How to Use WordPress Plugins to Enhance Admin Abilities

1. With any WordPress plugin, you first download the plugin from WordPress or from the plugin developer. You then upload the new plugin folder by FTP to the plugins directory of your blog (see links in Resources below).

2. To active the newly uploaded plugin, go to the WordPress admin panel for your blog and choose Plugins from the Dashboard menus. Find the new plugin in the list of available plugins for your blog and click the activate link.OK. On to the plugins you may want to use to improve your Admin panel.

3. Digital Fingerprint is a plugin that will help you detect the splogers who are scraping your content and passing it off as their own. This plugin places a digital fingerprint into blog posts. The fingerprint is only visible in the RSS feed, not on the website itself. You can search for the digital fingerprint using Google Blogsearch or any other blog search tool.

4. If you have a number of registered users who contribute to your blog, you will want Email Users. Email users allows you to send an email to the registered blog users. Users can send personal emails to each other. This is a free plugin, like most WordPress plugins, but donations are encouraged.

5. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator generates a XML-compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. Each time your sitemap changes, the plugin automatically pings Ask.com, Google, MSN Live Search and YAHOO!

6. OneClick works with WordPress and Firefox. It provides a way to upgrade plugins and themes with, well, one click. You don't even have to unzip the plugins. It handles both the unzipping and the FTP upload.

7. Share This lets you add a Share This button to all posts automatically. This button offers a way for readers to save and share links to each article you write. The many ways to share include: email, e-mail, bookmark, social, network, digg, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, technorati, reddit, tailrank, furl, blinklist, blogmarks, newsvine, facebook, myspace, social, socialize, stumbleupon, aim, google bookmarks, windows live, and YAHOO! MyWeb.