The great thing about WordPress is that while it makes a fantastic blog platform, it is also versatile enough to tackle other applications as well. There are many people who use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for a seemingly static website, largely because it is so good at managing all of that content.

For instance, you will notice that my freelance writing site is actually powered by WordPress, even though it is not a blog. I don’t have too many pages on there, so managing the different pages is a relatively straightforward process. However, this isn’t the case if you have a website with lots of pages in a multi-tier hierarchal configuration. How can you better manage those pages?

A simple WordPress plugin has been designed that allows you to easily navigate pages from within the WordPress dashboard system. This plugin will insert a widget in your dashboard that lets you navigate through your pages as if it were a Windows Explorer. This maintains the hierarchal structure, not unlike the folder system you have on your PC.

For more information and to download the free plugin, head on over to the official WordPress plugin directory.

Want to foster more of a conversation with the readers on your blog? Finding that the comment system is getting overwhelmed and it’s far too hard to follow a discussion? Maybe you want some live feedback from the audience, allowing them to interact with one another in a free and open manner?

It may have been quite some time since you last stepped your virtual foot into a chat room, but you can now integrate the same idea into your WordPress blog with 123 Flash Chat. Rather than directing visitors to a separate site altogether, you can run a full-fledged chat client on your own website. The Internet chat room is back!

There are two main options for using this plug-in. First, you can choose to have a lite chat client embedded into the sidebar on your blog. By using this, readers can continue to chat while reading the different content on your site. Second, you can provide a link to a standard chat client, which would then appear as a pop-up window. For both, you can define the width and height of the client, as well as its skin and language.

More information, including the download link, can be found at 123flashchat.com. Note that there is an attribution link that comes along with this free WordPress plug-in.

One of the keys to maintaining the readership on your blog is to keep those readers on your site for as long as possible. You can direct them to the most recent posts, in case they missed any in the last few days, or you can deeplink to some of your own older posts from within the current article. What if you want to show off your most popular posts?

Keeping things simple and effective is the Top 10 WordPress plug-in. This plug-in keeps track of the page views received by each of your blog posts, ranking them accordingly. You can then embed a widget in your sidebar, displaying the top 10 most popular posts from the current day or from all-time. People tend to follow other people, so if they see that a post is popular, they’ll want to read it to find out why.

The Top 10 plug-in can display the view count on single posts and pages, and it offers full support for post thumbnail images. You can also view the list of daily and overall popular posts from within the WordPress dashboard. The plug-in is also compatible with caching solutions like WP Super-Cache.

To download Top 10 for WordPress, direct your browser to ajaydsouza.com. The plug-in page also supplies more information, including screenshots, if you want to check that out too.

Social networking and social bookmarking can be fantastic sources of traffic for your website. You’ll notice that many blogs take advantage of various plug-ins and design customizations that capitalize on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and countless other services. One of the newest social services to hit the Internet, as you know, is Google Buzz.

Not surprisingly, the first of many WordPress plug-ins has been developed to connect your blog to Google Buzz. Called WP Google-buzz, this plug-in comes from the same developer who created Twitter Goodies, All in One Webmaster, and WP Archive-Sitemap Generator. That’s a pretty strong pedigree, wouldn’t you say?

With this Google Buzz plug-in, you can choose from a variety of Buzz-related icons to embed in each of your blog posts. Some of these are just the Buzz logo, whereas others can have a blue text box that reads “Buzz this.” You can choose to have this icon displayed at the beginning of the post, at the end of a post, or with a manual insertion code to use with your theme files.

Among the features that may appear in future releases of WP Google-buzz are nofollow attribution, pop-up window options, and new Buzz buttons. More information can be found at Arpit Shah’s site and the free download can be found in the official plugin directory on WordPress.org.

There are several sources of traffic for your website or blog. You can work on expanding your organic traffic or perhaps you’ll invest in some search engine marketing. Another area that can be quite effective is in social media, but that can be a time-consuming process.

Rather than manually submit your blog posts to the various networks, you can install the OnlyWire for WordPress plug-in. It connects to over 30 different social networking and social bookmarking networks.

On the surface, this plug-in looks a lot like the AddThis and ShareThis plug-ins. With those (as well as with OnlyWire), readers of your blog can share directly to various networks from a simple click-out menu. The difference is that OnlyWire adds in some extra functionality for the blog author. That’s you.

It can be configured to automatically submit your blog posts to dozens of social networks. All you have to do is sign up for a free OnlyWire account and then each time you publish a blog post, it will be submitted to your networks of choice. For more information, screenshots, and to download, check out the OnlyWire plug-in in the official WordPress plug-in directory.

