Tag: WordPress

My Must Have WordPress Plugins

On By westiIn Useful Links, WordPress1 Comment

Richard has been asking me for a while what WordPress plugins I use on this site. As Darren Rowse of has recently put up a list of his active plugins in a post called I’ll Show you Mine if You Show me Yours (WP Plugins). I thought it was time to share my list of “Must Have” WordPress plugins. So here is my list of must have WordPress plugins:

Spam Karma 2
No other comment spam blocking plugin works as successfully for me.
Gravatars
Easily integrate gravatars within your site.
InSeries
Provides navigation controls for next/previous within a connected series of posts.
WP-ContactForm
A drop in contact form.
WordPress Database Backup
An excellent backup plugin.
WP-CC
The original WordPress Creative Commons licensing plugin.
Subscribe To Comments
An excellent plugin which allows your readers to subscribe to the comments for a post.
CJD Notepad
Draft posts to your hearts content.
WordPress Version Check
Ensure you get visible notification of new WordPress releases within your dashboard.

FixBack
Fixes trackback and pingback URLs when publishing draft posts.
Permalinks redirect
Ensure everyone is viewing my posts via their one true permalink.

These lists don’t include every single plugin that I am using but they represent the plugins that I would install on a new WordPress install before I even started posting 😉

WordPress v2.0 Beta 1 Available

On By westiIn Asides, Development, Useful Links, WordPress

WordPress v2.0 Beta 1 was made available late last week and by the looks of the activity over on the special beta forum a lot of people are giving it a good test!

There is a growing list of plugins which have been tested with the beta for compatibility which can be found on the codex and everyone is welcome to contribute. I for one have to work on my version checker plugin to make it WordPress v2.0 compatible as the current css leaves it overlapping the main logout and profile links.