Therefore, modern day CMSs have made the otherwise-mundane task of running a website very simple. To quote from Typo3:

“If you can use a computer, you can manage the content for your website.”

However, oftentimes, in our bid to employ CMSs for website management, chances are that we might end up over-doing the use of CMSs. In this article, we discuss when to use, and when not to use a CMS.

When Should You Use a CMS?

Image from vi.sualize.us.

Using a CMS also ensures that you save your time (and eventually, efforts). You no longer need to hard-code your website in HTML or CSS – the CMS takes care of everything. Just install it, and you are presented with a neat administration panel that lets you tweak, modify and run your website in the manner you deem fit. Furthermore, with the availability of numerous themes, templates as well as plugins/extensions, a CMS can be made to accomplish virtually any task when it comes to web design.

Using a CMS for clients also makes sense – not all of us are gifted with tech-savvy clients all the time, and more often than not, most clients will have a hard time figuring their way out with hard-coded sites sans CMS.

CMSs also offer excellent editorial control over your content, and better user management for your website.

Lastly, many CMSs provide SEO out-of-the-box. Of course, you can always ensure that your hand-crafted HTML pages conform to SEO norms and beat even the most search-engine friendly CMS out there! However, CMSs again save time in this aspect – you do not need to worry much about SEO. At the most, you’ll just have to tweak a few settings initially.

When Shouldn’t You Use a CMS?

or

When Should You Hard-Code Your Website?

Image by Loren Zemlicka on Flickr.

When you decide to write extensive code for your website, you can pay attention to every minute detail – a blessing for small websites (and a curse for larger ones, pun unintended). Since you are no longer restricted by platform-specific limitations, you can design and craft individual components of the website manually.

Another point to consider should be security. Most CMSs release new updates/fixes/patches on a regular basis; however, on a generalized level, a CMS invites more hackers than a hard-coded website.

Most importantly, hard-coding your website, though time-consuming initially, also brings down the time and efforts required in maintenance of the website in the long run – there are no CMSs to update or plugins to uninstall. You design your pages, you publish them, and you drink coffee!

So, the Verdict is…

Image by walknboston on Flickr.

As stated above, if your website has dynamic content, a CMS will be mandatory in most cases. If, however, you’re running a site with mostly static pages that are not updated very frequently, you can definitely consider coding the website yourself and thereby saving the recurring efforts required in running a CMS.

Yes, some of you might have already figured out what kind of service we’re writing about here. ManageWP is a service that allows you to manage all your WordPress websites from one single dashboard. What does it mean?

Lets quickly run over the main features:

• Firstly, that means that you no longer have to remember all logins and passwords for your sites or keep them in long spreadsheets. With ManageWP dashboard you can access all your websites with one click.
• Performing an upgrade of WordPress, plugins and themes across all of your sites is easy as clicking one ‘Upgrade all’ button. You can also install plugins and themes to multiple sites at once, from a variety of sources (your favorites list, WordPress.org, your computer or any URL).
• You can backup all your sites from ManageWP dashboard at any time or restore a previous backup. ManageWP can backup both your entire website or just the database. You can also set automatic scheduled backups.
• ManageWP allows you to set up a new, fully loaded, WordPress site in minutes. Or use ManageWP’s clone tool to clone any of your existing sites from one domain, subdomain or folder to another.
• With all sites under one roof, doing bulk operations becomes easy. Whether you want to post an article to multiple sites, manage your blogroll links or add users, ManageWP allows you to do it effortlessly across any number of sites at once.

How does it work? Do you have to provide them with all your passwords? The answer is no. Access to your site is governed by the ManageWP Worker plugin that you install directly onto your blog. That means that the only password ManageWP stores is the one needed for their central dashboard. So lets get started and take a deeper look into this service.

Features

Dashboard

Once you’ve installed the plugin and linked your website with ManageWP you can access all the features it offers. The dashboard is clean and easy to use. Plus it looks just like your casual WordPress dashboard so you don’t have to worry about adapting to a new and unfamiliar platform.

In the main view you can see which plugins or themes have an update available, below there are post revisions aka post autosaves and spam comments. You can also view the recent comments and posts. In the top right there is a pageview statistics graph and scheduled backups below it.

Manage Plugins & Themes

ManageWP dashboard allows you to instantly and simultaneously install themes or plugins for all of your websites. You can also opt to Activate plugins after upload. Looking through all the plugins is also made easy. In my opinion, the only drawback is the plugin horizontal layout so you have to scroll the window quite far if you’ve got a lot of plugins installed.

Backup

With ManageWP, you can set up scheduled backups to Amazon S3, Dropbox, your own server, any external FTP or an email address for all of your blogs with just a few clicks. You can choose between daily, weekly or monthly backups. Note – this feature is only available for the professional and business pricing plan.

Migrating/cloning sites.

This feature comes in handy if you need to setup a new network of identically modified websites. The theme and all plugins are installed automatically so you don’t have to spend time setting up every blog manually.

Bulk Actions

ManageWP allows you to bulk add/export websites, create new pages, posts and links for all of your websites.

It’s pretty clear with the pages and posts – although I don’t see a good reason why one would like to publish the same post on several blogs, the function does it’s job. Again you’re given the default WordPress text editor so there’s nothing unfamiliar to master.

The Bulk add users feature is bloody useful if you’re willing to add a writer for a set of blogs. You can find this feature under the Users section.

Note – all the bulk features are only available for professional and business pricing plan.

Self-hosted version

ManageWP also offers self-hosted version which allows you to run the service on your own dashboard. Self hosted allows you to have an unlimited number of blogs, host everything on your server and add your own features. It’s created for companies and organizations managing hundreds or even thousands of websites and is currently available only as Enterprise license.

