You may just want to track the number of visits to you blog, or you might want to track every outbound link or even AdSense cliks and YPN too. Whatever your needs are, the following Wordpress plugins can give you exactly what you need from Google Analytics, without the hassle of copying and pasting tracking codes to all your pages.

RSS Link Tagger for Google Analytics

This is one of the plugins that has a specific usage. RSS Link Tagger for Google Analytics conveniently modifies RSS permalinks to include utm queries, so that you can track your feed subscription conversions, the same way you track non-AdWords advertising campaigns. » Plugin Home

DBD Footprints

Yeah I know. This is not exactly a branded Google Analytics plugin, but it gets the simplest job done – Adding Google Analytics tracking code. Since Google Analytics and other plugins are most of the time supplying Javascript snippets, it’s important to add these codes at the very end of the HTML body to save the page loading time. And this nifty little plugin gives you the ability to do just that. » Plugin Home

Google Analytics for Wordpress

This is my choice of a Google Analytics plugin. It does everything you need it to do,, plus more! The Google Analytics for Wordpress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin. Pretty cool, huh? » Plugin Home

Ultimate Google Analytics

This does the same stuff that “Google Analytics for Wordpress” plugin does. It’s suitable for those of you who don’t really know whether you want to use the Advanced Features of Google Analytics. In the basic plugin view, it’ll give you the basic features of Google Analytics. But if you wish to have more, you can switch to the Advanced views which pretty much integrates all the advance Google Analytics features to your blog. » Plugin Home

WP Google Analytics

Not as flash as the two plugins before, but can spherically be configured to track stuff like searches (as /search/{search}?referrer={referrer}), not track user roles (administrators, editors, authors, etc) and log anything in the admin areas in Wordpress. » Plugin Home

Local Analytics

Are you an efficiency freak? Worried about the page loading times of your blog? Then you should try out Local Analytics first. The plugin is highly configurable and also allows caching of the ga.js file locally, inorder to enable faster loading of pages. Includes support for tracking subdomains and main domain in a single profile as well as Yahoo Publisher Network ad clicks alongside AdSense ad clicks. » Plugin Home
Related Posts

• 14 Wordpress Plugins that will help you make more money from Google AdSense on your blog.
• What Google Webmaster Tools can tell about your blog.
• Wordpress 2.6 is out – and it’s a Killer!
• Do you load your server unnecessarily with the dofollow plugins?
• The biggest collection of Wordpress SEO plugins that can multiply your blog traffic

It’s no secret that ROCKFUSE is a dofollow blog.

Now, why did I exactly made this blog dofollow? Or in that case, why does any blogger make his/her blog dofollow? The obvious reason to do this is to influence comments. If you are in need of developing backlinks to your blog, you’d find that blog commenting is one of the easiest methods to do this – and dofollow blogs stand a higher chance of getting quality comments because of this.

But, there’s a claim that when you remove the nofollow tags, it will lure a lot of spam comments. This is true. Spammers will use software like CommentKahuna to mass-spam their website links all over your articles. Most of them will be free junk food to your Akismet plugin if you’re using Wordpress, but some will actually get through. To combat the ones that get through, like it or not, I moderate every comment that comes by.

But sometimes, it’s easy to just stop spam from entering at all. So I will reveal a method that did wonders for me, and hopefully, it does the same for you. However, I hold no guarantees that it will work for all of you, though it had certainly worked for me. In case you wee wondering, it’s not having a CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA can reduce your spam comments but some will actually get through and you’re putting an unnecessary weight on your loyal followers by making them enter some codes.

The secret is having an Ajax driven comment form. Too simple? Allow me to explain. Normal WordPress blogs have non-Javascript driven forms, which would be converted into plain HTML. Spam bots can play around with simple HTML easily. But when JavaScript kicks in, it makes it harder for spam bots to come out with their fireworks. True, it’s a form. But, inner components of the form are built with JavaScript (utilizing Ajax)., which, simply put, behaves differently than the comment forms used in 98% of the Wodpress blogs in use – or, make it 99%.

The easiest way to get this done is having a plugin – that is, Ajaxed Wordpress for me. If you don’t like all the attractions of the plugin as explained here, you can simply enable the “Comment Form” module, which will be sufficient for this purpose.

