Project Blogger Update: Week 4
I had a chance to chat with my apprentice Kelly Kilpatrick from Rancho Santa Margarita Lifestyles this afternoon – we spent quite a while talking about the competition and our strategy for the contest. I’m really impressed with the quality of her posts and she’s definitely shown a real passion for blogging. Please have a look at her site if you haven’t already.
Reading tonight that Automattic has released a new Stats plugin for WordPress, reminded me I had been meaning to add some more plugins to Kelly’s blog, so I got to work.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I added tonight:
Statistics
*NEW* Automattic Stats – I’m interested to see how well this works out of this… currently using Clicky to track visitors.
Popularity Contest – keeps a count of what pages and posts are most popular.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO Title Tag – optimizes RSMLifestyles’ title tags.
Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Fina – create a Google Sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of RSMLifestyles.
Wordpress WWW Redirect Plugin » Justin Shattuck – redirects rsmlifestyles.com to www.rsmlifestyles.com.
Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin | FuCoder.com – ensures there is only one URL associated with each blog entry.
Head Meta Description – adds dynamic meta descriptions to each post.
More here WordPress Plugins needed to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines
Functionality
WP-Polls – Nice AJAX poll for Kelly’s site so she can add some “Sticky” features.
Kramer – adds inbound links to a post as pingbacks by checking Technorati and monitoring incoming referrers.
WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.
WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection- drop in form for users to contact Kelly.
Subscribe to Comments – allows commenters to subscribe to e-mail notifications of subsequent comments.
Related Entries – displays related posts on single pages, based on keywords.
Brians Latest Comments 1.5.5 – displays threaded and weighted comments in the sidebar.
More later as we begin to modify Kelly’s template.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Make sure to follow Inman News on Twitter too!
3 Comment(s)
4 Trackback(s)
- From Connect SF 2007 Blog | May 8, 2007
- From Real Estate 2.0 | May 11, 2007
- From Real Estate 2.0 | May 17, 2007
- From myFeedz - Articles on "real estate blogs" | May 28, 2007
Shaun McLane | May 7, 2007 | Reply
I’m sure you already thought of this, but this isn’t just a nice list to show what you’ve added to Kelly’s blog…it’s also a great list for people to follow for starting a blog. I’m asked frequently what type of blog people should use, and if there are other tools they can use. Very nice list. I’m a clicky fan too, although I use Shaun Inman’s Mint for all my big sites.
Erik Hersman | May 7, 2007 | Reply
That’s an extensive list of plugins. I especially like how you’re paying such close attention to the SEO part.
Did you think about adding a way for people to sign up to get blog posts via email – like you do with feedburner?
Joel Burslem | May 7, 2007 | Reply
@Shaun – I love Mint. I use it on this blog, but for Kelly’s we went with the free option with Clicky. May revisit when her traffic grows though.