Pricing

ManageWP will be offering three pricing plans where the price then depends on the number of websites you’ll manage (you can choose from a range between 10 and 500). The pre-order is launching on December 6th. All users that sign up now will receive a 30% life-time discount on any hosted service plan that they pre-order for as long as they maintain their service.

• 30 day free trial so you can test the service before paying for it.
• Free plan which allows you to use the Standard features for up to three (five, if you refer some friends) websites.
• Annual plans, and you will get two months free when you sign up for these.

Below you can see the pricing plans for 10, 100 and 500 websites.

10 websites

• Standard: $7/month
• Professional: $21/month
• Business: $42/month

100 websites

• Standard: $40/month
• Professional: $120/month
• Business: $240/month

500 websites

• Standard: $70/month
• Professional: $210/month
• Business: $420/month

Interview

Since this series focuses on the startups we wanted to ask a couple of questions to the founder of ManageWP Vladimir Prelovac.Vladimir Prelovac is the the CEO of Prelovac Media, an internet company located in Belgrade, Serbia. Besides ManageWP he’s also written a book on WordPress plugin development and created other stunning services and plugins.

1. There aren’t many alternatives who can compete with ManageWP. How did you come up with the idea of ManageWP?

As with most good ideas, it was a stroke of luck and a hint of opportunity. A friend of mine was rambling about how he had trouble managing his blogs, and I suddenly realized there is nothing like that available for WordPress, which is, after all, the world’s biggest internet publishing platform. The world needed something like ManageWP, so I decided it was time to make it.

2. As far as I understand ManageWP began in 2010. Why did it take so long to finish beta testing and establish a fully functional service?

ManageWP is an extremely complex piece of software. What makes it unique is that we really tried to make it run smoothly on literally thousands of different server configurations that WordPress would run on. That was our biggest challenge. Scalability was also an important focus for us — some of our users are managing thousands of blogs. But knowing that ManageWP can load data from 1800 websites in less than two minutes… it makes it all worth it.

There is also a list of spectacular features that we are pushing to integrate into ManageWP. Some startups, for example, are satisfied with only offering backup solutions for WordPress. But that functionality is only a tiny piece of the overall picture. Backup features are critical — and something we pride ourselves in offering — but it is only one piece of the 23 major features currently offered by ManageWP, with many more on the way. And with all the great ideas coming in from our beta users, we know that the value we can provide will continue to grow.

Another thing is that we had to ensure that ManageWP would work with services that WordPress users already deeply value. That’s why ManageWP now integrates with Google Analytics and AdSense. And that’s why we already have plans in place to integrate with SEO and uptime monitoring tools in the near future.

And then there is the fact that WordPress is constantly evolving. Adjusting to all the changes is a challenge unless you are willing to work hard to adjust to those changes. Thankfully, our team put in the effort to adapt. So that’s why it all took almost a year and a half to arrive at this point. (And the ride is not over yet!)

Ultimately, our goal is to create a dashboard so useful, so powerful that people will no longer need to log into their WordPress websites or other services. They will be able to log into ManageWP, and everything that the user needs to effectively manage their WordPress sites will be all right there at the user’s fingertips.

Above you can see a screenshot from Wayback Machine with the ManageWP website in 2010.

3. You’ve established a flexible and nice scheme where instead of following a strict milestone schedule the users themselves suggest the ideas you then consider. How did you come up with this method and has it brought the desired results?

Yes! I believe this is one of our strengths at ManageWP. Many of our features were suggested by our users, and that makes it a much more personalized experience for them and for us. After all, nobody could ever have a perfect vision of a product (except maybe Steve Jobs), so it was very important that we listened to our users early on in the development process. We already have around six or seven different ways for users to send us feedback, and I read all of it. The best ideas are sent off to the team for development.

Above you can see a screenshot from ManageWP Google group where users can suggest ideas which then are sent for consideration.

4. Since our series is about successful and fresh startups could you comment on ManageWP from this perspective? How has it grown as a project?

There are different ways to measure the success of a startup. At ManageWP, and from the feedback we have received, it would seem that we created a truly useful service that solves a problem that many people share. Some of our users were excited to learn when we intended to charge for ManageWP, but for the past 12 months, all we wanted to do was focus on creating a genuinely useful product.

And I think that is the most important thing — in order to keep the team passionate and the users interested, you need to have a great product.

5. Your blog says that the number of websites managed by ManageWP has hit 50 000. How do you feel about these results and what are predictions for the future?

Well, looking at numbers like these is always exciting. We hit 50,000 websites near the end of September, but we now manage over 80,000 WordPress blogs. So, when you put it into that perspective, you get really excited as you can see that your product is making a small but measurable change in how the internet works.

Somebody once said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

By having a clear vision of where we want to go and by keeping our customers happy, inventing the future is exactly what we are doing. It also helps when we are working with a strong and thriving publishing platform in WordPress. So, all things considered, I am very positive about our future.

Above you can see a screenshot with the exciting announcement.

6. Could you share some of your tips/business principles for others out there willing to make a successful startup?

There are couple of principles that I believe will make any startup’s journey easier:

First is that you need to have a cool product, one that you strongly believe in and you will want to use on your own. This also makes it so much easier to justify putting most, if not all, of your own time, money, and heart into it. You have to realize that there will be many hurdles along the way, as with all things in life, so you better have an idea of what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Second is to launch the beta as soon as possible. This allows you to start listening to your users and getting feedback. They will give great ideas on how to improve your product… for free!

Third is to not create a startup that relies on external funding to succeed. We are completely bootstrapped, which most likely forced us to create a significantly better product than we might have if we were basking in investment money. It motivates you to perform.

Fourth is the speed — making efforts to optimize your application and interface like crazy. Users have never been as impatient as they are today. Also, intuitiveness: the less the users needs to think, the better. You really need to watch other people use your product. You will be surprised by what you will discover.

