Everyone loves lists of things, in fact some people create lists of their favorite lists. If you’re a blogger then you know how difficult it is to curate a list of things in list format in a way that’s interactive and engaging for your readers.

Simply providing links to things in a top 10 list is boring and takes people away from your site. A site called List.ly makes all of that simple and fun for list lovers. Even if you’re not a content creator, you can interact with other people’s lists that they’ve made on the site.

The steps to create a list are easy too; name it, tag it, and add items with or without links. Once you’ve created the list you can publish it on your site like you’ll see below in this post, or you can send people directly to the list’s page on List.ly. People can thumbs up and down the items in the list, allowing them to interact with the content as a community. As a publisher, you can remove the ability to comment on or rank the items if you’d just like to provide a straight up list.

Everyone loves a list

Once you log into the app using your Facebook account, you’re ready to create a list. The editor is beyond easy and you can re-order things once you’ve added them one by one:

Each list gets its own page and people can share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or by email. It’s a pretty handy tool if I do say so myself. Check out the embedded list of iPad stories we’ve written below (and be sure to give the articles on the list some feedback!)

I spent a bit of time searching through the site for other people’s lists and found it to be quite entertaining. List.ly will also suggest other lists for you based on the tags and content of the ones you visit and interact with. Get to listing!

List.ly

Are you a fan of lists? Would you want to see The Next Web use List.ly to get your feedback about lists of things that we find to be cool? Let us know in the comments!

List.ly is a way to create and share lists, as well as integrate collaborative lists into your own blog posts, acting as a catalyst for others to build upon the lists you share.

List.ly was once known as twtpickin, and the developer Shyam Subramanyan decided to take the app to a whole new level…with the understanding that lists make up a huge amount of the blogging content on the web today.

What List.ly does is allow content creators to create lists and then crowdsource them, giving them scalability and allowing them to have lives beyond their original blog post. List.ly allows lists to evolve, just as the service has. The limiting nature of a Twitter list only has so much staying power, according to Subramanyan, and by expanding beyond the social media sphere List.ly becomes more than just a means of sharing editorialized lists.

By signing up, List.ly allows you to create lists that can be shared and built upon by others. Users can embed their lists into their WordPress blogs, as well as share them via social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. You log in using either your Twitter and Facebook account, making the signup process simple.

Once you sign up for List.ly, you’ll be given a dashboard that allows you to see your favourite lists as well as those you’ve created. To create a list, click on the “start a list” button and enter all of the necessary information: title, description and any tags you want inserted. You can decide whether or not you want the list to be commented on, modifiable, and allow overall guest participation. Checking off any or all of these boxes is what will give your lists a much longer shelf life.

List.ly allows you to embed lists directly into your blog thanks to the List.ly plugin. It’s a Javascript-based plugin, meaning it can be used with a wide variety of platforms, including Tumblr (as shown below).

There’s no limit to the types of lists you can create and share — even collaborative video lists are possible.

List.ly just launched within the last week or so, and it’s well worth exploring if you’re the type who likes to make and share lists on the web. The addition of the plugin makes any lists you publish there more dynamic and engages readers in a whole new way. List.ly isn’t just about creating lists, it’s about creating lists that have staying power.

Read the top tech blogs and you will find hundreds of articles written about WordPress plugins: which are the best, the worst, and everything in between. Every author has their own view, and so the list of ‘best plugins’ has become very long indeed.

I’m not here to discount those articles, and definitely not here to discredit those authors; they have valuable views that are often dead-on. However if you are just getting started, or need a blogging boost, I have put together a list of five plugins to help you.

I’ve been a dedicated user of WordPress and a blogger for years, and during my trials and experiences (including using all the top platforms: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and even Blogger), I’ve come to find there are three components of a blog that are absolutely fundamental. They are:

1. Security
2. Professional Presence
3. Accessibility  (positive user experience)

With that in mind, the following list is a collection of useful and simply necessary plugins for anyone wanting a quality web presence using WordPress that is scalable and serves up a positive user experience.

WP-SpamFree

You think spam in your email inbox is a pain, imagine what it is like when you run a website accessible by the entire internet! You’re going to get loads of automated spam. Instead of sitting in front of your WordPress dashboard clicking through tens, hundreds, or thousands of bogus comments you should implement WP-SpamFree to block that stuff from even getting that far. I like this plugin for its thoroughness and because it does not employ CAPTCHA’s or challenge questions to verify commenters. While those methods are effective they harm the positive user experience you’re trying to maintain by annoying people looking to share their views on your content.

BackupBuddy

I cannot stress enough the importance of backing up you environments on a regular basis. Think about it, you’re pouring your soul out into great pieces of content and all of a sudden Murphy’s Law kicks in…

We all know that backups are required and necessary, but sadly not everyone follows through and actually executes them. BackupBuddy is an all-in-one tool for backup, recovery, and migration of your entire WordPress blog. That’s right, not just the database, but everything that makes up your site (themes, plugins, etc.). You set your backup schedule and destination and BackupBuddy takes care of the rest providing you with that extra feeling of security that, should the unfortunate occur, your hard work is backed up securely and is easily recoverable.

Note: with the latest release of BackupBuddy, released by PluginBuddy, you can use the Amazon S3 storage service as an offsite/geographically displaced backup location. I highly recommend you check out this commercial plugin – it has saved me from potential disaster a few times.

