Scribkin’s WordPress Plugins – Let Me Show You Them
A rare weekend post today, on a topic that most people probably will not find interesting and some people will find extremely awesome. I am speaking, of course, of the dozens of plugins, mods, and other bells & whistles that I have added to this blog over time.
Feel free to skip right over this post unless you love this sort of stuff.
Preface
Before I begin, I have to state that a good real life (RL) friend of mine, Rob, cautioned me against writing about blog twiddling as I was just starting out. He calls it macdinking. I have tried to take that advice to heart, either not mentioning changes or additions I have made at all or working them in to review posts.
But recently I have seen several of my blogging friends write articles about MoFuse, a service that takes your site RSS feed and makes it in to a mobile-enabled mini-site. I’ve been using this service for over a month on this site, and I realized I had overlooked the opportunity to voice my thoughts about it.
In essence, it’s cool but I like the wp-mobile edition plugin slightly better. I am going to compare the two in an upcoming article.
What’s Under the Hood?
I’m running WordPress 2.5.1 with a modified version of the Silver Light theme. In terms of UI tweaks, here are the essential ones:
- Changed the primary title and link color to #990000
- Added a custom logo
- Changed the default font from Verdana to Arial
- Changed the default body text back to Verdana
Ok, How About Plugins?
Oh boy, this will be a big list. I have probably installed and removed more WordPress plugins than I get visitors on a normal day. Here are the ones that have stuck. This list, of course, could be completely different tomorrow.
|
Plugin |
Version |
A |
Description |
|
0.3 |
Y |
This plugin automatically add the rel=”lightbox[ID_OF_THE_POST]” to images linked in a post. ID_OF_THE_POST is unique per post so all images per post are grouped in one lightbox set. Doesn’t add the the files required for lightbox! By Mdkart. | |
|
.9.2 |
Y |
Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service. By MicroPat. | |
| AdSense Manager |
3.2.13 |
Y |
Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your WordPress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours. By Martin Fitzpatrick. |
| AJAX Calendar |
2.4.6 |
N |
A version of the WordPress calendar that uses AJAX to allow the user to step through the months without updating the page. Additionally, a click on the ‘expand’ link shows all the posts within that month, inside the calendar. Caching of content can be enabled to increase speed. By John Godley. |
| Ajax Comments-Reply |
2.62 |
N |
send comment AJAX, and you can reply comments. By zhiqiang. |
| Akismet |
2.1.5 |
Y |
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg. |
| All in One SEO Pack |
1.4.6.8 |
Y |
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose. |
| Better-Wiki-Link |
1.3.0 |
Y |
This Plug-in links every text or link with the the appropriate wiki-system. (Option-page in english, german, norway and hebrew) By Bass-Blogger. |
| Blog Metrics |
1.0 |
Y |
Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget! By Joost de Valk. |
| Blogroll Page |
2.1 |
Y |
Outputs your blogroll links as a page or a post. Add the text <!--blogroll-page--> to a page or post and it will output your blogroll links organized by category heading. Don’t use this version on WordPress 2.2 or earlier! By Mark Allen. |
| Chunk Urls for WordPress |
2.0 |
Y |
This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site. By whoo. |
| Disqus Comment System | 1.04 | Y | The Disqus Comment System replaces your oridinary WordPress comments with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus. Head over to the Comments admin page to set up your Disqus Comment System. By Disqus.com. |
| FeedBurner FeedSmith | 2.3.1 | Y | Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner. |
| Feed Image | 1.01 | Y | Plugin to add a main image to your RSS or Atom feeds. Inspired by Anup Shah. By Terri Ann Swallow. |
| FriendFeed Comments | 1.5.0 | Y | Places the comments & likes from FriendFeed on each post from your blog under the normal comments section on the post page.By Glenn Slaven. |
| Google Reader widget | 1.5 | N | Adds a sidebar widget to show your latest shared stories. By James Wilson. |
| Google XML Sitemaps | 3.0.3.3 | Y | This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. By Arne Brachhold. |
| Lightbox 2 | 2.6.0 | Y | Used to overlay images on the current page. Lightbox JS v2.2 by Lokesh Dhakar. Mad props to Krembo99 for the auto-lightbox code! By Rupert Morris. |
| Lighter Menus | 2.7 | Y | Creates Drop Down Menus for WordPress Admin Panels. Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, comes with silk icons, a option page, and a design that fits within the WordPress 2.5 interface taking the less room possible. By corpodibacco. |
| LinkedList | 1.0.3 | N | LinkedList.wp is a simple WordPress plugin for sorting your blogroll in the order by which the sites on the blogroll were last updated. By Prateek Rungta. |
