I just came across a nice new plugin, via the JohnTP.com blog, for adding Related Posts onto your Feed. The Related Posts (or Entries) are automatically added to your full text RSS feed. So now people that use Feed readers will now see a list of related posts just below your normal feed, just like they would see if they were visiting your actual website, and all just by activating this cool WordPress plugin!

Note: The plugin requires that you have the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin or the Wasabi Related Posts plugin installed and activated.

This new plugin is being developed by Solo Technology, and looks set to be an instant hit. There are numerous advantages to having related posts appearing within your RSS feed. It will certainly help you to get your feed readers to visit your blog more often, and almost definitely increase your blog pageviews. Future versions of this plugin are sure to enhance your RSS feed further. It is well worth getting ahead of the pack on this one and checking out this plugin.

Download

The Add Related Posts To Your Feed plugin can be downloaded here.

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A new version of the WordPress Database Backup Plugin has been released. This V2 Version works great in conjuction with the latest WordPress 2.1 version and gives you the ability to schedule automatic backups of your WordPress database either hourly, daily, or weekly and also with the ability to have the DB backup file emailed to an email address of your choice, automatically!

Once installed there are several new options under the Manage/Backup menu in your Wordpress admin panel. The top section of the Backup screen is for doing immediate backups while the bottom section is for scheduling automatic backups. The created backup will be in the form of a SQL script file that contains all the data of your blog as well as the proper commands to restore it. To restore the data you will need to execute the SQL on your MySQL database, using PHPMyAdmin, which will recreate the tables and repopulate the data into the proper fields.

The new automatic backup feature makes this a must-have plugin to have on your blog. Check it out.

Download: WordPress Database Backup Plugin

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TechPress is a great-looking 3 column Wordpress theme by WpDesigner.com. It is inspired by a number of tech blog designs, such as TechCrunch and Engadget. The theme is awesome as it looks great, and it is Sidebar Widget Ready as well!

This theme features a non-graphic based header which is a nice change. I always prefer these narrow header blog themes the best anyway. They just make more room available to the important stuff… the Text! Also in the header is the page navigation bar which is classy-looking and there is nice Web 2.0 feel to the whole theme. Overall, TechPress is a great-looking new theme from WpDesigner.com.

Download: TechPress Theme

It’s well worth taking a look at all of the WpDesigner.com website. There are a lot of nice themes there.

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This is a very simple way to distinguish your Blog from everyone elses and that is by having a Favicon appear next to the URL in many browsers such as FireFox or Internet Explorer. The great thing about this is that it takes just a minute or two to setup.

About Favicons

The browsers of today have a facility where if someone visits or bookmarks your website an icon or small picture can be associated with that particular website and bookmark. Browsers try to obtain that icon by requesting for ‘favicon.ico‘ from the root directory of your website. When the favicon.ico file is found, the icon will be displayed beside the web address in the browser address bar and beside the link name in your Favorites/Bookmarks menu. Favicons are usually 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels in size.

Getting A Favicon

There are many online resources for obtaining Favicons, but the easiest way is to create one yourself by visiting the Favicon From Pics site. With this online tool you simply upload any picture and it will be automatically converted to the appropriate size along with additional options such as scrolling text and animated pictures. I prefer to just use the static icon. The file containing the favicon.ico can be downloaded to your desktop.

Favicon Plugin

The Wordpress plugin that is used to automatically show the Favicon can be found at Favicon Head. Simply download the plugin, upload to the plugins folder and activate. Next upload the created ‘favicon.ico‘ to the root directory of your blog and that’s it!

The Favicon should appear the next time you visit your blog. Sometimes it can takes a few browser refreshs for the Favicon to appear and if at first you do not see the Favicon, then click CTRL+F5 on your keyboard to do a hard refresh.

Download

Favicon Head Plugin

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The PayPal Donate Plugin is a nice WordPress plugin which can be used to insert a PayPal Donate Button in your WordPress sidebar without you needing to mess with any HTML code. It allows visitors of your site to make a donation or contribution via PayPal, the most popular and largest online payment processing service.

PayPal Donate Plugin

The PayPal Donate Plugin adds a small PayPal Donation form on your sidebar. In order to use this plugin with Widget-Ready Wordpress Themes, you will need to download the PayPal Donate Widget also. The settings for this plugin can be changed via your blog options page.

How To Install The PayPal Donate Plugin & Widget

• Download PayPal Donate Plugin for WordPress.
• Download PayPal Donate Widget
• Extract the Plugin zip file into your wp-content/plugins/ folder
• Extract The Widget zip and upload paypalwidget.php to your /wp-content/plugins/widget/ directory
• Activate the plugin from inside WordPress (Plugins tab).
• Enter your details in the Options page (make sure you do this)
• Drag the PayPal Donate Support widget to your sidebar from inside Themes/Sidebar Widgets
• Click the Widget configuration icon and enter a title and backlink option.

Options Page Settings

• PayPal Email Address (Required)
• Currency
• Donation Reference
• Return URL
• Cancelled URL
• Choice of buttons (the ones in use by PayPal)

Plugin Requirements

• PayPal account.
• WordPress 2.0+
• WordPress Sidebar Widgets Plugin.
• PayPal Donate Plugin for WordPress.

Download

• PayPal Donate Plugin
• PayPal Donate Widget

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