Let’s be honest, you know something has gone mainstream when there is a WordPress plugin to do it, and that has exactly happened with Group Buying.

A new WordPress plugin has been developed by Group Buying Site that allows you to turn any WordPress blog into a fully fledged Groupon clone, allowing you to run your own group buy flash sales and daily deals.

Collecting money is also easy as all you need to be able to receive money from visitors is a PayPal account, but could be a bit of an obstacle specially in countries like South Africa where PayPal is not such a widely used service.

Setting up a Group Buying site sure does involve having the correct software to drive your sales, but that is only part of the business. This WordPress plugin will help you solve the first part of setting up a Group Buying site, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg also. The Group Buying WordPress plugin is available from as little as $199 depending on the version you want, that is lest than R1500 for functionality that could cost you easily R20 000+ if you get someone to develop a Group Buying website for you.

The WordPress Group Buying plugin give you access to easily create deals allowing you to set minimum deal purchases required, max deal purchases allowed, deal expiration date/time, voucher expiration date just to mention a few features. It also integrates with Google Maps to easily allow you to add deal location, and also offer the site owner full deal statistics.

The code to the WordPress Group Buying plugin is also 100% unencrypted meaning that if you buy it you can easily make changes to the code to add certain functionality you need that isn’t built in already.

With allot of companies cashing in on the whole Group Buying concept you are now also given the power to be the next local Groupon competitor in your area, and who know maybe just maybe you could get Acquired for the odd $1 million.

Just a word of warning, having a Group Buying site is only part of the solution, without good quality deals nobody will buy from you so come prepared and negotiate to offer your visitors good deals they just can’t say no to.

If you want to start your own Group Buying site check out http://groupbuyingsite.com for the Group Buying WordPress plugin that will turn any WordPress site into a Group Buying site.

Forrst is a new online community where developers and designers can share inspiring code, links and screenshots. Think of it as a social network for developers and designers out there.

Forrst is currently only available on invite and I am lucky enough to be part of this great community, checking in daily to see what interesting things like-minded peers are up to.

Forrst recently released a, lets call it API, with limited functionality where you can look up user info and posts for specific users. It got me thinking seeing as I am such a big fan of WordPress, why not have a nice widget where you can showcase your latest Forrest Post and this is where Forrst WP was born.

Forrst WP is a WordPress plugin that enables you to place a WordPress Widget on your site showing your the latest Forrst Posts for the user you specified. Forrst WP currently has limited functionality seeing that the Forrst API is very restricted at the moment only allowing you to look up posts and user information for specific users.

To use Forrst WP, simply download the file below, extract and upload it to your WordPress plugins directory. In you WordPress dashboard under the Plugins menu, activate Forrst WP and then head over to your Widgets and simply drag the Forrst Widget to where you’d like it and enter the options as desired.

Download Forrst WP v1.0

There are a few WordPress plugins on the market that can allow your blog to rank better in Search Engines by improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the latest of these SEO plugins is Copycompass, a plugin developed by South African online marketing, design and development company Talooma.

Copycompas is a WordPress SEO plugin that analyzes your post’s copywrite and then giving you a score of how well your post is written in accordance to best SEO practices.

Using Copycompass is a real breeze, once you have written your post simply click the Analyze Content button and Copycompass will analyze the content, work out a overall SEO score and then give you a detailed breakdown of where you can improve your post.

If you see your SEO score is not very good, you can simply return to editing the post following the guidelines as set out by Copycompass.

To get your hand on this great WordPress SEO Copywriting plugin, simply visit Copycompass and download the plugin for free.

Okay let me start by saying if you are looking for sending free SMS messages you are looking at the wrong place. This plugin came to life due to an email I received from a friend over at WebAddiCT(s);, Rafiq Phillips.

The plugin allows users to subscribe their cellphone number via a widget (check my sidebar) and then allows the blog owner to send SMS messages to the subscribed numbers when he/she sees fit.

The plugin is called International SMS Subscription Manager and as the name says this WordPress plugin will allow you to send SMS message to over 819 cellphone networks in 221 countries and territories.

International SMS Subscription Manager for WordPress currently allows users to subscribe and unsubscribe their cellphone numbers in international format (eg. 27730000000). Once the user has subscribed, the blog owner can send SMS messages to the subscribed numbers through the WordPress dashboard.

International SMS Subscription Manager makes use of a widget, making it easy for non tech savvy blog owners to easily get it up and running on their blog.

Future features will include the ability to send SMS updates each time a new post has been made, and also an Ajaxified widget.

You can download your copy of International SMS Subscription Manager here until I get it onto the WordPress Plugin directory, this is the first release so please report bugs as you find them in the comments.

With the Facebook keynote over developers can start to put the new API to the test and start developing new plugins with Facebook functionality for the web.

Mark Zuckerberg founder and CEO of Facebook also introduced a new way of liking content on the web and sharing it with your Facebook friends. The new Like system allows you to put a like button on posts and enable users to share content with their friends without leaving your website.

This is where I thought I’d give it a shot and do a quick WordPress plugin to add a Like Button to posts.

To test it out simply download Facebook Like Posts WordPress plugin and add the code bellow to your single php file in your WordPress theme where you’d like your Like Button to display.

<?php display_facebook_like_button(); ?>

This is just a experimental plugin, you can place it in single posts or on your posts on the home page of your site.

We all know how annoying it can be to chat using the notification bar at the bottom of the browser when visiting Facebook. Every time you navigate to a new page you have to wait for the Facebook chat bar to load again.

Now you can use Facebook chat without even opening a browser. Again this time it was done using Pidgin, just like the Mxit Pidgin plugin you now get the Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin.

The Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin connects to the Facebook chat IM service without the need of an API key. Currently the plugin can log into the Facebook servers, grab the buddy list, send/receive messages, add/remove friends, receive notifications, show your inbox count, organises friend lists/groups, search for Facebook friends and set your Facebook status all from the comfort of your desktop.

You can get hold of the Facebook Pidgin plugin here to use Facebook chat from your desktop.