So here comes a list of 10 excellent and promising plugins for the popular blogging platform WordPress. Some you will not know yet, because they are brand new. They all run on WordPress 2.5 and above and are updated frequently by their authors.

Because they are so new, some still have a few minor bugs that are currently still being fixed, but they do work nicely and you can be sure that the plugin authors are working hard on improving their work. So right here, we’d like to thank all of you who are doing such a great job at this. These are all free plugins, and with this post, we also want to show you that there are some great talents out there. If you download and use the plugins they give us for free, then please give some love back by commenting on their sites, donating to those who accept donations, or leaving a comment on this post saying a quick thank you.

So here goes: 10 excellent & promising WordPress Plugins for you! There’s a link to the author/plugin page as well as a link to the download page for each free plugin. We didn’t include direct download links because this way, you can always get the newest version of the plugin from the source. So let’s get started.

1. MailPress

The MailPress Plugin page is here, or download from here directly.
MailPress is a great newsletter plugin that enables your WordPress blog to send out emails to your subscribers. It comes with fully customizable newsletter templates for posts and categories. The plugin also includes a simple, one-button sign-up form that you can place in your widgetized sidebar. From the admin area in WordPress, you can send newsletters out to your subscribers using the newsletter template – either for every new post you publish, or in an interval (every day, week, and month). There is a PHP file that you can use to create newsletter templates that match your blog design. This plugin requires a bit of coding, especially for the PHP template, but you can find a lot of information at the plugin page and even if you’re not sure how to handle PHP, you can still use this nice WordPress plugin.

2. Post Tabs

You can find the Post Tabs WordPress Plugin page here, and the download link at WordPress.

This one is a wonderful and cool tab maker and as you can see, it creates tabs for the content you like. Easy. Stylable. Customizable. Great! After installed and activated on your WordPress blog, you can use tags when you write a post to place your content in tabs. As easy as [ tab:Tab Name ], and [ tab:END ] (without the whitespaces). The first one always shows first, unless you enable the option to store the open tab in a cookie, so that when a blog reader returns, he will find the tab active that he had open the last time.

There is also an option “permalink for tabs”. If you activate it (we left it disabled), the page will reload when you click on a tab, revealing the permalink of the tab in your browser’s address bar.

The plugin options in the WordPress backend / admin offer a bit of flexibility. What you can do is change the tab border color and background color for active/hover classes.

What a few of you might miss is an option to style the content of the tab itself (not just the title). For instance, we added a light grey border to the content of this tab unit (it’s the border running around this very text). How?

The class for the tabs is postTabs_divs, and you can use it to style the tabs with CSS. Simply add this line to your theme’s style.css, and you get what we got right here:

.postTabs_divs { border:1px solid #dcdcdc; margin-top:-12px; }

The border explains itself, and the negative top margin was added so that the content div would match the position of the tab bar.

3. First Timer

The First Timer Plugin page contains the download link as well.
The First Timer WordPress Plugin checks to see if a visitor is new to your blog. If so, it displays a custom message at a position of your choice, e.g. above the WordPress loop (that is, above all posts). What you display to your first-time visitors is up to you – usually, you’ll go for an encouragement to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed.

Caution though, as this plugin doesn’t work with either WP Cache or WP Super Cache.

4. Similar Posts

The Similar Posts plugin page has a link to the download of this plugin. You also need to install the Post-Plugin Library for it to run properly.
On the search for a better “related posts” plugin after the last one we featured (in this previous post about WordPress plugins), we found this one. It is in action right now below every post on Beeex.net. What it does is simply pull related posts and display them in the manner you specify, either with an excerpt, with a URL, or quite a few more options. You can even specify how much it should weigh the post title vs. the post content when it determines which posts are related.

5. Snazzy Archives

Go to the Snazzy Archives plugin page here, it includes the download link.
Here’s a nice WordPress plugin to spice (snazz) up your blog archives. Using a page template that you can customize if you wish, you can create an archive that looks just like a calendar – the months are ordered horizontically, with the days as blocks under them. You can choose to include post images (preferrably by using WordPress custom fields), an excerpt of the post, and so on.

You can also customize the CSS file to match the archive page to your blog’s appearance.

Snazzy Archives comes with optional date collapse functions, so that by clicking on a month, for instance, it collapses all day slots for that month and shows only the date.

