![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/wordpress.gif\" "\\"wordpress")
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Maintaining a site as complex as CSSnewbie requires a bit more than just fancy CSS footwork. It also relies on a Content Management System (CMS) \u2013 WordPress<\/a>, in this case \u2013 and a healthy dose of plugins to extend that CMS\u2019s capabilities. Here are six of the many WordPress plugins that help keep CSSnewbie growing and thriving.<\/p>\n The cforms plugin<\/a> helps you build complex contact forms and embed them in your WordPress site \u2013 all from the WordPress back-end. I use this plugin on my contact page, and my advertising page. The plugin is amazingly customizable, both from within WordPress and by manipulating the CSS the plugin uses. Although, I have to admit I haven\u2019t done a lot of modifications to the forms\u2019 CSS yet.<\/p>\n Comment Relish<\/a> is a great way to encourage interaction between your site\u2019s readers and authors. The concept is pretty simple: each time a new person comments on your website, this plugin automatically sends them an email of your devising. You could theoretically use this plugin to inform your new community members of just about anything \u2013 a new e-book, perhaps, or other sites you run that they might be interested in visiting. I\u2019m currently using it to thank my users for their comment and encourage them to comment again (and subscribe to my feed, if they haven\u2019t done so already).<\/p>\n Using this plugin has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me. Many commenters have responded to the email to tell me they appreciate the articles I\u2019ve produced and to show me the work they\u2019re producing in CSS. If you\u2019d like to see the plugin in action, just leave a comment, and you should get an email at the address you specify fairly quickly. <\/p>\n My content is only useful if people are able to find it, and search engines are the number one way most people start looking for new information. Thus, it pays to make sure your site is being properly indexed by search engines. One of the easiest ways to ensure you show up in the world\u2019s most popular search engine (Google, for those counting) is to use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin<\/a>. <\/p>\n This handy-dandy little plugin automatically creates an XML-based file describing your site\u2019s content that you can then submit to Google. Once you tell Google where your sitemap resides, they\u2019ll use it to ensure they\u2019re fully indexing your website. And every time you post a new article, the plugin updates your sitemap. Organic Google searches are a growing segment of my inbound traffic, and I have no doubt that this plugin has a fair bit to do with that growth.<\/p>\n Of course, all the search results in the world won\u2019t do a bit of good if you reorganize your website and don\u2019t leave a forwarding address for your users. About a month ago, I rethought my article permalink structure \u2013 I decided having the article\u2019s \u201cprimary category\u201d in the permalink wasn\u2019t useful, as most articles belonged to several categories, and I didn\u2019t consider one any more \u201cprimary\u201d than the others. Unfortunately (in a way), Google had already indexed my site, and people were visiting from other sites via several soon-to-be-incorrect links. That\u2019s when the Redirection plugin<\/a> saved my rear.<\/p>\n All I had to do was describe to the plugin what my old permalink structure looked like, and what my new one now looked like. It took care of all of the forwarding stuff in the back end. I was worried the process of setting up a redirect file would take me most of the afternoon\u2026 but it ended up taking me all of ten minutes. <\/p>\n And while we\u2019re on the topic of making sure your users can find your content, a little search engine optimization (SEO) can make a big difference, too. WordPress already does a pretty good job with SEO just by providing clean, well-written code in their included templates and making \u201cfriendly\u201d URLs the default for all new installations. However, there\u2019s more that can be done in terms of metadata, and for that, I turn to the SEO Meta Editor Advanced plugin.<\/p>\n The plugin adds a couple of extra fields to each post that I write, allowing me to specify a group of meta keywords and a description. The keywords help search engines categorize my articles and increase the chances of someone finding the information they want. Search engines also use the \u201cdescription\u201d field to describe your pages instead of just grabbing an excerpt from your article that may or may not be descriptive. This is particularly useful for someone like me, because I can be a bit wordy at times (this time, for example). The description field ensures that people coming in off search engines get a good, concise summary of the article they\u2019re clicking through to.<\/p>\n The fundamental purpose behind CSSnewbie is to help people learn more about CSS. To do that, I often turn to code snippets to explain concepts or describe techniques. However, a snippet of code all by itself can be difficult to read \u2013 especially once the snippet is more than a few lines long. The Snippet Highlight plugin helps out by colorizing my code examples. It\u2019s what turns this:<\/p>\n Into this:<\/p>\n The plugin can also add line numbers to your code snippets, but I personally found them a little distracting, so I modified the plugin\u2019s CSS to exclude the line numbers.<\/p>\n These are just six of the many plugins that help keep CSSnewbie running \u2013 but these six I tend to rely upon more heavily than the others. I\u2019m constantly trying out new plugins in the background to see if they could make the site more useful. If you know of any plugins that you think would be a good match for the site, please let me know about them in the comments!<\/p>\ncforms II<\/h3>\n
Comment Relish<\/h3>\n
Google XML Sitemaps<\/h3>\n
Redirection<\/h3>\n
SEO Meta Editor Advanced<\/h3>\n
Snippet Highlight<\/h3>\n
p {\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tcolor: #333;\n\ttext-transformation: uppercase;\n}<\/pre>\np {\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tcolor: #333;\n\ttext-transformation: uppercase;\n}<\/pre>\n