One of the main requests you get as a developer from clients is to have a mailing list options on their website.

there are many options to create a mailing list.

you can let subscribers sign for a mail every time a post is published Subscribe2 does, provides a comprehensive subscription management and email notification system for WordPress blogs that sends email notifications to a list of subscribers when you publish new content to your blog.

you can also use a local program that runs on your client’s computer, let’s say you download something like 1st mass mailer, than you can let the client to import the new subscribers into a mailing list. (it’s the less comfortable way to do it).

and you can use the online tools for mailing list, most of them are very good, but they cost money. we really like mailchimp.

of course there are many great free and premium wordpress plugins for newsletter and mailing list, here are some of them:

Automatic Newsletter

This plugin will send a newsletter to everyone on your email list. You can specify how many recent posts it will send in the newsletter options under settings.

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Simple Newsletter Plugin

This plugin is a simple newsletter plugin. It can show opt-in form, save opt-in email and name, and send emails to your opt-in list. It also have import and export email data ability.

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Newsletter

This plug-in lets you collect subscribers on your blog with a single or double opt-in subscription process. Double opt-in means the user has to confirm a subscription following simple standard instructions sent to him via email.

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there is also a PRO version of this plugin, her:

http://www.satollo.net/plugins/newsletter-pro

MailChimp WordPress Plugin

The MailChimp WordPress plugin allows you to quickly and easily add your MailChimp signup form as a widget on your WordPress 2.3 or higher blog. See it in action on our own MailChimp Blog.

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*** try them all and find the one you like.

ENJOY

Popularity: 13% [?]

Sometimes you find yourself in need for maps in your blog. here’s a list of the top wordpress and google maps plugins:

PREMIUM

WP Geo Tagger

The WP Geo Tagger plugin can be used to add your current location to posts or to add an event location, so your readers can get directions in a snap. It even integrates Google Maps right on your posts!

• Add locations to your posts
• Include a Google Map using that location
• Creates a “Master Map” for your site, including all sitewide geo-tags
• Takes about a minute to install
• Includes full documentation and a screencast for any customization needs

DOWNLOAD

5sec Google Maps

• no API keys, no setup, no code editing
• works in sidebars, posts, pages and custom post types out of the box
• full screen support
• default shortcode, [gmap], can be changed
• multiple maps per post/page are supported
• 12 predefined markers/icons
• fully customizable HTML bubble/description
• uses local cache for Geocoding (address to lat/lng mapping) for max speed
• extensive documentation and examples
• works on WordPress versions 2.8 and newer

DOWNLOAD

Route Planner for WordPress

This plugin enables you to insert Google Maps widgets into your posts and pages, and by utilizing the Directions API , lets your user find directions to you (or any other address).

Built on the 5 star rated jQuery Route Planner plugin!

DOWNLOAD

User Locations

A WordPress Plugin which enables you to show your registered users locations on a frontend map from Google Maps. Comes packed with administrational settings for you to customize what information you want to display about your users and much more.

DOWNLOAD

FREE

Google Maps for WordPress

This plugin allows you to easily insert Google Maps into your blog, making use of the new shortCode system in WordPress 2.5. The maps can be configured to offer directions to or from the location, show or hide the zoom/pan controls, show/hide map type (street view, satellite, etc), activate zoom using mouse wheel, and more. PHP5 Required.

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XML Google Maps

This plugin allows you to easily insert Google Map or Google Earth Plugin Maps into your blog. You just have to add a link to your self defined Map from My Google Maps, Picasa Webalbum Picture Map, any geoRSS Feed (like Flickr), your uploaded Google Earth file (kmz, kml) or any other dynamic or static Google Earth file (umapper.com, flickr.com, etc.)

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WP Google Maps

With the Google Maps Plugin for WordPress you can easily add Google Maps to your WordPress blog.

To add Google Maps to a post or page you just have to enter [wp-google-maps (map-settings)], where (map-settings) is replaced with your map settings.

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Mappress

MapPress is the easiest way to create great-looking Google Maps and driving directions in your blog.

MapPress adds an interactive map to the wordpress editing screens. When editing a post or page just enter any addresses you’d like to map.

The plugin will automatically insert a great-looking interactive map into your blog. Your readers can get directions right in your blog and you can even create custom HTML for the map markers (including pictures, links, etc.)!

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Google Maps Plugin for WordPress

This plugin will let you easily create from simple maps with one marker and a text balloon, to complex multimarker maps with hypertext balloons as this page.