6. Code Autoescape

The Code Autoescape Plugin is here, where you can find the download link as well.
This fine little plugin auto-escapes code that you insert in HTML < code> tags. If you need to display code in your blog posts, this one is for you. And yes, there are a lot of code plugins out there (the author lists a few of them himself for you to compare), but this is one we find most functional, most easy, and least buggy.
Every time you want to display a code snippet (which WordPress would normally convert), thus you’re using the < code> tag, this plugin will autoescape (= tell WordPress not to convert) the contents of that tag. Let’s test it right here – the plugin is running on this blog as well:

<html>
   <title>This actually works with HTML, XHTML,
and also PHP</title>
      <body>
         <a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">
            Visit <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>, it's hot ;)
         </a>
      </body>
</html>

It works for any kind of text. If it didn’t, you would be seeing the result of the PHP call (URL and blog name), and not the call itself. Great little plugin

7. WP Comment Remix

WP Comment Remix can be found here, or go directly to the download page on Wordpress.org.
WP Comment Remix is a cool plugin for blogs that receive a large amount of comments. We took a shot at it and installed it anyhow
What it does is add two anchor links to the comments on the front end of your WordPress blog: “Reply” and “Quote”. The first button simply takes the reader down to the comment input form, and pastes a link to the comment they want to reply to in the comment box that says “@ Commentauthor name”. The “Quote” button copies the text of the comment you want to quote into the comment box and wraps it in blockquotes.

On the admin side of WordPress, this plugin adds the same buttons to the comments section and lets you reply to a comment in an AJAX popup window, all from your backend. That speeds up the process of replying to comments immensely.

You can test this comment right here on our blog (hint hint)!

Update: Unfortunately, we had to deactivate this plugin again, as it doesn’t eat WordPress 2.6 and causes a little error. It is still a great plugin and works fine with WP 2.5x, so if you haven’t updated to the newest version yet, you can still use it. We’ll keep you updated as soon as it has been updated for WP 2.6

8. Role Scoper

Go to the Role Scoper plugin here, the download link is on the page.
Role Scoper is a plugin that enables and enhances the already built-in capability of WordPress to deal with “roles”. If you’re building a CMS with WordPress, for a client maybe, who wishes to give access to the backend to his employees, this plugin is for you.
With Role Scoper, you are able to modify the roles WordPress carries until you drop. Roles are something like “Subscriber”, “Editor”, “Author”, “Administrator” etc. This WordPress plugin makes it easy to broaden or narrow the rights every role has, once you have worked yourself through the vast amount of options the plugin delivers. It’s not something for the casual personal blog with one author, but for high-end CMS solutions based on WordPress, this plugin is the best we’ve seen around in a while.

9. Brian’s Threaded Comments Optimized for SEO

Go to the plugin page, which contains a description and the download link.
This is a modified version of Brian’s Threaded Comments (original plugin here). It nests comments in threads. A link to “reply” is added to each comment, which places your reply below the comment you are replying to, and not below everyone else’s. It is debateable if you find this useful – it can be, for certain types of blogs. Sometimes, though, you will want a linear thread where the comments are ordered solely by the time they were posted, which is the original WordPress functionality. Take a look if you like, though. Justin from SEO Zombie modified the WordPress plugin and optimized it for Search Engine Optimization by dissecting it and placing the JavaScript and CSS the plugin uses in separate files. This keeps your WordPress template clean and speeds up the page load time – better SEO for your website.

10. WP Watermark

WP Watermark can be found here, the download link is on this page.
This plugin automatically watermarks all your pictures on your WordPress blog with either your logo (it can be a transparent PNG file), or with a text you choose. You can specify the position, size and font of the custom text, or of the logo image. This is a good way to protect your images against theft and copyright infrigement (well.. it’s arguable).
So if you regularly post your own images, photographs, or artwork on your blog, consider this. The plugin can even watermark your thumbnails, so its advantage is very clear. There is no need to run your image folder through a Photoshop action to give every image a watermark anymore. Use WP Watermark instead.
Upon installation, you will need to add a single line to a WordPress core file. Other than that little hurdle, it works like a charm. There are detailed instructions on the plugin page, simply follow the link above! Also, if you upgrade WordPress, you will need to repeat this step in case the old file has been replaced by the new version.

10 Useful and Promising WordPress Plugins

…for you! We hope you like them and do find them useful.

Some of these plugins are from over at the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog, run by Weblog Tools Collection. We’d like to thank Mark, Jeff, Ronald and Keith for their great blog which we encourage you to visit, and for having this great idea for a plugin competition. If you get a chance, hop over and vote for your favorite plugin. Also, thank you to all the authors of these WordPress Plugins. Keep up the great work!

That’s it, folks! We hope you enjoy our list of 10 Excellent & Promising WordPress Plugins, some Brand-New, and come back soon for more (Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed)!

~ Your Beeex Happy Team

Below is a screenshot of how you get to create your CSS menu. In the top row, you can see the live preview. We chose this one to demonstrate how it works. All you have to do is tell the free generator how many buttons you want, and then enter the labels (titles) with the according links.

What you get is a complete, ready-to-use CSS menu template with hover effects. The images are included in the download. If you use CSS in web design (which you absolutely shoud), you’ll love this little tool.

Check the free online CSS Menu Maker out right here!

