Everyone has their list of favorite WordPress plugins, so I thought I’d share my current list:

• Akismet - probably the best anti-spam plugin around
• ReCaptcha - a great anti-spam plugin to use when Akismet doesn’t do the job
• WP Contact Form - there are tons of variations on this plugin, but the best I’ve found is from Doug Karr
• Admin Drop Down Menus - this plugin saves me hundreds of clicks a week by converting the two-level menus in the WordPress admin panel into dropdown menus.
• WordPress Database Backup - if you use only one plugin, this should be it. Needless to say, backing up your database is crucial.

There are tons of other plugins that are useful for particular situations, but the above are my favorite general-purpose plugins at the moment.

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At long last, there is a working plugin to import your blog’s content from New Blogger (formerly known as Blogger Beta) to WordPress. Many thanks to Ady for creating it.

If for some reason this plugin will not work for you, we are still available to do Blogger-to-WordPress imports. Contact us for a quote.

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Lorelle has a list of template and function differences between WP2.0.x and WP2.1. They are quite substantial.

Most importantly, WordPress 2.1 requires a server that is running MySQL 4.x. MySQL 3.x will not work, and will cause error messages to be displayed.

If you have any questions about upgrading, please contact us. We do all WP upgrades upon request, at no charge to customers.

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Alex King, one of the leading WordPress developers, has a great social-web plugin called Share This. You may know Alex from your blogroll if you never deleted the links that get pre-installed with every copy of WordPress (consequently, he is the #1 Alex in Google search results).

Share This saves you from cluttering your site with eight million links to social bookmarking sites, and lets you follow each post with a single icon. Users can click this icon to see a multitude of social bookmarking options:

You can see it on Geektronica.com or on Alex’s blog.

Some install notes:

• Your theme needs to use the wp_footer(); function
• You may need to adjust the CSS in the plugin file to get the colors to look right on your site
• You will need to upload the Prototype.js JavaScript library to get it to work. This is included with the download, and goes in /wp-includes/js.

WebbleYou is proud to support the use of this plugin. Please contact us if you are a WebbleYou customer and would like to use this plugin on your site.

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Lorelle on WordPress has a post on the upcoming release of WP 2.1, which will be a fairly major feature, interface, and architecture update.

Judging from Aaron Brazell’s recommendations to plugin authors, it looks like not all current plugins will continue to work with WP2.1. If you are planning to upgrade, then, it’d be best to do the following:

• Find out if others are using your plugins with WP2.1 successfully before upgrading
• Back up your WP files and WP database before upgrading, in case you decide to go back to 2.0.6
• Be prepared to give up a plugin or two, at least until it’s upgraded for 2.1 compatibility
• Conditionalize your plugin calls, so your site doesn’t show errors when you deactivate plugins

As always, we will be testing and supporting WP 2.1, and will be upgrading existing accounts upon request.

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Christine Davis was kind enough to update her amazing Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for PHP5, which has different file-include requirements. We can install this updated version of the plugin now, or you can download her next (post-3.141) release soon from her site.

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WebbleYou was commissioned by a client to widget-ize the excellent Blix theme for WordPress. You can download the widgetized version here: ZIP | tar.gz

WordPress widgets are a project of Automattic. The Widgets plugin requires WP2.0.2 (which we pre-install by default).

Notes:

• Blix was released for Version 1.5, but it works with WP2.0.x (which is required for using widgets).
• Blix uses different icons for different sidebar elements. If a sidebar element uses lists other than those specified in the stylesheet, they will be bulleted with the same icon used for categories. I think.

If you notice any issues, please let us know. If you would like WebbleYou to widget-ize a theme for you, we can do so for around $20 (depending on the complexity and your needs). Contact us to discuss details.

Note: This theme was last updated on May 1, 2006. If you downloaded the theme prior to that date, you will have RSS feed problems and other issues; please use the new version, which fixes these problems.

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Automattic has released the Widgets plugin, for which WebbleYou is proud to offer technical support.

If you are not currently a WebbleYou customer and would like help with Widgets, tell us about your situation and we can discuss rates.

A few considerations for the time being:

• Existing WordPress themes need to be edited (some heavily) in order to work with the Widgets plugin.
• As more themes support Widgets, it will become significantly easier for bloggers who don’t know HTML to customize their sidebars
• Widgets require WP2.0+

Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and his team for another excellent tool.

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EventCalendar 3.0 is a great WP1.5.2 plugin that displays future events in both calendar and list formats. Simply create a post, change the date to some day in the future, and add it to your event category, and it will be displayed with a neat mouseover tool tip. Clicking the event takes you to the post on that event, even if it’s still in the future (WordPress normally doesn’t display posts with a future timestamp).

Unfortunately, the event list doesn’t work in WP2.0. The calendar works great, though, and you may find it very useful.

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WebbleYou is proud to support D13Gallery, a great plugin that automatically generates thumbnails from a folder of images you upload:

d13gallery is a simple plugin for the WordPress system that allows you to, easily, embed thumbnail image galleries inside your posts. The plugin works by scanning a supplied folder for images, which are then resized and displayed in a simple grid. Each thumbnail is clickable, linking to the full size, original image. link

We have tested this plugin, and it works great!

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