The snapshot to the right should speak for it self. That’s right I have updated my WordPress installation to the latest version. While several plugins are not compatible yet with the latest version of WordPress, Semiologic Extract Terms Plugin being one of them, I am still glad I went ahead through this upgrade.

This is the first time ever that I have upgraded the WordPress to the latest version long before it became available via Fantastico. In fact I said goodbye to Fnatastico for good. Unless you are hosting your blog with Bluehost, Hostmonster or FastDomain, you probably have not heard about Simple Scripts. You can on my other blog about initial impression Simple Script made on me.

I have to say that ability to upgrade your scripts within hours of them being available on the Internet sounds like a sweet idea.

Just a quick tip. If you decide to test the Simple Script, before doing anything else back up your databases as well as your current installations. If upgrading a installation made by Fantastico, do not opt to create new administrator and new database. Just fire up the script and at the end replace the new wp-config.php with the one you backed up, or enter the information needed to connect to your database in wp-config.php file.

On a personal note. I do hope many other web hosting providers will integrate Simple Scripts into their control panels. Feel free to point your own web hosting provider to Simple Scripts. I can’t praise enough Simple Scripts. This new way of installing and upgrading self-hosted platforms like WordPress will come very handy around the times when “crucial security updates” will be implemented. Unlike Fantastico, Simple Scripts will have the latest versions available for installation within hours, not weeks.

And of course as always, since this upgrade took place less than an hour ago I ask you to please report to me any bugs you may encounter.

Do you find yourself linking to a particular blog or website often? Do you link to your older posts? Do you promote a particular product and would like to associate your affiliate links to a keyword or a key phrase? Would you like some of these tasks to be done automatically as soon as certain keyword is mentioned in your post? If you answered yes to one of the question you may be interested in the WordPress plugin called aLinks.

I have had my eyes on several plugins meant to do these sort of things. Some of them were free and some were not. After taking a closer look at aLinks, I have come to conclusion that this plugin will suite my needs completely.

The plugin comes with four four modules allowing you to:

• turn keywords into links to your own blog posts- might be very useful if you often links to your older posts
• turn keywords into links to any URL of your choice- as an affiliate I find this feature to be the most beneficial
• turn keywords into links to to the gada.be website- I never heard about this website until now
• turn keywords into links to Amazon.com – amazon affiliates might find this option useful

There are other aLinks modules available, including a module that allows you to link to your Commission Junction merchants. If you are a savvy programmer, you might be able to come up with your own module. If you do so, make sure to stop by here again and let me know about the module you have created. For time being, the module that I will be utilizing the most on my blogs are those allowing me to link to URLs of my choice. There is an option to cloak your links as well.

Finally I would like to thank Mark from 45n5 for pointing me to this plugin, even though he thinks that WordPress sucks.

Implementing redirects for your website sometimes can be a very difficult and even painful process. I have learned it first hand when I decided to move 500+ posts about affiliate marketing from my old blog. It tuns out that htaccess file, while being very useful, can not handle unlimited amount of redirects. Having implemented about 200 of 301 redirects, I have soon discovered that visitors to my old blog where looking at 500 misconfiguration error page. Fortunately (HT: Andy Beard) I was pointed to Redirection Plugin. I quickly realized that this plugin is a must have plugin on any WordPress powered website. It does not require Apache htaccess, since it works entirely “inside” the WordPress. This plugin can be very useful if you are an affiliate marketer and need to cloak affiliate links without having to mess with htaccess file.

This plugin can be trully called the King of redirects. Here are some key functionality features of the plugin.

1. Creating a redirect is quick and easy. Takes literally few seconds by filling out a simple form:

2. Offers 6 different type of redirects and 6 different methods:
   Type of redirects:
   • Simple Redirection
   • Redirect based on login status
   • Redirect to a random WordPress post
   • Redirect to one of several URLs
   • Redirect based on referrer

   Methods of redirects:

   • 301 Permanent redirect
   • 302 Moved
   • 307 Temporary redirect
   • 404 Not found
   • 410 Gone
   • Pass-Trhough
3. Once the redirects are set up on your blog, it offers statistics of how many times the redirect was accessed as well as the date when it was accessed last:

4. It will monitor for you every time your website serves 404 not found page to your visitors. In fact in it provides you with a RSS feed of the latest 404 outputs by your site so you can act quickly if needed:


5. It can automatically create a 301 redirect when post slug changes:
   
   This feature can be of great use if you decide to change the post slug after your page was indexed by a search engine. I personally will benefit from this feature. I change the post slugs quiet often after discovering a misspelling, some times weeks after it was indexed.

If you ask me which plugin is the most useful to a WordPress blogger. I would have to say that Redirection plugin has to be among the top three plugins that every WordPress user must have.

As I was watching one of Marks recent videos, I really liked the idea of providing some sort of free classifieds on your blog. If you are a programmer like Mark, it probably takes you a minute or two to whip up a script for that purpose. But if you are handicapped in the area of programing, you look for the solutions out there. I was surprised that with thousands of plugins out there there is really none specifically made for that purpose.

JunxterAds came the closest to what I was looking for. I really liked the Google API integration on their live demo. Seemingly it was perfect solution for a blog that has a lot to do with real estate. However the support for the WordPress plugin is non existent . It is hard to tell if they ever moved beyond the demo version of their website. With this widget you would be able to both to sell or offer for free classifieds system to your readers. I like the idea. I hope they would continue to invest in developing the widget.

TDO Mini Forms is the solution I have settled on. With this plugin you can allow your visitors to submit a post to your blog without need to be a registered user. You can specify that all of these posts can go into a particular category- classifieds. Then you just need to exclude posts from that category on home page and/or other pages. The beautiful part about WordPress is that it can output RSS for every thing on your blog. You can manage and offer subscriptions to only “classifieds” category.

So with that being said I have set up Free Classifieds at Go Beyond MLS. If you know anyone who is in real estate business send them my way for a test drive of my system.

In the past I have supported the No Nofollow movement. On occasions I may have been overly strong in my opinions when I saw other bloggers removing nofollow attributes for the sake of inviting more comments. The truth is that nothing invites more comments as the valuable content of your posts.

To me nofollow is a way of giving credit to the source. After all, we do that all the time when we cite articles from news website or even from other blogs.

Having said that, I have become increasingly frustrated in my battle against the comment spam. It appears that across the globe certain lists of “dofollow” blogs are circulating. I do not know how else to explain behavior of certain “spammers” jumping from one dofollow blog to another leaving the same messages while using “certified used car salesman” as their name commenting on our blogs.

Making my blog less attractive to these spammers yet rewarding my regular readers, I have decided to use Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin. There is one review of this plugin that comes to my mind. Andy Beard once wrote:

I was going to liken this plugin to a Ferrari, because it is built to be fast, but it is probably more like a Subaru, not just fast but designed for rugged terrain and can handle the twists and turns of comment spammers without slowing down.

Not being a programmer myself there are times I use plugins because they work. Lucia’s plugin not only works, it makes sense. I am excited to finally try it on one of my blogs.

Make sure to visit Andy’s list of nofollow and dofollow plugins. While you may want to reward your regulars readers, you may also want to have a little more control over the “link juice flow” around your blog. Andy’s list has them all plus links to the solutions on removing nofollow on other popular platforms- Blogger/Blogspot, Moveable Type and Typepad.