You can choose your favorite web badge style out of a variety of pre-made designs. Then you enter your text, using the fonts you prefer, pick the badge color and that of the text, et voilà, you’re done! Fast and easy with no hassle at all – and no Photoshop or Illustrator involved.

The web badge generator looks like this:

…and you can jump to it right here. Have fun!

Update: Also check out this free vector art pack with one poppy Web Badge after another.

Before you start creating the corner images and writing the CSS styles to position them yourself, try this great tool out. It gives you all of the above – the corner images for free download, the CSS code to copy & paste, Internet Explorer conditional HTML tags and even the HTML code itself. All you have to do is insert your content and you’re ready to go.

The generator is called Spanky Corners and is on sitepoint.com. We dig this pure online tool very much!

The site describes their free service like this:

‘Spanky Corners’ is an experimental technique for using only CSS to produce ’round-cornered content boxes’ with semantically pure markup. It does not require JavaScript to work.

Now this is what we call fun! Look at how easy they make it for you: this is all you have to do:

… to get this:

• the GIF images in your specified colors,
• the complete CSS code for the DIV,
• the HTML code for the DIV,
• the Internet Explorer only CSS file,
• the IE conditional comment for your HTML source to call that CSS.

Spanky, eh? Go to this wonderful css generator right here.

This free online generator is a great, easy tool for rasterizing images quickly – without using Photoshop or Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop has a similar effect, and more options for sure (not to speak of plugins for rasterizing images), but this cool website does it all in a few easy steps and generates a PDF for you to download in less than a minute!

After uploading a picture or specifying an image URL, you can crop the image, resize it, and choose the rasterization method. Do you prefer small black dots or larger, colored dots? It’s all in your hands!

Remember, this free, web-based tool doesn’t replace any tools you might have, or even Photoshop. Instead, it’s a quick and easy way of rasterizing images without a lot of work. The results, while not the most optimal, are quite good indeed.

This is what your raster image result could look like:

You can jump to the Rasterbator here. Have fun rasterizing!

In this post, we collected 8 very good, yet not so widely spread WordPress plugins for you; as well as one plugin which is required for another one (that’s the ‘half’ one). All of them are great, simply because they add valuable functionality to your WordPress blog. The reason why you may not have come across them yet is that they, despite their benefits, haven’t been promoted too much. But we know of a whole lot of other bloggers out there who use them. Only they don’t talk about it. We do!
To install a plugin, you have to upload it to your wp-content/plugins folder and activate it in your Plugins menu.

• All 8 and a half plugins run on WP 2.3.2 without a problem. You can find more information about each plugin by clicking on the source link. If you’re in a hurry though and you’re eager to start, you can use the direct download link provided with each plugin. They all come with a Readme file.

So, here goes: The 8 and 1/2 excellent WordPress plugins you probably didn’t know about… until now!

1. WP-Sticky (direct download link)

This WordPress plugin lets you set any post as “sticky”. That means that it will always be displayed as the first post on your blog. It’s very useful if you, for example, want to create a “month’s best” or such, which you want to have displayed on top of all other posts at all times. Whatever you write and post after that, will be listed under your sticky post as usual.

To download WP-Sticky, you can click on the above link. Alternatively, you can download it directly using the direct download link on the right.

2. Fancy Pull-Quotes (direct download link)

Have you ever seen these in-text pull quotes? A short sentence or quote written in bold letters in a bigger font, with the post body wrapping aroung it? Here’s the plugin to do it. You simply put your desired text in a ‘pull’ tag. You can define its appearance easily in the options menu. Worth a try!

3. JAW Popular Posts Widget (direct download)

This is an excellent plugin that we use here on Beeex.net as well that unfortunately, doesn’t work for WordPress 2.6 anymore (we’re hoping for an update and will update you on that as soon as it is released!). You can see the widget to the right under our sponsors. It displays the most popular (most viewed) posts. The benefits for your site are that it adds credibility, as your readers can see what others liked most.

1/2. Popularity Contest Plugin (direct download link)

The JAW Popular Posts Plugin requires this plugin to work, as it pulls the stats from the data gathered by it. Popularity Contest is a neat plugin itself: it adds a tab to your WordPress Dashboard and shows you a detailed list of which post has been accessed how many times, and a lot more.

4. DoFollow (direct download link, unzipped PHP file; right-click and Save As!)

DoFollow disables the automatic rel=”nofollow” attribute added to external links in WordPress. This attribute is important for search engines such as Google – they don’t count a nofollow link as an inbound link. With this link, you enable backlinks (and also trackbacks) to be counted as inbound links. This is a good thing for anybody who will comment on your site.