Related Posts

• Do you load your server unnecessarily with the dofollow plugins?
• How you can fire up your blog with Ajax
• How to moderate your Wordpress Blog comments from your own Desktop
• I will not comment spam you since I’ve no idea about your niche
• I am thankful for their spam comments. They make me feel like a celebrity.

Here’s a recap of the coolest features I’m digging right now.

Multiple Post Revisions

If you’re blogging online through the Wordpress editorial interface, good news to you! Remember that time you though that., the article you’ve been writing actually looked better 5 minutes ago before you going ahead and making those revisions? Well, now wordpress automatically saves multiple revisions of the article being edited from time to time. So, if you should go back in time to a revised version before, or if you want to compare the revised versions to find in which one you’d strike gold, post revisions are for you!

Image Captions

Here’s something that I’ve been longing to see. When you insert an image through Wordpress gallery, now you have a chance to define a caption for the image. And that would align itself under the image so that the picture description would not be limited to a mouse-hovered-for-tool-tip.

Live Theme Preview

If you’d like to change your themes regularly or at least, test them out from time to time, I know how annoying it could be to activate one by one and refresh your blog’s home page to see how it looks. Well, not anymore – Live theme preview makes it possible to check how your theme would look on you blog with a click of the mouse and NOT activate it for the whole world to see during the process.

In addition to those,

• Gears support is embedded so you can work on your local computer faster when you’re messing around with the wordpress blog. The heavy files will be cached so loading your wordpress blog will be super fast.
• Plugin page is broken into two sections. One for the activated plugins and the other one is for the non-activated plugins.
• Multiple selection of the posts are now supported using Shift+Click. This is a lifesaver and I seriously don’t know what took them so long to have this out.

So, I guess that sums it up. There are more smaller features, and if you want to get more on them, and get into the new shoes, check this out.

Related Posts

• Still using FTP to upload your plugins and themes?
• You might have already been banned from Social Media. You just don’t know it… Yet!
• 6 Wordpress Plugins that Enhance Google Analytics on your blog
• 15 Firefox Plugins that will make your blogging more fun and productive!
• Bold SEO Wordpress Plugin for better SEO Keyword Targeting

Simply, this is what happens. When you install a dofollow plugin, when a page loads, the plugin will hunt down the nofollow tags and remove them from appearing in the page output to the browser. This is not the most effective method since what it does is using the system resources of your server to cure something that could have been simply prevented at the first place.

You know what they say right? Prevention is better than cure!

If there’s a page with 30 comments, this script will run a loop for 30 times to remove nofollow tags. And if you’re experiencing the Digg effect, this can really have a negative impact on your page loading times.

So, if the cure is so lame, why don’t we just prevent it at the first place? Well, all you have to do is make some minor edits to your Wordpress source files. I can tell you how to do it, but to make sure that ‘I’ don’t screw up your Wordpress installation, here’s a proven, reliable tutorial. Make sure you back your files before proceeding with the tutorial.

What this does is it simply removes the instructions provided for the Wordpress blog to put the nofollow tag there. So it will do what the plugin does at the first place, without wasting any resources.

Related Posts

• A simple secret which can reduce Wordpress spam comments by 90%
• How you can fire up your blog with Ajax
• Bold SEO Wordpress Plugin for better SEO Keyword Targeting
• Still using FTP to upload your plugins and themes?
• 6 Wordpress Plugins that Enhance Google Analytics on your blog

Why Sidebar Tabs?

First, they save a lot of real estate – Oh yes they do! Just imagine; If I had to display all those posts I’ve in those side bar tabs it would have taken the whole left sidebar, right to the very bottom. But instead with sidebars, I’m able to save 75% of the space needed to hold the posts.

Do you want to show off more from less? Before I started using tabs, I had no real way of displaying my recent posts and the most popular posts at the same time. Why? It would make my sidebar look unnecessarily cluttered. But, not anymore! I strongly feel that I should display my recent posts since they contain the most relevant tips for today, and most popular posts, because they are the most popular! So, thanks to sidebar tabs, I’m in full swing.

