WordPress 2.5…
April 1, 2008 | 10:15 AM
So I’ve been playing with WordPress 2.5 since Monday afternoon. In addition to upgrading, I also added some new plugins and started adding tags through WP instead of using a plugin (which doesn’t work anymore anyway). Because I added a Twitter Tools plugin, I’ve been tweaking the settings (no more “new post” twitter announcements… you’re welcome). Here’s a list of my plugins (with the descriptions they provided):
- Akismet: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
- Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter: Inserts copyright message in Feeds.
- Bunny’s Technorati Tags: Allows easy addition to a post of a space-separated list of tags which can be displayed with adequate Technorati links in the template.
- Comment Timeout: Automatically closes comments on blog entries after a user-configurable period of time.
- Official StatCounter Plugin: Adds the StatCounter tracking code to your blog.
- Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam: Stop a lot of spambots from polluting your site by making visitors identify a random word displayed as an image before commenting.
- Subscribe To Comments: Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
- Twitter Tools: A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter.
- WordPress.com Stats: Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.
- WordPress Database Backup: On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
I’m no longer using Bunny’s Technorati Tags because it doesn’t work with the upgrade, and WP built tags into its code several months ago. I just re-posted some old posts with the WP tags, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the other posts.
I also just added the WordPress.com Stats, which are far superior to the StatCounter stats. I’ll keep them both for a little longer, but since I rarely go to StatCounter anyway, I’ll switch off soon.
So what plugins do you use and recommend?
Posted in Blogs, Life, Media, Technology
joe kennedy, 2008
I’m diggin’ 2.5 as well. It’s a great upgrade. I particularly like the better Visual Editor.
Thanks, also, for the tips on plugins. Some that I have that you don’t are:
Countdown Timer, which is fun when you have something for it to countdown, but then often sits and takes up space. Also, when you set the date and time, it doesn’t work. You have to figure out how far off it is and then recalculate it to set the right time for what you are counting down for. It’s just one of those things that you may or may not want.
Embedify allows you to simply paste the page address of a youtube video and it embeds it for you. It gets rid of the WordPress issues with embedding.
Feed Statistics tracks interesting data on those who pick up your rss feed.
Google Sitemaps creates and keeps an updated sitemap for Google’s bot when it comes along. This helps Google hit your blog with relevant searches, allowing you to float a little higher in the search results.
InlineRSS allows me to scrape my own photoblog rss feed and post it in the sidebar. (That is to say, David Phillips set it up and now it works.)
Move Comments lets you … move comments from one post to another.
Podpress allows you to insert audio and video of your own into your posts for people to watch in a viewer or download.
The biggest new one is: Automatic Upgrade plugin for Wordpress. It’ll get you rolling with new updates and no manual ftp rewriting of your blog. Yay.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 PM
Thanks Art. I read about the automatic plugin updates… but I’m just fine with upgrading manually right now. Once upon a time, someone maliciously wrote hacks into an update of WP and it had to be fixed immediately… but it still took a couple days to fix everything and send out a new update. I’d rather just chill on the automatic thing for a while.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:23 PM
Actually, the automatic upgrade doesn’t download without you knowing it, but keeps you from having to do it through http://ftp. It’s just an easier interface that walks you through backing up files and tables, then turns off all plugins, then downloads the update and installs it. You have to give it permission for each step of the process.
It’s for folks not as savvy with all the background stuff, like you and David Phillips. That means me.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 PM