The biggest difference between a Blogger (blogspot) and a Wordpress blog is the use of custom plugins. These plugins have made Wordpress blogs better in terms of functionality. Believe it or not, a lot of Wordpress blog owners depend a lot on plugins. If you understand the structure and the codes, you can even make your own Wordpress plugin.

How flexible! This additional piece of codes can benefit both you and your readers.

There are a lot of custom ready made Wordpress plugins available to feed your needs. Here is a list of 16 great plugins which I think is really useful (however some are optional) for enhancing your Wordpress blogs.

[1] Adsense Manager

Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your Wordpress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours. If you monetize your blog with Google Adsense, this is a good plugin that allow you to add your Google Adsense ads using widget.

[2] Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments”. By deafault, this plugin is included in every Wordpress.org blogware. All you need is the WordPress.com API key to activate this feature. Signup an account in Wordpress.com to obtain the API key. Without this plugin, you will receive a lot of spam comments when time pass by.

[...more]

Tags: plugins

Sometime ago, if you ever notice the announcement from Wordpress.org, they stated that version 2.4 will be skipped and will be focusing on version 2.5 development. Normally, the Wordpress development team will release a new version in every 5 months time. Because of time constraint, 2.4 is skipped and 2.5 is now almost available to the public.

If you refer to the roadmap, Wordpress 2.5 was planned to be released on 10th March 2008. However, Matt from the development theme said:

The software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date.

If you are interested to be a tester of Wordpress 2.5 and have feedbacks, you can join the testers mailing list. [...more]

Tags: release

We have covered a topic on choosing a good domain name. Apparently, an impressive domain name will be something like yourdomain.com. However, the domain name itself can cost you $10 per year. What if now I tell you that you can get your own domain name for FREE?

Did I say FREE? Yes, for FREE. Not only for the name, but you can now host your own blog - ALL FOR FREE. How is that possible? Definitely possible with HyperWebEnable.com!!

HyperWebEnable is a web2.0 company offering reliable web services and online advertising based on the foundation of robust web techniques. Technological expertise in the areas of html, php, enables us to provide a solid presence on the web for our clients and very efficient means for online advertising. As a Silicon Valley based company, HyperWebEnable offers state-of-the-art development – enabling e-commerce, enabling web presence or enhancing your existing web presence, and expanding the reach to end-customers.

This is definitely a great offer for bloggers who are still having their blog hosted in free blog service such as blogspot.com. Impress your readers and yourself, get your own domain for FREE!

Are you still using free blog service like blogspot.com? What are you waiting for? Convert your blog (yourname.blogspot.com) to complete website (yourname.com) for free. Install blogs, forums, wiki, CMS or your choice of script. Get free www.yourname.com!! Signup now!

Tags: domain, free

When we mention “tag” in blogging, it refers to a keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (blog posts). In short, it’s a post description in the form of keyboards. It’s just like categorizing or labeling your blog posts.

tag cloud

Why should we even bother? [...more]

Tags: definition

Web 2.0, what is it? Now you always see people mention about Web 2.0 but how much do you know about Web 2.0? It is a new trend in the WWW (World Wide Web) technology. The term “2.0″ simple means second generation. It involves web-based community such as social networking / bookmarking sites, wikis, blogs and more.

Blogs! Yes, blogs are also one of the Web 2.0 technologies. That is why I mention Web 2.0 here. Why should you even care? If you are going to become a blogger yourself, this is some basic background knowledge that you have to know. It has its impact in the blogging world which involves issue like SEO. [...more]

Tags: definition