5. WP 2.3 Related Posts (direct download link)

This nice plugin displays articles on your blog related to a post the viewer is reading. It uses the newly introduced WordPress Tags for that. That’s why it only works with WordPress 2.3 or higher! (You should keep your WordPress updated anyway. Here’s the link to the newest version) (Update: This plugin is outdated. We featured a replacement in this new post: 10 excellent & promising WordPress Plugins!)
Installation is easy, but requires that you open up your single post script (usually single.php) to insert a single line of code. You might want to put it directly under the php the_content tag (that’s where we put it. Right, we use this plugin as well!)

6. No Self Pings (direct download link)

If you’re annoyed with WordPress’ automatic self-pinging, you can download and install this little goodie. It prevents your WordPress blog from pinging itself. That means that when you link back to an older post on your own blog, there won’t be a trackback entry placed in that post’s comment section. Trackbacks from sites other than your own blog are not affected.

7. WP Relative Date (direct download link)

This plugin adds a relative date to your posts and comments next to the date, such as Today, Yesterday, 2 Days ago, 2 Weeks ago, 2 Seconds ago, 2 Minutes ago, 2 Hours ago. Giving your readers this information adds to the overall style of your blog and creates a sort of relevancy!

8. Subscribe To Comments (direct download link)

Our last excellent plugin in the list of 8 and 1/2 plugins you probably didn’t know about is this goodie: It adds a small checkbox under the comment box, asking if you’d like to subscribe to this comment thread. If activated, an email is sent to the reader’s email address automatically when someone posts a new comment in that thread. It’s a great plugin, adding a lot of ‘personality’ to your blog: it encourages users to return to your site and keeps them in the discussion.

There you have ‘em, the 8 and a half excellent plugins you probably didn’t know about – until today. We hope you liked them and you can put them to good use!

One last note: You might want to check back in the next few days, as we’re already working on the next giveaway for WordPress bloggers. Stay tuned, subscribe to Beeex.net!

Beeex.net – Strictly-Free Quality Resources for Designers and Web Developers

This is a wonderful web-based and free tool for every web developer!

The website Typetester lets you compare up to three different typefaces on your screen. You simply choose from a large list of predefined fonts and define the parameters. Almost instantly, you can see the results on your screen – as well as every available font style.

Typetester not only supports every web-safe font, but also default Windows and Apple fonts. In addition to that, you can choose from a long list of specific fonts, including pixel fonts.

Once you’ve finished setting up your preferred font, you can get the CSS source code for that setting, ready for you to copy&paste to your CSS script. But be sure to check it before applying it to your website, as there are still some minor bugs in the code.

Also, if you pick a font which is not compatibe with internet standards, like, for instance, a pixel font (e.g. ‘hooge’, like in the screenshot above), you must be aware of the fact that whoever views your website and does not have that specific typeface installed will see the text on your website in a standard font such as Times New Roman. That’s the crux with web safe fonts

You can jump to Typetester right here.

Did you notice our new, cute little button at the bottom of Beeex.net? It’s right under the Firefox 2 Badge and it says “We love Beeex”. Do you know how we made it? Here goes:

You might already have come across these buttons or badges while surfing the web. They are usually used for displaying meta and stats content. Now, you can easily make your own – using this free online button generator!

Of course, you could use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or another graphic program to design your own button. But this is a quick and easy way to generate them in just a minute. You simply fill in your preferred text, define border and background colors, and the button generator creates a badge for you to download and use on your site.

You can go to the Online Button/Badge Generator here.

This is a goodie! If you run a website and you want a certain page to be password protected, this is what you need. Sometimes, you just don’t want to go through a CGI Script. So here comes the easier JavaScript solution!

This is an encrpyted password protection generator, fully web-based and free. It gives you JavaScript code to copy&paste into your HTML source code.

This is how it works: name a password of your choice, hit ‘Generate’, and the JavaScript code is being generated. You get code to copy&paste into your HTML file.

Using this script, you have to have a starting page to call the form (where the user has to input the password). Only if the correct password has been entered, the target HTML page opens. Plus: the JavaScript code is encrypted, so nobody can see the password by opening the HTML source.

You can go to the generator here.

If you run a website, you’re gonna love this one: it’s a fully web-based Favicon generator. Trust us: even if you think you already know the best way to create Favicons (like Microangelo), you absolutely need to take a look at this one. The benefit: You don’t need to buy and install software, and you get a very high quality Favicon in an instant!

Making a sophisticated Favicon has never been easier. You simply upload an image of your choice (PNG, GIF or JPEG) – that can be up to 5 MB -, then you crop it by dragging and resizing a rectangle over your image, hit ‘Capture & Preview’ – and you’re done!

You can then download the .ico file to place it in your own website’s root as a favicon. The site even offers you the HTML tag to copy&paste to your source code. And the best part is: it’s fully, totally, absolutely free. Thanks to the guys at A Beautiful Site for this!

You can jump to favikon here.

If you don’t know how to install a Favicon on your website, you’ll want to read this post.