Having just upgraded my Wordpress installation because of a security flaw discovered last week, I’ve got Wordpress on the brain. And, while I’m still relatively new to the platform, I thought it would be fun to share with you the Wordpress plugins I’ve found useful so far.
When I decided to start a blog, one of the main features of Wordpress that convinced me to choose it over Blogger was its extensibility. Because Wordpress is an open source project, there is an immense community of developers tweaking and adding features and functionality to the platform. Here are the eight that I have installed right now.
- Akismet - This is a plugin that comes bundled with a basic Wordpress installation. It’s function is to catch spammers who try to leave crap in your comments section. To date, Akismet has caught the only spam comment that’s made it through. My site is still small, but Akismet is batting .1000 so far.
- Bad Behavior - One of the reasons that Akismet has only caught one spammer so far might be because Bad Behavior is turning a lot more away at the door before they have a chance to comment. Most of the time, spammers use programs or scripts that automate the spamming process. Bad Behavior analyzes the methods that spammers use to deliver their junk, and stops these robots from ever having access to your site. Just in the last week, BB has stopped 47 spambots from accessing my site. Good stuff!
- Custom String Query - This one sounds scary, doesn’t it? All it does is let you control the number of posts displayed on your archive pages. I installed it when I thought I only wanted one post per day displayed on the main page. I’ve since changed my mind about that, but I still use CSQ to manage my archive pages.
- Disable wpautop - In the interest of having full control over my code, I installed this plugin to disable Wordpress’s automatic formatting in their post editor. Also, I’ve never used a WYSIWYG editor before, so it’s easier for me to manually add HTML and CSS where I want it. I would assume that most folks wouldn’t care about this, but for me it was a necessity.
- FD Feedburner Plugin - All this does is redirect users who type in onethingnew.com/feed/ to my Feedburner feed. This way, if I ever leave Feedburner, I won’t have to change the address of my syndication feed.
- Obfuscate Email - I have no idea if this works because I’m not a spambot. But I have my email address in the sidebar, and this program is supposed to hide my address in the “mailto:” link from anyone who would automatically harvest it and add it to their annoying lists. I haven’t gotten and spam mail in my inbox, so I assume it works.
- Social Bookmark Creator - Social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and reddit seem to be all the rage these days. So this plugin generates link codes for easily submitting my articles to those sites. No one has used them so far, but I’m always hopeful.
- Subscribe Me - Another plugin for easy syndication, Subscribe Me adds those little chicklet links to my sidebar. Click on those, and you’ll subscribe to my syndication feed in whichever service you click on. Easy as pie!
What’s so great about Wordpress is it’s a fluid platform with lots of room to play around. I still need to look into plugins for audio and video, but that’s down the road. I hope these plugins give you and idea of just how powerful Wordpress can be.