Do the above things, and people will be drawn to your efforts and will help you to succeed.

Conclusion

ManageWP indeed is an amazing and one of the most useful services for WordPress. It’s also a great example of a fresh startup success story. You should definitely check out the free trial if you are running multiple WordPress websites.

In this article, we shall attempt to compare TextPattern and WordPress and see which one emerges victorious.

Before proceeding further, a short disclaimer: the division of this comparative review under multiple headings does not essentially have a logical explanation – I’ve simply attempted to compare it using four basic, but very important, categories, functionality and usability, mode of operation, extensions and plugins and finally, community and support.

Furthermore, I guess many users of WP and TXP will either agree or disagree with my views. To be honest, using a particular CMS also requires a certain amount of personal choice, what might work for me, may not work for you, and vice-versa. Differences in opinion are always welcome!

So without further ado, let us begin with our comparison.

Functionality and Usability

When it comes to functionality and usability, WordPress seems to win easily. While this does not mean that TextPattern is, in any way, less functional than WordPress, WP simply beats TXP in terms of ease of use! With the advent of version 3.x and higher, WP now boasts of a super organized administrative panel that lets you manage your website with ease. Don’t believe me? Take a look at WP’s admin panel. ‘Dashboard’, ‘Posts’, ‘Pages’, ‘Settings’ – which of these sections are not self-explanatory? Customizing the blog becomes a matter of few clicks. Take a look at the ‘Settings’ page of both the CMSes.

On the other hand, TextPattern’s administrative panel, though equally capable and powerful, seems ‘outdated’ in comparison to that of WordPress. Of course, TXP is equally robust in its admin panel, but overall the interface is not as easy to use and may even be confusing for beginners.

Availability of Custom Plugins/Extensions and Themes

Apart from ease of use, the next thing that defines any piece of software is the availability of extensions for it. However, more often than not, there is a spiral between ‘ease of use’ on one hand and ‘extendability’ on the other. For instance, when it comes to mobile operating systems, Android is more popular than Samsung Bada. While this does not demerit Samsung Bada itself, Android’s popularity can be attributed to its ever-growing app market, which in turn is increasing because developers take an interest in it due to its easy extendability and wide usage, which ensures their efforts will not go unnoticed. Again, due to developers’ keen interest, the apps keep growing, and the users keep coming to Android.

Both WP and TXP support themes and templates as well as multiple plugins and extensions. However, WP has more themes and plugins then TXP. While this may or may not prove WP’s superiority, it surely plays its role in contributing to WP’s user base. Since many commercially viable tech blogs and websites are powered by WordPress (not to mention the millions of blogs at WordPress.com and Blog.com), it is but natural that WP has a large number of themes and plugins. Certain providers, such as WooThemes, offer themes for both WP and TXP. Yet, in this case too, WP dominates TXP in terms of the number of available themes.

If you have exemplary coding skills, fret not! You can easily tweak TXP and design your blog or website the way you wish to. But if you are an end user just looking to get a blog or website up and ready with as little technical expertise as possible, WP should be your safest bet!

Mode of Operation

Modus Operandi is by far the most debatable topic when it comes to comparing any two CMS’s, let alone WP and/or TXP.

To begin with, WordPress comes with a WYSIWYG Editor that makes editing posts and articles extremely simple.

TextPattern, on the other hand, has an equally awesome (though not so end-user friendly, as it takes some ‘getting used to’) editor, which can do almost anything you want it to, but will surely leave many beginners confused. In TXP, Textile and other related features can either be your best friends or your worst enemies.

In the admin back end as well, you will notice that mundane tasks such as updating the CMS, installing themes/plugins, or even navigating the back end – all seem easier on WP rather than TXP for a novice. However, the confusion vanishes once you get accustomed to the interface.

Community and Support

A CMS is only as good as its user base. Both TXP and WP have a good and fairly active community and many forums where you can seek support and advice.

In terms of documentation, TXP seems to win outright. WP is well documented, but it comes nowhere close to beating TXP – apart from the usual website, TXP also has its own User Documentation Website and another TXP Resources site.

Speaking of support, WP is updated on a more frequent basis as compared to TXP. However, this can be interpreted either way – supporters of WP will consider the frequent updates as higher level of activity at their developers’ end, while supporters of TXP can attribute the lesser updates to a sign of maturity of TXP in itself.

To sum it up

Before coming to a conclusion, let us recap each CMS’s pros and cons:

TextPattern:

Pros:

• Textile is a wonderful component, and if you get used to it, you will never, ever, miss WP.
• You can tweak your website as much as you want. There is negligible encapsulation done.
• Extensive documentation.

Cons:

• Admin back end looks outdated.
• Interface confusing for beginners.
• Lesser number of themes/plugins (as compared to WP)

WordPress:

Pros:

• Perhaps the easiest CMS ever
• Several themes/plugins
• Excellent update mechanism

Cons:

• WP is intended to power only one blog at a time (unless you’re using WPMU)
• With plugins/extensions, it may becomes bloated
• Editing article meta data is difficult
• Notorious for frequent security bugs and issues

And the Winner is…

As I stated above, using (or not using) a particular CMS is a matter of personal preference too. More often than not, our choice for a CMS is governed by our needs (and, perhaps, bias towards a personal favorite).

WordPress and TextPattern are both great at what they do! If you need a CMS just to power a blog or a small website, look no further than WordPress. If, on the contrary, you wish to run multiple blogs, or prefer to tweak your articles before posting them (or simply like to do things the geeks’ way), TextPattern might be your ideal solution. In simple terms, TXP should be chosen if you wish to define the dynamics of your website just as if you were ‘programming’ software.

Have you used WP and/or TXP earlier? Do share your experiences with us in the comments!

