Almost my moniversary

Posted by Wonder

October 30, 2008

I remember celebrating moniversaries or “month anniversaries” with someone special way back when. I’m almost to that point on my new web log. I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for almost a whole month. I feel like I’m just getting a clue and my head is spinning.

In the first month of having a WordPress blog, I’ve updated the installation twice, changed the theme twice and changed my mind about whether I even want to blog eleventy times.

My current blog setup is the almost unaltered Deep Blue Theme from Daily Blog Tips. Since I’m doing the blog to become a web designer, I’m really going to have to do a design of my own obviously but, hey, I just found the header. It’s about time, you know. Anyway, I like the design, mostly.

And, of course, I’m just guessing by the sites I’m seeing around the blogsphere, yet I think I’m using relatively few WordPress plugins. It’s not that WP plug-ins aren’t easy to install because they really are “point and shoot” for the most part. It’s not even that I’m not facinated by a boatload of available plugins and themes. It really just all boils down to time to understand them :)

But, for the record, and a little image experiment, here are the 5 plugins I have installed today:

wp-sticky-plugin

I’m not technically using this WP tool today because I don’t have any posts that I want to stay at the top of my blog but I tested it with this post for a few days and it works great and is obviously a fantastic tool.

WordPress Google Sitemap plugin

I’m a firm believer in sitemaps for Google and site visitors alike. Putting one in for Google was easy as pie. Now, if I even understood yet exactly where I am on this site now, maybe I could draw one for my visitors, too!

WordPress Secure and Accessible Contact Form

Contact is important on a website but so is security. I’ve had my contact forms hacked on other php based sites for illicit purposes. This “instant cure” for a WordPress contact page saved me.

WordPress Twitter Tool plugin

I just installed this plugin today. This tool links your WordPress blog to your Twitter account. Interesting idea but, up to now, I’ve never been much of a tweeter (or tweaker either). I replaced my tag cloud with this as I just found the cloud kind of ugly and pointless.

All in one SEO Pack plugin

And, the last but most important WordPress plugin on this blog today, All in One SEO. I’m only just beginning to realize all the wonderful things this plugin is doing for me. The nicest part is that it is doing it almost automatically, behind the scenes, without my lifting a finger and I’m getting all the great benefit.

Thanks a bunch for these great plugins guys. They’re all free. They all work with the most current version of WordPress in this configuration and they’re all great tools.

WordPress

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