Want to give your readers a better way to share your blog posts with their Twitter followers? You already see a number of buttons and other widgets that provide this kind of functionality, but WP-Tweetbox offers several unique features that separate it from the pack.

Instead of showing a simple button that will just redirect your visitors over to the Twitter website, WP-Tweetbox lets your readers compose the tweet while still on the same page as your original blog post. Further still, you can get the plug-in to auto-generate the tweet text ahead of time. This way, the user really can just click on “tweet” to send it out.

This WordPress plug-in supports a number of URL shortening services too, so you shouldn’t have any trouble fitting the auto-generated tweet text into the 140 character limit. WP-Tweetbox can be configured to work with Su.pr, Bit.ly, Bitly.pro, and Wp.me.

For more information, including a live demo of WP-Tweetbox, check out the plugin page at riyaz.net.

Any time that you have a blog that allows for comments, you are opening yourself up for comment spam. That’s just part of the territory and that’s where utilities like Akismet and Captcha codes can come in handy. Similarly, if you publicly post your email address somewhere on the Internet, you become increasingly susceptible to spam that way too.

In regards to comment spam, you may find that your filter is constantly picking up comments left by a certain IP address or IP address range. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could prevent people from that IP address from posting spam comments (or malicious code, for that matter) on your blog? You can. And all it takes is a simple plugin.

The appropriately named IP Ban is a plug-in for WordPress that, when activated, will return a 404 error message “for IP’s visiting your blog specified in the IP Ban option on the Discussion Options page.” This “page not found” error will effectively prevent them from not only leaving spam comments, but from viewing your site at all.

You can download IP Ban directly from the Plugin Directory on WordPress.org. As always, it is a free download.

Twitter can represent a huge source of traffic for your blog, but how you can best capitalize on this phenomenon? Part of it has to do with syndicating your blog content via your Twitter stream, but what if your readers want to share your articles with their followers too?

Well, the folks at Twitter have now released the official Tweet button that can be implemented on just about any website. In short, it puts a small “tweet” button your page, automatically generating a shortened URL, and allowing your readers to share the link with just a couple of mouse clicks. This is implemented right on your blog itself. The button also shows the number of times that the link has been shared.

There are two ways to go about implementing this feature on your WordPress blog. You could use the official utility from Twitter.com. This generates a couple lines of HTML code that can then be inserted into your theme templates as you see fit.

Alternatively, you could use any number of different WordPress plugins, like WP-Tweet, to achieve much the same functionality. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons.

Blog should be more than soapbox platforms. They should be a venue to facilitate a two-way conversation between the blogger and his readers. One part of fostering this relationship is through blog comments, but having a good comment form is very valuable too. This is true of both personal and professional blogs.

Offering a robust set of features is Fast Secure Contact Form. As its name implies, this WordPress plug-in allows you to create both a fast and secure contact form. It fully supports anti-spam measures like Captcha and Akismet, but it also comes with a number of other notable features that separate it from other contact form plug-ins.

For instance, it allows for the creation of multiple contact forms on the same blog, the creation of a single contact form with multiple destinations (e.g., sales, support, customer service, advertising inquiries, etc.), optional extra fields of any type, support for file attachments, configuration as a newsletter signup form, optional redirects to any URL after message delivery, e-mail syntax validation, automatic form fills for logged-in users, and customizable CSS style.

To get more information on this updated version of Fast Secure Contact Form (formally Si Contact Form), check out the official page in the WordPress Plugin Directory or the developer’s site. Both sites include screenshots and download links.

Given the nature of most blogs, you don’t really need to have perfect spelling and grammar. At the same time, it certainly helps to elevate your respectability and legitimacy when your blog is largely error-free. It is still a public space, after all.

To this end, it may be useful to consider After the Deadline. Available as a WordPress plugin, this will intelligently search for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and even issues related to writing style. This way, you can feel better about putting out the best possible product.

Instead of using a simple database to find your spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, After the Deadline makes use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology. This, in turn, offers smart suggestions on how you can “fix” the problems. The best part is that it is available for free for personal use under the GNU General Public License.

Get more information at afterthedeadline.com.