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Google Maps All In One

Google Maps is the internet standard for mapping and direction. And why not? Their latest APIs make for the easiest, most streamlined experience available. This plugin does all the work for you. No creating an account. No copying of links from google’s site. No need to go to google maps at all.

This plugin does it all, providing a solution for the everyday blogger, the ma and pa business owner, and even the most particular of power users! And it’s ready to be used in any environment – WordPress, BuddyPress, and Multisite – it’s never been easier than it is now!

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WordPress Geo Mashup

This plugin lets you save location information with posts, pages, and other WordPress objects. These objects can then be presented on interactive Google maps in many ways.

There are often two versions of the plugin available, stable and BETA. The BETA version includes all the stable version features, and also new features that need further testing.

URL

Popularity: 27% [?]

On the last two months we’ve been working on a huge wordpress website, soon i will be able to share it with you, it’s an old website, written in asp.net and one of the main targets was to transfer the CMS to wordpress while saving all the features from the old website. the main features were classifieds area, articles, not a complex but different registration from the one we familiar with in wordpress.

After two months I  can honestly say, each problem had a plugin to solve it. here is a list of the main plugins i used so far:

my first choice to handle the classifieds area on the website was to use Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin, it turned out to be an excellent choice, very easy to manage and lots of features.

I had to add some extra fields to the user registration and some of the authors, i did it using the awesome plugin Cimy User Extra Fields, the option “can only be modified by admin” is very important if you want to add some hidden fields to the user. and to solve the captcha fields which Cimy User extra fields doesn’t have i used WP-reCAPTCHA.

I had to allow the users to login with their email and not UserName as wordpress always ask, for this i found Email-Login it lets the users login with username and email too. and just to make all the login / register pages more pleasant and well designed i used InsiteLogin.

there some great plugins to enrich the articles pages (posts), WP-Print to add a print option to the article, WP-PageNavi for advanced posts navigation and WP-Email to allow readers to send the article to their friends.

And finally, To welcome the new visitors with a pop up message i used WordPress Popup Scheduler.

hope you found this useful, soon i will share the website with you.

Popularity: 19% [?]

From time to time you need an ads section to your website, or maybe a client is asking you to design him classifieds area, here are the top available Plugins And Themes:

Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin

This plugin is designed to allow you to add a classifieds ad section to your blog. You can use it to add pretty much any type of classified ads service that can run under a simplified structure taking some basic information from the user.

DEMO

Classipress

Instantly turn your WordPress blog into a professional Classified Ads Web site.
ClassiPress was built with a focus on simplicity, affordability and usability.

DEMO

wpclassifieds

wpClassifieds is a free WordPress theme that transform your wordpress blog into a classified ads site similar to Craigslist or OLX based on classifieds ads system Open Classifieds. It is released under a GPL license.
Some features: Publish ads without registration, Publish ads with pictures, Confirm new ads by email, Edit ads after publish, Unlimited categories and subcategories, Translatable theme, reCaptcha, Akismet

DEMO

Popularity: 22% [?]

* Supports Up To Wp e-Commerce 3.7.8

We are happy to release our new Premium wp-e-commerce theme for wordpress WOPSHOP.

as we already know, many people want to create their own store using WordPress, this theme helps you create a unique and exclusive look and feel for your store.

for the next 30 days the price will be $5.99 and then it will cost more.

A new and exclusive designed wordpress theme to use with wp-e-commerce plugin.

- wp – e – commerce theme

- theme options

- promo carousel

- widget ready

- full integration with blog posts

- stylish header fonts

- unique category for homepage products

- all browsers compatible

- very friendly to use

* Supports Up To Wp e-Commerce 3.7.8

HOMEPAGE

screenshot of the homepage, including the promo carousel, new arrivals category and widgets.

products page

Blog Post Page

* Supports Up To Wp e-Commerce 3.7.8

Popularity: 31% [?]

One of the best ways to let your users say their opinion except from the comments area is by rating systems in your blog. here are the best plugins we found:

I Like This

This plugin allows your visitors to simply like your posts instead of comment it.

DOWNLOAD | URL

WP-PostRatings

Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD | URL

GD Star Rating

GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings. Plugin supports use of cache plugins and dynamic loading of data using ajax.

DOWNLOAD | URL

Comment Rating

If you’re tired of moderating readers’ comments on your blog, stop doing that and let your readers decide which comment deserves to be shown. If you’re getting outrageous comments on your blog, don’t get too angry yet. Let’s see how many readers feel the same. You can do these tasks (and more) with the Comment Rating plugin.

