• Automatic Links – Automatically adds HTML anchor tags to plain text links and email addresses embedded in the content of posts and pages.
• Category Icons – Assign icons to your categories to appear next to post titles on the index, single post, archive and search pages.
• WP-Polls – A great AJAX polling system to place polls as widgets or into posts. You can have multiple polls throughout your site.
• WP Authors – Want to have a list of authors on your sidebar alongside your categories? This plugin allows you to place a widget that lists and links to authors on your blog.
• WP No Category Base – Would you rather have “yoursite.com/categoryname” or “yoursite.com/category/categoryname” ? This plugin allows the former for a shorter URL.
• Wordpress Popular Posts – Retrieves the most active entries of your blog and displays them with your own formatting (optional). Use it as a widget or place it in your templates.

Also check out my Ten Favorite WordPress Plugins and my post about using WordPress as a CMS.

Here are a few examples:

• Viper’s Video Quicktags – Another update today, which prompted this post. It seems like there are a few updates a week, sometimes daily. The latest update is to fix a bug inroduced in the version it’s replacing.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This one went a little while without updates, then all of a sudden one came along, but it caused errors. Thankfully, an update was released the same day, but then another the next, and another the next…
• CommentLuv – While not updated quite as often, I’m sticking with an older version. I tried to upgrade on two separate occasions and it screwed up my blog and I had to delete and activate the one I originally downloaded.

On the other hand, there is still quite a bit of spam getting past Akismet that I have to manually mark as spam. So, while it can save me some time and effort on the front side, I’m finding myself spending more time later wading through pages and pages of comments, rather than on a flow basis.

I’ve found one thing about being a decent blogger, is the importance of acknowledging and responding to every comment that you can. What’s to keep someone coming back if they’re just going to be ignored. I fear that because I wasn’t able to immediately approve and respond to comments marked as spam, I may have lost some visitors.

What is your experience with Akismet? How do you deal with spam and false positives?

I had no idea some people would be so adverse in their opinions of blogs. When I mentioned, “it’s the best blog script, but we can use it for your needs,” the response was, “We don’t want a blog.” Ok…… Then you don’t have to use it for that. After some explaining and re-explaining, we’re proceeding.

What the “client” needs to use their web site for:

1. Signup and renewal for real world membership
2. Store for selling books and clothing
3. Information about their event(s)
4. Photo gallery to display event photos
5. A page for the latest news
6. Information about their location
7. A page for links to related sites

Why I recommended WordPress as a CMS:

1. They want to be able to change content
2. It’s secure and updated frequently
3. It’s easy to set up, use and update
4. Use of Pages vs. Posts (to not be a blog)
5. Use Picasa or Flickr gallery plugin
6. Set a static page as the front page

Several plugins I will be looking at using:

1. WP-ContactForm
2. Flickr Gallery
3. WordPress Simple PayPal Shoppping Cart
4. WordPress Easy PayPal Payment Accept
5. eShop

For the photo gallery, rather than have the client try and manipulate photos, upload and arrange them via WordPress manually, we looked at other solutions. While they are familiar with Coppermine, we also wanted to keep the use of other scripts to a minimum and perhaps cut down on hosting costs by hosting the pictures elsewhere. For these reasons, a Picasa or Flickr gallery plugin is ideal.

The various PayPal plugins may be used on different pages, depending on their need – There is only one link needed per book. For shirts, there may be one link per size for each shirt. The membership registration and renewal will require more information, which the eShop plugin should be able to handle.  I proposed using subscriptions, but the association’s Treasurer would rather handle renewals manually. Understandably, an automatic yearly payment would catch some people off guard.

While it’s not a terribly complicated site, I think it’s a good example of how WordPress can be used for purposes other than a simple blog. Being able to create a theme, or alter an existing one, and not have any links or blog structure is a major benefit. Also, because of it’s ease of use, rather than create a few static mockups, I created a test blog and let them get an actual user experience.

Thanks to the Akismet plugin for WordPress, only one spam comment made it through to the queue. Akismet has successfully blocked over 1,300 pieces of spam in the past month. Take a look at these stats!

Looking into this further, I found that much of this spam was comming from 83.233.30.32, which is located in Sweden based on the WHOIS search I did on that IP address. I also contacted the two abuse email addresses on file. I’ll post an update if I get a response.

So, consider this a heads up – make sure you have Akismet installed. It’s easy to set up and to get a key, you only need to register on WordPress.com. Once you register, check your profile and copy/paste the key into the Akismet Configuration page.

Also, you may want to add 83.233.30.32 to your IP Deny Manager if you use cPanel, or whatever ban list your host provides. While I was at it, I banned the 194.8.75.* range as some of the spam was coming from there as well, but not nearly as much…

While I commented about it here, I thought that enough people use this plugin that I should highlight this problem in case people are using that version.