| No Self Pings | 0.2 | Y | Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site. By Michael D. Adams. |
| Odiogo Listen Button | 2.5.3 | Y | Give your blog a voice! Add a “Listen Now” button to your blog so your readers can listen to your posts and download podcasts. Free Sign up. By Odiogo. |
| PHP Speedy WP | 0.4.5 | N | Speeds up the display of your blog by combining your JS and CSS files, adding far future expires headers and GZIPing. By Leon Chevalier. |
| Profilactic | 1.1.1 | Y | publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parseing your aggregated online activity feed from yourprofilactic.com account. Use the widgets or place <?php profilactic(); ?> or <?php prof_wtfmo(); ?> in a page template. By Anish H. Patel. |
| Recommended Tags | 1.70 | Y | Creates a list of recommended and existing tags (JavaScript must be enabled). Visit Settings -> Recommended Tags to change some of the options available. This version is only designed to work with WordPress 2.5. By CyberNet. |
| Remove Max Width | 1.3 | Y | This plugin removes the max-width of the WordPress 2.5 Admin interface. By Dion Hulse. |
| SimplePie Core | 1.1.1 | Y | Does little else but load the core SimplePie API library for any extension that wants to utilize it. By Ryan Parman and Geoffrey Sneddon. |
| Sociable | 2.6.6 | N | Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. Go to Options -> Sociable for setup. By Joost de Valk. |
| StripTease | 1.1 | Y | Strip “#more” fragments from “Read More” teaser links. By Guy M. Fisher. |
| Twitter Tools | 1.1b1 | Y | A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. By Alex King. |
| Ultimate Google Analytics | 1.6.0 | Y | Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site. Check http://www.oratransplant.nl/uga/#versions for version updates By Wilfred van der Deijl. |
| WordPress.com Stats | 1.2.1 | Y | Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton. |
| WordPress Mobile Edition | 2.1 | Y | Show a mobile view of the post/page if the visitor is on a known mobile device. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README. By Alex King. |
| wp-cache | 2.1.2 | Y | Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada. |
| WP-OpenID | 2.1.8 | Y | Allows the use of OpenID for account registration, authentication, and commenting. By Alan Castonguay. By Will Norris. |
| WP-Polls | 2.30 | Y | Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. |
| WP-Polls Widget | 2.30 | Y | Adds a Poll Widget to display single or multiple polls from WP-Polls Plugin. You will need to activate WP-Polls first. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. |
| WP-Print | 2.30 | Y | Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. |
Wow! You Weren’t Kidding!
Nope.
Anything Else?
Well, I use a bunch of widgets in my sidebar. Here’s a list. These will change faster than my plugins, in all honesty.
- Text – Feedburner Subscription Widget
- Polls – Poll Widget
- RSS Feed – RSSmeme Top Shared Stories
- Adsense – Default Ad
- Archives
- Categories
- Text - Disqus Stats combined widget
- Text – Digsby chat widget
- Text – MyBlogLog widget
- Text – Twitter info
- Text - Twitter flash widget and Awesomesauce link
- Text – Gaping Void cartoon
- Odiogo Subscribe Button Widget
- Text – Blogged link
Are You Done Yet?
Maybe! Well ok, no. I’ve also customized some of my plugins so that they fit into the the theme better:
- The WP-print icon can be found in the upper-right-hand corner of each article
- The Odiogo listen now icon can be found under the timestamp of each article
- The CSS for my FeedBurner FeedFlares look more integrated
- The Add to Any button only appears on full articles, and under the FeedFlare
- The FriendFeed status text is more terse and avoids pluralization issues
- Added Jangro’s trackback hack to the Disqus plugin
Yeah.. that’s about it, I guess.
What About the Page Tabs?
Ohhh yeah, I have a lot of those. Let me break them down real quick.
- Home – This one is obvious.. takes you to the front page.
- About – About scribkin.
- Contributors – This is only me at the moment. I’ve taken the opportunity to modify the default page template to include the Profilactic Where to Find Me Online (WTFMO) module. And an obligatory flash Twitter widget.
- Polls Archive – self-explanatory.
- Lifestream – A tweaked version of the Profilactic plugin.
- Blogroll – A list of pages I find cool, generated by the Blogroll Page plugin.
- Promote – Right now mostly a placeholder that has an animated FeedBurner gif on it. Feel free to put it on your site! I won’t complain, promise.
- Bookshelf – An embedded widget from Living Social that lists current books that I am interested in or reading. I really need to get this current.
- flipside – Used to just be a link to my tumblelog flipside.scribkin, but I found a great site that makes custom RSS widgets called widgetbox. I now have the 10 most recent entries showing in this widget.
Now Are We Done?
Yep.