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WordPress blogging “paradise” begins with installing new plugins. Every foray into the WordPress Plugin Directory is a discovery expedition. Intending to merely hunt down a certain kind of plugin, you find a plethora of inspiring plugin tricks you never imagined existed! If you’re like me, you want to try them all.
There’s the rub. Overloading your blog with too many plugins will slow down loading time. In addition, plugins may be incompatible with your theme’s code, may not be written with the best code in the first place, usually need to be updated by developers for each new WordPress version, and can be a time sink hole if they are not accompanied by user-friendly documentation. In a nutshell, choose your plugins wisely.
Most of the plugins I’ve tried have worked delightfully. A few didn’t “take” and were deactivated and deleted without problem, if not disappointment. For a while àlaBuzz featured content with the Dynamic Content Gallery from StudioGrasshopper. It worked and looked great, until I was working with it one day…and broke it. I spent many hours trying to fix it, without success. Each time I tried another solution, it generated an infinite number of posts. Reflecting back on it now, that doesn’t even seem possible, but it was something horrible like that. TIP: Always perform home directory and database backups before experimenting with plugins.
Displaying content in a visual and intuitive manner is useful for readers, plus it looks sharp. It’s my burning quest to find a great feature content plugin that a code-challenged blogger can install and operate. Others have not worked for me at all. Since Dynamic Content Gallery has been recently updated, I may give it another try.
I experiment with different plugins at àlaBuzz all the time. Many fine ones have been tried, but were deleted because they were not absolutely necessary. Below is a list of WordPress plugins currently installed (courtesy of the WP-PluginsUsed plugin). Some are deactivated, pending a decision regarding their implementation. There are 37 plugins used: 33 active plugins and 4 inactive plugins.
AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button .9.9.5.3
» AddToAny (url)
Help readers share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service. [Settings]
Akismet 2.2.7
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
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.
Category Posts Widget 3.1
» James Lao (url)
Adds a widget that can display posts from a single category.
Contact Form 7 2.2
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
Dean's Permalinks Migration 1.0
» Dean Lee (url)
With this plugin, you can safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website,and even doesn’t hurt your google pagerank.
FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3.1
» FeedBurner (url)
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.
Google Analytics for WordPress 3.2.5
» Joost de Valk (url)
This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.
Google XML Sitemaps 3.2.3
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
Keys To Admin 1.0
» Zero, Chien-An Cho (url)
Provides you a shortcut from blog to admin interface without putting any disturbing link in your page. It enables you to type specified text when you’re in your blog (and not any input field in page), then magically go to admin interface.
Meta SEO Pack 2.2.1
» Daniel Frużyński (url)
Fine tune your WordPress blog for SEO: title rewriting, meta descriptions, tags, robots, canonical links and more. Out-of-the-box settings are a good starting point for blogs.
No More Frames 1.1.6
» Christopher Ross (url)
Many web sites try to load your content into their own frame, to help sell ads on their sites. This simple plugin ensure your site is protect from this using a simple piece of code in your document header.
No Self Pings 0.2
» Michael D. Adams (url)
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.
Page Lists Plus 1.1.8
» Tim Holt (url)
Adds customisation options to the wp_list_pages function which is used to create Page menus. Change the link text and title attributes, redirect, nofollow or unlink links, and remove links from page lists altogether, all through the WordPress dashboard.
Recommended Reading: Google Reader Shared 4.0.4
» Jacob M Goldman (C. Murray Consulting) (url)
Pulls shared items from your Google Reader account for display in a sidebar widget or within pages or posts. Easily customized with friendly interface. Embed in page or post via shortcode; can always show newest, or start at post publication date!
SEO Friendly Images 2.4.4
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.
Shockingly Simple Favicon 1.8.2
» matias s (url)
A simple way to put a favicon on your site.
Simple 301 Redirects 1.01
» Scott Nellé (url)
Create a list of URLs that you would like to 301 redirect to another page or site
Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess
Tweetable 1.1.8
» Matt Harzewski (redwall_hp) (url)
Integrate Twitter with your WordPress blog. Automatically tweet new posts, display your latest tweet in your sidebar, etc.
Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger 3.1
» Ultimate Plugins (url)
Replaces the built-in ping/notify functionality. Pings only when publishing new or future posts, not when editing. The new post’s url is pinged, not the main url. Also includes reverse order logfile.
Widget Logic 0.47
» Alan Trewartha (url)
Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc
WordPress.com Stats 1.6.3
» Andy Skelton (url)
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
WordPress Admin Bar 3.1.10
» Viper007Bond (url)
Creates an admin bar inspired by the one at WordPress.com. Credits for the look of this plugin go to them.
WordPress Database Backup 2.2.2
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started.
Wordpress PDA & iPhone 1.2.8
» Imthiaz Rafiq (url)
This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser.
wp-cache 2.1.2
» Ricardo Galli Granada (url)
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”.
WP-CMS Post Control 2.12
» Jonnya Creative WordPress Consultant (url)
Hides unwanted items within the write/edit page and post admin area for each user role. Also controls autosave, revisions and flash uploader.
WP-ContactForm 1.5.1.1
» Ryan Duff, Peter Westwood (url)
WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post.
WP-Optimize 0.8.0
» Ruhani Rabin (url)
This plugin helps you to keep your database clean by removing post revisions and spams in a blaze. allows you to rename your admin name also. Additionally it allows you to run optimize command on your wordpress core tables (use with caution).
WP-PageNavi 2.72
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan & scribu (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog
WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.
wpSearch 1.5.0.5
» Kenny Katzgrau (url)
This plugin uses Lucene to power a blog search.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin 3.1.7
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.
Broken Link Checker 0.9.3
» Janis Elsts (url)
Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
Freebie Images: Free Stock Images Plugin 1.0.2
» Crestock (url)
Spice up your blog with high quality free stock photos & images created by professional photographers and illustrators: Easy to use search interface with advanced filtering and Drag & Drop functionality.
Lifestream.fm 1.0
» Robert Buzink (url)
Provides a sidebar widget for your Lifestream.fm lifestream.
WP-Blogengage 1.0.2
» Blog Engage (url)
Adds a Blogengage vote button to your posts.
No related posts.
Hi,
I couldn’t help replying given your mention of my Dynamic Content Gallery plugin (in rather negative terms, I feel, which is disappointing). Sounds like you either edited some plugin code or you put the call to the gallery within the Loop – a big no-no (as mentioned in the extensive documentation). You could have posted on my my support forum, which is what it’s there for, and we would have sorted this out in minutes…
In the meantime, check out the new version 3 (it’s still in Release Candidate stage, but is stable and works fine).
Nice looking site, by the way.
Cheers,
Ade.
Dear Ade,
I absolutely love Dynamic Content Gallery. I did indicate that I, myself, broke it. I feel so bad to have stupidly contributed to any possible disparagement of your excellent plugin. I will be sure to write something very soon to recommend it (and mention your ready support forum, which I should have accessed), and clear up any misimpression I made.
My intuitive sense (not technical sense) is that I messed up my databases with a database optimizer plugin (which I will not mention). More recently, I had another bout of trouble with a different plugin after “optimizing.” Perhaps it was coincidental, but at that point I removed the optimizer plugin. Have you ever heard of an optimizer causing problems?
Of course, I don’t know what really happened regarding any of this! I created such a labyrinth of missteps, I was unable to retrace what I did.
Thank you for your comment. Since I just changed to a theme with a built-in gallery, I’ll install Dynamic Content Gallery on a test site and review it properly that way.
Sincerely,
JoAnn
Hi JoAnn,
Thanks for the reply. Don’t worry, I haven’t taken any offense.
Try out the new version 3 RC3. It’s very nearly ready for release and any feedback would be very welcome.
Personally, I haven’t had any experience using an optimiser plugin so can’t really say why one would have caused a problem. Unless your db is really slowing to a crawl I can’t see much use for one either. Sure, a lot of unused stuff gets added to the db, such as post revisions, undeleted spam comments etc, but in mySQL terms this is nothing – these dbs can handle millions of records.
Best,
Ade.