Instead of using that plugin, try this one, found at StuffBySarah.net. Unfortunately it’s not as plug-and-play as the original, but it only took a matter of minutes to get it set up.

In order to use it as a widget, you will need the ExecPHP plugin found here. Once you install and activate that plugin, you can go to your Widgets and drag over “PHP Code” – edit that widget and paste in the following code:

<?php if(function_exists('ns_show_top_commentators')) { ?>
<li>
<ul><?php ns_show_top_commentators(); ?></ul>
</li>
<?php } ?>

If you don’t use widgets, you can add this code to your sidebar php file:

<?php if(function_exists('ns_show_top_commentators')) { ?>
<li>
<h2>Top Commentators</h2>
<ul><?php ns_show_top_commentators(); ?></ul>
</li>
<?php } ?>

I should point out that the code above is not what I found to work best due to the unordered lists… Here is the exact code I have in the widget:

Want to be listed here? Leave some comments!
<br/><br/>
<?php if(function_exists('ns_show_top_commentators')) { ?>
<ul><?php ns_show_top_commentators(); ?></ul>
<?php } ?>

Now, I don’t know if everyone using the original Top Commentators plugin was experiencing this problem, but I was able to replicate it on two different blogs and have since tested the new plugin on both blogs with no hijacking. I hope this helps some of you…

Before I go on, I should mention that the plugin site states that it’s only compatible up to WordPress 2.3.1; however, I’m using it just fine on two blogs running 2.7. I also believe that there’s going to be a newer version coming out soon…

I installed it on drivelocity first and ran into a problem with it displaying correctly. I installed it on another blog and it worked like a charm right out of the box. So, obviously, there’s an issue with the theme on this site. It took me quite some time to get it to look right due to the CSS around the form labels.

What finally got it looking right was editing subscribe-to-comments.php and replacing the php call for the label with the text, “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail,” which you should see below, unless you’re subscribed. In which case, you will see a different message with a link to the Subscription Manager.

So, now it’s working and is where I want it in the comment form. I look forward to your comments and hope you use the plugin to continue the conversations!

So, here is the list, in no particular order, though I did place the newer ones at the top.

1. Akismet – This comment spam prevention plugin, as you probably know, comes pre-installed with WordPress. The hangup for me in activating it is that you need a WordPress API key to use it. To get that, all you need to do is create an account on WordPress.com. If you have an account, you can find it in your Profile. I activated it yesterday and it’s already started blocking spam comments
2. Top Commentators Widget – This is becoming one of my favorite plugins. Top Commentators adds a widget to your sidebar that lists the visitors who have commented the most in whatever duration you select. You can also check here for a list of sites, sorted by PR, who use this plugin. By commenting on these sites, you can wind up on their front page with a link back to your site.
3. CommentLuv – This plugin is showing up more frequently as it’s a good way to provide value to people commenting on your blog. When a visitor comments, CommentLuv can pick up the last post(s) on their blog and provide a secondary link directly to that post. I am grateful for visitors who take the time to comment and this is a way to show my appreciation.
4. DoFollow – Wordpress has NoFollow set by default and this plugin remedies that by removing it and allowing search engines to follow links in comments left by visitors. You’ll also notice that I’ve added a “U Comment I Follow” image to the left sidebar to show visitors that there is added benefit to posting comments on drivelocity.
5. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin creates that sitemap and will help the top search engines index your blog better. While it is called Google XML Sitemaps, the XML-sitemap format was adopted by Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.
6. Slashdigglicious – See the cute little icons below each blog entry? Those, if you’re not aware, are social bookmarking links to help promote the site. If you find something interesting, please click the icons and vote/add for that entry.
7. Viper’s Video Quicktags – This plugin easily lets me embed videos from YouTube, Google, etc. into my blog posts. Without this, I could only post links and that’s just not very fancy… To use it, you just click a button in the WYSIWYG editor and paste in the URL.
8. WP-ContactForm – I don’t like putting my email address out there for all the email address harvesting bots to come by and pick up, and it has built in security. Plus a contact form built into the site makes it easier for people to email you.
9. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is a pretty impressive plugin that can crawl your post titles, content and tags and provide a list of related topics (if any) below each post. It can help people find other posts that are not otherwise easily found.
10. wp-cache – I’ve just installed this plugin, but I don’t need it just yet. If a post ever ends up on slashdot or digg, it will help to keep the site up. I hope. If you’re using shared hosting, there may be issues with symbolic links.

So, if you’d like to be listed and linked to in the right sidebar, start posting some comments! Keep in mind that comments are moderated and blatant spam will not make it through this human filter.