Here are a few of the plugins I use to extend the core capabilities of Wordpress.

How To Keep Wordpress Current

First and foremost is Plugin Central. This was shown to me by Ed Keay-Smith of Ozdomainer.com. It keeps track of all of the other plugins installed on a site and automatically lets you know when new versions are available.

How To Migrate A Site To Wordpress

Once of the sites I built using XSitePro, had around 40 pages and some pretty complicated navigation. It’s a key site of mine and attracts a lot of visitors, so I was reluctant to change anything.

However, because of it’s size, it became a bit cumbersome to update and of course, I had to be at a certain computer in order to make any amendments.

The problem though, was migrating the site to Wordpress would mean that all of my page names would change, since Wordpress doesn’t use the .htm or .html extension by default. ((Though there is a plugin for that).

I didn’t want to change everything and lose valuable search engine placement. I knew that I’d need to either amend my .htaccess file and include 40+ error 303 references, or look for another solution.

Not being too technical, I decided on the latter course of action and found a wonderful plugin called Redirection. This plugin is really easy to use. All I had to do was enter the old site’s page URLs and select from a drop down list, then new location for the information. The plugin automatically creates the 303 redirect and also handles the error 404 page not found issues too.

But that’s not all it does. Once it’s working, it logs each time an error 303 is triggered and captures the user-agent information and the link information, so you can see where old search engine or out of date site links are.

How To SEO A Wordpress Site

The next is All In One SEO Pack – popular with other WordPress users, it offers easy on-page search engine optimisation, by providing just about all you need in terms of title, description, keywords, etc. I use the PRO version – it’s well worth the few dollars it costs, but the free version is great too.

How To Create Contact Forms In Wordpress

If you don’t like publishing email addresses on your sites, then it’s likely that you’re going to need a form. The plugin I use for my forms is called Contact Form 7 which I use in conjunction with Really Simple CAPTCHA from the same developer – to help prevent Spam bots auto-completing forms.

Adding contact forms to web sites can be tricky, but Contact Form 7 has made life very easy for me and I use it all the time.

How To Create A Google Sitemap With Wordpress

Google XML Sitemaps is another plugin that I consider essential to any site, since it notifies Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask of any changes made to your site and puts it all in a nice XML compliant file that search engines like. It’s been around since 2005 and is constantly updated.

How To Create An Image Gallery With Wordpress

For image galleries, I use NextGEN gallery, which makes super professional-looking galleries in an instant, complete with slide viewer. If you have photographs on your site, this really is a nice tool to display them with.

How To Hide Pages From Navigation In Wordpress

One of the difficulties with Wordpress (compared to XSitePro for example) is trying to remove pages from the general navigation. Every page you publish automatically gets included in the navigation area, but sometimes, you might not want that.

For example, who wants their privacy policy page sitting there on a tab of it’s own, or their email confirmation pages being visible to all?

The plugin I have found invaluable in this area is called Page Link Manager. This plugin allows you to decide which pages should and shouldn’t appear in your navigation

How To Add Adsense & Affiliate Program Links To Wordpress

The main advantage to me, for using XsitePro, was it’s ability to include affiliate and Adsense links, which if course, Wordpress doesn’t do as standard.

Although I don’t really do much in the way of affiliate marketing or ppc, I do occasionally add the odd Adsense ad into a site. For this I am currently using WP Simple Adsense Insertion. I’ll probably investigate other options, but I certainly like this plugin developer’s other ideas. You’ll find them here.

How To Create A Mobile Version Of Your Wordpress Site

Another nice function of XsitePro was the ability to create a mobile version of your site on the fly, so that people using mobile devices can view the site without having to download all of the images and other files and code that slows down mobile browsers.

My search for a suitable plugin led me to WPtouch, which was designed to work specifically with iPhones, iPod Touch, Android and Blackberry Storm.

This plugin automatically detects one of these devices and serves it’s own theme to those visitosr only. You can add other user agents from the admin panel, but so far I haven’t bothered – there’s too many of them!

Using this plugin was a real eye-opener for me, because previously, although I could see entire web sites using my iPhone, the text was small and it was almost impossible to navigate on such a small screen.

WPtouch makes the user experience much better – which after all is said and done, that’s what web sites are about.

How To Build A Membership Web Site

Membership Sites are something that a lot of people would like to be able to create and as this an area that is of great interest to me, I went off in search of something suitable.

In the past, I’ve had to have special php sites built, which always come with their own set of problems, not least because I don’t understand a single line of php code!

With XsitePro, I could never manage to do anything membership related, so was always at the mercy of developers, which is ok when the money is flooding in, but not so great when it’s all flowing out into the pockets of the developer.

My research led me to a product called Wishlist Member and I have to say that it is hands-down the best off the shelf membership system I have ever seen.

It is now possible to add a comprehensive, multi-level membership system to a Wordpress site in just a few clicks, complete with payment integration from popular payment processors including Paypal, 2CO, Clickbank and others.

