Solo Technology

An interesting side-effect of spending so much time hanging out at the WordPress support forums is that I see a lot of plugins announced or mentioned. And if they catch my eye (”oooh, shiny!”) I install them. As a result, I have quite a pile of plugins running in spite of my initial vows of remaining lean and mean.

Because I’m a sharer (and a carer!), it just doesn’t seem right not to share them with the world. So, without further ado, here they are followed by some thoughts for each. Alphabetically to avoid any hint of favoritism or impropriety.

• Advanced Search - Right below my search field (in the sidebar) is a link to see this in action. It rocks. Once I settle on a new theme, I look forward to styling it a bit, but even the default look is very serviceable.
• Bad Behavior - At the bottom of every page you’ll see how many spammers this plugin whacked before they ever even hit the blog. A key piece to any WP blogger’s anti-spam arsenal.
• Browser Sniff - This one does the nifty stuff in the comments that shows browser and OS for each commenter.
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - I’m mainly using this one for 404s (not found) to offer an index into the site. Want to see it in action? Click here.
• Extended Live Archives - Pretty! An interesting way to find posts by date / category. Granted, most of my posts are in one category, but still… It essentially is my Archives page.
• Feedburner Feed Replacement - Makes hooking up with FeedBurner painless.
• FeedWordPress - I had hopes and dreams of syndicating posts from other bloggers. However… there were some side-effects I hadn’t completely thought through. Very powerful and flexible way of bringing in content (as new posts) via RSS feeds.
• Head Meta Description - Presumably this one helps with the search engines. Adds a bit of each post to the meta description tag.
• iG:Syntax Hilighter - When I want to post code, this is the one I use to make it look pretty.
• Spam Karma 2 - This one keeps the boogers away. Another tool in the fight against spammers.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - Want to tag posts? This is an incredibly powerful plugin to make that happen.
• WordPress Database backup - It just works. Is at 1.8 via the recent 2.0.5 release of WordPress.
• WordPress Mobile Edition - Trying to be pretty for the mobile folks. Follow the instructions or things go all to heck!
• wp-cache - In theory, less load on the server for non-dynamic content. In practice? I worry that other plugins are negating the savings…
• WP-Cron and family - I can’t seem to get my backups going nightly at Dreamhost, but everything else works great.
• WP Wetfloor - Eye candy, but I really dig it. By adding the CSS class to an image, the image gets that “wet floor reflection” look.

This next list are neat but currently on hold/deactivated:

• Link Indication - I just can’t decide if I should keep it of lose it.
• Akismet - it generally rocks, but when their server burps things get minorly annoying. I switched to SK2 after the last burp. That being said, it’s slick and works awesome when up. Very low maintenance.
• WordPress XML Import (or Export) - Going between WordPress .COM or .ORG (or vice-versa)? This plugin on the .org side will surely make it easier. Read the instructions!

Thoughts? Am I missing out on any “must have” WordPress plugins? If so, tell me why in a comment!

3 Responses to “Favorite WordPress Plugins (well, for this week at any rate)”

1. cctech on December 22nd, 2006 1:32 pm
   

   I had not seen the WP Wetfloor plugin before now. Very nice…makes it easy to add a sweet little Web 2.0 effect. Nice find

2. Siuyee on December 24th, 2006 8:51 pm
   

   Thanks for supporting wp-wetfloor.

3. Chris on December 25th, 2006 9:58 pm
   

   If you look around, you can see I’m addicted to wp-wetfloor!

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