discovered that Facebook made changes to the HTTPS protocol on October 1st, 2011, so Facebook users with secure browsing turned on will not be able to view your page properly unless your website has an SSL certificate.   Fortunately Premium Coding has provided a free workaround to this issue using Social Server which they’ve detailed here.

Overall I have to say I was very happy with my time trying this plugin and can recommend it to anyone who would like to clean up and improve their default Facebook page.  If you’d like to learn more about the Facebook Page Themes plugin, you can get additional information here.

Not long ago I covered a free WordPress plugin called WPTouch which creates a mobile-friendly version of your WordPress blog to display for mobile web browsers.  The unfortunate truth, however, is that outside of clicking on a link from Twitter on their phones, most iPhone, Android, or mobile users in general do not use the mobile web to view a webpage.  In order to maximize convenience for your readers you really need a custom iPhone application.  This is where an app I recently discovered, Wiziapp, comes to the rescue.

What is WiziApp?  Wiziapp is a WordPress plugin that automatically turns your WordPress blog into a native iPhone app in real time, giving easy access to the following within the application: Posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, links, images, videos, and audio files. And if that wasn’t enough, Wiziapp even offers a push notification service to notify iOS users when your website has new content available!

Here is a complete list of the features provided by the Wiziapp team:

• Create and personalize your iPhone application from your WordPress dashboard using the plugin’s wizard.
• Deliver all of your blog content directly to your App in real time.
• Notify your readers about new posts via push notification service.
• Your readers can easily read and post new comments directly from your App.
• Your App will display your images and galleries in native iPhone style.
• All the media you have posted will be collected to video or audio libraries.
• Your readers can easily search your blog directly from your App.
• Playing video and audio using Wiziapp’s advanced players.
• Enable your readers to navigate between posts by categories, tags or author name.
• Integrate with your login system.
• Your readers can easily share your posts and images via Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS.
• Monetize your App by displaying ads using your own AdMob account.
• Your readers can easily save your posts to their ‘favorites’ list.
• We publish your App to the iTunes App Store and save you time & money dealing with an Apple developer account.
• See daily stats of your App visits and downloads.
• Stay up to date with all iOS and WordPress new features.
• Check out the Wiziapp tour here.

So, it sounds awesome, but is it difficult to setup?  How does it work?  I put the plugin to the test to find out just how easy it is to use.  Here are the steps I followed, which allowed me to build an app within 10-15 minutes:

1. Download the WiziApp plugin from the official WordPress Plugin Directory here.
2. Upload and activate the WiziApp plugin.
3. Access the “Create Your App” menu in your WordPress dashboard and name your application.
4. Design your splash screen using the plugin’s generator or upload your own custom splash design.
5. Customize your app’s appearance.
6. Build your App menu (tab bar).
7. Determine if you want to enable your readers to share your content via Facebook, Twitter, Email, or SMS.
8. Configure push notification options.
9. Enter your AdMob ID if you want to monetize your application.

Once configuration is complete, the next step is to sign up for your Wiziapp account to get your new application into the iTunes App Store.  As of the writing of this review, it looks like there are three plans available, each of which is a little different to cover the varying needs of all types of websites.

• Personal Blog:  $199.00 setup and $19.90 a month
• Professional Blog:  $299.00 setup and $29.90 a month
• Enterprise Blog:  $499.00 setup and $49.90 a month

What makes this plugin/process better than just building your own custom application?  Even if you have the ability to build your own application for iOS, there is still the matter of getting it approved through Apple’s walled garden and into the iTunes App Store.  Of course, this is probably my favorite part about this WordPress plugin.  Wiziapp will actually use their own Apple developer account to publish your application, meaning you won’t need to sign up as a Apple developer (which has a $99.00 yearly fee) and deal with Apple’s approval board, which in my personal experience has been an absolute nightmare.  Wiziapp has an established setup which should make the approval process fairly easy.

Overall, I have to say that the entire process of building your application was surprisingly easy and looks really good.  If you run a WordPress blog and would like to build a custom application for your website, there is no cost to simulate your own application for FREE with the Wiziapp WordPress plugin and then you can decide if you want to have your application published in iTunes.

Note: This review was sponsored by the team at Wiziapp.

