Archive for March, 2010

I got the domain name http://BiographyJournal.comseveral years ago and set up a multi-use blog. I’d toyed with that setup using various scripts and settled on WPMU. I left it running a while and had a journal for a new dog we got so the previous owners could see how he was doing. But after about a year there were no active users other than spammers, who packed the thing full of annoying links. I shut it down and focused on other things.

But the idea remained intriguing.

Most blogs are simply people giving their opinions about current events. I saw the blogging platform as a way to journal ones life. The last week I cam across a blog written by an amazing American girl who’s adopted 14 kids in Uganda and lives there raising them. I tried to read her blog from the beginnign to try to get the full scope of the story, but she uses BlogSpot which does not lend itself to reading blogs in that way. It was pretty difficult to keep up with where I was.

That’s when I decided to re-open http://BiographyJournal.com. It may sit empty again, but I want to at least make the effort to offer a platform geared more to journaling than just blogging. I’ve already added dozens of themes and lots of plugins, many that I’ve tweaked (and unfortunately lost some of the work when upgrading a plugin)

Check it out and see what you think and offer suggestion that may make the focus (journaling) work better.

6. Template Shelf. Allows quick access to blog templates

7. Xomment. A snazzy Ajax commenting plugin.

8. HMPassphrase. Nice, simple spam prevention.

9. Access Count. Tally up the accessed count. Additionally, you can sort entries by their accessed count.

10. OnThisDay.  Display the info about the entries which were posted on this day in previous years.

1. Pagination. Paginates your home page like WordPress.

2. Simply Threaded. Allow threaded comments.

3. YUI Editor for Movable Type. Very useful, flexible and stabel rich text editor.

4. User Profiles. Allow registered members to create profiles. Inch your blog toward social networking.

5. MT Forum. Turn your comments into a full message board.

To continue…

6. WP-CodeBox. This is one I wish I’d found earlier. It allows a nice display of code for blogs that offer programming tips (like this one). I added an updated a few entries to use the code, and it’s really nice.

7.  BuddyPress. This one is not for everyone, but it has a lot of features. In essence it turns your blog into a solcial networking site. The basic look is kinda ugly, so a redesign would be needed, but if you wanted to offer some of the social networking features of Facebook or MySpace to your blog, this will allow you.

8. Google XML Sitemaps. Very important for search engine optimization.  It should reduce the bandwidth required by search engines to spider your site, which is always a plus.

9. Automatic Upgrade. Something that will be really handy. The documentation claims that it…

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

10. GD-Star Ratings. Not only will this help you know which posts people like, it just looks snazzy.

It was tough finding the right plugins, because older plugins are still being promoted across the web, which may or may not be of any use. Some offered features which are now standard in the latest versions of WP. Some, apparently have been purchased by WP to be in corporated in later versions. But, here are the ones I found, which include many I’ve installed for clients.

1. WP-Optimize.  This is very handy in cleaning up the mess left from WPs database usage. It can optimize the tables as well as clean out unused drafts. I’ve installed this on clinets’ web sites.

2. WP to Twitter. This one will tweet your latest post to Twitter, but will require your Twitter login and has an optional cl.gs API function that would also require that API key. I haven’t tried it, but was considering writing one that did this, so its usefulness is obvious.

3. Sociable. Until I’m able to package up the social links I did for some clients, this would probably be the next best thing.

4. WP-FacebookConnect. I haven’t tried this, and apparently no one else has and verified that it works. It’s obviously needed, and is the only one I could find. I have clients asking for this functionality, so I’ll be testing it, and if it doesn’t will need to build one.

5. Facebook Dashboard Widget. Also a handy one, if it works.