Archive for March, 2010

My WordPress plugins

Mar 18th

Posted by edgardo in Software

4 comments

I wanted to share what plugins I use currently on this blog. I actually spent way more time browsing the plugin directory then I did setting up wordpress. By that I mean moving blogging providers, setting up the blog, and migrating all my posts. I can’t say that I looked at each plugin in the directory, but I did view a lot of them. Just as a warning the directory can be extremely frustrating to navigate and search sometimes, but it is worth the pain to find plugins that will enhance the behavior/look of your blog.

  • Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
  • All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog
  • Broken Link Checker – Checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
  • FD Feedburner Plugin - Redirects all feeds to a Feedburner feed
  • Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics’ UID and enable logging
  • Google XML Sitemaps – 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.
  • 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.
  • Socialite - Publishes your WordPress posts to Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. I use WP to Twitter to post to Twitter (see below)
  • SyntaxHighlighter Plus – An advanced upload-and-activate WordPress implementation of Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript code highlighting package.
  • Theme Test Drive -Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail.
  • WordPress.com Stats - Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. The benefit of using this is that you can view the current day’s stats unlike google which you can only view the stats after the current day passes by.
  • WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database as well as scheduled backups.
  • WP-Optimize – 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-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
  • WP Security Scan - Perform security scan of WordPress installation.
  • WP to Twitter – Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. I really liked the options on this plugin over Socialite and solely use this for posting to twitter.
  • WPtouch iPhone Theme – A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.
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Just post it

Mar 4th

Posted by edgardo in Uncategorized

No comments

I was participating in the workshop on How to Become a Person of Influence, hosted by Jo Miller, at Grace Hopper 2009. Throughout the workshop we were asked to exchange ideas and our assignments with those at the table.  I was lucky enough to have Stormy Peters (of GNOME fame) at my table. During one of these exchanges on increasing our influence, we were asked to talk about things we knew we should be doing but are not. For me that was writing on my blog. I ended up talking about blogging and why I didn’t do more of it. She really got to the core reason why I wasn’t blogging. She said you are trying to emulate other blogs your read and really like, you are trying to be prefect. She told me to “Just post it”. She was completely right of course. I feel it is more important to actually publish the information and experiences that I have rather that trying to write the prefect post. I have using this mantra since I have updated my blog.  I hope she approves of the new blog so far.