Effectively, Increase you page views! Well, this is really a derived benefit from the earlier point. When you show off more, it is evident that your visitors will check out more of it. It’s just a bonus of being able to harness more from less.

How can I put them in my blog?

Well, there are a few plugins for WordPress. If I had to choose between two, I’d probably use either one from Accordion or Fun with Sidebar Tabs. (I know of no way to replicate this for blogger blogs. And I highly doubt whether it’s even possible – but if you know, please enlighten us?)

However, Fun with Sidebar Tabs is relatively easier to configure and customize. So, in this tutorial, I will walk you through the minimal steps of setting it up.

1. Download, Install and Activate the plugin if you already haven’t.
2. Then check out your widget section of your WordPress admin control panel.
3. In the list of the sidebars available, select “Tabbed Sidebar 1″.
4. Add the widgets that you want to be shown as tabs to the “Tabbed Sidebar 1″. Save the changes.
5. Go to your default sidebar section.
6. You would be able to see a new widget called “Tabbed Sidebar 1″ there. Add it where you want within the sidebar. Save Changes.

That’s it. You’re good to go. There’s really nothing to it.

The wonder of this plugin is that it sets you configure your tabbed widget as a specific sidebar. This makes updating it relatively simple and much more easier than other plugins like Accordion. So if you thought you must pay a professional coder to get a Ajax Sidebar Tabbed Widget done, think again!

Related Posts

• BlogCatalog offers the coolest Social News Widget
• How a simple CMS element in your Wordpress blog can increase your Page Views
• Absolutely free traffic for blogs! BlogRush!!
• 15 Firefox Plugins that will make your blogging more fun and productive!
• Still using FTP to upload your plugins and themes?

Image Credits: jεƒ saƒi

Do you know that senseless pinging practices of WordPress could have banned you already from Social Media web sites? An that it can very well happen with the default settings of your WordPress blog? It might be a bit overwhelming with all the nasty questions. To ease the pressure a bit, let’s start with a simple question.

So, what do you know about pinging?

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.

In need of the less geekier version? Let me put it this way. Pinging is like sending a press release. You write the press release, and post the press release for the journalists to let them know that so and so had happened. So, pinging is like “letting the press know about it by posting it to them”.

So this “letting the press know about it by posting it to them” feature is the trump card of all blogs. It’s the thing that gives blogs the edge over normal web sites. Basically, your blogging platforms Ping system is like you own virtual PR team.

How can pinging get me banned?

Well, if you’re a WordPress blogger, it’s really easy to get banned.

Pinging is a good thing – if not, a great thing for bloggers. But due to a few logical flaws in WordPress, pinging can actually hurt your reputation online.

Here’s the story. When a new post is added or edited, all the services that are specified in WordPress are pinged. Let’s say after publishing a post you needed to edit it because of a really small spelling mistake. When you edit it, WordPress treats it as a new edition of the post and pings all the services automatically again. Now, would the press like it very much if your PR team bothered them to get them a new version of the same press release posing under the assumption that it’s a new press release? I don’t think so! But that’s exactly what WordPress does.

Just like the press hating you for that, the services that WordPress pings will hate you for pinging a post multiple times. Just imagine., if you had to edit the same article 4 times, you’d be pinging the services 5 times in a row for the same post. They will hate you for this and Technorati will ban you if they already haven’t.

Let’s look inside WordPress for a second. When you navigate to the writing tab of the settings, you will be presented with a dialog like this.

This dialog tells you what services are being pinged after you add/edit a new post. As you can see, I ping Technorati and Ping-o-Matic. Ping-o-Matic automatically pings many services like FeedBurner, Ice Rocket and etc for me. And Technorati – yeah., you guessed it right!

So, I ping almost 20 services each time I post. If I don’t take any safety precautions, I might as well lose half of them.

What can I do to prevent this?

Well, you can try and be extra careful with your blogging and make room for no errors and give up all hope of editing a post after you publish it. But we both know that’s not going to happen.

The second and the most effective method is to employ a plugin to control the pinging process. There were many plugins for WordPress that seemed to get the job done in the past. But, for one reason or the other, when WordPress progressed several ground-breaking version, those plugins did not quite keep up. But luckily for us, there’s this one plugin left. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. I’m running WordPress 2.5+ with the latest version of this plugin and so far, it gets the job done.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer optimizes your outgoing pings and refrains from pinging the services unnecessarily for post edits.

