One of my goals in 2009 is to release a lot of the WordPress tools that I have developed for myself as WordPress Plugins and hopefully this new category will help keep track of this work.

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I had used eBay as an affiliate before but with very little success. And I have heard all sorts of stories about some of the eBay Scripts and plugins on WordPress sites being very troublesome and causing problems with search engine indexing. This is basically why I put together the Cybers Ebay WordPress Plugin. So far, I have been thrilled with the results.

One of the issues I see with other systems is that they are trying to make an entire site out of a script and that could spell trouble, very little content, and even less original content.

Using a WordPress Plugin for something like eBay gives you the chance to add a nice income stream to a site. It can also help to drive traffic if it does not smother the site with it’s pages.

If you have not tried the eBayPartnerNetwork I would highly recommend it regardless of what script you use.

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This is the theme I am running on this site.

I added a YouTube video hook on the Single post page. Instead of using a WordPress Plugin that would be an additional step I took my AJAX API Video plugin and incorporated it into the Functions file. Thanks to Chris Pearson for the inspiration for this idea.

By using the function file there is no need to have an additional Plugin to install. Whenever you write a post the single post page will automatically search YouTube for videos that match the title and put them in a horizontal bar under the post. These videos will play dynamically on the given page utilizing the Google AJAX VideoBar.

The Minimal WordPress Theme is excellent on Niche sites that focus on Search engine traffic. CelebrityRamble is one site that is already using the theme.

Make sure to change the Adsense to your account, and you can move the YouTube videos by relocating the ajaxapivideos() call

EDIT : This theme is also Widget Ready.

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Why do something that someone else has already done, and especially if it is actually easier to use their program than it is to do it myself?

The best example of this is WordPress Plugins. For the longest time I would code everything myself. As an example I did my own SEO programming and it worked well, but, I discovered as I moved from blog to blog I had to do a lot of extra work that I would not have to do if I had used a WordPress Plugin. So I started looking to replace all my custom programming with WordPress plugins, and I can not tell you how much easier it is to manage my blogs now.

I also found that in some cases the plugins were better than what I had done myself, ouch. But hey, that is the idea, use the software that gets the job done and is the easiest to maintain. I will say that in some cases I think a particular WordPress plugin can be improved, in that case I try to do one of two things, improve it and send it to the originator, or comment on the originating blog and give them my idea.

Here is a list of my current favorite WordPress plugins I am using on the majority of my blogs.

Akismet

All in One SEO Pack

Custom Query String Reloaded

CyberExcerpt

Get Recent Comments

Google Analytics

Google XML Sitemaps

Recommended Tags

Show Top Commentators

WP-ContactForm

Using WordPress Plugins can certainly help you manage your blog better without all the additional work. Just make sure to test each plugin carefully before rolling out in full production. I have found some plugins may cause problems with other plugins and that even the order in which you install them can sometimes cause issues. The best thing to do is setup a sub domain with WordPress that is not indexed in the search engines and use it as a test site.

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