Those of you who follow our blog have probably noticed a format change over the past couple of months. We have moved our entire site over to WordPress, which, given that we are not in the business of managing websites, was a smart move for us. Rather than requiring someone to update our site on a regular basis, we can now use the WordPress modules. Plus, it’s free and open source.

For those who have not looked at WordPress, it’s a very simple blog program to install and manage. It’s not just a blog program, as it can be tailored to many different uses, such a home pages like ours. Out of the box, though, it doesn’t have all of the functionality that you might want for a blog or a home page. So, here is our list of useful plugins that we have incorporated into our site or seen incorporated.

• Akismet Spam: This is the plugin that keeps your Gentle Readers from seeing comment spam encouraging them to buy Viagra and check out nude pictures of Lindsay Lohan. You do need a WordPress API key to use it, but the key is free and easy to get.
• Brian’s Threaded Comments: If your site gets a lot of discussion through the comments, then this is a useful tool for threading the comments and allowing replies to comments to show segregation.
• Enforce www. Preference: Search engines will ding your site for having redundant comment if they think that your www.site.com and your site.com sites are two different ones. This plugin enforces yes-www or no-www throughout the site. You can also accomplish the same thing through Google’s Webmaster Tools without having to change code.
• Feedburner FeedSmith: This plugin directs all feeds from your WordPress installation to Feedburner. Doing this facilitates your management of feed subscribers by having them all in one place, making your analytics easier.
• Google Sitemaps: In order for Google’s bots to crawl your site effortlessly, you need a Google standard XML sitemap. This plugin creates the XML sitemap that the Google bot needs to know where to go. You can then register the sitemap with Google’s Webmaster Tools.
• Sociable: Want people to Digg your site, StumbleUpon it, or send it to Reddit? Use this plugin to add the different widgets at the bottom of the posting that allows your readers to submit the article with ease. Watch traffic flow into your site (well, maybe not, but it’s worth hoping for, right?).
• StatTraq: While it is recommended to look at the server itself for the stats about your visitors or to use Google Analytics because of the extra load placed on the server by getting your stats at the client side application, StatTraq has a quick, easy to use interface which gives you a quick view of the visits to your site. If you’re not adept at playing with your server and don’t have a Google Analytics account, this is a quick and useful plugin to use.
• WP-Chiclets: Quickly adds the useful little sidebar RSS feed subscription buttons so that your loyal readers can find out the next time you publish an article rather than needing to wait with bated breath for your proclamations from on high.

Although we don’t have advertising on our website (aside from the plug to Contact Us if you want to discuss how we can help you with your tough to crack projects), I would be remiss if I did not address another commonly used plugin. Adsense-Deluxe manages your Google Adsense ads effortlessly, allowing you to customize how your ads appear and bringing them into your postings with one simple command.

Do you use WordPress? Have a plugin which you use that I haven’t discussed? Let us know about it in the comments below!

Jason Hull posted this entry on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 12:02 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.