Over my time of working with WordPress and using it to create websites for clients, I have found that some of the most unique requests I have recieved from clients have been settled by a simple WordPress plugin. We all know the major things needed for every website – From SEO to Analytics, which I will also be including in this article.

Getting Started

For those of you that are new to using WordPress and installing plugins – There are a couple of different ways to do it. The easiest being to use your admin panel under “Plugins” and clicking on “Add New” where you can search for each plugin and install directly from your admin panel. The other way is to use an FTP client such as FileZilla and browse to your WordPress Plugin directory “WP-Content” – Then “Plugins” to manually upload the plugin files.

Remember that after manually uploading your plugin files you will still need to activate them by visiting your admin panel and going to the plugin tab and choosing activate.

The Plugins

Here is my own personal list of my top 10 WordPress Plugins that go along with each personal and client installation of WordPress. Remember also that there are many different variations of some of the plugins, which some people like more or less than the ones I have listed. Through my own personal experience using these plugins and doing my own research the following ones are the ones that have suited me the best and worked for me.

1. Akismet

Akismet Home Page

This one should be a given. This is actually included with every WordPress install by default. You will need to obtain a Akismet API key to use it, but it is on my top list of plugins that are worth using. Make sure to use it on all of your WordPress powered websites to cut back on the spam comments. Although it doesn’t cut out 100% of all spam comments, I myself cannot imagine not having it installed and activated. There are also other plugins that take it a step further and more protect from spam comments, but Akismet is well worth using.

2. All in One SEO Pack

By: SemperFiWebDesign.com – All in One SEO Pack

I have tried and tested many of the other SEO plugins available for WordPress and found this one to work the best for everything I have ever needed. The list of options is almost endless, and the ease of use adds to the list of great features offered by this wonderful plugin. Most of us that currently use WordPress have used this plugin, or probably currently use it now. I would recommend this with each and every WordPress install. If you are looking to really make your website Search Engine Friendly then I would always use this, and take advantage of all the options it has to offer.

3. Contact Form 7

By: Takayuki Miyoshi – Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is another one that has always been high on my list of must have WordPress plugins. Everyone that has created a website knows the importance of having a secure contact form. I have choosen this one as my favorite due to all of the options available for it, along with how easy it is to create and implement forms on any page of my WordPress powered website. I have used this to create large surveys for clients websites, and custom contact forms for times when very special things were needed on the form itself. I want to also mention that using the included .CSS file it is VERY easy to modify the appearance of this plugin on your website to make it fit in with your website.

4. Google XML Sitemaps

By: Arne Brachhold – Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin has been a top performer from the start. We all know the importance of XML sitemaps for SEO purposes, and especially using Googles Webmaster Tools. This sitemap creater runs by itself to always keep your sitemap current, and also submits it to the major search engines. It can also create HTML sitemaps, and .gzip sitemaps as well. Another top one on my list that I think should be added to every WordPress powered website.

5. Secure WordPress

By: SiteSecurityMonitor – Secure WordPress

This has proven to be a great security plugin for WordPress. It use to be individually owned and was recently purchased by SiteSecurityMonitor (SSM) and made a lot better. Below is a brief overview of features directly from SSM.

Secure WordPress:

1. Removes error-information on login-page
2. Adds index.php plugin-directory (virtual)
3. Removes the wp-version, except in admin-area
4. Removes Really Simple Discovery
5. Removes Windows Live Writer
6. Removes core update information for non-admins
7. Removes plugin-update information for non-admins
8. Removes theme-update informationfor non-admins (only WP 2.8 and higher)
9. Hides WP-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
10. Adds string for use WP Scanner
11. Blocks bad queries
12. Validates your site with a free malware and vulnerabilities scan

6. Secure Admin

By: Ryan Boren and Robert Accettura – Secure Admin

Like Secure WordPress, the Secure Admin plugin adds more security to your WordPress admin panel. I have always used this alongside of Secure WordPress to try and protect each of my WordPress installs. I have done research on both and always used them. I put alot of thought into how much work and effort I had in each of my WordPress powered sites, and thought it only made sense to activate a simple plugin to offer more protection. There are many other security plugins available but some offer the same things. With this one and the above mentioned, they together cover most everything.

7. WordPress Database Backup

By: Austin Matzko – WordPress Database Backup

The WordPress Database Backup plugin is exactly what it says. I have not personally found a more straight forward way of backing up my WordPress site and having so many options to automate the process as well. I always run this on every WordPress site I have, and it has never let me down. I have always set mine up to email me a weekly copy of my website, for those just in case situations. If you are looking for a way to backup your WP database, as well as your published articles and information that you have on your site, then you need this plugin.

8. WP Google Analytics

By: Xavisys.com – WP Google Analytics

Exactly what it says, and if you don’t know about Google Analytics then you don’t know what you are missing. This is the best way to use a plugin to add Analytics to your site. There are other ways (Manually adding it, and you can also do it using your functions.php file) But for the easiest most straight forward way…. The plugin is the answer. This will ensure that your stats can always be seen by you to know what is going on with your site. Great way to monitor the details of your visitors.

9. WP No Category Base

By: WordPressSupplies – WP No Category Base

I found this plugin when I realized that WordPress was making a “Category” directory trailing my domain name, that was being placed before my pretty URL’s I had created. This was throwing me off, and I searched high and low for a way to remove the category base. Using this plugin is as easy as it gets, just install – then activate it, and your done! Works the first time every time, and makes those URL’s look much much better. Great for SEO purposes.

10. White Label CMS

By: VideoUserManuals.com – White Label CMS

One of the best CMS plugins I have found that has so many options. White Lael gives you the option of customizing your WordPress install along with making it more aimed at a CMS instead of just blogging. I have used this numerous times for many purposes and it is worth taking a look at. Great way to make a CMS site, or use it just to customize your WordPress login and Admin panel with a custom logo and branding. Great Plugin!

