While everyone else is writing up these lists of 12 moments, series, Gundam mechs, etc. that matter, I jotted down some plugins that I find handy. I was going to release one a day, but the writeups are so short that I decided to just publish the whole list at once. If you want to read an anime-related list, try:
[ Roxas | CCYoshi | 0rion | Owen | Demian | Reverse Vampire | Nekoron | Martin | Michael Huang | Moogy | DS | Nigorimasen | Usagijen ]
- WP-DBManager: No more excuses, this plugin will actually automate the backup process for you. The ability to do some rudimentary DB housecleaning is nice, too.
- Simple Spoiler Enhanced: So much better now that you don’t have to edit any files, this plugin almost feels necessary on an anime blog.
- WP AJAX Edit Comments: Lets commenters correct their own entries. I hate when I realize I wrote something incorrectly and I can’t change it!
- LMB^Box Comment Quicktags: Having the HTML buttons above the comment area is so much more convenient than having to type in the code yourself.
- Who Sees Ads?: WSA lets you customize your ads so that certain visitors see certain ads. You can also use the plugin to ensure that regular visitors don’t see ads, or ads are only displayed on newer posts. There are a ton of customizable rules, and WSA also simplifies the process of adding/editing ad code in your blog.
- Maintenance Mode: When you want to make some changes without users seeing the mess, this handy plugin lets you throw up a splash page that gives readers an idea of what is going on, and how long the blog will be under construction. At the same time, logged-in users can continue to work on the blog and see how things are looking.
- myDashboard: The default WordPress dashboard is rather ugly and slow. This plugin lets you customize how the dashboard looks, and allows you to prune information and feeds that you don’t use.
- Full Text Feed: The
<!--more-->tag is great for formatting your blog’s front page, but it truncates your feed. If you want to offer full feeds to your readers, this plugin will let you use the<!--more-->tag without punishing feed readers. - FeedBurner FeedSmith: Feedburner is even more useful now that all the Pro options are free. Basically, Feedburner lets you track and optimize your RSS feed (which is increasingly important), and this plugin makes it easy to use Feedburner on your blog.
- Google Analyticator: With the new fancy graphs, and the even newer ability to display 2 data lines on one graph, Google Analytics is a powerful tool. This plugin makes it super easy to integrate Analytics into your blog.
- Header Image Rotator: Yeah, it’s easy enough to code yourself, but this plugin works right out of the box and comes with a few handy options. Who doesn’t like rotating banner images?
- Akismet: Soon to be the only major player in the spam fighting game, Akismet is a decent plugin. It’s convenient for commenters and it’s great at catching splogger/scraper pingbacks. Unfortunately, Akismet doesn’t catch everything and it suffers from way too many false positives (even after catching over 67,000 spam comments).
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1935 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
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Haha, how did I expect for something like this to happen?
This list is great though. I can definitely see myself trying some of these out!
Ooh a spoiler plugin I could use one of those 8D
WP-DBManager: I recall you mentioning it before, and since I’m so paranoid about losing everything I’ll look into it. I can’t stress the importance of backing up enough, so a bit of software that restores it all when things go bad has to be a good thing.
Simple spoiler enhanced: I’m sure I’ll find a use for it. On my to-do list.
WP Ajax edit comments: I love this plugin! As someone who’s prone to making typos, I wish more bloggers used it too.
Comment quicktags: see my thoughts on spoiler enhanced.
Who sees ads?: I don’t use ads on my blog, so wouldn’t need to use this I’m afraid.
Maintenance mode: I tried using this once, but it was so much hassle it proved to be more trouble than the maintenance I was doing!
MyDashboard: I’ll look into this soonish, after getting the comment-related plugins installed. I’d like Wordpress mu actually, since I run two WP blogs on my server.
Full text feed: my posts are more long-winded and spoilerific than in days gone by so I use more tags quite a lot now. I’ve already installed this so look forward to seeing it in action!
Feedburner feedsmith: Similarly, I’ve just installed this to see if it improves things (i.e. one of those gadgets that you didn’t know was so useful until you tried it)
Google analyticator: how does this compare with WP Stats? I’m a little torn between the two at the moment (I used to use StatCounter but the W3 validator didn’t approve)
Header image rotator: I’m using a different random image selector and since I needed to tweak its PHP code to do exactly what I wanted, I’m reluctant to throw it away. If this can be integrated into my CSS file in a similar way, I might consider it.
Akismet: Ok, the final one. I installed this to work alongside SK2 as a last resort before installing ReCaptcha because, although SK2 marks spams as not to be displayed, the comments are still in the database. Not a problem when viewing the blog, but the backup file becomes huge after a while. Akismet offers to delete them proper, which is what I did…my blog DB is now half of what it was! It’s nothing short of miraculous (and would be a big help if I ever need to do a restore). I’m sure my web host will appreciate several MB being purged from my server too.
All in all this is an excellent list of some great plugins. Many thanks and happy Christmas! ^_^
Martin: I just run both Google Analytics and WP Stats. However, I don’t usually look at the WP Stats page.
I’m gonna give the quick tags and edit comments a try. I loved it here and has been wondering for some time whether or not it was a plugin.
I’m using Wordpress Database Backup plugin instead of DBManager, but it seems like they function in the same way so I probably wont switch.
But spoiler tags will definitely come in handy
The ones I had pretty much sucked.
I’m really liking the MyDashboard plugin.
Nice list. I’m already using Akismet (great but misses a couple occasionally) and Header Image Rotator and should probably “upgrade” my spoiler tags even though I don’t use them a lot as well as the database backup.
I’ll also look into implementing the two complement related ones. God, I need to weed out the plugins I don’t use anymore.
I already have some of these, but some of these look useful and I don’t have. So it looks like I’ll be adding to my ever expanding list of wordpress plugins. My plug-in list in my admin panel is so long *weeps*
Is there a way to turn off “click on post to edit” in WP ajax comment editor? If I’m logged in as admin I can’t click on links in the comment…
Hm nevermind me. Was being silly as usual.