If you haven’t already taken any safety precautions against this, I highly recommend that you install this plugin to make sure there will be no heartaches in the future. You’ve obviously heard a few bloggers talking in the past about how they got banned by Technorati right?

[tags]Ping, Optimize, Technorati, Social Media Ban, Plugin, Optimizer[/tags]
Related Posts

• Here’s how you can automate your blog posting, forever!
• Your complete guide to RSS – Part 4 – Harnessing the maximum from your RSS Feed: Tips and Tricks
• Wordpress 2.6 is out – and it’s a Killer!
• Keep both of your Twitter and Plurk accounts functional with Ping.fm
• How I got Google to index me seconds after a new post

Do I really need it?

Well, if you think that a 16×16 image can’t change how your blog performs, I’d say you’re right. But it’s not a question of increasing your traffic or subscriptions. It’s a question about your blog brand. Are you conscious about your brand of blog? At the end of the day, your brand of blog is what sets you apart from the millions of blogs out there.

Think of it this way. In a long list of bookmarks, a bookmarked page of your blog will stand-out because it doesn’t have the same default icon that everyone is having. In this example image, you can see how the Blogging Zoom entry stands out in midst of all the other entries of my bookmarks.

So, let me put my answer this day. You really don’t need it. But you can certainly benefit from having it.

Designing my Favicon

Well, first of all, you have to design a Favicon. It should be exactly 16×16 pixels, so try not do anything flashy. The trick is to be clear and concise. For an example, it wouldn’t be very effective if I put a detailed image like the ROCKFUSE logo as the Favicon. Simply because, no one would be make out that much detail in that 16×16 space. So in my case, I use a ‘R’ – for ROCKFUSE; which is probably the best possible option.

You can use any graphic designing software to design your Favicon. But if you’re looking for an easier and a faster way to do this, I recommend RealWorld Graphics – Online Icon Maker, which is an online image editing tool.

Adding your Favicon to your WordPress blog

There are so many ways to do this. But we’ll take the easiest for now.

Install the “MaxBlogPress Favicon” plugin. (You will need to register and get a key from them, which is totally free and totally worthwhile since you can use that key to use their other great plugins too on your blog) After that you can upload the image you created and you’ll be up in a jiffy.

Were you expecting more? Well, I guess I’ll have to say “you’re all done!”. Your Favicon will start appearing immediately.

It’s that easy for a WordPress blog. But, the non-automated way to do this is to add a couple lines of code to your header file, which is exactly what Blogspot bloggers should do.

So I guess our little tutorial today helped you if you weren’t into Favicons that much. Please feel free to comment and clarify any doubts that you may have. After all, like Favicons, We help you stand-out…

[tags]Favicon, Create, Install, Wordpress, Plugin, Design[/tags]
Related Posts

• 41 Places to find Free Images to your Blog or Web Site!
• How I lost more than 50+ RSS Subscribers – and How You Can Too!
• 14 Wordpress Plugins that will help you make more money from Google AdSense on your blog.
• Still using FTP to upload your plugins and themes?
• Bold SEO Wordpress Plugin for better SEO Keyword Targeting

If you’re a wordpress user, OneClick basically is a plugin that you can use to eliminate the use of user-handled File Transfers to upload new plugins and themes. In other words, if you’re the kind of blogger that tests a dozen of plugins daily, OneClick will let you do that without even using the server File-Manager.

So after using OneClick for months, I thought of doing a followup to the already published article. Mainly because, one – I don’t see many bloggers using it, and two – it had been a lifesaver for me!

Simple configuration

Unlike other plugins of it’s kind, OneClick configuration is super easy. You just have to install the plugin like any plugin, and change the file permissions appropriately to get it working. And what’s cooler? It auto-diagnoses whether everything is alright for the proper function of the plugin! And if it’s not, you can always follow the instructions provided to make it right.

Ideal for non-techies

Are you not a tech geek, but a blogger? One click is definitely for you! It usually takes all the pain away that non-techies have to go through when trying to test a good plugin or a theme! Simply copy and paste the download URL at OneClick and presto!