MailChimp

Outside of your RSS feed and your social networking profiles, probably the most effective means of attracting and retaining readers is through opt-in newsletters. MailChimp takes all the guesswork out of creating, formatting, and distributing newsletters to subscribers of your continually updating content.

You can very quickly go through and setup the layout of your newsletters, and the times of the day it should be mailed out. Even better is the built-in integration of Analytics360 which works in conjunction with your Google Analytics account to let you know how the letters are doing.

W3 TotalCache

Let’s take this into consideration, you write a killer blog post and next thing you know, you’re picked up by one of the larger media organizations or start climbing the Google Wall. What’s going to happen to your site when you start getting tons of traffic? It’ll fall over and die, that’s what’s going to happen. So how do you avoid that and allow your site to scale as your popularity grows? You can and should cache your static HTML pages. There are a few decent caching plugins out there, but on the top of my list is the one written by someone who knows a thing or two about multitudes of viewers. The CTO of Mashable, Frederick Townes wrote W3 TotalCache which improves the overall user experience of your blog by improving server performance, caching all aspects of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Smart YouTube

To break up the text within many blog posts, it is common for content creators to provide video interludes. YouTube is the obvious giant in this space. Many video content providers do provide HTML embed codes for their videos allowing for others to quickly and easily insert the video within a blog post or article. There are, however, some that do not provide this ability. That’s where Smart YouTube comes in. Smart YouTube allows you to insert just the URL in your post and still be able to “embed” the video content.

Vladmir Prelovac, the fantastic developer of Smart YouTube, has also incorporated the ability to use Smart YouTube to insert video in your comments, and in your RSS stream. Smart YouTube also supports playback of high quality videos, works on the iPhone, produces xHTML valid code, allows you to view videos in fullscreen and now even supports YouTube playlists.

Obviously this is not a complete list of the key WordPress plugins, but as I mentioned above, it is a concise list of plugins that work very well, and are absolutely essential to anyone looking to effectively scale and professionally present their website.

What are you favorites? I’d love to hear your Top 5 list.

[Update: it's now live]

Having just launched an updated version of its desktop client with lists at its core, Tweetdeck is going online and turning its site into categorised lists directory.

You may remember Tweetdeck launching their “recommended users” list, this new site will replace that. Using tag clouds in its desktop app and profile info, Tweetdeck is creating its own lists directory based on number of followers but also allowing visitors to comment and vote lists up and down.

Tweetdeck isn’t the first into the lists directory business. Listorious arrived on the scene immediately after launch of the twitter feature and has seen solid traction, but with Tweetdeck being Twitter’s most popular application with a great deal of information about its users, the people they follow and the lists they create, Tweetdeck has a significant advantage.

In addition, Tweetdeck, thanks to its built in tagging system, will make it possible to search for users not just based on what someone has called the list they are in or the information in their profile, but also based on what most people have tagged them as.

This update will be featured in Tweetdeck’s latest update due out today.

Via Techcrunch.

A neat little tool for those of you who aren’t ready to give up Google Reader.

Twitter Lists 2 RSS lets you enter the URL of a public Twitter List and returns an RSS Feed you can insert into your RSS reader of choice.

It’s a clever little tool, particularly for those who aren’t able to log into Twitter that often and enjoy a recap at a leisurely pace.

I’m not currently certain whether the feeds are PubSubHubbub or RSS Cloud supported, if anyone can clarify this for I’ll update the post immediately.

Try it here.

Thanks @Kim

Twitter lists have been all the rage over the last two days, the first significant enhancement in Twitter’s core features in ages. Fortunately, it seems that they have been accepted warmly by both users and developers.

Although we earlier quoted Dabr as being the first Twitter client to integrate lists, a few hours later we were introduced to Talking puffin who claimed it had been the first to incorporate the feature.

After a check, it is in fact true and a post amending our previous story was the least we could do.

The application does show some real potential and cool filtering functionality but in reality its still far from prime time when compared to other Twitter clients out there.

Dabr, an open source twitter client has become, as far as we know, the first Twitter client to add lists to its feature list. Amendment, we have since discovered TalkingPuffin to be the first client to support Twitter Lists (since October 18th), more details here.

Twitter lists have recently been shipped out to almost every Twitter user and if you’re looking for guides on the feature, read this post.

Simply put, lists are a neat way to sort your followers into easy to browse groups. Lists can be made public and private and of course if they’re public, they’re visible by every Twitter user out there.

So how have Dabr integrated the feature?

Co-founder James Whatley explains:

Your new homescreen options include ‘lists’ in the top bar.

Unfortunately, I haven’t made any lists yet so there’s nothing there to show you… Um. I tell you what, lets find someone who has made some lists: Robert Scoble – aka @scobleizer – he’s definitely made some lists.

So on Robert’s profile, click ‘lists’ and voila, you can see his lists (as below).

Let’s click ‘Twitter Tools’

According to David Carringdon, the other half of this project, you can now see which lists you appear in. and also see who’s in the lists.

Carringdon also notes: “There’s a known bug that paging doesn’t work with tweets or user lists, – Twitter have made it more complicated than usual to help with their performance. I’ll implement the paging next time I get a chance to work on Dabr…. tomorrow hopefully :)”

Try Dabr out for yourself here.