Over the past few months I’ve added some new plugins and services to my blog at Webomatica that are solid and useful enough to recommend. All are working great with WordPress 2.5.
- Democracy: This creates polls on your WordPress blog, either in the sidebar or in a post. Polls are fun for users and add another angle on your blog’s subject matter. It’s easy to set up questions and choices and track the results within the WordPress admin. Right now, I’m running a Battlestar Galactica poll and it’s working well.
- Disqus: This is a replacement comment system for your blog. It provides many features that would be difficult to do with plugins alone, namely threaded comments, comment ratings, avatars, and associated sidebar widgets. Moderation of comments is easier (including reply by email), and I have much less spam.
- InstantUpgrade: This plugin allows you to upgrade your WordPress installation with one click. Although it’s in beta, I just used it to upgrade to 2.5.1 with no problems. Remember to back up first, though!
- WP Super Cache: This is a souped-up version of WP Cache which may seem like overkill for most blogs, but it’s always good to be prepared. It basically takes load off your server by storing static, cached versions of recently visited pages, allowing for higher traffic.
- RSS Footer: This plugin inserts a “credit” line of text – including a link if you want it – to the start or end of your articles within the RSS feed. This is a neat trick if your content is being re-published elsewhere without your knowledge – you may at least want author credit or a link back to your blog.
- SimplePie Core and SimplePie Plugin for WordPress: SimplePie gives you the ability to parse XML feeds using templates for display on your blog. That sounds pretty obscure, but I’m using it to display my FriendFeed activity in my sidebar. Using SimplePie gives me more control over exactly what parts of the feed to display.
I’ve provided links above if you want to check them out yourself.
