Twitter for Wordpress: Maybe you’ve got a lot to say to your audience, but it comes in fits and starts. If you are a Twittermouth, try this one in a sidebar. It comes as a widget and will potentially drive your readers to your Twitter profile and potentially your Twitter followers will hop onto your site now and then. Likewise, regular updates tend to keep Googlebot happy with seeing changes to your site.

MultiFeedSnap: This one is more “Web 2.0″ than “social networking,” but what the hey.  It is great for embedding RSS feeds right into your content post.   What I like about it is that you can build a page that is essentially a dynamic directory of content. It will, of course, update based on the schedule of the remote feed.  Neat, huh? I’m using it on a site I have built for my day job, you can check out an example of MultiFeedSnap here at ClarkVoices, where we’ve used it to pull in a podcast of Alumni interviews.

TubePress:  Have video content from YouTube that you want to integrate with your Wordpress site?  Learn a single line of Wordpress “shortcode” and you will be on your way to adding YouTube Galleries to your postings.  Humor me again, and check out how these YouTube galleries display in ClarkVoices.  Not just individual videos, but entire playlists can be referenced.

Smart Youtube: Maybe you just need the simple capability of adding a YouTube video now and then.  If this is the need, then this little plugin is just great.  No need to copy the YouTube embed code.  Once this add-on is installed and activated, you just plunk in the URL to the YouTube video, with the little addition of a “v” in the address, after the “http” and voila’, you have an embedded video.  Simple and nice:  httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU

I Love Social Bookmarking:  I’ve reviewed a number of these, and they function in a pretty similar fashion, but this one presents very well.  Getting “slashdotted” is really a good problem to have, and building inbound links is essential for gaining ground with your organic search placement.  So you really MUST get social book marking, and this one is a good one to have, it installs easy, and requires no fiddling with PHP code, as some do.

Now is a good time for a housekeeping note:  keep your plugins updated!  As fabulous as they may seem, all software is constantly improved, and you don’t want to miss out on new features.  Likewise, assuming you are keeping your Wordpress updated, you want to make sure your plugins are “keeping up” with the latest release that you are no doubt running.  Also be sure and test and review functionality after each update.  Did I mention this is a long-term commitment?

The add-on’s I’ve featured are great for adding dynamic content.  They give an additional sense that your site is alive with changing content, and that is valuable, without a doubt.  However, it is not really a substitute for presenting and sourcing original, quality content on your site.  Now we all know that the Google-rithm is a mysterious proprietary thing and while Googlebot will index your new content, your site map won’t be updated.  By the way, the Google XML Site Maps plugin is a must-have, but that’s a topic for another entry!

Caution: may require many plugins!

But, is it a good bet to employ a very flexible, extensible blogging tool for the purpose of maintaining “regular” web presence?  It certainly possible and tempting.  After all, Wordpress has a ton of developers and an incredibly active support community.

But whether you should deploy Wordpress in this fashion may require careful consideration of the complexity of a given site.  Is it web presence for a small business with half-a-dozen editors or less?  Are we talking a larger organization with multiple departments and business units?  If the latter, then we can end up with quite a challenge on our hands.  Wordpress isn’t quite designed for hierarchical permissions.  I’m referring to scenario where staffer Suzy Q. who edits the “Customer Support” area of a site does not need to have access to edit the press releases or product marketing copy.

Wordpress seperates content into Pages and Posts, and these content types may further be typed by Category. Out-of-the-box (or tar-file as the case may be), Wordpress does not prohibit an editor of one content area from editing another area.  Of course there are plugins to help with this, and that’s the beauty of open source.   However with extensibility comes the inevitable trade off!  Techno-karma has no mercy.

That’s to say, through plugins you can potentially scale Wordpress into more CMS-like functionality by adding the workflow, permissions, notification bits that you’d expect from a “real” CMS.   But do not expect that you “add it and forget it” with plugins.  Assuming that you plan to keep your WP install current (you DO plan to, yes?!), you enter into a long term commitment with every bit of add-on functionality you install.  Do so… with fear and trembling.

For example — check out this list of plugins you might need.  Yowza.  Be aware that each plugin has its own life-cycle, meaning that in addition to being a good doobie and keeping your core Wordpress install updated, each plugin will need to be updated, and, this is critical:  may or may not be compatible with major WP upgrades.  It happens.

Coming soon… Wordpress and Google Analytics.