Posts Tagged With: plugins
· February 25, 2008 at 9:00 am · Web Development
Tags: after install, blogs, guide, help, plugins, tips, WordPress
It isn’t a big secret that I love WordPress and feel like it could be used for just about any project out there, blog or not. There are a lot of guides out there on how to install WordPress, but not many tell you what to do after you get it on the server. Now everybody has their own methods after a WordPress install of how to configure things but this is what I do.
Configure the Basic Options
First, login to your WordPress admin interface and click on Options > General and setup the General Options. Need to check and make sure your blog title and your addresses are correct. Next go to Options > Discussions and edit your comment and trackback settings. I like to make sure I get e-mailed when anybody leaves a comments, and I like for comments to be filtered through me before they get posted. With the plugins I’ll give you in a few hopefully we will get rid of the need for you to moderate too many.
Grab Your “Must Have” WordPress Plugins
Here are the WordPress plugins I like to use on the basic install of any WordPress powered site:
Update Your Permalinks for SEO Friendliness
Now you need to go back into Options > Permalinks and choose the Date and name based option then hit the Update Permalink Structure button. If your .htaccess file is set to be writable, then it should update it automatically. If not, then you can copy and paste the permalink code from WordPress into your .htaccess file.
Past this point, you may want to go check the rest of your settings, add a blogroll and configure your theme. I think I have gotten most of the important steps out of the way. If you stumble into any problems always remember to go check WordPress.org. They have tons of information on installs, backing up, upgrading and more.
· August 2, 2007 at 9:49 am · Hot Web Topics, Web Development
Tags: plugins, pownce, recent, social, tools, updates, WordPress
I am a big fan of Pownce. For those of you who don’t know about it - here is a little ‘bit of information from the Pownce web site that might help.
Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.
How can you add your public pownces though to a web site outside of the powncerverse? Thankfully Ronald of cavemonkey50.com made a plugin for WordPress that gets the job done.
Go Get the Pownce for WordPress Plugin!
Once you get it installed and activated, all you need to do is copy and paste some text into your layout and your done. It could not be any easier. If you want to see it in action visit Mitchelaneous.com and check out the upper-right hand sidebar under “Latest Pownce”.
Any other cool Pownce tools out there yet?
· April 11, 2007 at 8:22 am · Web Development
Tags: comment, filter, help, plugins, refferals, spam, trackback, WordPress
Back when this blog was on Blogware, fighting trackback and comment spam was impossible. The filtering scripts were not that good and all around, I just had to moderate by hand, which is no easy task for a popular Web site of any shape or size.
When I moved to my own hosting account with WordPress installed, my battle with spam got a heck of a lot easier.
For me, 99% of my spam and trackback spam is filtered out by the Askimet WordPress plugin. If Askimet doesn’t do it for you, or you need even more protection though - I have a few suggestions.
Spam Karma 2 - This plugin works by running all of your comments and trackbacks through a list of tests, and then grades it by “karma”. It also has a few other spam prevention tools built in as well. If Askimet wasn’t working for me, this would be my number two choice.
Comment Timeout - This neat tool allows you to turn commenting off for older posts. Chances are if they haven’t added a comment in a year, they never will. This will leave less holes for spammers to find to post their “v1agra” loving messages.
Bad Behavior - Bad Behavior is a set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.
One word of caution, don’t go overboard with spam filtering or you are going to piss off your readers. If they have to jump through 20 hoops to post a comment and so that you can say you get no comment or trackback spam, you are not going to see too many new comments on your Web site.
You need to find the thin line between filtering crap and keeping comment posting easy for your readers.
Need more? Check out this list of anti-spam plugins via the WordPress Web site. The list looks a little out of date with some of the links, but should be a good place to get started at least.