DOWNLOAD | URL

DS-Rating for WordPress

DS-Rating is a plugin for wordpress that gives you the ability to add a rating to posts, anywhere from 0 to 5 (including half steps). Note that this plugin does not allow users to rate posts when browsing a site – It is only set up to allow publishers or administrators to add ratings when creating or editing a post.

DOWNLOAD | URL

WP Digg This

WP Digg This is a plugin that adds a Digg button, but with a twist. Instead of adding a Digg button to all your posts, WP Digg This plugin selectively adds the button only to posts you want.

DOWNLOAD | URL

Popularity: 21% [?]

from time to time you want more than just the name of the author to display in your new theme. here is a list of the best authors related plugins for WordPress.

User Photo

Allows a user to associate a profile photo with their account through their “Your Profile” page.

DOWNLOAD

Author Exposed

This plugin does the same thing as the the_author tag, displays the author name, only this time it’s linked to hidden layer (div). By clicking on the author link the hidden layer(div) pop’s up with author info gathered from the profile page, plus gravatar photo (if author email is assigned with one).

Example here

DOWNLOAD

Posts by Author Plugin for WordPress

This plugin will show the last X posts by the current author either at the bottom of every post, or where you manually specify in each post. Using the built-in options page, you can choose the number of posts to show, set the header text, choose to show the post dates, select the format of the date, and choose whether or not to include the current post in the list. Other options have been added since the first release.

DOWNLOAD

Author Slug

This WordPress plugin lets you create custom permalinks for author pages.

DOWNLOAD

Popularity: 11% [?]

One of the great tricks to keep traffic in site and lower the bounce rate on CMS and Blogs platform is the related posts / articles at the end of the content. here are some great wordpress plugins that will do that job.

LinkWithIn

LinkWithin is a blog widget that appears under each post, linking to related stories from your blog archive. looks very neat and professional and works smooth as well. you can see it in action on the bottom of every post here on our website and also here: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/intelligenttravel/.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site, features: templating (you can customize yourself the way it will display the results, disallow certain tags or categories and much more. very recommended!!!

Wasabi Related Entries

This plugin will output a series of “related” entries based on keyword matching.

you can limit the results, include excerpt and decide the html tags before and after the related entries.

Similar Posts

This plugin displays a list of posts which are related or similar to the current post. excellent plugin with a great support.

WordPress Related Posts

WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed.

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Hope you will find the plugin that fits you best. tell us what you think.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Here are some great links and news from the wordpressphera this week.

a very clever way to use widgets for text areas or text blocks in wordpress, let’s say you want to display some text in your sidebar, footer or CMS website homepage, you can do it like this: look-ma-editable-text-regions. until i read it I used to open category called, let’s say, “textareas” and to add posts to that category. and then pell the data with a single post plugin, like this one, Get A Post plugin.

A new movie called “phobidilia” is going to show on the toronto international film festival, as many films does, they promote themselves with a trailer and downloads website, this one used wordpress to do that. very nice work.

Popularity: 15% [?]

If we talk about speed, uptime and other issues on the minds of wordpress bloggers, here are some tips and plugins to keep your website optimized all the time.

Caching

wp-cache – WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to less than a millisecond.

wp-super-cache – This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

W3 Total Cache – W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by caching frequent operations, reducing the weight of various theme files and providing transparent content delivery network integration. The goal is to improve the user experience for the readers of your blog without having to change WordPress, your theme, your plugins or how you produce your content. When fully utilized, your blog will be able to sustain extremely high traffic spikes without requiring hardware upgrades or removing features or functionality from your theme.

Performance

HyperDB – HyperDB is a very advanced database class that replaces WP’s built-in DB functions.

wp Tuner – The (mu-compatible) WP Tuner plugin for WordPress is a powerful and easy to use way to answer many hard questions about why your blog is slow or cranky. What’s causing the slowdown? Is it a plugin? Is it your host?

Database

DB Cache – This plugin caches every database query with given lifetime. It is much faster than other html caching plugins and uses less disk space for caching.

Optimize DB – MySQL is a great database, but it doesn’t clean itself up the way it should sometimes. This plugin runs an optimize table command on your WordPress tables, effectively defragmenting it. This is very useful for tables that are frequently updated.

Other Online Tips:

http://yoast.com/40-wordpress-optimisation-tips/

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/13-great-wordpress-speed-tips-tricks-for-max-performance.html

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/general/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website-and-optimize-your-code/

Popularity: 16% [?]