Of course, thanks to beauty of the open source nature of WordPress, WordPress users have access to all sorts of great WordPress plugins.  I recently found myself debating whether or not to develop an app for WordPress Hacks and decided that first I would look into what free WordPress plugins were available.  My goal was simply to find one which would display a WordPress blog to mobile browsers in a mobile friendly format.  

Based upon roughly 2 million downloads plus great reviews, far and away the best plugin I’ve found to accomplish this is one called WP Touch.  For those that haven’t heard of WP Touch, this WordPress plugin automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, and will display this theme when your WordPress blog is viewed from an iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung  and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile device!

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your WordPress website to mobile visitors, all without modifying a single bit of code or making any changes to your standard WordPress theme.  The mobile theme also includes the ability for visitors to switch between WP Touch view and your site’s regular theme if that is what they prefer.

If you are looking for a more feature-rich product, I discovered that users can also purchase a Pro version of WP Touch which includes a slew of new features like more style, color and branding customizations, themes, 10 languages, more advertising options, web-app mode, and even iPad support.

Ever notice how many features the standard installation of WordPress lacks? YouTube embedding, stats, and even a specialized Twitter widget? Well, if you have a self hosted blog at WordPress.com, these features are all given to you. In fact, many of these features are forced upon you by the sponsoring company, Automattic. Wanna learn how to get all of that “cloud-power” for your WordPress site?

If you are one of the people who would love to have these features at your disposal and already has a WordPress.com account, keep reading. Otherwise, you’re losing out on a great plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites!

The first thing you may be asking yourselves is: “Jetpack…What exactly is this plugin, and what does it do?” Here’s the simple answer: it brings all the feature of sites hosted on Automattic’s WordPress.com platform to your self hosted WordPress site. This includes WP-Stats, YouTube embeds, a user-friendly Twitter widget, Sharedaddy, PollDaddy, and even the easy ability for the VideoPress upgrade. This makes it the best, user friendly way to view complicated information and manage otherwise complicated settings and installations.

The first thing to do is to create a WordPress.com account if you don’t have one already. You can do that by clicking here. The next thing you want to do is download download Jetpack by Automattic. Then, when activated via the admin panel  on your WordPress install, you’ll see a banner telling you to login with your WordPress.com account. Follow those directions, and you should have all that “cloud-power” at your finger tips.

Of course, there is always the lack of Grunion, another great WordPress plugin used for creating forms, but that should be included by Automattic in the next release, or at least I hope so.

Today I’m going to share with you the best WordPress widgets that I would recommend for each and every WordPress blogger. I personally use a few widgets on my blog to help my visitors easily browse all of my blog posts. A nice WordPress blog would have proper utilization of widgets, plugins and footer & header bars.

When I started blogging I had lots of widgets in my blog’s sidebar and never really bothered worrying about the performance of the blog. All I wanted was to make my blog look cool. But one fine day lightning struck me and I decided to delete most of the WordPress plugins and widgets which were not necessary to my blog and were intense on bandwidth and resources. Having lot of plugins and widgets on my blog resulted in too much bandwidth consumption and made my blog sluggish, bringing down my site’s overall performance. So keep in mind, too much of something can be as detrimental as too little. A slow website or blog can equal unhappy visitors and a low score for your site’s search engine ranking. A smaller number of widgets means less content visible on your blog to the visitors, ultimately leading to a high bounce rate and/or low page views.  The solution is to find a way to balance the two.

Do not confuse yourselves with widgets and plugins though. WordPress plugins are easy to install and activate which helps you to improve your blog’s functionality. Plugins can include widgets as well. Widgets on the other hand are visible and interactive to your visitors. Usually these widgets are shown in the sidebar, but are not limited to only the sidebar. Fortunately there are many themes available now with widgetized footer and header space.

