WordPress Weekend: 5 New Plugins

Hope your weekend is going well. I’ve relocated to North Carolina where the weather is much nicer at the moment than Vermont, so I’m enjoying that. I’ve got a few new(ish) WordPress plugins for ya for this week’s WordPress Weekend post. I haven’t tested any of these. You can try them out on a test blog before using them on your live site.

Title Split Test Plugin

The headline is the most important thing about any blog post. And although you always try to write the best ones you can, at some point you have to pick one out of all your drafts (you do write more than one headline to try and come up with the best one, right?). The problem is you never know if that other one you almost went with wouldn’t have been better.

Title Split Test is a free plugin that lets you enter in multiple titles per blog post and then lets you know which one performed the best.

Wordfence Security Plugin

Wordfence is a newer free security plugin that has some pretty interesting features. It checks your WordPress core files against the official WordPress file repository, performs malware scans, and much more.

Social Count Plus Plugin

There a few social sharing plugins out there I like but my one disappointment is that they don’t show any sharing numbers as social proof to site visitors. Social Count Plus looks like a nice one that does just that.

Read Offline Plugin

For people with EPUB readers (Nook, Kindle, iOS, etc.), giving them the ability to save your blog posts for offline reading later in the EPUB format might be a nice option to offer. Read Offline is a plugin that does just that.

Pinterest Image Pin Plugin

If you’ve ever wanted to have a simple “Pin it” button under your blog post images, check out Pinterest Image Pin. It makes a lot of sense to put the Pin button directly by an image, so I really like the idea of this plugin.

Happy Plugin-i-fying

Which one of these strikes you as the most useful? Are you going to try them? Let me know!

ivica

Wordfence is already in usage – there is never enough security
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Glad to hear a second opinion on it!
- http://cuberules.com Scot Herrick
  
  I installed Wordfence and it didn’t prevent my site from showing, but it did wipe out seeing the Plugins page. Of course, I have multiple security plugins and I’m sure it conflicted with one or more of them.
  
  Security is a big deal. I’d try and put a suite of security plugins that work together as a post (at least on Remarkablogger!) and see how that plays. Nothing against Wordfence — most of my plugins are preventing access and not monitoring for stuff that has already happened.
http://pajamaproductivity.com Annie Sisk

Great roundup. On a completely different note: What part of NC are you in? I live in the mountains!
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  By Camp LeJeune. I used to imagine that bombs going off would be like fireworks. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
  - http://pajamaproductivity.com Annie Sisk
    
    Yep, not so much fun. If you make it out to the mountains, swing by and say ‘howdy’!
fcaballo

Thanks so much. I’m definitely checking out the Title Split Test and Pinterest Image Pin plugins. I need those!
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Cool, glad to hear you liked those.
troublesometots

Thanks for sharing these – have been looking for a nice clean social count plugin. Just purchased a different pinterest plugin (http://pinterestplugin.com/) which frankly was too expensive for what it does, but it’s a nice upgrade from the basics if you’re really into pinterest.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Hey, if it works, and has support, it will probably be worth it in the long run.
Will Falconer DVM

Michael, how much does a WP blogger have to watch out for Plugin interference with performance? Are there limits, measures, you take into account before adding another? It’s all pretty virgin territory for me, only on WP in the last 4 months.

Thanks.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Will, there are services out there that will test the page load speed of a URL. You can add a plugin and test to see any difference.
  
  You can run more plugins than you probably think, but it’s better to test and find out.
  - ivica
    
    TOP 4 free online tools for measuring web sites speed with lot of useful details:
    
    1. Pingdom Tools: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
    2. GTmetrix: http://gtmetrix.com/
    3. WebPagetest: http://www.webpagetest.org/
    4. loads.in: http://loads.in/
    
    BONUS TOOL:
    Which loads faster: http://whichloadsfaster.com/
    Enjoy it!
Flora Brown, Ph.D.

Hi Michael,

I look forward to trying the Title Split Test and Pinterest image plugins.

Thanks for sharing them.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Cool, hope they help.
Ellen

MIchael, what is the name of the social media plugin you’re using for your blog posts as shown above? Also, which plugin are you using for the comment section? Thanks for all the great plugin information! Love the new website design.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Ellen, I’m using:
  
  Digg Digg:http://bufferapp.com/diggdigg
  
  Juiz Social Post Sharer: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/juiz-social-post-sharer/
  
  The Slide:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simplereach-slide/ which to use requires a free account here: https://www.simplereach.com/
  
  For comments, I use Disqus: http://disqus.com
  
  I’m glad to hear you like the new design. I like it, too!
http://www.robertbcairns.com/ Rob Cairns

I love this post Michael. Some really great useful tools here . Thanks for sharing
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Glad to hear it, Rob, you’re welcome. Is that a new avatar pic? Looks good!
  - http://www.robertbcairns.com/ Rob Cairns
    
    Its is a new avatar and thank you:)
Derek

The only one I’ve used and continue to use is Wordfence. I rate this plugin very highly and it’s the only one I use for security. It always sends an email when any plugins need updating and if anyone tries to hack your site it locks them out after a certain number of login attempts and blocks their IP address. This plugin really works and is quite easy to set up.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Derek, thanks for your confirmation on that. Makes me happy to know I pick good ones to share with everyone.
http://twitter.com/andrewrondeau Andrew Rondeau

Nice share, Michael. Love the spilt testing title one. Will use that from now on – always want to improve headlines. Crucial!

Andrew
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Absolutely! Why guess when you can test?
http://www.heartspoken.com/ Elizabeth H. Cottrell

I just participated in a website security webinar, and Wordfence got high marks from the presenters.
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Awesome, looks like we have security plugin winner, here.
http://twitter.com/write_clever Sue Neal

I have to say, Michael, my first reaction on seeing your title was ‘Oh, no – not MORE plugins!’ Having promised myself I wouldn’t add any more for a while, I’ve recently caved in to Front-end Editor, which was just too much of a time-saver to resist. These do look interesting, but I’m going to bookmark them for now – worth sharing, though – thanks!
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Thanks for sharing that, Sue. I don’t add new plugins that often, only when I really feel that it would be a big benefit.
William Cato

Hello Micheal. thanks for the list of plugins. I am currently testing only 1 right now and that 1 is Title Split testing plugin. blog titles matter almost as much as good content and as a student of copy the title is the attractor factor of any type content you will write. So why not use available resources in order to get a bigger advantage and traffic?
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  Agreed, William!
http://cuberules.com Scot Herrick

On my first test of the Title Split Test Plugin, I set it up for offering up two title options. While not enough to be scientific proof, one of my titles was clicked on to read two times more than my other title. This is going to be an interesting view of results and what works on my site. Glad you found this one, Michael!
- http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine
  
  That’s great to hear, Scot, thanks for sharing your experience with us.