5 Great WordPress Redirect Plugins

Orphan, dead, or broken pages affect user experience on any site. This can be very annoying and frustrating and will cause users to leave your website and go to the next search result. Take the time to conduct a site maintenance audit and install any one of these useful redirect plugins to manage and keep your site error free.

Redirection Plugin

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation. Some features include: Supports both WordPress-based and Apache-based redirections, captures a log of 404 errors and allows you to easily map these to 301 redirects, RSS feed for 404 errors, custom ‘pass-through’ redirections allowing you to pass a URL through to another page, file, or website, full logs for all redirected URLs, create redirections based upon a URL, browser, referring site, or login status, and automatically add a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes.

Permalink Redirect Plugin by Yoast

This permalink redirect plugin fixes all sorts of weird addons to your URL’s by automatically 301 redirecting to the permalink for that post, page, category or tag page. Note: this plugin can create issues when other plugins that query variables. It has since then been succeeded by WordPress SEO also by Joost de Valk, and is considered one of the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users.

Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin

This plugin redirects Pages/Posts to another page/post or external URL. This plugin adds adds an option box to the edit section where you can specify the redirect location and type of redirect that you want, temporary, permanent, or meta. You can redirect without needing to create a Page or Post. This is very useful for sites that were converted to WordPress and have old links that create 404 errors. This option does not allow: open in a new window or nofollow functions. Redirect location can be to another WordPress page/post or any other website with an external URL.

Permalink Finder Plugin

The Permalink Finder Plugin detects when WordPress cannot find a permalink. Before it generates the 404 error the plugin tries to locate any posts with similar words. It does this by searching through the database trying to find any of the word values from the bad link. It takes the best match and then, rather than issuing a 404 error, it sends back a redirect to the correct page. Users will see the page that they are looking for, and search engine spiders will see the 301 redirect and update their databases so that the page appears correctly in searches.

Simple 301 Redirects

Simple 301 Redirects provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web. This plugin is especially handy when you migrate a site to WordPress and can’t preserve your URL structure. By setting up 301 redirects from your old pages to your new pages, any incoming links will be seamlessly passed along, and their pagerank will be passed along with them.

Don’t forget to always check plugins for compatibility with your current WordPress version before installing them.

10 Inspirational Typography Plugins for WordPress

Believe it or not – typography or the way you present your text and media on your website – plays a crucial role in building your brand name. Did you know? There are books comprising thousands of pages that teach you how to use a consistent typographical style on your publications. Such as well as “Style Guides” like The Chicago Manual of Style, The MLA Style Manual, Hart’s Rules or The Oxford Guide to Style, etc. Different organizations use different style guides and apply them on their publications in order to achieve consistency throughout the text. If a person who has been reading The Guardian for several months will be asked to identify the paper amongst a collection of many other papers such that the name of the publication is hidden from view, he will have little or no difficulty in identifying it. This is because The Guardian, just like all other standard newspapers, use a specific set of fonts, a specific indentation, a specific line gap, etc. in its publications. Such things help create an authority and reinforce the brand name.

It is not necessary that you follow the standard guides for your publication. If you want you can create your own set of style rules or mix some of your own personal tastes with any standard style manual. Whatever you decide, to help you in your endeavor I present you with 10 inspirational typography plug-ins for WordPress. Some are free while some others cost a nominal amount.

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Best Shopping Cart Plugins for WordPress in 2013

Online shopping has been steadily growing in the last few years. As more and more people engage in business transactions on the web, it is fitting for WordPress sites to be ready for this flurry of eCommerce activity. Here are some of what we consider the best eCommerce plugins for the upcoming year.

Cart66

The Cart66 WordPress ecommerce plugin makes selling easier than ever before. With Cart66 you can sell electronics, digital downloads, videos, music, web hosting, legal services, collect membership fees, and more. Online selling need not be so complicated. This plugin makes selling anything as simple and as easy as can be. Cart66 integrates major merchant tools such as Amazon S3, for delivering digital products, and popular payment gateways such as Paypal’s payment system for collecting payments from sales. There is also a Lite Version which can be downloaded for free from the WordPress repository.

