There are so many different options for WordPress that learning every little thing about it and what it can do is nearly impossible. You may think you have everything mastered and then something comes along that is either new or you just have overlooked it in the past. Even though I have been blogging for six or so years and have been using the WordPress CMS engine for at least four of those, I still learn new things about it everyday.

Plugins is one of the areas where you can almost always learn something new. New plugins are constantly being created and updated for WordPress. Some are great, others so-so and some are just down right crap! These plugins make WordPress the most flexible, easy to use Content Management Solution out there.

Most WordPress plugins work nearly straight out of the box with a little bit of configuration to set your preferences. Some others take a bit more time and knowledge to set up. Either way, when you add a new plugin to your blog, you are doing so to improve the functionality of your site.

One of the perks of doing a blogging blog is that you tend to experiment with more plugins so that you can pass the knowledge that you gain in your trials on to your readers so that they may better their own sites. There are also times when you are recognized as a “blogging guru” (please don’t ever classify me this way I am the anti-guru), and developers send you their premium plugins to try out for free.

In addition to WP Syndicator, here are a couple more that I have been playing around with lately:

Zemanta is a cool free tool that analyzes your text and suggests images and other media sources to add into your post. While you are typing, they magically appear in a box to the right of your editor. You can scroll through them and pick the ones that are best suited for your article. If you are worried about copyright infringement, each source includes the type of license that is associated with it so that you can decide if it is usable for your purposes. Most of the media has some sort of GPL or Creative Commons license or may even be in the public domain.

In addition to the media hook-ups, Zemanta also picks sites related to your post to link back to. This makes linking to other blogs a breeze and generates good will from the sites you link to and probably a few reciprocal links back to your site. Its a win-win-win situation.

• Your readers get additional sources.
• Other blogs get links from your site.
• You get links back in the form of pingbacks from other blogs
• Plus, you get reciprocal links because of the good karma that you are putting out there.

If you register with Zemanta, you can also list your blog (or blogs) in their network of sites that other users of their plugin connect to. They will do a verification of your site to make sure that it is appropriate for their system, so you want to be sure and have a good content rich site ready before you submit it. But, if it is approved… Think of all of the backlinks that you are going to receive from the others using this plugin linking to your articles! Cool beans, huh!?!

The other free plugin that I have been experimenting with is Twitter Tools. Now this one is a bit more complicated and the documentation a bit on the lite side. But, if you can read between the lines a bit, you should have no problems in getting it set up…

The plugin integrates your blog with your Twitter account by you creating a Twitter application. Don’t worry… There is no programming involved. The application is built into the plugin, but to use it you have to register it with Twitter and get your app and OAuth keys. Its pretty simple to do, just be sure and read the directions very carefully.

What will it do? A lot… But here is a quick overview.

It allows you to send new blog posts to Twitter. I know, a lot of others do this. Here is the difference. Have you noticed the line under all tweets… “via the web”, via TweetDeck“, “via SocialOomph“, etc. Each of those lines are a backlink to that applications website. When you set up your app, you name the application (Your site name would be good) and enter the location of the app. This gives you a link to your new post, through the tweet you sent, plus a link to your main site though the “via your app” line.

Other stuff the Twitter Tools plugin does:

• You can also set it up to send your tweets to your blog as posts
• Send Tweets from your blogs dashboard
• Create daily or weekly digests of your post
• Adds a widget that you can use to display your latest tweets
• Has an API hook that developers can use to pass your tweets onto other apps or sites

This is why I blog with WordPress. The tools that are available for it are constantly being developed, tweaked and improved. The uses for it as a CMS are unlimited. Sure, there is a learning curve involved… But, that is why I am here… To help bring that curve down to as close to level as I possibly can for you. Enjoy!

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