Social media and social networking are as popular as ever. People are updating their Facebook statuses, sending out pictures through Twitter, and connecting with fellow professionals on LinkedIn. They’re also sharing their locations and favorite places with Foursquare, so how can you best integrate that network onto your blog?

One way to do it is with the recently released Foursquare Map WordPress plug-in. After installing and configuring this plug-in, you can place a widget in your blog’s sidebar that displays your most recent Foursquare check-in. This not only provides the name of the place, but an actual map to the location as well.

This way, people can stay on top of your Foursquare activities without actually having to go to the Foursquare website or using a compatible client of some kind. The plug-in was built using the Foursquare and Google Maps APIs, so you can expect “blistering fast speeds” for the map loading on your site.

Head over to DigitalCortex.net for more information and to download the Foursquare Maps plug-in for your WordPress blog.

You’ve surely encountered more than one blog out there that highlights a series of “related posts” at the end of each entry. This is a great feature to have on your blog, because it can direct interested visitors toward additional reading on your site that is relevant to what they just read. That much makes sense.

This kind of functionality is largely attained through the use of WordPress plugins, but the majority of the plugins are algorithm-based. In this way, the selection of the so-called “related” posts is done automatically by the plugin and these kinds of associations aren’t always completely accurate. You might be writing about the produce you found at the supermarket and it pulls up a “related post” on your new Apple iPod.

Offering a different take on the “related post” function is the Custom Post Relationships WordPress plugin. This allows for the manual selection of related posts, ensuring that you are indeed getting reading for your visitors that is relevant to the current post.

The integrated system lets you filter through based on category and you can type in a few words to narrow the search even further. From there, you can click to add posts to the “related posts” section and even organize their order. For more information, check out webtoolkit4.me.

Search engine optimization is a very important whether you are running a small blog or you are trying to promote your business website. If you have WordPress as your chosen content management system, you also have access to a wide range of plugins and customizations that can aid you in this effort.

An oldie but a goodie in this realm is SEO Slugs. This WordPress plug-in accomplishes one very simple task, but it does it very well. In short, it shortens the “post slug” portion of your URI, removing superfluous words. This generates a shorter URI and one that is more easily indexed by search engines like Google.

The example used in the plug-in main page has a blog post called “What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings.” If left at default, the post slug in WordPress would be “/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings”. By using the plugin, the slug is automatically shortened to “/immediately-higher-rankings.” That’s shorter and more efficient.

For more information and to download SEO Slugs, head over to vretoolbar.com.

Social networking is as popular as ever, so how can you go about capitalizing on this interest for your business, your brand, or your online presence in general. Sure, you could try investing in some freelance web coders to create a social network for you, but it’s a lot easier to use a free plug-in instead.

WordPress may largely be known as a blogging platform, but it can also serve as a social networking platform thanks to the BuddyPress plug-in. In effect, this serves as a social network “in a box.” It includes all sorts of features you’d normally find in a standalone network.

For instance, you can get users to register on your website. From there, they can set up their profiles, post messages, make friends (connections), create groups, and so on. This social network can be good for businesses, to be sure, but it can also prove useful for schools, communities, clubs, and other similar organizations.

Check out the live demo and find more information about BuddyPress in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Did you just publish a new blog post only to realize that you made a typo or some other kind of error that needs to be fixed? Normally, you would need to head back into the backend of your WordPress installation, find the post in question, hit the edit button, make the necessary changes, and then hit the “Update” button on the right hand side. That’s a lot of work for such a simple change.

To help ease this process, you might want to try checking out the Front-End Editor WordPress plug-in. As its name implies, you can edit your pages and posts right from the “front end” of your blog, rather than having to head into the main WordPress dashboard to get anything done. This means that you can edit right from the page that your visitors see, making for a much faster and more efficient process.

Further still, this same plug-in allows for the editing of widgets too. This goes beyond just changing the widget titles and the text widgets. You can actually edit the widget right from the main screen, using the same controls that you would get from the widget management screen from within the WordPress dashboard. Front-End Editor will handle any kind of post type too; not just posts and pages.

Go to Scribu.net for more information on Front-End Editor, including support, revision history, and the much-needed free download link.

Do you find that your blog is starting to attract a lot of spammers, but you still want to find a way to reward the legitimate commentators on your site? That can be quite the tough balance to achieve, but it is possible.

