Credit: NY Times

If you have visited the NY Times’ site recently, chances are you have seen the “more articles” box that shows up at the bottom of its articles. This is not only an attractive feature, it makes it easier for the NYT fans to find more stories on topics that interest them the most. If you know your Javascript and CSS, you can add the same effect to your website. upPrev for WordPress is a cool plugin that simplifies the process. It animates your posts at the bottom of your pages and displays other posts your visitors may be interested in checking out.

upPrev is highly customizable. For starters, it lets users define the type of effect they want to use for their “Read Next Post” box. The position, size, and margins for your article box can be changed too. Webmasters can define the stories shown on the settings page. Here is the cool part: you can show next stories by category, order of your articles, or by tag. You can also choose to randomize this step.

Webmasters get to include both posts and pages when using this plugin. The size of your article snippet can be modified to fit your layout. The inclusion of caching capability is a plus. Overall, this is a pretty powerful tool for webmasters looking to keep their visitors busy on their site for longer.

One Click Close Comments plugin works like a charm. You can just disable comments right where your posts are listed. Just click on the green sign to disable the comment section in your posts. The red signs mean that visitors won’t be allowed to leave a comment on posts next to them.

One Click Close Comments may not do something earth shattering. But it can save you a lot of time disabling and enabling comments on specific posts. It is pretty fast and does not get in your way. Javascript should be enabled if you want to use this plugin.

WP Realtime Sitemap is highly customizable. You can choose which pages you want included in your sitemap. It covers pages, posts, archives, tags, categories, and much more. Webmasters can choose the right order and define pages to be excluded from the final sitemap (by ID). The same type of options are available for posts, archives, and tags (with minor differences).

This plugin does allow you to modify the header sections for your sitemap. This is of course optional but you can be more descriptive with your titles if you need to.

If you have a complex site structure and want to help your visitors find their way to the right page on your website more conveniently, WP Realtime Sitemap is worth trying.

Tweet Blender lets you display your Twitter updates on your website easily. The plugin is tag aware and allows you to filter your updates based on lists, authors, hashtags, and keywords. Have multiple Twitter accounts for your website (one for each author)? You can use this plugin to display all your updates on your website.

You can customize this plugin’s behavior to your heart’s desire. Worried about its SEO effects on your website? Just choose the appropriate option from the “General” page to keep your site protected. Widgets can be fully customized as well.

This script provides support for non-English hashtags and filter words. If your web server is white-listed, you can choose to re-route Twitter traffic through your own server. It offers database-caching, so your site’s performance does not get affected significantly if you choose to install this plugin.

Tweet Blender has multiple widgets to give you flexibility when it comes to adding tweets to your website. Tweet Blender for tags grabs your tags and shows tweets related to those (pretty neat).

If you are using Twitter heavily and want to include your updates on your website, Tweet Blender is worth checking out.

Booking Calendar can be used for all kinds of situations. You can take advantage of it to schedule resources, manage your clients, keep on top of your event and people attending it, and even use it for your private practice as a doctor, a lawyer, or a freelancer. Your visitors can take advantage of this plugin to make appointment with you or reserve their place at your event. The booking calendars can be added to your posts or your sidebar.

I like the fact that multi booking resources is supported. Users have complete control over bookings and can modify them easily (notes can be added to them too). Your visitors receive emails once you confirm or deny their booking. Their information is validated, which means you won’t end up with invalid information too often.

Your visitors can book you for a specific time of a day. Depending on the type of business you are running, you could allow your visitors to take advantage of week booking on your website. Multiple payment systems are supported, which is helpful.

The pro version offers even more features. For instance, you can ask for more money in April if you happen to be a tax accountant. The same applies for hospitality businesses. The plugin does offer advanced cost management features and supports discounts (or additional fees for items).

Booking Calendar comes in two versions. The free version should get the job done for most folks. But if you are looking for more advanced features for your business, you may want to invest in the pro version. The plugin does take some time getting used to, but it can be a life saver for businesses.

Secure WordPress Plugin enables you to reduce hack attacks on your blog by protecting your installation information and plugin lists. It automatically adds an index.php file to your directories to make sure hackers can’t gain access to your plugin list to use known security wholes in some of them. It also removes theme, plugin, and core update information from non-admins. It can even protect your blog against malicious URL requests.