Jigoshop

This eCommerce plugin is the basis for the popular WooCommerce solution. While the two plugins have diverged development wise, Jigoshop maintains the clean, well written code philosophy both plugins have. Jigoshop provides you with the features necessary to set up an eCommerce website in no time with the option to create a multitude of product types and apply detailed attributes customers can easily refine your catalog, ensuring they find what they’re looking for in just a couple of clicks. It is one of the fastest growing plugins and has an emerging ecosystem of extensions that go with it.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free, open source eCommerce plugin that is easy to install, use and extend. This very popular plugin is built for flexibility. It has great built in functionalities such as reporting, tax and shipping capabilities, products and inventory, supports numerous payment gateways, and so much more. The basic functionality can also be beefed up with available extension upgrades to match your business requirements. WooCommerce is an eCommerce tool kit that you can tailor to your specific needs.

MarketPress

MarketPress is an easy to use and powerful ecommerce / shopping cart plugin available for WordPress. This plugin was developed from the ground up to make it simple to set up a stylish online shop, MarketPress has all the features you need, including: Multiple payment gateways (PayPal, Authorize.net, Google checkout, 2checkout, Moneybookers, eWay, Cubepoints and more), fully internationalized by the WPML crew, and includes provision for shipping, coupons, Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking, sale pricing, unlimited product variations. Not only that, it’s also free.

WP Marketplace

The WP Marketplace plugin is a full-featured WordPress Shopping Cart/e-commerce system that is extremely easy to install and even easier to maintain. It has everything you need to build a complete online shop – from front-end management to shipping to payment gateways to analytics to social marketing and SEO features. WP Marketplace is an eCommerce tool that can turn your website into a money making machine.

25 Helpful Twitter Plugins for WordPress 2013

Twitter is one of the most visited social networking platforms on the planet. WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging platforms. When the two meet, you can expect beautiful things to happen.

Below we present you with 25 helpful Twitter plugins for WordPress – Plugins can make your WordPress site do virtually anything.

Here’s an example of what you can achieve with one of these Twitter Plugins for WordPress.

It is a common habit nowadays that people sign into their Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail accounts when they start their computer, and after checking their accounts they typically close all these web pages but do not sign out of their accounts. Instead they go on to work on new web pages and they occasionally return to their accounts to check any latest updates. Now there is a plugin named “Simple Twitter Connect”, no. 5 below in this list, which enables you to log into your WordPress dashboard through your Twitter profile. Once you install the plugin and sync everything then you can login to your WordPress dashboard with your Twitter account. If you have the habit of being logged into your Twitter account all the time then you can log into WordPress by just a click of the button – you will just have to hit the “Sign in with Twitter” button and you will be in.

This is just one example of the power of the Twitter Plugins presented below. Scroll down for more info on these wonderful Plugins for 2012 – 2013.

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25 Very Useful WordPress Calendar Plugins for 2013

Time management is one of the biggest problems faced by business owners be they digital business or brick and mortar. There are too many things to do and when you do one thing you obviously can’t do something else (MBA programs call this the “opportunity cost”). Therefore, to manage your time properly and make the most out of the few working hours that exist each day, you must find the best tools to help you manage your time properly. Enter digital calendars.

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Comment Management Solutions for WordPress

Who doesn’t love Spam? We’ve consumed cans and cans of this comfort food and we never get tired of it. Unfortunately, spam has become synonymous with what the internet hates the most – especially by bloggers. Too much of it is just pretty hard to ignore.

Comments – Love ’em. Hate ’em.

Admit it. When you started out blogging, you would check your blog everyday to see if someone left you a comment on your post. AND, you were absolutely thrilled when someone actually did. Never mind that it wasn’t from some popular blogger or someone famous. Someone left a comment. Hooray!

