Better Comments Manager is an extension of the default Wordpress comments manager. It adds two new features to the default Wordpress Comments Manager. You can reply to comment from within Wordpress Admin Panel. The title says it all, you can reply to every individual comment from within the Wordpress Admin so you do not have to go to individual posts to reply to comments.

Also, you can view All Comments based by posts. It simply lets you view all the comments based on a particular post. So if you want to see the reactions for a particular post only then you can simply click the View All link in the Better Comments Manager.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.x+
Source: http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/better-comments-manager…

Tabbed interfaces are the most common on newspaper type website where they can save a lot of vertical space and make it look less cluttered.

Accordion type tabs were made popular by Apple, who use them for grouping different types of content in a very narrow sidebar. They are particularly useful if you want to have longer tab titles or more tabs that would not otherwise fit into the given horizontal size. Tabbed Widgets can create tabs for you easily. The following are the main features.

• Use other widgets for the tab content and specify a custom tab title.
• Make tabs rotate in a set interval so that they become more noticeable and prominent.
• Set a random start tab on each page load so that all tabbed content gets equal exposure.
• Make unlimited number of tabbed widgets that can be then used as regular widgets under ‘Design’ > ‘Widgets’.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.5+
Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tabbed-widgets/

One of the most successful ways to bring in new subscribers to your blog is to give away a bonus when people sign up. If you’re like most people, you haven’t had time to write a great book to give away as a sign-up bonus. Well, Darren has has shown us two very easy ways to get free books to give away on your blog:

• Create Your Own eBook In 48 Hours With An E-book Template
• Use someone else’s book that is in the public domain (you’d be amazed how many great books are out there for free!)

Now you have no excuse NOT to give away a great sign-up bonus for your new subscribers! Set aside some time this week to get this together, and start watching your subscriber numbers climb!

Source: How To Get Free Books To Give Away On Your Blog

One thing planetOzh wanted to improve in the Admin area of his Wordpress blog was the header menu. He wants to be able to reach any admin page in one click, instead of first clicking on the first level link (”Manage” for example) and then only on a submenu link (”Comments“) So here is a very neat plugin : the Worpdress Admin Drop Down Menu. 

The plugin comes with a wickedly cool API that will allow other plugin developers to interact with it, like adding your own custom icon for your plugin. Read the API for Coders page for examples and documentation. Also, all elements the plugin produces get custom CSS classes and id’s to allow easy styling or selecting.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.5+
Source: http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-admin-menu-drop-down-css/

Smashing Magazine released Simply Ornate — a free professional Wordpress-theme created by Evan Eckard. This theme was designed with the main focus being on patterns and typography and comes in 5 flavours.

The theme also includes a prototype-based tab effect that allows users to browse latest posts, comments and tags. The front page is set up to show excerpts of your 4 latest posts, and also includes a mini-nav in the upper right side to allow for page navigating.

You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/01/simply-ornate…

Tired of copying and pasting the embed HTML from sites like YouTube? Then this plugin is for you. Just simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box — easy as that. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, colors, alignment on the page) and much more. Your site will even stay (X)HTML valid unlike with the code provided by most video sites.

Viper’s Video Quicktags supports YouTube (including playlists), Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Veoh, Viddler, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Flickr videos, Spike.com/IFILM and MySpaceTV. You can also use the [flash] shortcode to Flash-based video from any website.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/

It’s true that there are tons of blogging software solutions from which to choose. Each has their place, and their legion of ardent followers.

Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.

Habari strongly favors open, standard, and documented protocols. Atom, being both open and documented, is the prefered syndication format, and the Atom Publishing Protocol is the prefered means of remote communication with your site. This is a core feature, and not a plugin.

Habari is being written specifically for modern web hosting environments, and uses modern object-oriented programming techniques. Using these recent but well-established additions to the PHP language allows Habari to make use of PDO, enabling prepared statements for all interactions with the database. This greatly reduces the system’s vulnerability to SQL injection attacks. This is just one of many benefits of modern object-oriented techniques.

Those are just a few of the technical differences, but a major component of what makes Habari different is its community participation model. Users who demonstrate a consistent level of quality contributions to the project are granted more privileges within the project.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://habariproject.org

Most of the blogger are using WordPress as their blogging platform. I recommend WordPress to all people who would like to start blogging, because it is so powerful but easy to use. WordPress themes are premade designs that can be installed seamlessly and effortlessly to any site.

Elegant WordPress Themes provides WordPress themes of quality and integrity. They craft their themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism, and strive to inject each design with a dose modest elegance. Each of their WordPress themes come widget readt and coded in valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and CSS. Every theme is made in compliance with the latest version of WordPress, and are compatible with Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 6/7, Safari, Opera, and Netscape.

You can have a look at the gallery page which contains all of the themes you can use after joining the Elegant WordPress Themes membership. Each theme comes with a unique set of features, click “feature” to view a list, and click “preview” to see a live demo of the theme. You get downloadable access to all of their themes immediately, as well as all themes released during 1 year following your purchase after you sign up! It is only $19.95 per year. Do not miss the chance and join now today!

They do provide support for all themes as well. If you have experienced any problems with the themes, you can contact them immediately for a quick fix.

Want To Start a Website – Choose Wordpress Hosting

Starting a website is for the inexperienced person an almost impossible task. Understanding coding in html, ASP or PHP can seem like climbing the Chinese wall, even for the accustomed Internet user. And as a natural result of a high demand with little know-how, web hosting companies have stepped in to assist beginner website builders in creating professional and good looking websites. But even so, there are far too many terms and available options for the inexperienced not to feel confused. However, with wordpress hosting all you need to do is choose a web host, register a domain and the host will take care of the rest.

The Misconception of Blogs

We are talking about the prospect and benefits of starting a blog. A general misconception is however that a blog isn’t a real website, only fit for people like Perez Hilton to use as a daily online dairy. This is of course not an accurate observation. A blog is a simplified CMS, content management system used by most dynamic websites today, allowing the webmaster to login and easily administer the website from a user-friendly control panel. Getting a blog is the best way to get started if you do not know so much about developing websites. It will give you a proper website and a platform from which you can control web design, content, settings and additional features.

What does a Wordpress Host do?

A Wordpress host is simply a web host that offers free tools to help you install a blog. Wordpress is, if you don’t know already, the most popular and used blog developer with a unique control panel and management system, adapted to the beginner user. The 5-minute installation that is advertised by Wordpress can however be quite tricky, seeing as you have to create a MySQL database and edit the config.php-file, and letting someone else handling this is advised. That’s hence where your Wordpress web host enters the picture. With one click and a few steps the host will install the Wordpress blog for you – in less than 5 minutes.

Don’t even think about it anymore. Trust us – if you want to start a website but lack knowledge, time and money to set one up yourself – choose this hosting type. If you want a website to easily manage, with the aspect of choosing between hundreds of design templates, adding video and image slideshow content, banners, your own header/logo, pages, posts and so on. Choose this type website hosting.

Another really nice WordPress theme released on SmashingMagazine. Agregado Lifestream Theme — a free professional Wordpress-theme features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with custom control panel options. You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission.

Agregado was inspired by the recent popularity of services like Twitter, FriendFeed and Tumblr, and by a recent trend Zeldman calls ‘the vanishing personal website’. The theme attempts to rebuild that idea of a personal website, incorporating a lifestream carousel alongside standard blog posts, keeping your fragmented data all in one place. The theme also contains a custom Archives page.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.6+, Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, IE7+, PHP 5+
Source: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/08/agregado-a-free…