If you choose to add the “dofollow” attribute to all commentator links, you could attract too many spammers. Go with the default “nofollow” attribute and the real people leaving comments don’t get that advantage. So, maybe you want to try the Link Love plugin and get the best of both worlds.

In short, the WordPress plugin will count the number of approved comments left by each visitor (based on the provided email address). When that author reaches a certain comment threshold, his or her links then gain the dofollow attribute. Prior to that threshold, the links have the default nofollow attribute.

For more information, including the download link, check out IntenseBlog.com.

Do you oftentimes use the same block of text in multiple places on your blog? Perhaps there is a usual snippet of HTML that you commonly append to some blog posts, but not others, so it is not suitable to edit the single post template in your WordPress theme?

If you find yourself facing any similar scenarios, you may want to consider the Contemplate plugin for WordPress. Developed by David Gwyer, it allows you to insert commonly used blocks of content anywhere in posts, pages, comments, and widgets. To do this, you just use the shortcode defined within the plugin.

The WordPress plugin allows for text, HTML, CSS, and Javascript in its mini-templates, adding a great deal of versatility. The shortcode takes on the form of [contemplate1], [contemplate2], [contemplate3], and so on. You can define the names of the individual templates, but it seems that the shortcodes cannot be customized. I hope that Gwyer changes this with future revisions of Contemplate.

For more information, including screenshots and the free download link, check out the Plugin Directory on the official WordPress website.

One of the most frustrating experiences for any web user is to click on a link only to discover that it points towards a webpage that no longer exists. This is not good for the user and it reflects poorly on the site providing the link.

This is not necessarily the “fault” of the original site owner, since links embedded in older blog posts may have been valid when the post was originally published. Some time later, the target page of the link may come down for one reason or another. When you have hundreds or thousands of posts, it becomes impossible to check on the validity of all the outbound links.

To automate and expedite the process, consider the Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin. As its name implies, this plugin will check for broken links in all your posts and page, as well as in your blogroll, comments, and custom fields. If it discovers a broken link, it will inform you of this via the main WordPress admin dashboard.

For more information on Broken Link Checker, including the download link, check out the plugin directory on WordPress.org.

Do you have an Amazon Wish List? Do you want to share this wish list with your blog readers, but you don’t want to send just a simple generic text link, nor do you want to use the heavier “carousel” widget on your site? As it turns out, there is a free WordPress plugin that approaches this exact need.

It’s called AVH Amazon and it is able to pull items from your Amazon Wish List at random and have them displayed on your WordPress blog. Say, for example, that you have a series of books that you’d like to buy and these are all added to your Wish List. Using this plugin, it’ll pull one at random — like Make Money Online by John Chow and Michael Kwan — and feature it in a widget on your site.

The plugin will work not only with the main Amazon.com (USA) site, but it will also localize to Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr. You can choose the thumbnail size, the links will include your Associate ID (so you can earn the referral commission), and you have the option to use unlimited widgets. Multiple items from the same list can be displayed in the widget too. If you want more control over the random selection, there are options for that too.

Go to the WordPress plugin directory to get more information about AVH Amazon. You can also find the free download link on that page.

This has become an increasingly common issue among bloggers, both casual and professional. Many of us syndicate our blog content, in some form or another, onto Facebook. This can be a great source of traffic and continued brand presence, since many people log into Facebook every day and they may or may not visit your blog directly.

This is true whether you only use the “share a link” feature on Facebook or your import your entire blog posts in the form of a Facebook note. The trouble is that many Facebook users will then proceed to post a comment on your post, but from the posted item inside Facebook alone. These comments do not, then, appear on your blog. You want to extract that value, right?

That’s where the aptly named Facebook Comments for WordPress can provide some reprieve. While it can’t pull the comments from Facebook onto your blog, what it can do is allow users to leave comments on your blog using their Facebook profiles. This integrates the Facebook commenting system into your website.

Comments can be shown in either chronological or reverse chronological order and it is possible for users to post their comments directly to their Facebook profile page. This helps with integration and expanded visibility of your blog on the popular social networking site.

For screenshots, more information, and the download link, head over to the WordPress Plugin Directory.