Soon after, someone left another comment. And another comment. And another comment. And another comment – this time with a link. More comments. More links. And pretty soon, your dashboard is exploding with millions of comments and links that have nothing to do with your blog post. “Hello world.” just turned into “Hello spam.” Now, you’ve probably realized that more doesn’t exactly mean great. What to do?

Approve. Reply. Delete. Trash.

WordPress has a built-in system that can handle all the basic comment management requirements necessary like approving, replying, deleting, or trashing comments. However, the native WordPress system, albeit simple and easy to use, has its limitations and the more savvy users need more than just the basics. Features like social media integration, media support, public user profiles, or better spam filtering options cause people to turn their heads to third-party solutions especially when comments flood the back end and become challenging to monitor and manage.

Ban-The-Spam Solutions

Why ban the spam? Spam is a global problem and often WordPress comments are the place when bots try to enter bogus content full of links to their sites. Here are some of the blog comment systems and/or plugins you can use on your websites to help you manage those annoying spam comments.

  • WordPress Default Comment System – built-in comment management system that’s simple and easy to use but needs supplemental plugins to ban spam effectively.
    Cost: FREE
  • Akismet – It is an external service for battling spam with a database of known emails, IP addresses, and usernames used for sending spam. This advanced hosted anti-spam service efficiently processes and analyzes masses of data from millions of sites and communities in real time. When a visitor submits a comment, it is checked by Akismet and put in a special Spam folder to be managed by the website admin later on.
    Cost: FREE (Personal, Non-commercial sites/blogs)
    • $5-$50 (For commercial, business, and professional sites / For publishing networks, agencies, hosts, and universities)
  • Disqus – Disqus, Inc. is a blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities that uses a networked platform. The company’s platform includes various features, such as social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. Features a powerful moderation dashboard and all the filters you’d expect: blacklists, whitelists, spam controls, and word filters.
    Cost: FREE (core version)
  • Livefyre – Livefyre Comments 3 is a comment platform for real-time conversations. Important features include real-time user generated content-publishing, mobile device-friendly, real-time profanity filters that administrators can moderate and flag comments from directly within the stream, or block by IP address and Web Browser, social media and multi media support.
    Cost: FREE (basic version)

Other practical tips to manage spam:

  • Control which comments are automatically published and which ones need to be moderated. WordPress has a built-in provision for this.
  • Tag comments that have more than one link to be manually approved.
  • Create a blacklist and/or white list of frequent commenters.
  • Disable comments on older posts and pages.
  • Install tried and tested WordPress plugins or 3rd-party plugins to beef up your comment management system.
  • Wipe out your spam folder regularly.

Wearable Technology and Its Impact on WordPress

Believe it or not, wearable technology has been around longer than you think. Think about all those old James Bond movies, the Mission Impossible series, or the Get Smart series. We all marveled at those nifty gadgets – pens that become bomb detonators, shoes that turn into phones, virtual reality or augmented reality gadgets, etc. The novelty of ordinary items turning into high tech gadgets that do more than what is expected of them is always a crowd drawer. And if they are all that they claim to be you’ll probably want one too.

But not all wearable technology survive the acid test of customer approval. In the past, some have, although a lot more turned out to be duds that have long faded away. Hence, the wary and lukewarm response to these types of products. That is until recently. Times are changing. Technology is way better than it ever was. People are more interested in wearable technology today more than ever. Companies are putting out wearable gadgets focusing on health and lifestyle, content, and even education.

Google Glass, Apple Watch, Pebble, OpenGo, etc. – Is Wearable Tech The New Frontier?

It’s daring. It’s risky. It’s experimental. But that’s what trailblazers are made of. You’ll never know if you don’t dare. Wearable tech is interesting but it’s still early stages. People are definitely interested but not necessarily buying, yet. However, if we are to consider the future of the “internet of things”, it’s just a matter of time before people get warmed up to it.

