While you may want to install and test that plugin list in the directory on your blog and find out how it materializes on your blog, I suggest to choose your plugins wisely. Many of you might already have felt this: Too many plugins tend to make your WordPress installation slow.

Yes, it is true. I have checked it out myself. I installed a lot of plugins and the result is a slow responding blog.

Some tips to keep your blog in tip-top shape:

• Remember to choose your plugins wisely.
• Install and activate only those plugins that you require.
• Do not test new plugins on your actual production blog. Either create a test blog with your host or create a testing environment on your home PC or laptop.
• Do not keep plugins that you don’t use installed on your blog.
• Finally, many of the features which were previously available via plugins are now integrated into the latest release from WordPress. So, to lessen the load, keep your blog updated.

There. I hope these tips will be useful for you. Got comments? Drop them here.

A great plugin called Sabre is a great option to let users who want to register on your blog to verify themselves as being real humans. What is Sabre you say? I let the author tell you that:

SABRE is an acronym for Simple Anti Bot Registration Engine.

Well, what can I say? I tried to upgrade automattically ( ignore my pun there ) my Bad Behaviour (v2.0.20) to version 2.0.21 and after the update I started receiving request errors such as that you can see in the image below (You can click on the image to see it in detail).

Bad Behavio(u)r v2.0.21 giving out header errors on my blog...

Well, sometime back I had managed to put together a list of WordPress Plugins I Use. This is an updated version of that very list. It’s not much different from the previous one except that I have stopped using some of the plugins from that list and started using some new ones to increase functionality of my blog and keep it running in an optimized and tip-top shape.

So, without further ado, here comes the list:

The WordPress 2.3 release is just round the corner and if you happened to download and install and test it on your blog, why not help the whole WP community in contributing to the WordPress 2.3 compatibility list here.

I had downloaded this plugin called WP-Wetfloor plugin by Siuyee which is in turn a wrapper plugin for Cow’s Reflections.js javascript code and makes it work on WordPress (well up until version 2.1 came out).

When version 2.1 came out, a lot of plugins broke up (with WordPress) due to a change in the hierarchy and many events were either dropped or renamed. Unfortunately for us, the Wetfloow plugin was a casualty of this change. After the author of WP-Wetfloor expressed her inability to make changes to it due to lack of time, I was trying to figure out how to modify the plugin myself and make it available to you all.

In the meantime, I found a workaround for this problem. As I work towards finding a way to fix the issue with this plugin with regards to it’s integration with the Editor in WordPress, I encourage you to use this workaround. It will be a little bit time consuming but believe me it IS worth the extra time. Don’t you agree?

To make the plugin work, simply install the latest version of the plugin from the plugin’s homepage and install (and activate) it to your blog.

After you finish doing this. Instead of searching for the button in the WordPress Rich Text Editor, simply insert an image using the normal “Insert Image” button and then go to the Code tab of the editor.

After going to the Code tab (which shows the HTML code for the post that you are editing), find the <img src="path to your image" /> tag that has the image that you want to use the Reflection API with and insert the following line class="reflect rheight80 ropacity40" in the same tag. After you insert the tag, it should look something like this:

<img src="path to your image" class="reflect rheight80 ropacity40" />

That’s it. This should do it for you.

Liked the article? Or not? Please share your feelings. I want some praise from you (or my share of ass-kicking if it is justified! ). Post your comments.

In my last post, I wrote about how I was busy setting up my WordPress blog and how I found out about the huge plugins repository that WordPress really had. I did end up using a lot of them as you can see from this list of plugins that I use.
Plugins can make your life easy or hell. Depends on how and what plugin you are using or plan to use on your blog. No really. There’s certainly nothing funny here.

Now, let me share my experience with you considering what I went through in order to configure them to work cohesively with my blog.

My approach was simple. It was what anybody would tend to follow: I visited blogs, sites and plugin repositories, I liked some; I downloaded them.

It was all fine up until I faced my first problem. After activating a plugin, I went over to my site to test it and presto! It ain’t working. It was giving some huge PHP error. Now back to the site admin dashboard. Deactivate last plugin (that I had activated before the error happened). Checked the site and this time it was working fine (I later found out that some plugins were never upward compatible and some were never backward compatible).

This experience should give you some warning. It tells you NOT to mess up your online blog with mistakes like these. Unless you want people to be freaked out by the stupid errors that the server throws up when during this period a visitor comes to your site. This will give him a bad impression about your site.

Remember these things when choosing your plugins:

1. Before you set out looking for plugins, I must tell you to write down these things which are very important:
   • The PHP version that your server is running
   • The MySQL version that your site is running
   • and; The WordPress version you are running your blog on.
2. If you like a plugin on any site and it looks to be working fine with them, this DOES NOT mean it will work fine with you. This is one thing you MUST understand. Do some research about the plugin. Ask yourself questions like, “Is the plugin compatible with your version of WordPress? Is it compatible with other plugins that you may have running on your website. It is a good idea to read the Release Notes/Readme (no matter how boring they may look to you) of the plugin.
3. It is better if you go in for plugins that are backward compatible. This saves you the trouble of losing the functionality that this plugin provides if, God Forbid, you mess up with the latest release of WordPress and decide to stick with an older version.
4. Be sure to check out any issues or requirements that the plugin may have with the specific MySql version (Some plugins are using the database).
5. Make sure you have a test environment where you check your plugin thoroughly before you make your plugin live. (This is one approach that I learned the hard way as mentioned above in this very article and I follow it to the T. No compromise).

I will be telling you about setting up your own environment at your home so that you are good with all kinds of compatibility tests and are confident enough to upload it to your actual website.

I leave you with some related articles that might interest you:

Getting ready to start your blog, then you should read this.

Need some cool plugins for your WordPress blog, check this list.

When I first started using WordPress, I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to use plugins and many a times the functions that I needed to incorporate were already available out there in the forms of plugins (which I came to know a little later!).

Anyway, this is for those people who are starting out with blogging and who have chosen WordPress as their publishing platform. If you are new to blogging, you can read the detailed article about how and where to start blogging.

This article continues the direction shown by the previous article and takes you a step further. Not only do you get to know the various plugins that I use, you can use only those which are relevant for your requirements.