Here are two Wordpress plugins that can be very useful in your Niche Blogs. I wanted to write about it because I was able to help out my buddy Paul with his niche blog. Paul came to me with two things: (1) he was irritated with the Wordpress ‘more’ tag, and (2) he wanted a easy way to use pictures with his Adsense ads.

At first, I told him he could edit his Wordpress theme to show excerpts instead of the content. He really didn’t want to do that. He was irritated because he places his adsense ads “above the fold”. And whenever his visitor read his article and proceeded to read the rest of it, they click on the ‘more’ link and they are taken to the article… but scrolled down to where they left off. This meant that the ad he placed, wrapped with the first paragraph, was scrolled off the page. This bites.

I suggested using a plugin called Striptease. He absolutely loves it. What does it do? Here’s how the owner describes it:

The StripTease plugin is a simple filter that strips the fragment identifiers from WordPress’s teaser links so that they link to full posts.

Now, the reader gets to see the entire post/article, including any ad placed above. Problem Solved. Cool.

Next, Paul wanted a easy way to place pictures with his ads. I suggested a plugin that I’ve only been using for about a month now. I was hesistant at first because it doesn’t work properly on some themes I had tested. It “breaks” based on the stylesheet. This is of course remedied by editing your stylesheet.

Fortunately for Paul, his theme worked properly with the plugin. The plugin is called Adsense Beautifier. The plugin currently only work with 2 formats of Adsense Ads: Leaderboard and Large Rectangle. Those are the two good ones anyway, so no problem there. The plugin displays a picture beside your ad (or on top if you’re using leaderboard). However, the picture is always the same. This is something the creator is working on. A new version is being developed that will pull the image based on a relative keyword. In the meantime, those who can or want, can integrate an image rotating script to work with the plugin. Oh, and the plugin works well with the Adsense Deluxe plugin. Another one you should be using, by the way.

So there you have it. More Wordpress plugins to use with your Niche Blogs. If you’re using a plugin that’s worked really well for your niche blogs, drop me line. I’d really like to hear more about it. In the meantime, I’ll keep digging for more plugin gems.

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