Happy New Year – here’s a listing of some of the plugins I added to my blog in recent months and have fast become some of my favorites to recommend to WordPress users:

Different Posts Per Page – Set default value for each different page in WordPress. For example, without this plugin, if you have 1 post set to be viewed on your front page – then only 1 post will show on your archives, search, categories and tags pages. But, you may want more of a listing on those internal pages. With this plugin – you can set values for each of those pages, completely bypassing the setting in Options/Reading in your WordPress administration panel.

Single Click Plugin Updater – A very handy plugin that extends the plugin notification system, introduced in WordPress version 2.3. This plugin also provides an ‘update automatically’ link that, when clicked, will automatically download and install the new version on your blog.

I’m rounding out the month of October by sharing a list of my personal favorites that I use on various other blogs I operate. Do you have any ‘to die for’ plugin favorites? Do share!

Better Feed – Brought to you by Ozh – this plugin puts your RSS Feed on steroids! It allows you to enhance your feeds with several highly customisable features.

Comment Relish – A plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.). Developed by Justin Shattuck

This weeks WordPress Plugins spotlight brings you some great plugins that will help you enhance your comments on your blog – - making reader interaction more fun and pleasant! Your readers will thank you!

4Avatars – A simple Plugin for WordPress that allows you to add avatars to comments on your blog. Avatars are from MyBlogLog or Gravatar or even from Polish site Avatars. Of curse avatars are NOT saved on your ftp! 4Avatars have very simple options page which allows you to choose site with avatars and choose default avatar which will be shown when author of comment doesn’t have any.
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CommentLUV – Everyone enjoys a little love now and then, don’t they? All you need is love. . . . Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the comment author by visiting their site and looking in the standard locations for a feed.
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For our plugin spotlight this week, we’re hauling Alex King up front and center with his GREAT (no, really – GREAT) set of plugin offerings he has available at AlexKing.org. Alex is one of the original developers of WordPress from way back in the day. He is still very much involved in the WordPress community, as evidenced by his great set of plugins:

Share This – Used here on this blog, this plugin is THE ONLY PLUGIN YOU NEED FOR SOCIAL BOOKMARKING. Sorry, didn’t mean to yell – but, really – - this is it. It’s all you need. The Share This plugin allows you and your readers to easily add your posts to the various social bookmarking sites out there, like Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, etc. One click is all you need. One click and ONE icon – - so more cluttering up your post footers with a gazillion social bookmarking icons. I love this plugin.
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Plugins make us happy! Plugin developers make us grateful! Plugins for WordPress help us extend our blogs way beyond WordPress ‘out of the box’ – Consider making a donation to your favorite plugin developer today! They work hard, so you don’t have to!

Here’s our spotlighted plugins for this week – Enjoy!

Daiko’s Video Widget – Gives you the ability to add video to your sidebar from YouTube, Google, MySpace, etc.
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WP Post Ratings – Another fine plugin from Lester “Gamerz” Chan. This one adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page. Cool!
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Advanced Excerpt – This plugin adds several improvements to WordPress’ default way of creating excerpts: It keeps HTML markup in the excerpt, Trims the excerpt to a given, user-defined, length, Customization of the excerpt length and the ellipsis used when trimming and it corrects HTML markup that may have been ‘cut’ during excerpt trimming. Sweet!
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Finding great WordPress Plugins is not difficult. Plugins developers are talented people and there are some GREAT projects going on out there. Have a look at the plugins we’re putting the spotlight on this week:

Link Harvest – From the incomparable Alex King comes Link Harvest. I use this plugin on this site – you can view the output here on my Links page. Link Harvest will go through all of your posts and pages and compile a list of all external links. Then it will create a live updating linkroll for you, based on your actual linking activity. Nifty!
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FAQ Auto Responder – Brought to you from Ozh this plugin gives you the ability to create autoresponders if you run a blog where users frequently ask the same questions over and over again. Brills!
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This weeks plugin spotlight puts plugin developer Lester Chan center stage, up front and personal! Lester has created, and works very, very hard on the plugins he develops. Not only has he developed some amazingly useful plugins – but he keeps them updated and is, generally, happy to work with users on issues.

Here’s a look at some of my favorite Lester “Gamerz” Chan plugins – do you have a Gamerz favorite?

WP-DBManager – Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database. Very handy!

WP Download Manager – If you provide files for your visitors to download (WordPress Plugins and/or Themes, perhaps?) this handy plugin will allow you to manage your downloads and gives you an accurate count on how many times each individual file has been downloaded from your site. A really handy way to have a quick glance at how well your downloadable files are doing!

A quick look at some of the WordPress plugins that caught our eye this week – - there’s some real good ones in here!

Advanced Permalinks – Think WordPress Permalinks can’t get any better? Think again! This plugin allows you to create different permalink structures for each post on your site. This is particularly useful when migrating an old permalink structure to a new one.
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Smilies Themer – This is a fun plugin for those of you who like emoticons/smilies on your blog! Smilies Themer allows you to use smilies (emoticons) themes (or packs) to replace the wordpress default ones.
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Simple Viewer – This plugin allows you to easily include SimpleViewer Flash galleries into Wordpress posts and pages. The admin interface helps you to manage all the options and will also help you to create the thumbs. The captions for each image can be changed individually if you like to show them in the gallery.
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Having a look at some of the great WordPress plugins we’re spotlighting this week – give ‘em a try and then let me know how you loved (or hated!) them:

PodPress – “A dream plugin for Podcasters using WordPress” – this plugin is feature rich with an automatic feed generator, gives you a preview of what your feed looks like on iTunes, PodCast download stats, support for paid only premium content and more!
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WordPress.Com Stats – excellent stats program brought to you by Andy Skelton! WordPress.com users have enjoyed these stats for a long time now, Andy gives us this plugin so that the users of the WordPress.Org (self-hosted) software can enjoy them, too! (Note: You do need to obtain a WordPress API Key in order to use this plugin).
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