Here are my favorite WordPress widgets:

• WordPress Popular Posts : This widget is really awesome and useful for me and for my visitors. For me, I can display my most popular posts to my visitors. For my visitors, it helps them to easily find the posts that are the most popular.
• Related Posts: There are many related posts plugins available in WordPress Plugins directory. I prefer to use one that is simple and does not have many features allowing me to show related posts in the post footer as well as in the sidebar at the top of my website.
• My Random Posts: I use this plugin whenever I feel like I have not posted for ages. Apart from showing popular and recent posts, I choose to display random posts on my blog as well. It helps reviving older posts which new readers may have missed. Visitors can find your posts that might be interesting for them without going to sitemap page.
• Recent Posts: I use this widget on single page only. Widget logic gives you the ability to decide which widget to show your readers. On my website I have set up the recent post widget to only display recent posts in the sidebar when readers are viewing a single post page.  
• Search Engine Keywords Related Posts: I came across this widget recently and find it very useful. It displays related posts based upon the keyword your blog’s visitor used in the search engine. It has its own way of detecting similar posts. But combining it with Widget logic makes it a good widget to have.
• Archives: Usually it’s a good idea to have an archive page setup instead of having a sidebar widget. But since I wanted to have a minimalist look of my blog I decided to add archives in my sidebar widget. It’s easy and available through WordPress.
• Search widget: This widget comes as a standard feature in most WordPress themes however it’s a built in widget as well in WordPress. It’s important to have a search widget on your blog to let people search for anything if they can’t find it on your blog.
• Ad Squares Widgets: I am really fond of images and I like to include as many images as possible on my posts. This widget is used to add 125×125 ad blocks in your sidebar. There are 2 things that I like about this widget. First, you can add as many widgets as you want in your sidebar. Secondly, you can have up to 12 125×125 blocks configured per widget. You can use image or html code in the space, so AdSense would work very well!
• PHP-Code: I like this one because it lets me execute PHP Code as well in my sidebar apart from Text and HTML. For example, if you want to display recent posts from a specific category, you can do that with the PHP code available on the web. There are various other things you can do with the codes available.
• Recent Comments: Recent comments widget is as useful as recent posts widget. It keeps your visitors engaged by checking on the recent discussion on your blog.
• Text: This built-in widget allows you to add any text or HTML code in your sidebar widget. It’s useful to those small announcements you want to make every now and then with some links and text.
• Feedburner e-mail Widget: Feedburner is the most widely used email subscription service in the world. To get your visitors subscribe to your feeds via email, you can use this widget.
• Custom Menu: Another great addition to WordPress 3.0, the introduction of custom menus. As soon as you add a custom menu in the admin panel, you can add the menu item in the sidebar through widget called Custom Menu. The Custom Menu widget lets you add posts, links, category links and pages combined in to a single widget. Great potential combined with Widget logic. I use it to highlight my greatest posts on my blog coupled with the Widget Logic widget.
• Latest Tweets: Twitter is big and is getting bigger day by day. Every blogger in the blogosphere is now connected with twitter. The latest Tweets widget will show your recent tweets on your blog out of the box.
• WP-Cumulus: I don’t use this widget anymore as I am concentrating on having a minimalist blog design, however I wanted to share it here. This widget works on Flash and tends to eat up resources. In case you are okay with a slightly increased load time then its one widget that you must have. WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard (depending on your speed setting) but does take you to the appropriate page.

Feel free to add any WordPress widgets you feel I missed in the comments below. I will do my best to update this post to reflect the best widgets provided in the comments!

According to the numbers, over the past 12 months, the number of referrals from social networking sites to blogs has doubled. Social traffic is becoming more important than search traffic according to some. How do WordPress users adjust to this reality and exploit it to your advantage?  The core strategy should be to embrace and focus.

Embracing the Social Trend

Some bloggers have shut down their blogs and moved to Facebook fan pages. Others have kept their blog and complemented with fan pages as stop-gap measure. Either way, there is a perceived threat that you are losing traffic to Facebook. It could very well be a real threat unless you embrace the trend and make it work for you.

Focus Your Social Media Efforts

In an effort to please all readers and maximize reach into social networks, bloggers are integrating a plethora of social tools. One favorite is the AddThis plugin which offers some 100+ options for sharing. In my opinion this approach will clutter your site and distract the user. Pick a winner instead. All indicators are that Facebook is becoming the de-facto standard for social syndication.