· January 11, 2007 at 7:54 am · Online Tools
Tags: customize, guide, install, plugins, themes, tips, WordPress, wp
I enjoy installing WordPress for people. Now I will leave it up to you to decide if that is really cool or really sad. Nevertheless, it provides a neat feeling. Maybe I get a buzz from knowing that this Web site could be the next big thing. Maybe I just like helping folks out. What people do not realize though is getting up and going with a WordPress blog is not that hard at all. Once you get the hang of it, you can get yourself up and going with a great looking Web site in under an hour.
Now the first thing you are going to want to do is visit WordPress.org and download the script itself. Personally, I find downloading the .zip version works best for me - but others might like the .tar.gz version as well. Once you get that downloaded onto your computer, you need to un-compress it and decide where you are going to put it.
+ Read the Rest of Customizing and Using WordPress 101 at Lunartics!
· December 6, 2006 at 5:00 am · Online Tools
Tags: back, best, list, plugins, Resources, spam, tools, WordPress, wp
Since people liked my article on Firefox Extensions for Regular Folks I figured I might try to cover another topic that is near and dear to my freaky heart, WordPress plugins. Now I like to use WordPress to run the back end of nearly all of my Web sites I manage. It is one of the best (if not the best) content management system out there today. So which plugins would I consider alright for the everyday folks?
1. WordPress Database Backup
Keeping a regular backup of your Web site or blog is always a good thing to do. What if something goes wacky with your Web host, and all your files and content are lost? Sure they might have a backup - but what if they don’t. Take care of yourself and keep a regular backup! I try to at least do backups once a week to once a month. At least this way I am for sure that not too much could go wrong.
2. Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports
I love both FeedBurner and Google’s Analytics tools, but it is a pain to have to go here and then go there to find out all these stats I am tracking. This WordPress plugin brings it all together for me on one nice single Web page.
3. Search Everything
No matter where your content is, you want to make sure it gets searched. This WordPress plugin makes note of all of your content (not just the blog posts) and makes it searchable via WordPress’s built in search engine. You don’t want people to miss any of your content so having this plugin is a necessity as well.
4. Google Sitemap Generator
We all want Google to pay more attention to us, right? Well, as confusing as the current Google Sitemap system is for regular folks, it is all we have to go by right now if we want to make sure Google is keeping an eye on us. This WordPress plugin creates your sitemap and also allows you to ping Google when you update it.
5. Smart Archives
Now as I have said before, and I will probably say again - I do not navigate via the archives that much. If I want to find something, I usually search for it. For those few times you need to have organized archives though, Smart Archives does the job better than the rest. The install is easy and when you are done you have a neat organized list of all your posts.
6. Optimal Title
When it comes to creating a Web site, having a good title is key. The Title is what grabs folks attention and it is also how you bring them in via the search engines. To make sure you title is “optimal” you need to pick up this WordPress plugin. It is key if you want clean titles that are search engine optimization (SEO) friendly.
7. Jerome’s Keyword Plugin
This might not be the best way to get tags into your WordPress blog, but it is simple. I have tried some of the other WordPress plugins for tags, and I always keep coming back to this one. It does the job, it does it well and you really can not ask for more than that.
8. FAlbum
Have a Flickr account and a WordPress blog? This WordPress plugin makes quick and easy work out of creating a gallery of all your latest and greatest photos from your Flickr account.
9. Akismet
The ultimate comment spam killer. Not much more can be said about this WordPress plugin that has not been said before. One of the main reasons I moved away from Blogware was because of the spam problems. Now I have no problems at all.
Now I am not the be all and end all as far as this list goes. Do you have any plugins that I might have missed? Let me know about it by leaving a comment and that way you will share your thoughts on the matter as well. If we are creating a list for he folks, then your suggestions and opinions are just as important as mine.
· August 25, 2006 at 10:59 pm · Personal
Tags: albums, flickr, photos, plugins, stream, WordPress
I just finished up installing and customizing FAlbum for my blog here. Go check out my new photo stream here:
http://www.mitchelaneous.com/photos/
The setup for FAlbum is super easy, the only hard part comes when you get into customization. I tend to get a little anal in this department, and I like for everything to be just right. If you see anything wrong though, feel free to leave me a comment!
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