What if you own multiple domains, but you don’t want to manage multiple WordPress installations? It is still possible to have your blog appear on these different domains without having to use redirects or multiple installations.

This is quite the specific type of application, but you can achieve this functionality by using the Domain Mirror plugin for WordPress. In short, it allows multiple domains to point toward the same WordPress installation. In effect, you are mirroring your own site in multiple places.

Search engine optimization experts may or may not like kind of functionality, but there are people out there who will appreciate the capabilities of this WordPress plugin. To see a “live” version of the plugin, take a look at LightPainting.org and McAleavy.org. Both domains are using the same database and the same WordPress installation.

The Domain Mirror WordPress plugin is free to download and comes with a decent amount of documentation in case you need some help with its use.

Do you post a fair number of pictures on your blog? As you may already know, it’s important to fill in the ALT and TITLE attributes for those images to maximize your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. This way, it’s easier for search engines like Google to know what are contained in the images.

However, you can oftentimes forget to fill in these fields and it can be a major pain going back through all your posts to fill them in after the fact. Instead of doing it that way, you can try the SEO Friendly Images WordPress plugin. This simplifies and automates the process.

Instead of manually typing in the words for the ALT and TITLE attributes, the plugin automatically fills in these fields with the article title or something similar. This can be set via the options panel that appears after the plugin has been installed and activated. The post is W3C/xHTML valid too.

For more information and to download SEO Friendly Images, head over to Prelovac.com.

When you need to update your blog on a regular basis, you also need a good way to keep track of your different post ideas. Some people choose to collect these ideas on a notepad, either digital or paper-based, but these can be easily misplaced and forgotten. You could set up a series of “drafts” in WordPress, but those can get buried too.

The Post Ideas + WordPress plugin was recently highlighted on Blogging Tips as a better way to organize your post ideas. It’s not the fanciest WordPress plugin, but it does offer a very valuable functionality.

In short, it creates two widgets on the main WordPress dashboard. With one widget, you can quickly jot down your post idea for later writing. With these post ideas, the plugin provides fields for the title, a description, tags, links, and priority (1-99). The other widget allows you to write a post based on one of these ideas.

When you do so, the post idea “draft” is automatically deleted and a new “write post” webpage is opened for you to start writing. The title field is prepopulated with the title you defined in the post idea, but the tags, links, and description do not automatically carry over. Hopefully, this will be addressed in a future update.

For now, check out Post Ideas + by Matt Hobbs in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Are you looking for yet another way to connect your blog with your social networking endeavors? We’ve already seen a variety of plugins that can automatically syndicate your blog’s content to your Twitter account, but TwitPic-It takes this just a step further.

Using this free WordPress plugin, you can have your image uploads automatically sent to TwitPic for sharing with your Twitter followers. Normally, when you upload images to your Media Library on your WordPress blog, either for posts or pages, that content remains on your site alone. This plugin pushes those same pictures into the social media sphere immediately.

Before you get concerned about breaking embargos or leaking information that you’d rather not have public just yet, be aware that the TwitPic-It WordPress plugin comes with a checkbox in the WordPress media uploader. This way, you can skip the uploading of the image to TwitPic should you so choose. You can also track the TwitPic uploads from the TwitPic-It settings page.

Head to the WordPress Plugin Directory to get a TwitPic-It description, as well as several screenshots and that all-important download link.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to have multiple sections to the same company website or to even have several websites across the same brand. This is the case with BlueFur, for instance. You are currently reading the blog, but there is the main website too.

As you may have noticed, the blog recently underwent a fairly dramatic design change and the same update was carried through to the rest of the site. This creates a consistency in the brand messaging and imaging. In this way, whether someone is reading the blog or checking out the product and services page, they are offered the same overall branding.

A similar strategy is employed by Michael Kwan with his freelance writing business and with his personal blog. They are both powered by WordPress and make use of a very similar custom theme. The template was altered slightly to suit the specific needs of each site — like the removal of the sidebar for the freelance site — but the overall look is consistent.

If you run multiple websites that all fall under the same company banner and use the same branding, it is important that these sites carry through with a consistent look and feel as well. The easiest way to do this is to use a single WordPress theme and have it altered to suit the specific needs of each site.