On Wearables — According to analysts at ABI Research, over the next five years businesses will integrate into their wellness plans more than 13 million wearable devices with embedded wireless connectivity. Wearable tech also ties into the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion devices by 2020. The inherent versatility of Atmel’s microcontrollers and radio chips have made our silicon a favorite of Makers and engineers . Atmel is right in the middle of the wearable tech revolution, with a comprehensive portfolio of versatile microcontrollers (MCUs) that power a wide range of platforms and devices.

source: Atmel and the Internet of Things

Wearable WordPress?

Did you know that there are WordPress plugins that allow you to publish using Google Glass? True! Who would have thought that you could manage your content using a pair of glasses? But it does exist. You can actually take a picture or a video using Google Glass and upload it on your WordPress site straight away. Some notable Google Glass WordPress tools, apps, and plugins include:

  • wpForGlass is the first plugin that allows you to post to your WordPress blog from Google Glass.
  • Umano for Google Glass allows you to read your posts from your favorite sources to you. You can also get in touch with Umano to have your content included on Glass.

The recent release of the Apple Watch received mixed responses. Nevertheless, for a company like Apple to invest in such a product means that they will provide the support and infrastructure to make it succeed. How it will affect the way content providers and publishers (WordPress users included) deliver to their audiences remains to be seen. It is however, worth taking note of.

As in the early stages of Cloud Computing and everything being stored “above our heads”, so is wearable tech at this point. Developers need to be able to show consumers how they can integrate daily activities seamlessly using these wearable gadgets. The novelty is good for a while. It is, however, the long-term benefits of these gadgets that will determine whether it will once more get buried in the gadget graveyard.

WordPress-Friendly Ghost Themes

Ghost started out as a Kickstarter project by John Nolan with the goal of creating

… a blogging platform with all the open source benefits of WordPress, but simpler in every way, and just focused on publishing. Ghost is unique in its philosophy of focusing entirely on publishing. Everything about the administrative system is designed around making writing simple and pleasurable. Everything about the theme system has been created to facilitate personal blog, magazine, and news themes.

The biggest difference between Ghost and other platforms from a technological point of view is that it’s built entirely in JavaScript. A modern technology stack means that Ghost can push the boundaries of what’s possible with the web. You can install and run a blog on a 16MB USB stick, a Raspberry Pi, or a high powered Virtual Private Server.

Although this new ecosystem is fairly new compared to WordPress and may not appeal to everyone’s liking, there have been several beautiful and interesting themes that have been released with a WordPress version counterpart. Here are a few of these Ghost-inspired WordPress themes that you can check out.

CASPER

Casper WP theme, is essentially a port of the gorgeous default theme from the Ghost blogging platform built using Underscores as a base. It is a clean, minimalist, and lightweight theme that’s designed to highlight content without the unnecessary frills. Author, Lacy Morrow, gives a short demonstration of the theme’s features with a blog post that was written in Markdown (the language used by Ghost)and uses the Jetpack Markdown plugin for parsing. Other WordPress features are also integrated into the theme.

RAIN

RAIN is one of the best selling Ghost themes on ThemeForest and also has a responsive WordPress theme counterpart. This minimalist WordPress “Ghost” theme has a background that is 100% dynamic where you can imply upload your own photo and it also includes audio files in the package free of charge. This theme is designed primarily for writers.

ASTRO

Astro is a content focused responsive theme, originally a Ghost designed theme, built for the WordPress platform. Designed from the bottom up to be high performance, user friendly, and accessible on all devices. Astro adapts to the users viewport, so it looks great on smartphones, tablets, TVs, and even the latest 4K monitors. Astro includes two different post styles. The standard style is designed for update posts and short articles. The featured style includes full title images, suited towards larger articles, tutorials and other documentation.

Best WordPress Themes 2021

UPDATED April 12, 2021: 2021 is sure to be another great year for WordPress Theme development. Like the millions and millions of people using WordPress, we eagerly await the Themes and Plugins to be released this year, and you can …