WordPress – What is a Blog without Plugins?

Posted • February 20, 2009 • 1 Comment

WordPress

The software that blogs run on is the key to the presentation and features available. There are a multitude of different applications available, all with their own respective pros and cons. It is not very surprising that close to half of the Top 100 blogs run on customized software. When it comes to out of the box blog software WordPress is still the most popular.

There is blog software of all kinds as well as free blog hosting available today.
Here is a list of just some of the options available:

• WordPress
• Typepad
• Blogsmith
• Movable Type
• Gawker
• WordPress.com
• Dupral
• Blogger
• Expression Engine
• Scoop
• Bricolage
• iWeb
• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Open Diary
• Skyrock
• Typo
• Windows Live Spaces
• Xanga
• Vox

There are many ways to get you blog on the internet. All you need to do is choose one.

I have chosen to use WordPress for many reasons:

• open source
• template system
• widgets
• customizable
• easy to use
• link management
• search engine friendly
• clean permalink structure
• multiple categories
• multiple author capability
• rich plugin architecture
• trackback and pingback support
• support for tagging of posts and articles

Blog

So what is a blog?
A blog (a shortened version of the term weblog) is a website, usually maintained by an author with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other stuff like graphics and/or video. The posts or entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” is also used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Themes

There are many free WordPress themes available today. Your theme will present your online personality to the world.

The best WordPress themes are really a matter you your personal preferences. What is you want your WordPress theme to do and/or present to the online world?

The WordPress site currently offers 618 free themes and there are more available on the net.

Plugins

There are many WordPress exciting plugins available today for just about any use you can think of. There are even an astounding amount of WordPress photo plugins that will give you total control over your images. Plugins are very useful if you’s like to customize the WordPress Theme you have chosen to use.

Some of my favorite WordPress plugins I use are:

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade
  Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org. By Keith Dsouza.
• Plugin Central
  Automatically installs WordPress plugins by name and URL. Provides automatic update of multiple plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
• Maintenance Mode
  Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. By Michael Wöhrer.
• Search Commander WP_Core_Tweaks Plugin
  Conceived by Scott Hendison and programmed by Heather Barger for Search Commander, Inc. to automate proper WP setup. It also extends the built-in features of WordPress menu management, an and combines several common plugins into one.
• TweetSuite
  A WordPress Plugin to integrate Twitter and WordPress By Dan Zarrella.
• Advanced Excerpt
  Several improvements over WP’s default excerpt. The size of the excerpt can be limited using character or word count, and HTML markup is not removed. By Bas van Doren.
• Post Avatar
  Attach a picture to posts easily by selecting from a list of uploaded images. Similar to Livejournal Userpics. Developed with Dominik Menke. By Vicky Arulsingam.

These are just some of the WordPress plugins I have chosen to install my blog.
What are some of your favorite WordPress plugins?

Late,
Gary Pool

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