WordPress Plugins Used on My Law Firm’s Websites

I have used WordPress to create 11 websites (put your cursor on the menu text above that says “My Other Websites” to access one of my other sites), ten of which I created to get more clients and revenue.  The only WordPress site I created that is not for my law firm is one called “F-4 Phantom,” a site about my five years flying the F-4 Phantom supersonic fighter bomber in the United States Air Force.

If you want to know why I use WordPress to create my law office websites read my article called “Why I Love WordPress for My Law Firm.”  In that article I say that the biggest reason I love WordPress for the law firm is because WordPress has over 19,000 free plugins that allow a WordPress administrator (you should be your site’s administrato) to add cool features to your WordPress blog or website.  A WordPress plugin is software written to accomplish a specific task or add a feature to your WordPress site.  My guess is that somebody has already created a free plugin that will do  everything you could possibly want to do with your site.

Do you want to have message forums or a list serv on your site?  Would you like your site to have a gallery of photos or videos that are displayed to viewers in the order you select for the number of seconds you select?  Would you like to require a visitor to type a captcha before he or she could send you a message?  There are numerous plugins that provide all of these features right out of the box.  That’s cool and free, but the second neatest thing about WordPress plugins is that when you see one you want you click twice and the plugin is installed and working on your WordPress website.  IT ONLY TAKES A FEW SECONDS LITERALLY TO INSTALL A PLUGIN.

The following is a list of plugins in alphabetical order that I always install on every WordPress website or blog I create:

  • Akisment – used to prevent comment spam.  It automatically deletes spam comments of which there are many.
  • All in One SEO Pack – a great tool for adding title, description and key word meta tags to your posts and pages.
  • Bad Behavior – another spam preventor.  I use Akismet and this one.
  • Broken Link Checker – A must have program.  It alerts you to broken links and makes it easy to fix them
  • Contact Form 7 – Use to create web forms to collect contact information and message text so visitors can communicate with you or your firm’s personnel.  See one of my contact forms.
  • Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin makes a map of your website every night and sends it to Google and other search engines to help you get better search engine rankings.
  • Sharedaddy – It creates icons and links to share your content with other sites like Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and Twitter.  You can see this plugin at work at the bottom of every one of my posts.
  • Smart Youtube Pro – This plugin lets me insert and position a Youtube video any where on my site just by copying the Youtube share URL and pasting it where I want it to go on my WordPress site.  It also requires me to add “vh” just before the colon in the Youtube URL.
  • Sociable – I use this plugin to send a post to our Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn pages.  Although you can configure it send every new post we have it set to send posts only if we want to send it and then it only goes to the other sites we select.
  • Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – Use this plugin to allow people who leave comments to chose to receive copies of all future comments and replies made to their comment.
  • Websimon Tables – WordPress does not do tables so you need a plugin.  I have tried a number of table plugins, including one I purchased, and my favorite is Websimon Tables.  It comes with 9 pre-configured tables.  Everything about a table can be customized easily.  It is also easy to move rows and columns.
  • WP-DB Manager – This plugin does all your back ups of your data, including the site’s MySQL data.  It also zips backup files and emails them to you.  I also use it to optimize the WordPress site.
  • WP-PageNavi – This adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog or website.
  • WP-PostViews – It counts and displays the most popular posts and pages on your site.
  • WP-Print – Gives your visitors a better printed output than was is inherent with WordPress.
  • Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This one displays other posts on your site that are similar to the post a visitor is viewing.

To learn more about these plugins and the 19,000+ other free WordPress plugins go to the WordPress plugins page.

By |2018-01-14T08:51:51-07:00April 28th, 2012|Blogs, WordPress|2 Comments

WordPress is Most Popular Blog Software

A recent survey by Pingdom found that 48 of the most popular blogs are created with WordPress, up from 32 in 2009.  In order the blog platforms by percent of sites using the software are:

  • 48 WordPress
  • 14 Custom
  • 7 Movable type
  • 6 Drupal
  • 5 Gawker
  • 4 Blogsmith
  • 2 Typepad
  • 2 Blogger

Where does your blog/web software fall in this list?   The article says, “It’s also interesting to see that our findings are not far off compared to what Technorati found in its State of the Blogosphere 2011 report. In it, Technorati found that 51% of blogs in the world use WordPress.”  The article contains a list of the top 100 blogs and the software platform used by each.

If you are not using WordPress for your blog or website you are probably making a mistake.  If you are paying somebody big bucks to create a custom site for you then you are really wasting a ton of money.

I started using WordPress in the fall of 2009.  It is an incredible program and it’s free.  I now have 11 websites/blogs (counting this one) that I created using WordPress.  I use WordPress to create pure blog sites and sites that are traditional websites that may or may not have a blog.  Here are the reasons I love WordPress and recommend it:

  • It’s free.  However there are some themes and plugins that you must buy to use, but the vast majority of themes and plugins are free.
  • It’s very easy to use.  I can teach somebody in ten minutes how to add content (posts and pages) to a WordPress blog or site.
  • It’s very powerful.  For some reason I do not understand people write add-in features and give them away for free to anybody who uses WordPress.  The two most common types of freebies are: (1) themes, and (2) plugins.  A theme is the look and feel of a blog or site.  WordPress comes with a default theme, but you can select from thousands of free themes and download and active a them in a matter of seconds.  When you active a theme, it instantly changes the look and feel of your site.  I use a theme for all of my sites called “Atahualpa,” one of the most popular free themes.  A plugin is a WordPress software add on that adds a new feature to your site.  You do not have to spend time creating code to make your site do what you want.  Instead, you search for a theme you want then click on the Install icon and the plugin then downloads and installs on your WordPress site.  For example, if you want a feature that automatically makes a sitemap of your site and uploads it to Google or if you want to have a message list serve on your site, all you need to do is decide which plugin you want, install and configure it and your WordPress site has those new features in a matter of minutes.

Do yourself a favor and switch to WordPress or create a WordPress site if you do not have a blog or a website.  The first step is go to www.lynda.com.  Pay to watch one of its how to videos on using WordPress version 3, the latest version.  If you learn WordPress and have a WordPress blog or website you can save tons of money and frustration by avoiding the need to pay a consultant.

By |2018-01-14T08:51:50-07:00April 16th, 2012|Blogs, Software, WordPress|0 Comments
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