Smart YouTube – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- Don’t you just love attaching Youtube videos on your posts or RSS feeds? Videos are actually a big help for different blogs, as people tend to like watching more than reading stuffs. However, the problem with too much videos is that it uses a huge size of your bandwidth and resources, that’s why people drop it off already.
However, with the Smart Youtube plugin, this will no longer be a problem for bloggers and website owners. With this plugin, you can attach not just single videos from Youtube but also playlists in your posts, comments or RSS feeds. Size is not a problem with this plugin, as it is fairly small and integrates with your whole WordPress blog.
Even HD Youtube videos can be attached on posts and can be played back on full screen. It can also make the videos viewable on smartphones, such as the iPhone.
So what is different about Smart Youtube in the traditional Youtube video embedding? The answer lies in the codes. This plugin generates an xHTML code from the embedded video file, so it makes it fairly smaller and easier to load. It also surpasses many compliance issues and validation errors that are main problems with the default HTML code in Youtube.
Again, Youtube videos can be included in RSS feeds via this plugin. So, your subscribers won’t be left out on what you were talking about in the whole post, just because they cannot view the video in their RSS readers. They can even see preview screenshots of the video if their RSS reader does not support Youtube.
This plugin also creates a customizable look for your Youtube videos, such as colored borders to either match or complement your site layout and skin. Even size and position parameters can be fixed via the plugin configuration page.
The only problem with this plugin is that it is only exclusive to Youtube videos, and you have to use other closer plugins which support other video sharing sites like Vimeo if you want to embed videos from there. However, who knows, they might add this feature up the next time?
Overall, this plugin is a great tool for those who care much about videos. No problems with bandwidths, speeds, slowing down of sites, or anything else that could make your visitors leave. It is a lightweight plugin that can even be viewed on your iPhone and other mobile devices.
Check out the Smart YouTube plugin here.
Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- Contact forms in blogs provide useful and beneficial results to blog owners as well as their visitors. As you can see, the easier it takes for people to contact you, the higher the chances that they would feel good to interact with you. One such good contact form in WordPress comes as a plugin – the Contact Form 7.
Obviously, it is a recent improvement of old Contact Form plugins supplied for WordPress. Its purpose is clear, to provide contact form, but this plugin also provides more features than just being a simple way to reach the webmaster.
First of all, this plugin is highly customizable. Its layout can actually be configured to match your overall layout in a simple way. You can put different fields on the form, depending on your preference and needs. You can add data to the drop-down lists on each field. Definitely customized and personalized as you would like it to be!
It can also support file uploads and attachment. Yes, it’s definitely not your ordinary contact form. As we said above, you can add this option depending on what your website data needs. Also, with one plugin, you can add multiple forms with different configurations to different pages and posts to your site. That’s a no-hassle form setup!
Not only that, it also supports Akismet spam filtering, so not everyone can be filling up your forms. CAPTCHA can also be enabled to ensure that a human is filling up the right information and data on the form.
After installing the plugin, attaching the form to a page or wherever in your blog is not a hard thing. You know, it uses just a shortcode for that. The code is just [contact-form 1 "My contact form"] or something like that. So no more complicated codes to copy and paste from one place to another.
Those reasons above actually make this plugin a favorite by most bloggers. Actually without it, contact forms are a tiresome thing to do and it is troublesome to get it configured to receive the right information or else data will be messed up. Its developers are always ready to help the users, so if you ever have a concern or problem with the plugin, you may visit their website in http://contactform7.com. You can also download the plugin via that webpage.
Nonetheless, this plugin is a must-have by each blog, and don’t worry, it’s definitely free to use.
Tweet Meme Retweet Button – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service)- Obviously, Twitter is becoming very popular nowadays in sharing posts or anything interesting in the WWW. That’s why it is fairly essential for your blog to have a Retweet Button. A cool plugin that can do that function for you is the TweetMeme Retweet Button.
With this plugin installed, it lets you add a retweet button within your blog posts that visitors can click to share to their followers as easy as a click of the mouse. This button is fairly very easy to add to the blog’s pages and posts, and it can go along well with most themes and most blogging platforms and applications. In WordPress, it can be easily customized to go alongside every post you blog about so that your readers can immediately share the post as soon as their mind decides to do such. No more having to go through the unnecessary steps of copying links and pasting them on the Twitter dashboard to tweet to their followers.
This plugin can also let you add the Retweet Button not only on the main blog posts and pages but also on your RSS feeds. This is particularly useful for more exposure. Attach it on your emails or in other websites you have, it is really compatible with most sites. Like other social networking plugins, the retweet button also shows you how many times people have retweeted the link to your blog post, for a more informed popularity show off.