I also like the fact that the plugin deactivates tool-tip and error messages from your WordPress login page. These small details may not look too important, but there are many hackers out there who succeed in their jobs by taking advantage of this information. So it never hurts to make their life difficult.

This plugin is not designed to make your WordPress 100% hack-proof. So you are going to need other security plugins to help defend your blog against hackers. Nevertheless, the plugin is very easy to use and does fix a few common WordPress issues. It’s free too.

Here is how this plugin works. If you are running one of the above mentioned plugins, this cache script will cache a portion of their outputs to bring the load down on your server and improve your plugins performance. So you no longer have to wait a few seconds for your top or similar posts to show up on your sidebar.

Now you want to make sure you don’t use Plugin Output Cache in conjunction with some other cache plugins available for WordPress. You don’t want to have too many cache plugins installed anyway. But if you are running too many of those popular/similar type plugins on your blog, you want to give this Plugin Output Cache software a try.

WP Plugins is a store that comes handy for both developers and publishers. Small developers can easily submit their plugins to the store and start accumulating cash from their work. As a developer, you will have work a bit to develop the perfect page for your plugin. You want to include screen-shots, add proper description, and promptly answer your prospects’ questions when they contact you. You don’t have to have the best plugin to start selling using this service. I have seen plugins being sold for as low as $3. But you do want to pay attention to your code and the quality of your work.

WP Plugins runs you through a few steps before your can upload your plugin. They also keep 10% of everything you make. But that’s not too much if you think about it. Considering the targeted audience for the store and how they manage your listing, it may be worth it for your business.

WP Plugins may be a young project at this point, but it does have a few super plugins that you can take advantage of to take your website to the next level. Whether you are interested in adding an event registration service to your website or want to create a job listing site with a plugin, WP Plugins Store has something for you. Overall, a great place to find some powerful plugins.

In order to take advantage of this plugin, all you have to do is enable it and choose the URL service that you want to use with your blog posts. The plugin essentially brings WP.me to your self-hosted WordPress blog. So why would you want to use such a plugin on your blog? It’s simple. People don’t trust obscure URL services these days. After all, how can you be sure that you are not clicking on a URL that is not going to install ad-ware or harmful files on your blog (some URL redirection services do). With URL Shortener, you won’t have to worry about that.

Once you install this plugin, a small button will show up right under your post URL which you can use to view your short URL for each post:

The plugin comes with various URL redirection services that you can use to create short URLs for your blog. You can choose for the process to happen automatically or even turn it off if you prefer.

Let’s not forget about the add-on module either. It makes it easier to take advantage of Google’s URL redirection service to shorten your URLs on your blog. You can’t get more trust worthy URLs than that. Considering that the plugin is for free, it’s a must try if you like sharing your stories on Twitter and other social networking websites.

Take a look at the above buttons. They are not only colorful enough but also dynamic. It doesn’t matter how your buttons look. In reality, you should look for buttons that give your users the call to action to spread your content online. You can always add the above buttons to your blog posts by downloading a plugin such as Digg Digg. But if you don’t want to do anything other than copy/paste, Boostpost comes in handy. It’s a cool service that lets you add the buttons you would like to see on your blog and add them to your posts fast (copy/past the code into your blog).

There are three ways that you can add social media buttons to your blog using Boostpost. The first way is to choose the services that you want to use on your blog, download the appropriate code, and paste it into your single.php file. That’s pretty straightforward and probably the best way to get maximum exposure for your blog posts.

The second way to get these buttons on your blog is by downloading the button code from Boostpost. These buttons are compact and expand as your readers take their mice over them. So they are perfect for blogs who don’t have too much space to spare for social media buttons.

You can customize the above button and even provide your own image for it. This is pretty similar to the first option, except you are downloading a compact button.

The third option involves displaying social media buttons in the footer of your website. It may not be the best place to put them, but it’s better than nothing.

Overall, if you are planning to add social media buttons to your blog and don’t want to download multiple plugins to get it down, Boostpost is a must try.