Other Useful and Unknown Plugins

I have added some of these extra plugins that I have found over time at the request of different clients. As things are asked of me when I am creating a website I start searching and so far (Fingers Crossed) I have always found a plugin to fit my needs. These are all more reasons that I love and recommend WordPress. Here are the extras, along with a description of each. Many of you may already know about these, but the point of this article is partially a reminder, and to show new users to WordPress the power of certain plugins, and also as a reminder to those of you that may be using WordPress and just simply forgotten about some of these lovely plugins.

Web Invoicing and Billing

By: TwinCitiesTech

Great plugin for keeping track of clients and being able to create and send invoices directly from your admin panel. Nice way to keep track of your business needs, and also be able to monitor your income from the invoices. I really like this over other invoice plugins simply because it’s the best. It also will handle recurring payments you setup, and also recurring payments from PayPal. Great if you have a reason to send out invoices to get paid.

TubePress

By: TubePress Plugin

Great plugin to allow you to easily add some content to your website. Set it with keywords and it will add videos directly from YouTube directly to a post or page of your choice. Has options for you to change where the videos come from (also supports other video services like Vimeo) and will let you pull videos directly from a user, keywords, and many other options. Great for tutorial videos on a website of any kind. Awesome way to create more dynamic content to your site. I highly recommend this one and I currently use this on one of my sites as well.

Elastic Theme Engine and Editor

By: Elastic Theme Engine and Editor Plugin

I have played with this a number of times. I am still a little in between on really liking it and not being too sure about it. I do think that if you do not know anything about programming and want to make a custom site, then it is worth playing with. Like anything, it had it’s downside, but overall was really worth playing with. If you are looking to make your own custom WordPress site and don’t know any PHP or CSS then get this plugin, and make your own site easily.

WP125

By: WebMasterSource

This is one of my favorites. If you have a blog that you offer out advertising on, then you need this plugin. There are other plugins aimed specifically at BuySellAds.com, but this plugin is for the individual managing their own ads. It shows details on your admin panel, and can be set to run ads for a set number of days.

WP-Polls

By: Lester Chan

I love this simple plugin. As the name implies, it is for adding a poll to your website. Now I know that there are hundreds of other plugins that do this, but this one is the most simple straight forward that also offered the most options and never let me down. Just for that I will recommend it and keep using it myself. Customize the look and feel of it, while generating different polls over and over. Great plugin for doing exactly what it is suppose to do.

In Closing…

Plugins are a great way to add more functionality to your WordPress powered website - and no matter what you are looking for someone else has thought of it and probably made a plugin for it. I personally think that WordPress is still growing in popularity and being used more and more each day. This helps with the growing community of users supporting more WordPress themes(massive theme collection here) and plugins. If you don’t find what you are looking for then you can always create your own. I hope everyone has enjoyed the article!

2.How to Build a Custom WordPress Theme from Scratch
Chris Spooner,a very well known designer shared a simple but great wordpress tutorial which you can understand easily.

3.Make your Own WordPress Theme
Another good and very detailed WordPress theme tutorial with 7 parts(Layout,Header,Index,Comment,Sidebar,Footer and Publishing Step).Beginning from the layout to the last publishing step,ever part is easy to understand.

4.WordPress – Theme: Building Your Own Theme
Very detailed tutorials about every part of WordPress theme building with easy understanding.

5.How to Create a WordPress Theme
This tutorial is much more for those interested in taking an existing design and converting it into a beautifully working WordPress theme.

6.Stop Tweaking! Create Your Own WordPress Theme
This is also one the most understandable WordPress theme tutorial with 10 parts.I like this tutorial because it is really easy to follow the steps and understand what the codes are for and why.

7.How to Code a Praticle WordPress Theme
Every part of the WordPress coding is very well explained to understand easily.Great tutorial especially for beginners.

8.Converting PSD to WordPress Theme
This tutorial is from scratch.I mean you can see all the steps of PSD to wordpress theme building.Excellent tutorial.

9.Designing and Coding a WordPress Theme From Scratch
The tutorial is about building a wordpress ttheme from creating the layout (with photoshop) to the last step publishing.If you are new to wordpress designing and coding this tutorial is just for you.

10.How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch
This is one of the best WordPress theme tutorials from scratch.The tutorial begins with structuring and designing from the photoshop to last step.Like some other tutorials,every step is very well-explaied and also i advice to read all the steps carefully to become a wordpress designer.

11.How To – Design Your Own WordPress Theme
A step by step tutorial for converting a design into WordPress site.

12.Building Custom WordPress Theme
The tutorial explains the basics of how WordPress theme works and show you how to convert a static HTML template into a theme.

13.So You Want to Create WordPress Themes?
A very detailed tutorail from scratch.The whole process is divided in the many parts to understand easily.You can also download as e-book.

14.WordPress Theme Guide:Dissection of a WordPress Theme
Easy to follow and understand 4 parts tutorial.The author dissects an existing theme and explaining parts as they are required.Also another very detailed tutorial.

15.How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch
This tutorial will look at taking a HTML/CSS template and turning it into a functioning WordPress theme.

16.Build a Newspaper Theme With WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework
How to make a 3 columned newspaper theme that has all your main blog posts in the main column, and off to the side a set of posts with a certain category.

17.Developing a WordPress Theme
Not a tutorial from scratch but you will learn to convert your xHTML CSS site into a Compact WordPress Theme

18.Creating a WordPress Theme
Actually not for beginners but another good tutorial to create your own wordpress theme in 3 parts.

19.Creating WordPress Themes:Introduction
Like some other wordpress developement posts this tutorial begins from the basics of theme development to the end.

