Birmingham WordCamp Take away – Plugins and Tools

On a previous post, I outlined my impressions from the Birmingham WordCamp for WordPress (WP). Here I want to list out some of the cool plugs in and tools I saw. Most of these tools need to be run on the self hosted sites and can’t be run on the free wordpress.com sites. None the less, for my future use and maybe to help someone else here they are in no particular order:

Codex.wordpress.org – this is not a tool but a reference resource for doing anything with WP.

WP-sIFR – style your headlines using different fonts – SEO and print still see regular HTML but browser displays nice font. link resourse: sifrgenerator.com

ALL-IN-ONE-SEO; SEO SLUG; YARPP; SOCIABLE; GOOGLE XML SITEMAPS – Search Engine Optimazation tools

Analytics360 – analytic tool – duh

wp_query – add custom content to site

Flutter – the ultimate (a few of the presentations hit this one) custom content manager – add hooks to databases and custom fields and content.

My page order (also a my category order plug) – set pages to show on menu in your order as opposed to alpha.

Page sidebar – html on side bar

cformsII – contact manager – with email etc.

wp_shop == $50 but best shopping cart with links to payment etc.

FeedSmith – hook to Google’s feedburner which allows you to add subscribers and feed your posts to them via multiple channels (RSS, email, etc).

exec-php – code in posts, pages and text widget

Map-press – allows maps in your posts / sidebar

Artisteer.com – not a plug in but a full tools for creating themes for WP, Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, Dot Net Nuke, or static page.

Powerpress – PodCast ability to WP. Some tools for creating a pod cast would be a good mic and software like -griffinitalk; Audacity; garageBands; Adobe Soundbooth

For the record I did not find these on my own. These are all gleaned from the wonderful presentations by the experts at the WordCamp. As I learn more about WP, I will use these notes as a basis for further research. One other take away – if you are trying to do something in WP and it doesn’t seem easy to do – there is a good chance someone has written a plug in to handle it for you. If you find any good ones, please let us know.