Are you using WordPress yet? If so, you know all the amazing things you can do. With a click of a mouse, you can download thousands of plugins that can make your blog/site do anything you choose. In this post, lets look at 10 plugins that can offer you, the photographer, a wide array of capabilities within your site – from marketing to showcasing your work.
All-In-One SEO
All-In-One-SEO – Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo can bring in loads of traffic to a site, but need to understand what your site is about. Search engines look beyond what you’re writing about, and also focus on your keywords and descriptions. Having a plugin for your search engine optimization helps make the connection easy. Here are a few items that this plugin provides: generates META tags automatically, fine tune Page Navigational Links, override any title or META description information to make it clearer. And best of all…even if you are a beginner, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery – A full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slideshow option. Want to load large amounts of images to your site? You can load zipped image files quickly instead of individual files. Tag your images with meta data so search engines can see them. Auto generate thumbnail images on the fly. And so much more…
SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images – SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress SEO plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your images to search engines and when a user searches for a certain image, this is a key determining factor for a match. TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.
WP-Cycle
WP-Cycle – one of my favorites to add to a blog or site. Creates a running stream of image slides on a site and the best part is you can link them to a page or post. Easy to change sizing, both width and height and when the visitor hovers over the image, it pauses the show so they can click it.
Facebook Like Button
Facebook Like Button – Do you love your Facebook account? Why not make your blog posts more Facebook friendly? Social media helps connect content with visitors. And with this simple like button, you’ll make your content easily shared with a click of a button. Want to see it in action? Check out the top of this post and while you there, click on the like button!
WordPress Mobile Edition
WordPress Mobile Edition – Mobile devices like smart phones are growing fast. It is predicted that 1/2 of all mobile phones will be smart phones by the end of 2011. Is you site ready for this? Mobile editions will automatically create a layout that is mobile friendly allowing the visitor to see your site in a easy to view format.
Yet Another Related Posts
Yet Another Related Posts -(YARPP) – This plugin gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. Using a customizable algorithm considering post titles, content, tags, and categories, YARPP calculates a “match score” for each pair of posts on your blog. You choose the threshold limit for relevance and you get more related posts if there are more related posts and less if there are less.
W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache – Cache your sites for faster delivery of your information. With WordPress, there are may resources called upon to deliver the content to the visitors browser. From running scripts to accessing information in a database, each takes time and power from your server. If you have selected to host with an over capacity service, your server has to wait it’s turn to deliver the finished webpage. Cached sites are complete pages that can be delivered without running database searches or script running which cut the finished page load times. Either of these plugins can help your site run more efficiently.
WP DBManager and WP DB Backup
WP-DBManager and WP-DB-Backup Backing up your information is vitally important. Its bad enough to have your site go down; but if you lose everything, you’ll quickly learn the importance of a great backup system. While you have many options for backup, two great plugins that can help you along the way are listed here.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 – Contact forms are an integral part of running a website or blog. But designing a great form takes lots of effort. This plugin is easy to understand and simple to implement. Build a custom form and copy a small piece of code to your page and you are done. Once completed, you can modify the form without ever adjusting it on the page.
WordPress Stats
WordPress Stats – Stats for your site is important. Do you know what pages your visitors are looking at? Where did the last visitor come from? How many page or post views are you receiving per day, week or month? What is your most popular post this week, month or quarter? This amazing plugin will show all the important info about your site.
No Right Click Images
No Right Click Images – Remove the right-click on your page and images.
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About Virtual Photography
having just started out on the WordPress road I found ur plug in information extremely helpful – thank you
I think the plugin “WordPress SEO” by Joost de Valk is much better than All in One SEO. The options are endless but so easy to use. You should definitely check it out. He is a top, very knowledgable WordPress guy.
I just wrote an article for PPA magazine ( http://www.ppmag.com/web-exclusives/2011/02/blogging-seo-secrets.html ) that talks about the CommentLuv plugin, which is another great plugin to take advantage of.
In addition to several of the ones you listed, I also use a theme designed for photographers called Photocrati.
Hi Friends i found one another plugin for photo gallery its really useful and has so many features in it juz check it out http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mac-dock-gallery/
I’m curious, have you ever tried my WordPress SEO plugin? I think you’d love it
You can find it here: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/