These plugins help you with your content by either adding any fields or hiding it from certain users. You can set roles for each user visiting your site and set some exclusive rights for each one about how much they should be accessing your blog, some plugins help you with a smooth navigation which can be in the pages or in the sidebars which also supports the CSS drop down menus and manages you pages and posts. These plugins also help you in a case where you are too much obsessed with multi languages or find it hard to manage with more than one language.

For all those avid WordPress users, we have collected some of the most used and popular plugins which helps you grow as a professional blogger.

Easily Manage Categories, Pages and Posts

1.Idealien category enhancements

Idealien category enhancements makes the category and post templates selectable through the drop down lists as easy as page templates and includes configuration of sub-categories to inherit templates from their parent or not and applies for both category and post templates and sub-category inheritance also applies and deleting a category will delete all the record too.

2.Pagemash

The Page Management plugin images you pages by customizing the order of the pages and rearranging the page menus with the drag and drop style with AJAX interface which allows sorting and hiding easily and toggling the page to be hidden from the output making the page hierarchy very easy. Allows features quick page renaming, alternate list coloring, reordering and modifying the page by dragging a page to become a chill and toggling it from the view.

3.Yet another related posts plugin

Yet another related posts plugin gives you pages related to the current entry and other relevant content on you site to the reader which features an advanced, versatile and customizable algorithm which considers the post titles, contents, tag and categories. You can know, how your related posts and pages are displayed and caches the relates posts data which improves its performance, displays the related posts in RSS and allows to disable certain tags and categories.

4.Exclude pages

Exclude Pages adds a check box for the user ‘include the page in menus’ which is checked by default and uncheckable it makes to page disappear from the listings of pages and do not show in the menu listings and pages which come under the excluded pages or children of excluded pages will also not show up.

5.Wp no category base

The plugin WP No Category Base will remove the mandatory category base from the category permalinks and will not break any links taking care of the redirection of the old category links to the new ones. Does not require any set up and other plugins to work. Is compatible with the sitemap plugins and works with multiple sub categories making it good for SEO.

Better & Smart Navigation

6.Wp pagenavi

WP PageNavi plugin adds an advanced and numbered paging navigation . You can use this plugin to replace the Previous pages and Next ones links from the home pages. The look and feel of this plugin is adapted from the original WordPress PageNavi plugin to match the LightWord WordPress theme. Has an option to display the texts for first, last, current, previous and next pages.

7.Multi level navigation plugin

Multi-level Navigation plugin adds a CSS based, SEO friendly accessible dropdown or slider menu to your blog. Produces W3C valid XHTML and CSS. This plugin allows you to control the animation speed of the dropdown menu, mouseover delay, what type of content should be displayed, keyboard accessibility, hover sensitivity and allows to hide the delay. This plugin also has a similar functionality to the PixoPoint menu plugin.

8.Breadcrumbs

Yoast Breadcrumbs plugin allows you add to breadcrumbs in your theme for WordPress SEO here the posts, newletters, presentations everything comes under the SEO guide to WordPress. This is also decustomised for any website running WordPress and makes setting the options easy for administrator and making available a direct class for theme developers and adventurous users. Has a translation in more than eight languages.

9.Simple sidebar navigation

Simple Sidebar Navigation creates a navigation in sidebars and other pre-defined areas with a support for the CSS custom drop down menus in a much simpler way. Also adds a widget or unlimited number of navigation widgets into the Widgets dashboard without any PHP coding and conditional tags are included while specifying the pages along with an option to add navigation links with title, URL and target attributes.

Making Your Content Unbreakable

10.More fields

More Fields plugin, as the name says adds additional fields or boxes to the Edit or Site page. The fields can be input field, such as the name, work, title etc., Also you can add check boxes, radio buttons, create archives and create buttons programmatically, add Web forms or HTML5 fields. These fields or boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left of the Write/ Edit pages.

11.Fresh page

Flutter is a plugin which simplifies the content management by creating customized write panels like radio buttons, check boxes, file and image uploads i.e. offers you all sorts of options for each of the field. Allows you to create different content on different pages. Flutter allows to modulate your themes and includes image manipulations such as cropping, resizing, editing in place, watermarking etc.,

12.Wp cms post control

Sometimes, you may feel that you don’t want to show certain items to others, in that case WP CMS Post Control plugin hides the unwanted items within the write / edit page for every user and alos gives you the complete control to create content. You can set an option of what kind of users need to see what type of content, and enable or disable the revisions, auto saves and Flash uploader.

Managing Users and their Roles

13.User access manager

The plugin User Access Manager gives you complete control to manage your pages, files and posts where you can create a group separately for readers and editors, set the rights and allow only registered users to use the group which is accessible only for the members of that group. The main advantage in this plugin is that other people can write in your blog but not everywhere.You can hide pages, limit the access to uploaded files or give access even by IP address.

14.Role scoper

Role Scoper gives you complete access in reading and editing permissions for access control and editing where you can set the access and roles to specified pages or posts or categories ie control the categories where users can post, grant access for a limited time, limit the post / page publishing dates and inherit the restrictions and roles to certain categories and exclude the un-editable post and set default restrictions for any new post.

15.Role manager

Role Manager plugin gives you the rights to define a role for each user who can have individual capabilities i.e.  he can perform a set of assigned tasks to him and he can belong only to that role. Also you can work or create multiple subscriber profiles and set controls for each role setting the access of what they should do and what they should not do like give certain user permissions like unfiltered HTML posting.

16.Member access

Member Access is a plugin for Administrator to set permissions for members to make pages and posts accessible only to logged in members i.e either you can make them globally accessible or only to the members. This plugin also let you configure the search results, archives ad RSS feeds to omit entire content available to members or include some excerpt for non-members to use and make it viewable only to members. Redirection to the login page can also be configured for non members.

