About two weeks ago, we covered a story about the All-in-One SEO Pack and the fact that it was no longer being supported.  To the relief of thousands of WordPress users, about a week later, we found out that someone else had resurrected the plugin.   The lesson learned was obviously that too many people had come to rely heavily on a single WordPress plugin.

Thanks to a heads up from my friend Leland at Themelab, it looks like someone has attempted to put a fork into the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin, with the release of a new plugin called Platinum SEO Pack.  Here are a few of the features that you will get on top of what AiO SEO Pack included:

1. Ability to add follow or nofollow and noindex meta tags to any post or page.
2. Automatic 301 redirect for permalink changes.
3. Nofollow links to your archives, categories, and tags pages.

To read more, or to download the Platinum SEO Pack, check out the authors page.

Statistics have long shown that rotating your advertising or affiliate banners can decrease advertising blindness and increase clicks.   More clicks makes bloggers happy and advertisers happy!

A few months ago I wrote a post about the Got Banners WordPress plugin, which is a simple WordPress plugin that was designed to allow you to rotate banners in a set location.  What it does not do is allow you to rotate multiple banners without displaying them all, meaning you can’t rotate 8 banners within 4 posts, etc.

I’ve been waiting for a suitable replacement and I believe yesterday I may have found what I was looking for.   What I’m talking about is a new free WordPress plugin by MaxBlogPress called Max Banner Ads.

To get an idea what this plugin is about, you really need to click over and check out the video demonstration that comes with it, but I will attempt to explain it here.   Max Banner Ads sort of works like the Shylock AdSense WordPress plugin in that it requires no code hacking.  You actually control your advertisements from the WordPress dashboard.

Max Banner Ads allows you to rotate several banners in a single spot or multiple spots, and you can choose from several locations, including your header, sidebar (using widgets), footer, or even within your posts.   Want to place it only in the second post?  You can do that as well!

As I mentioned above, this plugin is actually being released for free by the author, but he does ask that you write a quick review or at least mention it on your blog.   Considering the potential value of this plugin, I think that is more than fair.

[Check out the Max Banner Ads WordPress Plugin]

Almost a week ago we wrote a post about how we noticed that the All-in-One SEO Pack was no longer supported by the original author, Uberdose.  This was obviously very concerning for many WordPress users as it is the most popular plugin and so many people have come to rely on it to optimize their blogs for search engines.

My original concern was that the author had not disclosed licensing information with the release of the plugin, but I noticed today that an update to this plugin was available and it appears that someone else is now supporting this plugin.  If you are wondering who is now supporting it, you can find information about the new owner over at ImBloggingThat.

Though this is exciting news for users of this plugin, I’m not familiar with the author so hopefully he is up on the latest SEO techniques and provides a similar commitment to what Uberdose did for the plugin. Ideally, this plugin really needs to be built into the standard WordPress install because it is so important and widely used, and everyone either is or should be using it if they aren’t already using a more advanced version like SEO Sniper.  Can we get this built into WordPress 2.7?  Only time will tell…

You might remember that a couple of weeks ago I reviewed a premium WordPress plugin called WP Affiliate Pro. In the time since then, I came across a similar premium WordPress plugin called WP Ninja Affiliate, which I managed to pick up a copy of and have been playing around with ever since. What can I say? I’m a sucker for plugins that have the potential to make my online life easier!

At first glance, WP Ninja Affiliate might seem a lot like the WP Affiliate Pro plugin due to the many similarities, but in testing I’ve found that in many ways, it is a more advanced version of that plugin. It does the things you’ve come to expect from WP Affiliate Pro, such as managing your affiliate links, adding cloaked affiliate links to your existing blog posts, and even provide you with click statistics.

In addition to all that good stuff, you’ll also be able to:

1. Assign Multiple Keywords - If you want to use multiple anchor text for an individual affiliate link, you can do so with this plugin.
2. Group Affiliates - Group your affiliate links for easy management.
3. Enjoy Smart Caching - This plugin uses a smart caching feature to prevent your blog from slowing down.

I also found that many of the functions are easier to do than WP Affiliate Pro. Also, in the time that I’ve owned this plugin, it has already seen updates, leading me to believe it is very well supported by the author. If you aren’t happy with your purchase for some reason, you have an eight week money back guarantee!

Overall, I am very happy with my acquisition of this premium WordPress plugin I plan on using it on a few of my WordPress blogs. If you find you are managing a lot of affiliate links on your blogs, I recommend you check out the WP Ninja Affiliate splash page.

Like many other bloggers, I display 125*125 pixels ads on my blog, and earn some money with it. Currently, I own 6 different ads, and most of them change every week. I became bored of editing my sidebar template everyday, so I asked my friend X-OR to write a cool widget to manage thoses ads. Let’s review it together.

What the Show125 widget can do for your blog

I always loved the concept of widgets: drap n’ drop, easy to edit, easy to place, easy to remove. Most of todays themes can handle widgets, so there’s many chances that the theme you use haven’t any problem with it.

In addition to the basic widgets advantages, Show125 gives you many option and a true control over your ads. Let’s see:

• Display from 1 to 8 ads
• Available in English (default) or French
• Display all your ads together, or in an eye-candy Mootools slideshow
• Optionally add the target=”_blank” attribute to links, if you want ads to open in a new tab.
• Show (or not) a title for your ads block
• Easy to install
• Clean code
• Add custom css class to links for styling it your way
• And more!

Installation

Nothing hard here: First, download the widget. If you want to see a “live demo”, just have a look at x-or’s blog, where you’ll be able to see the slideshow mode of the widget.

Once you unzipped the widget to your hard drive, upload the entire directory to your wp-content/plugins directory. Then, go to your Wordpress administration panel and activate the plugin.

In Design » Widgets, you’ll be able to drag n drop the Show125 widget to your sidebar (or any other widgetized part of your WP theme) and set the options.

Once you filled the fields and saved your changes, you’ll see your ads in your sidebar. Managing your ads with Show125 really makes money earning easier!

Have you ever found that you are looking for a WordPress plugin that does something specific, but you’ve tried the WordPress Codex or using Google search and nothing has come up?

There are a few choices you have, including our quickly growing WordPress plugins page, but one cool thing I ran across is I want a WordPress Plugin to… , which serves almost as sort of a WordPress plugin directory.   Here you’ll find plugins broken down into categories, allowing you to click on the type of plugin you are searching for, then see what options you have.

[via WordPress Garage]