While this button is very useful in marketing your online presence, it is not as useful as Digg Digg or Social Slider or other plugins that also offer other sites to connect with. Apparently, this plugin only connects with Twitter and it is only where it goes to share the links. Also, having no customization whether you want the number of retweets to be displayed or not, you have no way of controlling it in case you would not want to display it. Having a huge number of retweets boosts the author’s spirit, but it can do otherwise to those who only have a few or even no retweets.
Another thing that one can find as a flaw in this plugin is the fact that you cannot revise the text you will be tweeting. Yes, it means there will only be that one specific pattern of text that will be retweeted throughout the WWW.
Overall, this Retweet button is a really useful button if you are also into the twitter world. But in case you would not want the statistics published, this is not the app for you.
Learn more about the Tweet Meme WordPress plugin here.
Social Slider – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service )-Another cool plugin that is used for social bookmarking and sharing is the Social Slider. I see this fairly frequently on many sites, and you might have too. This is the box floating on the sides of the screen, mostly on the left side, that contains social networking buttons that also slides along with the page as you scroll it down.
Sounds familiar? Yes, apparently, it is currently one of the most common plugins for social sharing used by most bloggers today, alongside Digg Digg. Like the latter, Social Slider plugin can also connect with different sites such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Buzz, Tumblr, LinkedIn, NetworkedBlogs, MySpace, Orkut, FriendConnect, Digg, Picasa, Flickr, Youtube, Last.fm, Delicious, and much more. It also has a Newsletter and RSS buttons for that easy bookmarking and subscription. Also, like Digg Digg, it is fairly customizable too in different areas.
Layout and theme-wise, it can be customized to match the rest of the website theme. You can choose whether it can be displayed full, compact, or with only minimal icons. You can also customize on the position, height, color, and transparency of the box. Color schemes can be either dark or light, depending on how your website looks overall. You can also control the movement of the box when it expands, how fast or how slow it goes upon hoovering. You can also disable this plugin when your page is viewed on a mobile device, so as not to interfere with the small resources used in mobile display.
The default position of the sliding box is on the left of the page and you can keep it unchanged if you see it fit. Where the page opens after a click on the button can also be changed to either the same window or another tab, depending on how you think your visitors will benefit on it. At this moment, the default installation file of this plugin is available in three languages English, Polish, and Spanish.
Social Slider is free to use, however there is also a paid version, the Social Slider Pro which of course has more features than the standard one. A licensed Pro version though can only be used in only one blog for as long as you like, however, it is highly customizable to go along your whole website for that cool visitor experience and quick sharing through the most visited sites.
To check out the Social Slider Plugin please click here.
Digg Digg – WordPress Plugin
( The Best Web Hosting Service )-Social bookmarking is also a way to go marketing your WordPress blog. One cool plugin that gives you the ability to do such is Digg Digg. Created by Yong Mook Kim, it has already developed much differently from when it started.
The latest version, which is available at WordPress.org plugin site, now boasts of having connections to different small and big social networking sites. Digg Digg, while simply a plugin that gears users to put buttons to posts and pages for sharing and bookmarking, is actually one of the most sought after plugins by many bloggers.
Upon installing the plugin, you can choose which buttons it will display after every post or page. You can choose from a long list of sites, some of which are Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Google Buzz/Plus, Twitter, TweetMeme, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Yahoo Buzz.
Its function is fairly simple, but Digg Digg makes it cool by letting you customize how the buttons appear after posts. The buttons can be customized to act like a fixed background image as well as they can also be programmed to have a scrolling effect on either sides of the page.
This plugin is also available in numerous languages and thus can be used by different website owners. Buttons can also be displayed flexibly depending on how it is coded, and you don’t have to worry about it making your website slow, as it will not eat too much of your bandwidth.
Real-time statistics of bookmarks or number of shares are also displayed upon each button, giving you an accurate data on how users found your post useful. Some users don’t just leave comments, but share the posts immediately after finding it helpful either for them or for someone they know. Of course without that statistics, you cannot be able to track down where your post is shared to.
The one annoying thing I see in Digg Digg plugin, though it is also a good thing, is the fact that it updates so frequently. When we say frequently, it can either be monthly or even twice monthly. While it is understandable, given the fact that social networks change API for security reasons, it can quite make you think whether you will upgrade today or just wait for the next update. Of course, for as long as you are not updating, the plugin will prompt you on the dashboard that it has an update.
Interested in learning more about the Digg Digg WordPress Plugin.
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