Courtesy Gawker Media

After their launch of Open Graph in April this year, Facebook has grown from 15% to 35% of all social networking referrals. This assumes that Gawker Media is a good reflection of the industry average. My personal choice will therefore have to be Facebook, however StumbleUpon is another good candidate. Twitter is already prevalent but it is a typically a disappointment in terms of referrals. There are two reasons:

1. Twitter is undoubtedly the noisiest channel on the web.
2. People in general are not spending any significant time on Twitter.

What are my Tools?

With Facebook, you have some excellent tools. You also have some great plugins for WordPress integration. Most likely you already use several of these tools today. The key is how you use them and how you combine them.

The Facebook Fan Page

The fan page is a great tool for dialog and brand promotion (yes, you are a brand and you should cultivate it):

• Do use the fan page as a personal relationship tool by engaging your audience in discussion and dialog around the topics you are focused on. Use it as a place to share news about you, your brand and your site. The purpose is to create an “exclusive” community where your dedicated followers get the inside scoop on everything you.
• Do not use the fan page to push your RSS feed and manage relationships at the same time. First, your relationship efforts will drown in your content updates. Second, you are creating an intermediate (proxy) between your audience and your blog. Thirdly, the updates are indiscriminatory, lowering relevance which results in fewer revisits to your fan page and web site. Instead use a Like button for your feed (see below)
• Do one or the other of the above.

Get a Like Button for your WordPress Site

In its basic form, the Like button provides a one-time sharing function. There are tools that connect the Like button with your RSS feed, thereby providing a way to connect directly between your site and the Facebook News Feed (no Fan Page intermediary). Explain to the user that you want to connect for updates in conjunction with the Like button. Use a text widget to insert the button HTML on your site. If you want to connect your RSS feed to your fan page instead, Pheedo offers a solution with Dlvr.it.

Get a Like Plugin for my Posts

Let people “Like” your posts. There are WordPress plugins that allow you to automate the insertion of Like buttons. The Like button offers a one-time sharing event. It can also connect with the user for ongoing updates related to the topic of the particular post (a.k.a “Like for Tags“).

We recently did a case study on CNN.com. If they implemented these strategies, they would see 25%-40% increase in page views over time. CNN is already a user of Facebook social plugins but they are currently not using them as described in this article. The increase in page views is significant from a revenue perspective, most likely seven figures.

Note: This article includes opinions of the author based on working with the blogging community to develop social syndication tools. Your reactions to these opinions are greatly appreciated.

You may have noticed that Facebook social plugins are everywhere these days with the popular ”Like” button, primarily because of its ease of use and how it integrates with the social graph.  This is because the button represents a one-time sharing event vs. establishing a lasting connection with your readers.  Now imagine instead how you could get ongoing updates on topics that interest you!

A recent addition to the WordPress plugin directory does just that! Facebook Like for Tags transforms the Like button into a personalized user connection for ongoing updates and sharing based on tags or categories.

For example, say you have a travel blog. One day you write about southern France. In your post you assign categories “Europe” and “France” to the post.  Some of your readers really enjoy the article and share it in Facebook by clicking on the Like button. Some time later, you again write about France. Those readers who had “Liked” the previous article will now get an update automatically in their Facebook News Feed!

Since the automatic update is based on user interest, it will be relevant to the user and thereby more likely to grab attention. The result is more revisits to your site and more reach into Facebook due to additional sharing. Over time you will commonly see in excess of 25% more page views.

A more detailed description of the plugin and installation can be found here.  Grab Facebook Like for Tags today and transform the Like button into a trusted recommendations engine!

Disclosure: I am co-founder of IngBoo, the provider of this WordPress plugin and the cloud-based change-detect-notification service that powers the function.

While searching for a WordPress plugin that could automatically publish my blog posts on Twitter, I was thrilled to discover the WordTwit WordPress plugin.    With this plugin, simply upload and activate, then enter the Twitter login information for the account you want the tweets to appear under.   Once done, all your WordPress posts will start to appear on your Twitter account (almost instantly from my experience).

[Download the WordTwit WordPress Plugin]

This free WordPress plugin simply needs activated, then whenever you click Optimize Now, the plugin runs an optimize table command on your WordPress tables, effectively defragmenting it. This is very useful for tables that are frequently updated. If you’d like to learn more about why this WordPress plugin might be necessary, you can read more information on this post.

Great plugin Joost!

[Download the Optimize Database Plugin]