Unlike some plugins, Wishlist Member is paid software that costs $97 for a single site licence and $297 for a multi-site licence. Needless to say, I got myself the multi-site version, because I can recoup the entire cost on a single client membership site.

To think, when I ran a membership site previously, I used to spend hundreds of dollars every month on having new and different functionality built. It really is a bargain at the price and I have seen nothing to compare it with, not only in terms of functionality, but also support and video training – it really is first class.

I have found that development using Wordpress to be far more flexible than other software I’ve used. There are plugins for just about everything and whenever I am asked if it’s possible to do something in particular with a site, I always check for a suitable plugin before going in search of specialist software solutions.

So far, I have managed to achieve everything I’ve wanted in terms of site development. I hope that you do too, but if you don’t have the technical inclination, I might just be persuaded to do it for you. See Hollywood Internet if that’s of interest.

For a number of years now, I’ve been a user and fan of XSitePro.

The program is a domainer’s dream and could have been made specifically with domainers in mind. It was certainly built with the affiliate marketer in mind and that’s it’s real strength.

Using the in-built templates, it takes just a few minutes to get the skeleton of a web site up and running with XSitePro and adding content isn’t that difficult if you can use the copy and paste function on your keyboard.

The real attraction for me though, was the ease of adding affiliate links and Adsense to any site or any page on a site with the click of a button, Xsitepro storing affiliate links and banners with ease, for re-use again and again.

But times are moving on and although the team behind XsitePro are doing their best to keep up, I think there are now better options for the domainer, whose main job these days is to keep content fresh and appealing.

For that reason, I started developing my new sites with Wordpress around last summer.

At first, I thought it was a bit daunting and also mistakenly believed that Wordpress sites had to be blogs.

The biggest thing to put me off was that it looked incredibly difficult to get a Wordpress site to look anything like what I thought it should look like. That’s when I discovered a program called Artisteer, which offers virtually limitless possibilities design-wise and is so easy to use.

Best of all, you can also use Artisteer to create templates for other content management systems and blogs like Drupal, Blogger and normal HTML sites.

Now I can get a site up and running using Wordpress as I can using XsitePro.

The main advantage in using Wordpress is that it allows me to add, edit or delete content from a web browser, meaning tat I don’t have to be sat at my own computer.

The number of plugins that extend the basic Wordpress functionality is incredible and I already have a strong list of favourites that I include on every installation.

It was only recently that I discovered Wordpress MU, which allows multiple Wordpress sites, each with their own theme or layout, to be run from a single Wordpress installation. I haven’t tried it yet, because I wasn’t sure about the SEO implications of doing so, but I’m pretty sure that it’s only the database and the physical server that have to be common, the IP addresses can be unique, at least I think that’s right!

In any event, Wordpress has now taken over as my favoured development tool. The published result just looks sleeker and more professional than those I made using XSitePro.

As far as adding affiliate links and Adsense code, that’s easy too – there are plugins that enable you to do all of that.

The other difference between Wordpress and XSitePro is that Wordpress is free and so are many of the plugins.

Personally, I like to make a contribution for the plugins I like and use a lot because it keeps the whole development process going.

So all said and done, which is the better development tool for a domainer?

It’s an easy choice for me. I like XSitePro, but Wordpress wins hands-down for its overall flexibility. It’s a little more difficult to get to understand initially, but there are plenty of places to get support, including the excellent forums.

My eldest son works with me in the surveying practice at the moment as a graduate trainee building surveyor. We’re putting him through university to get his building surveying degree, but it’s a part time course on a day-release scheme.

Along with some of his work colleagues, he has started to supplement his income by drawing building plans for people he gets introduced to, as well as for as some of his university friends, who don’t yet understand how to use programs like CAD.

We were both chatting with his colleagues this week about the level of outside business they all get. Occasionally, they are having to turn work down or delay it, because so many people want plans drawing cheaply.

It seems that they always have a couple of drawing jobs on the go and they charge pretty good money for the work, which is still a lot cheaper than architect or surveyor rates.

Unfortunately, this type of work can only be done after normal working hours, which means that they all often stay behind each evening and sometimes have to work weekends in order to meet their outside obligations. But, they’re all young and keen.

I was impressed by their enthusiasm as throughout my working life, I’ve usually held down more than one position.

So, I introduced them to the world of off-shoring.

The same work that they’re sweating over can be done quicker by sending it to India, with all of their on-site notes and sketches being scanned beforehand.

The cost savings are incredible and the turnaround on the work is far quicker than doing it themselves.

We currently have two companies working on an already completed project, so that we can compare the quality and accuracy of the work, but rather than having to work away (as some of them do at present), they can increase the workload considerably and concentrate on their real jobs again!

Of course, as a domainer and web developer, I’m quite used to the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing work abroad, but when the work is technical and repetitive like CAD drawing, there’s little reason not to do it.

It was certainly interesting watching the reactions of my son and his colleagues when I suggested the idea. Suddenly they get the idea of capitalism and the power of the Internet in particular, that’s is now a lot more than just Facebook!

My son went off looking for domain names immediately. Seems he spotted an opportunity.