A couple of months ago I talked about some ways to adjust your WordPress plugin code to avoid having plugins break your blog. That post was designed to show people how to easily adjust the PHP setup for the calls for their plugins to not fail if the plugin is deactivated. I also think more theme authors should use that method to make their themes compatible with a variety of plugins out-of-the-box.

Along those same lines, there are some simple checks you can do to make sure that your theme has the best chance to be compatible with a plugin. The WordPress Expert recently posted some simple checks to verify that your WordPress theme is plugin-friendly. John recommends you verify your theme uses the following:

<?php wp_head(); ?>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
<?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?>
<?php wp_footer(); ?>

If your theme isn’t, some plugins may not operate properly. Great post John!

There are quite a few reasons a blogger may want to create URL redirects.  One common reason bloggers create them is in an attempt to hide their affiliate links.  Another reason I’ve always liked about URL redirects is that you can easily link to the redirect in your posts.  Then if you need to later update your redirect link to point somewhere else, all of your old posts now point to the new spot without any manual editing of those posts. This can go a long way towards helping you to avoid broken links.

If you don’t have the technical knowledge to easily create redirect links, you may be interested in using a new WordPress plugin called GoCodes. This plugin was created by Webmaster-Source to allow anyone to easily create URL redirects within WordPress. Once uploaded and activated, you will see the following menu in your dashboard:

In order to use the plugin, you simply need to enter the Key and enter a URL destination where you want the user to be redirected to. You can do this to point people to any location on the internet.

WordPress has long been used for helping people to easily create a functional and attractive looking weblog, but only recently have people started to use it for CMS purposes and even business blogging.

When you go to build a professional business blog, you need to bring a different mindset to the table.  Many of the popular WordPress plugins often won’t apply to your average business blog.  So what plugins should your business blog use?

WebHypes has taken the time to throw together a great list of 15 WordPress plugins that are ideal for a professional blog.   You’ll find a few of the usual suspects, but you’ll also get a bunch of other plugins you might not have thought of.

With the recent popularity of themes attempting to turn WordPress into a content management system (CMS), people have begun purchasing premium WordPress themes in order to get the features and look they are wanting for their website.

As Josh Byer’s points out, people can instead use free WordPress plugins to achieve much of the CMS functionality they are looking for.  Miriam of WordPress Garage also adds that a few additional plugins to turn WordPress into a CMS.  

While using a theme designed specifically to function as a CMS has a few advantages, I think those of us that are on a budget can definitely get many of the CMS features we crave through the use of these WordPress plugins.

If you were looking to purchase/download a CMS, what options are you most looking for?  Can you get this functionality via plugins?  I’d love to get everyones thoughts on this!