In the left column of the superfooter, I wanted a tag cloud.  Recent versions of WordPress have tags built in and you can use the wp_tag_cloud function to display a tag cloud on your site.  My code is

<?php wp_tag_cloud(‘smallest=8&largest=22&number=20′); ?>

The attribute number=20 limits my cloud to only show the most used 20 tags in Red Pill.

In the middle column, I’m using the Recent Comments plugin to provide a list of (duh!) recent comments on Red Pill.   The Recent Comments plugin is built by the same developer who built the Similar Posts plugin I wrote about on day 2 of this series.  Like that plugin, Recent Comments has a ton of powerful configuration and display options that can be set from within the WordPress admin dashboard. 

In the right column, I wanted to bring in the RSS feed from our Tumblelog – Blue Pill.  I’m using the SimplePie RSS classes to grab the RSS feed, parse it, and display it.  There’s a number of plugins utilizing SimplePie for WordPress (and tons of other content management systems out there), but I like the official SimplePie plugin that the SimplePie team maintains.  I like the built in template system within the plugin that seperates the functionality from the markup and design.  Once I installed the plugin and used the dashboard configuration page to define a new template called ‘tumblr’ that removed the descrition feed from the display, I added the following code to the superfooter php

<ul>
                <?php
                echo SimplePieWP(‘http://shinynewtoy.tumblr.com/rss’, array(
                ‘items’ => 5,
                ‘cache_duration’ => 900,
                ‘date_format’ => ‘n/j/Y g:i A’,
                ‘template’ => ‘tumblr’
                ));
                ?>
</ul>

And with that, my superfooter was no full of some initial goodies.

Today, I’m going to adding a list of related posts on the single post page of this WordPress blog.  If this works correctly – and you are looking at the single post version of this page (not the index, archive, or search result pages) you should a list below that shows 3 posts that you might also find of interest.  I’m utilizing the Similar Posts plugin to power this list.  There’s many plugins that will easy give your blog the same functionality, but I like the Similar Posts plugin because you can fine-tune how “post similarity” is defined using post titles, content, and tags.  Many related post plugins simply use tags.

Once you install the plugin, it’s a simple matter of inserting the function into your theme …

<?php //simlilar posts listing
if (function_exists(‘similar_posts’)) { ?>
<div id=”similar-posts”>
<h3>You may also like:</h3>
<?php similar_posts(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

….and then add some styling the list it generates.  You can do both of these tasks directly in the admin panels for the plug-in or in your PHP and CSS files for your theme.  I also like that the configuration options allow you to easily filter out categories and authors.

So in effort, to roll out some new features to Red Pill, as well as get back in the blogging routine, I’m going to add a new site feature to Red Pill every day this week. Each new site feature will be accompanied by a blog post.  And so here we go…

I just added the All-in-One-SEO-Pack plugin for WordPress.  We always install this plugin for our clients, but for whatever reason…we forgot to add it here.  Talk about neglecting your own best practices!

The biggest thing the plugin does for you is format your post titles in the browser title bar so that the post title appears before the Blog title.  The result of which is optimization for your search engine.  There’s a ton of configuration options in this plugin, and I you need a roadmap to figure out how to set everything, I’ll just point you in the direction of the one I used.

This isn’t a list of the best plugins out there.  It is simply a list of plugins which are installed every time we deploy a WordPress site.  Actually, most of them are plugins that help out WordPress admins and editors. 

Customizable Post Listings
I’ve heard more than one WordPress ninja refer to this plugin as the Swiss Army knife of WP plugins.  What it does it allow you to quickly include lists of recent posts, recent comments, random posts, and other types of lists.  It’s inevitable that somewhere in your site design that you’ll want to include a list like this.

Dublin Core for WordPress
Another plugin that easily optimizes your site for search engines by inserting the Dublin Core metadata as meta tags in your posts and pages. 

The Excerpt Reloaded
Expands the options in using content excerpts in your themes. 

Feedburner FeedSmith
Priceless if you are using Feedburner to monitor your RSS feeds.  Which you should be. 

Google XML Sitemaps
Help optimize your web site for search engines.  The plugins I love most provide a ton of useful functionality without actually having to do a lot, if any, configuration.  Just install and you’re done.

One Click Plugin Updater
Keeping WordPress sites updated used to be a nightmare.  Seemed like every time I logged into the WordPress dashboard, I was informed that I had out of date plugins.  While that still seems to be the case, the One Click Plugin Updater actually makes the process of keeping plugins up to date painless.  Does what it says it does – updates all your plugins with a single mouse click. Eliminates the painfully repetitive process of downloading, unzipping, and uploading updates of your installed plugins one by one.

Search Everything
Expands the search functionality of WordPress to include more than just search of blog posts.  If you are utilizing WordPress as a a CMS, this plugin is an absolute must.

WordPress Database Backup
Does exactly what you think it does.  The beauty of this plugin is that you can use it to configure automated weekly backups of your DB.  Quite honestly, this plugin is mission critical.

What are your essential WordPress plugins?