17.Custom post type UI

Custom Post Type UI plugin create for WordPress 3.0 manages to create and manage the custom post types, content sorting which makes the developers work easy especially if they are new to WordPress , panels and taxonomies without any PHP coding. You can also assign both the custom and built-in taxonomies to post types and label the post types.

Having a Multilingual Site

18.Sitepress multi lingual CMS

Language support is a problem faced by many users in WordPress but with WPML Multilingual you can build multilingual sites with WordPress making the multi lingual content management easy and makes you feel like you are running the site in one language. This plugin features a Comments translation which allows you to reply to comments in your own language, a Professional translation to connect translators with the site owners. Includes CMS navigation elements to use site-wide navigation and for easy customization.

19.Xlanguage

The xLanguage plugin is for multi language lovers who love to blog in many languages and the users can select which to read. You can use this on all the blog UI elements, page, tags, categories and blog posts. The language is detected from the browser’s preferences and can also be configured to facilitate multiple fallbacks. Displays each language in a different theme and allows the user to switch the languages with the widget and template functions provided which can also be customized without the code getting disturbed.

20.Qtranslate

You may love to work in multi languages but creating a muliti linugual content is not that easy. qTranslate is a plugin which makes the multi language content management and translation very easy as working in a single language with some of the features like human and machine automated translation in 2 clicks, language customizations, switching languages with a single click and a support for multiple built-in languages and one URL for each language for friendly SEO.

Highly customizable Widgets

21.Widgets reloaded

Widget Reloaded was derived to correct the default WordPress widgets which don’t offer much control over their output on screen. This plugin replaces many of its predecessors and these widgets come with highly customizable control panels and are packed with archives, authors, bookmarks, calendar, pages, menus, tags, categories etc., This is very useful when you use a sub menu in your header using the sub menu widget area and base on Pages.

22.Flexi pages widget

Flexi Pages Widget is sidebar widget which is configurable and is used to list the pages and sub pages, also can be used in place of ‘Pages’ widget. This plugin has many features like includes a link to the home page, has an option where only selected pages and sub pages can be displayed only in parent pages and related pages and lists. If you don’t want to use the widget, then you can use the function flexipages() which can be called anywhere from the template.

23.Side posts

Alkivia SidePosts widget displays the selected category and its entries in the sidebar giving a link to each entry in the sidebar or you can set another option in this plugin which shows only the private posts which are hidden in the home page. You can choose to display the full post or the excerpt of the post, can show a link to the selected category feeds or archives page or create your own template to show everything other than the provided templates.

24.Query posts widget wordpress plugin

Query Posts Widget lets you display anything on your posts by any criteria without knowing any code. You can choose to display your posts by tag, category, author, custom field key, date / time. Also show the full post or an excerpt or show the pages and order them by any term. This widget has almost 40 options to customize the display format.

SEO

25.Google sitemap generator

Google XML sitemaps generates a special XML map to help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing to index your blog easily. Makes it easier to see the complete structure of your blog and also supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages and notifies the search engines whenever you create a post and calculates a priority for each post and is available in multi languages and doesn’t require any PHP knowledge. Also has a WordPress filter which allows other plugins to add their pages to the sitemap.

26.All in one SEO pack

SEO is the most important part for any blog and All in one SEO pavk plugin optimizes you blog for search engines taking care of the custom Post types, supports CMS style WordPress, finetunes the navigation links, generates the META tags automatically and over rides any title and allows you to set META description and keywords, optimizes the titles and avoids the duplicate content on the blog, is compatible with other plugins because of its built-in API.

27.Redirection

Redirection is a WordPress plugin which makes it easier to migrate from an old website or while changing the directory for WordPress installations because this plugin keeps track and maintains a log of 404 errors and maps these to 301 redirection which are based upon login status, redirect based on the referrer and random pages. Maintains a log for all redirected URL’s and has a pass-through redirection which allows you to pass an URL to another website or page.

28.SEO smart links

Initially to improve ranking in search engines, a manual work was done to interlink the old blog posts to the new one but SEO smart links plugin  gets your blogs interlinked and adds links to other sites which automates SEO benefits to you site. This plugin automatically links the keywords and phrases to corresponding pages and categories in your blog and also allows you to create or set up your own keywords and matching URL’s. These changes which are done by default can also be changed from the options in the administrative settings panel.

28.Platinum SEO pack

In addition to the features incorporated with the All in one SEO plugin, Platinum SEO plugin offers additional features like adding index, meta tags, nofollow or follow, noodp to any post or page. This plugin not only automates the WordPress SEO but also provides an ultimate onsite SEO solution for the blogs. Also avoids the duplicate content, is compatible with other plugins, adds meta description and keywords automatically and generates the META tags relevant to SEO automatically.

29.Permalinks moved permanently

Migration of your WordPress blog from one permalink structure to another may result in a loss of Pagerank or traffic which accessed through the old permalinks sometimes, but if you dont want to happen this then ‘Permalinks Moved Permanently’ plugins is for you which grabs and checks the slug from the end of the request to the post with slug somewhere else on the blog. (before the generation of 404 from the old permalink) and generates a ‘301 moved permanently’ error to the visitor and forwards him to the new location.

Must Check Plugins

30.Search everything

Search Everything is a plugin which increases the search functionality by activating the Configure options Search (covers two steps) where the options (metadata) may be searching every page, tag, every category, highlighting, comments, excerpts, custom fields, custom taxonomies, exclude posts and exclude categories.

31.Subscribe2

Subscribe2 is a plugin to send email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish any new content in your blog providing a comprehensive subscription management. The emails sent can be on periodical or pre-post basis where certain categories can be excluded for individuals through a custom field. This plugin also lets you handle requests for subscription or to register with your blog by submitting their email addresses in a simple user form where the format of the email can also be customized as an excerpt or full post.