Are you offering some kind of free download on your website or blog? Maybe you’re giving away a free e-book for marketing purposes and you want to know how many people have downloaded it thus far? The trouble is that Google Analytics may not supply this kind of information for you.

To overcome this mild shortcoming, you may want to consider the DownloadCounter WordPress plug-in. This plug-in will track the number of times a file has been downloaded from your site, giving you an accurate representation of how well that product is doing and how popular it has been.

This doesn’t work automatically with all files, of course, as you could be overwhelmed with the amount of stats available. Instead, this plug-in can automatically generate a special link and code that you then embed in your website. You can manage your chosen files through the administration page.

More information can be found on paran0id’s blog. The plug-in has not been updated since 2006, but it still seems to work for most current users. Here is the direct download link, which is also representative of the links the plug-in creates.

More and more people are using their cell phones and smartphones to access the Internet these days. They’re watching YouTube videos, posting to their Twitter accounts, and keeping up with their RSS feeds. Is your blog properly equipped for the smaller screen?

One of the more useful plug-ins that you may want is called WordPress Mobile Edition. This plug-in serves two purposes. First, it detects the browser being used to access your website. Second, if it detects a mobile browser, it displays your blog using a mobile-friendly theme with minimal graphics and a simplified layout.

The idea is that WordPress Mobile Edition can provide a mobile-friendly interface for your blog “with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.” This should work not only for the iPhone, but also for BlackBerry devices, Nokia smartphones, and the like.

Go to Crowdfavorite.com for more information. The download link is located about halfway down that page.

Comments mean a lot to the success of any kind of blog, whether it be a political blog, technology blog, or even a personal blog. We have to remember that this platform is meant to provide for a two-way conversation and not as a one-way soapbox. Discussion and interaction are inherently important.

What can you do if someone leaves a particularly good comment on one of your posts? What if someone leaves a bad comment that isn’t necessarily worthy of being marked as spam or being deleted? The aptly named Feature Comments is a WordPress plug-in that was coded with this exact functionality in mind.

From the Edit Comments area in the WordPress administration panel, you can choose to do one of two things to each and every comment left on your blog. You can choose to “feature” a comment if you think that it is particularly apt or informative, or you can choose to “bury” a comment that isn’t quite as worthy of that kind of attention.

This is quite different from the voting-based system that you may see from other solutions, since the choice to feature or bury a comment is solely at the discretion of the blog owner. Go to WPprogrammer.com for more information, screenshots, and to download the Feature Comments plug-in.

Generally speaking, most of the blogs that you find on the Internet will make use of a single unified theme or template for the entirety of the site. Whether you are reading this single WordPress Wednesday post or one of the Marketing 101 posts on the BlueFur blog, you will see the same theme. What if you want to shake it up?

There are instances where you may choose to have a different theme based on the category or type of post. For instance, if you have a multi-author blog, you may want to have a slightly modified template based on the author of that particular post. How do you go about doing this without utilizing multiple WordPress installations?

A very handy plug-in for this purpose is called ThemePerPost. As you can probably guess from its name, this WordPress plug-in allows you to have different styles and themes for each of your posts. This can be great for landing pages, sub-sections, and other similar applications. Maybe you want a different theme for your About page.

This plug-in adds a custom field in the area where you would normally write or edit your blog posts and pages. From there, you can choose from the templates that you have uploaded to the regular themes directory in your WordPress installation.

For more information and to download the WordPress plug-in, point your web browser over to Steveify.com. A live demo is also hosted there.

There is already a rather popular WordPress plug-in that will automatically backup the databases associated with your WordPress blog and you can have this plug-in email the backup files to you on a regular basis. However, that’s only one part of the equation. What about your themes, uploads, and other information?

To get a comprehensive backup of your blog, you may want to consider Automatic WordPress Backup. Unlike the plug-in that only backs up the database, this plug-in provides a complete backup. According to the official page, you get a back up of your WordPress database, themes, plugins, uploaded files and setting files. This way, you can fully restore your site should something arise.

The system is automated, so it can make the back up on its own. It also uses Amazon S3, so you can achieve very good reliability. You can initiate a manual backup too, which comes in handy before you do any new updates or upgrades that may “break” your site.

For more information, point your browser to WordpressBackup.org. Note that this plug-in only works with Linux/PHP5 servers, so do not use it if you have Windows servers and PHP4.