WordPress Theme JV

"Real Simple Syndication (RSS) enables site owners to automatically syndicate their content to readers in an easily digestible format. There are a number of WordPressWordPress reviewsWordPress reviews plugins to help you manage your blog’s RSS feed, track subscribers, and much more. Below are 18 of our favorite WordPress plugins for RSS. While we think all of the options we’ve provided are extremely useful, we advise you to only download a few as more will impact your blog’s response time. Add your own thoughts about the plugins and recommend new ones in the comments." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation. Features include:" - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site: "One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people." (Source: In the Middle, Starting) I built this WordPress plugin to implement Seth Godin’s idea. For WordPress users it reduces the "work at first" to almost nothing. By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words "If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!" After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. The message can be excluded from Pages if desired. You can also specify a message for return visitors. This plugin requires cookies. Users without support for cookies will always see the new visitor message." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"While Wordpress 2.7 finally has a stable release, I figured I could not keep these awesome new features packaged with Wordpress 2.7 to myself. For you theme developers you will be very excited, keep reading! Plugin Uninstaller This feature makes it a lot easier to delete, or uninstall, plugins quick and easy. The way it works is Wordpress creates the uninstall code for the plugins, so that the user can simply click delete when he or she wants to get rid of the plugin. There are two methods to do this. The first one is, by creating a file called ‘uninstall.php’ inside your wordpress plugins’ directory, and all the Wordpress uninstall code is placed inside it. The other solution is to use a good old fashion Wordpress hook, register_uninstall_hook() , that will simply execute the uninstall code/routine. This hook registers it to Wordpress. Comment API This is simply used to handle comments using the XMLRPC protocol. Wordpress Update Core" - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"Let’s start with a couple absolutely necessary plugins: Login Lockdown - Surprisingly hard to find on the Wordpress extend site, this one is a gem at stopping brute-force attacks (works with 2.7!). WP Security Scan - WP Security Scan does a few pretty cool things just by activating it, including masking your WP version and DB errors. It will help you identify proper permission settings for the most critical files, change your DB table prefixes, and some other cool stuff. Now to the easy steps that should absolutely be done: - Choose strong passwords. There are so many great password checkers out there, WP Security Scan even includes one! - Stay on top of the latest version! As of writing, if you’re not on version 2.7 start there. You can’t begin to be protected unless you’re on the latest version. This is so critical. You should subscribe to the feeds of the developers of your plugins and templates and make sure to keep these updated too! - Delete your “admin” user. You never use it anyway, and you " - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"Thesis was already a brilliant theme, I have to concede that. Thing is, I am one of those people who zags when he sees everyone zig. The theme was getting popular fast and I worried the blogosphere was going to look like the Thesisphere. No need to worry now, though, good news everyone! Chris Pearson has just added the capability to easily change from your control panel * Font selection * Column number and size and next week you will be able to easily change color scheme too! All without touching the code. Chris is constantly upgrading his themes and customers get those improvements completely free of charge." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

Due to the overwhelming interest in creating a theme I've decided that Thesis is the closest thing to a custom theme and am going with it for all my blog projects. It would still make sense for us to discuss optimum plugins, placement, etc. - Internet Strategist

"Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine. In the directory you can find, download, rate, and comment on all the best plugins the WordPress community has to offer." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"One of my goals in 2009 is to release a lot of the Wordpress tools that I have developed for myself as Wordpress Plugins and hopefully this new category will help keep track of this work." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

"This is a community driven blog where you can find answers and ask questions related to blogging. Register For A Free Account and then Post Your Question live on the blog. Don't forget to subscribe to the RSS Feed or get updates by email. You can also check for news and updates by visiting our Announcements section." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

Or do you feel that using a Recent Posts plugin (see http://dereksemmler.com/2008... for an example) makes those links unnecessary? - Internet Strategist

While I'm not personally a fan of the Prev/Next links at the post level, I do think it provides an alternative to the Recent Posts. Think of it this way, if a reader comes to a post that is 9 months old, the prev/next links will show them the posts that were published at that time, whereas the recent posts plugin only shows the current posts. - Derek Semmler

The reason I recommend using both is that the decision point on whether to leave or read another post occurs when deciding where to go next. You can manually suggest other posts, use a related posts plug-in, or use the previous/next links. Well chosen related posts would be best followed by prev/next to entice visitors to another page. - Internet Strategist

"Description: Used on single post permalink pages, this template tag displays a link to the previous post which exists in chronological order from the current post." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

Remember the arrows that allow you to move directly to the previous or next posts. This is the info for previous post and the info for next post is at http://codex.wordpress.org/Templat.... Thanks to http://www.aimclearblog.com/ for this info. - Internet Strategist

"Description: Used on single post permalink pages, this template tag displays a link to the next post which exists in chronological order from the current post." - Internet Strategist from Bookmarklet

I'll have to defer to others here. As a reader, I am not registered with DISQUS so don't have much experience. However, as a reader on other blogs, I have never been motivated enough to register and simply leave my comment without taking advantage of DISQUS. - Derek Semmler

Only problem I had was when I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress, I wasn't able to bring Disqus with me....maybe there is a way, but I stopped using it after migrating to WP. What about http://intensedebate.com/ ? That's supposed to be similar to Disqus. - Helen Hoefele

I use the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin and have had good luck with it: http://txfx.net/code... - Derek Semmler

Does it allow subscribing to comments in a particular post or does it subscribe to all comments across an entire blog? I suspect most visitors would prefer to subscribe to comments in a particular post? Should people be offered the ability to do both (all comments and specific post comments)? - Internet Strategist

That plugin does allow the reader to subscribe to individual posts. If someone wants to subscribe to all comments, I'd imagine the RSS feed for comments might be the easiest route. - Derek Semmler

My preference is for the icons themselves to be displayed on the page/post. With something like Share This, you're adding a click to the process and that can discourage some people from sharing/voting. - Derek Semmler

One thing we need to do is discuss the best plug-in and/or design for each function needed in a WP blog. Until someone has a better idea let's start one discussion for each function. We can get ideas, then reach a consensus (hopefully) and then I'll collate those "decisions" on a Web page for easy reference. Everyone is welcome to provide ideas and direction - this isn't "my" room - it is "ours". Thanks for participating. - Internet Strategist

I know those are simplistic questions - thought we would start with the "easy" decisions and move on to the complex. - Internet Strategist