32.Exec PHP

The Exec-PHP plugin executes the PHP code in the content portion of your posts and in the excerpts which can also be restricted to certain users by using the roles and capabilities of theirs, also works in your news feeds. Updates the notifications is a new version of this plug-in is available and issues any user warnings for inappropriate blog and its settings. Supports multi languages which write the code in familiar syntax.

32.Wp ecommerce

WP e-Commerce is a shopping cart plugin which features shopping cart application used for selling your products, services or fess online can be primarily used for crafters, artists, books, DVD’sm bands & record labels. This plugin is designed for great presentation and aesthetics.

33.Next gen gallery

A fully integrated image gallery plugin, NextGEN come with a slideshow option along with role settings where each gallery has an author, sortable albums, watermark functions, option to upload pictures via a zip file, sidebar widget, tag support for images, JavaScript effect like Lightbox, Shutter, Highslide and Thickbox. Also has a multiple CSS stylesheet which gives a shadow effect for the thumbnails and a TinyMCE button for easily adding the gallery tags.

34.Contact form

Another simple and flexible plugin, ContactForm7 manages multiple contact forms which can be customized with the mail contents with a simple markup. This plugin also supports AJAX submitting, spam filtering, CAPTCHA etc. Comes with more than 35 translators.

35.Vipers video quick tags

Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin valid posting of videos with easy XHTML from websites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimoe and so on. You don’t have to copy and paste the embed HTML just click the ‘new’ button from this plugin and paste the site’s URL in the prompt box where you can configure the display option like alter the height, width, alignment and colors.

Other plugins

36.Contemplate

Contemplate plugin us manages commonly used content like text, HTML, CSS or JavaScript which appears on site pages,you can define the content template in the options page of the plugin and insert them anywhere in the site any number of times in the post, pages, widget or comments. and the change in the template is automatically updated everywhere in the site wherever defined.

37.Front end editor

Front-end Editor, a WordPress 3.0 plugin comes with fully editable widgets where you can also see the controls on the widget scree, can handle custom Post type including Posts and Pages, add or remove buttons from the settings page, double clicking in the thumbnail will display your images whatever be the overlay script. It is light and fast and compatible with any theme eliminating the need to load the admin back end.

38.Multiple post thumbnails

Multiple Post Thumbnails plugin adds multiple post thumbnails to a post type i.e. you can have more than one Featured image on your post.

Akismet

Akismet is so crucial to a WordPress blog it even comes pre-installed. All you need to do is sign up for an API key from WordPress.com in order to activate the plugin.

What does it do?

Akismet works on the front line in the battle against spam. It picks out spammy comments from your blog and helps protect your site against those pesky spam bots.

Download the plugin

All in One SEO Pack

Changing your Permalink structure is the first step you should take to a more optimised blog. The second step is to install the All in One SEO pack to allow complete customisation of every post and page to squeeze out the best search optimisation you can.

What does it do?

The All in One SEO pack makes a few important SEO improvements to your WordPress blog, such as canonical URL redirection and reconfiguration of page titles. More importantly it gives you complete control over the page title, meta description and keywords for every post and page so you can completely optimise your site.

Download the plugin

Google XML Sitemaps

After settings up your permalinks and installing the All in One SEO pack, all that’s left to do to completely SEO’ify your blog is to provide the Googlebots a sitemap to feast on. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin does exactly what it says on the tin…

What does it do?

The Google XML Sitemaps plugin creates and regenerates an XML based sitemap file that lists every page of your site in order of popularity. This allows the bots to easily crawl your pages, as well as quickly update changed pages in the search index.

Download the plugin

Login Lockdown

Brute force attacks are one of the most common ways blogs are hacked. One way to protect against this is with the Login Lockdown plugin, which provides a sturdy security wall between your site and the bad people by limiting the number of login attempts and blocking out IPs that exceed this set amount.

What does it do?

The Login Lockdown can be configured to allow X number of login retries. Once these retries have been exceeded, that particular IP will be locked out for a period of time (also configurable). The plugin also allows you to mask login errors, so WordPress will no longer give hackers a clue if they correctly guessed your username.

Download the plugin

W3 Total Cache

I’ve played around with just about every caching plugin out there, but W3 Total Cache definitely gets my recommendation. Caching is one of the most important additions to any WordPress blog. The W3 Total Cache plugin not only provides page caching, but also has database caching, object caching and a minify system built right in – All with customisable options.

What does it do?

W3 Total Cache speeds up your WordPress site by caching pages. Instead of WordPress making multiple calls to the server upon every visit, it displays a ready-made static file or reuses queries from the cache. This provides a huge speed increase and eases the load on your web server.

Download the plugin

WP-DBManager

Regularly taking backups of your WordPress database is as important as remembering breathe. There’s a good selection of ‘scheduled backup’ plugins out there, but my favourite is WP-DBManager. Not only does this plugin provide useful scheduling options, but it also allows you to browse, restore and optimize your database directly in WordPress.

What does it do?

WP-DBManager allows you to browse your database tables, restore existing backups, automatically optimize your database and set regular scheduled backups at interval of hours, days or months.

Download the plugin

WP Smush.it

The images you upload to your WordPress blog will account for a large portion of the load your server deals with. Smushing these images strips out the meta data, optimizes compression and removes unused colours from JPEG, GIF and PNG files, which in turn reduced their size by a couple of percent. This change isn’t huge on a per-file basis, but it all adds up when calculated across the whole site!

What does it do?

WP Smush.it automatically sends all the images you upload via the WordPress media uploader through the Smush.it API to optimize the images. You can even go back and Smush all your existing images using the handy button in the media browser.

Download the plugin