Saving hours

I have literally saved hours with OneClick. Imagine the pain you have to go through to download the plugin, login to cPanel, navigate on File Manager, upload the zip file and extract it? Well, I can’t remember the last time I did that. With one simple click, I have the option to replace all these steps and cut to the chase and activate the plugin from the plugins tab.

Trials had never been easy

Before I used OneClick, I always hesitated to trial out a new plugin. Mainly because of the time factor and the complications. But now, I can trial out a plugin without even downloading it! Yes, with OneClick, you can provide the external URL, and let OneClick download it automatically to your server. You just have to go to the plugins section on your Wordpress Adminstration and enable it.

In built Firefox support

Well, if you think visiting your Wordpress dashboard to activate a plugin is a pain, then don’t! If you’re a Mozilla Firefox user, you can install the Firefox add-on, and you’re good to go! You can install that set of plugins with some simple mouse clicks within the comfort of your own browser.

My experience with OneClick

In one word – Amazing! OneClick had proven to be one of the most vital aspects for the survival of my blog. For me, it had accomplished everything that I told you it would in this review. Thanks to OneClick, I can easily switch over plugins, update them with a few single clicks and live up to the urgency of the ‘urgent’ security updates!

And I would like to take a moment to thank Anirudh Sanjeev for this excellent creation.

You can download the plugin here. And trust me! It’s a lifesaver. Once you go OneClick, you’ll never go back. Have fun with it!
Related Posts

• OneClick – Who nees FTP?
• Bold SEO Wordpress Plugin for better SEO Keyword Targeting
• Wordpress 2.6 is out – and it’s a Killer!
• 15 Firefox Plugins that will make your blogging more fun and productive!
• Add sidebar tabs to your WordPress blog in 2 minutes!

The WP-DB Manager, helps you to:

• Optimize: Remove the unwanted clutter in your wordpress tables for them to perform faster.
• Repair: Repair the SQL database, in case data inconsistencies occur, in one click.
• Backup: Backup all your Wordpress data, so easily and even automate the process for it to be done in a regular interval.
• View Stats: Have a bird’s eye view of the database stats.
• Run SQL Queries!

All without even opening the cPanel. Basically, you can control your whole fleet of SQL tables within the Wordpress dashboard. Written by Lester Chan, this amazing plugin can be downloaded here. I highly recommend it for any Wordpress user, as a must-have plugin. The functionality it offers it simply, unprecedented.

If you are a bit not familiar with the whole database/table, SQL, PHP myAdmin, cPanel, concept and why you should care about them, you can check out his great video by tubetorial:

Related Posts

• Still using FTP to upload your plugins and themes?
• Three points on why you should upgrade to Wordpress 2.3.2 right now!
• Put your blogs’ private advertising on Auto-Pilot
• 6 Wordpress Plugins that Enhance Google Analytics on your blog
• 14 Wordpress Plugins that will help you make more money from Google AdSense on your blog.

• Draft-post bug.

Did you know that people can read your future timestamped posts with Wordpress 2.3.1? Yes, they can. Anyone who wanted to know what your article is going to be tomorrow, or steal the article and put it in their own blog, can do so, right now! And that’s the major ‘why’!

• Giving away your data structure.

Some detailed database error messages in 2.3.1 allows someone to have a eagle-eye look of your blog’s data structure. Now you wouldn’t want anyone messing with that right? In 2.3.2, this is fixed and you can breath again. Wonder why this update didn’t come sooner.

• Custom DB error messages.

For all those error messages that might pop-up in your blog blog from time to time, which of course, you want to conceal from your visitors, custom DB error messages are available. Yes, now you don’t have to worry about that, and neither your visitors.

So get Wordpress 2.3.2 now! It will save you from a lot of bad things At wordpress.com, you can take a detailed look at the fixed bugs and changes.
Related Posts

• Read your Google Reader feed items from your Desktop
• How to get your Feedburner subscriber count in Plain Text
• How you can fire up your blog with Ajax
• 8 Twitter tools that you should probably check-out!
• Give me 2 minutes and I’ll show you how to Optimize, Repair And Backup your Wordpress database within Wordpress!