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Playing with WordPress Plugins

Playing with WordPress Plugins

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I’ve been playing with a variety of plugins for WordPress. I’ll be nice and not list the plugins that I don’t like. These are the new plugins that I’m actually using:

  • The most useful one is Google Sitemaps (Arne Brachhold). It creates an automatically-updating Google-compliant sitemap of your blog with a built-in configuration page for your administration panel. Excellent!
  • The WordPress Akismet comment spam filter works really well, but I wanted something at the gate too. Even scanning the hundreds of daily attempted posts was depressing. Peter Keung’s Custom Anti-Spam plugin is a simple word image generator that has stopped the spambots cold, at least for now. The image isn’t very difficult to read, unlike some, and you can customize the pool of words to display – which is kind of fun. And of course, I’ve still got Akismet for backup if that fails.
  • I am very fond of the Kill Preview plugin (Owen Winkler). It seemed a simple thing, but there seemed to be no way to turn off the preview when you’re writing a post. This did the trick.
  • Mullet (Jonathan Broom) produces the “long-tail” listing of post titles at the bottom of the page. It lists only posts that aren’t already on the page – much better than just having the “Previous” link – and you have to love it just for the name.
  • Sociable (Peter Harkins) automatically adds links to popular “social bookmarking” sites. Mine doesn’t have Technorati listed yet, but it looks like it will be added soon. You can change the configuration to include as many (or as few) as you want. Hover with the mouse if you’re not familiar with the icons. It’s such a viral thing that I can’t resist. I have it on the single post pages, so you’ll see it if you look at comments, but I decided not to have it on the regular blog home page. That would be a little too much, I think.
  • I have installed and tested, but not actually started using, Anthony Girasoli‘s Get Recent Posts plugin. It lists the most recent posts, by content or excerpt, but for only one specific catagory. I’m thinking about using it to make a dedicated page for the JW posts.

There are some other plugins that I’ve already been using, of course. Here are my faves:

  • Recent Comments List (Jared Bangs) is on my sidebar. It lists recent comments in descending order, arranged by post title. It shows the name of the commenter, and links to the comment.
  • One year ago (Borja Fernandez) shows titles of your posts from… um… one year ago, although you can change it to X years or posts ago.
  • Ultimate Tag Warrior (Christine Davis) is what I’m using for the tags at the end of each post, as well as the tag cloud at the bottom of the page. It has a lot of options, and I like it, but I still haven’t figured out how to make a tags page that would list all the linked tags.
  • WP-Amazon (Rich Manalang) makes it easy to search for and add items from Amazon to my posts. I do that occasionally, sometimes more for the image than anything else. Configure it with your Amazon associates id. Who knows? You might earn yourself a free book or two.
  • WordPress Database Backup (Scott Merrill) is a convenient way to backup the blog and download it. I’m not entirely comfortable with database administration, and this gives me peace of mind.

Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions?

TTLB Graphs, Technorati Issues

TTLB Graphs, Technorati Issues

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Today I’m a Slithering Reptile in the TTLB Ecosystem. The descriptions are cute, and very humbling! I was an “insignificant microbe” for a while when I first had the blog. I was a “Flappy Bird” for less than a day once – I think that’s the highest up I’ve gotten.

In addition to the regular blog stats, The Truth Laid Bare now has graphs of incoming links and outgoing links (by frequency). Here’s my most frequent incoming links graph:

Who Links to VirusHead

(larger, interactive version)

These things are great, but I’ve been having some technical difficulties with both TTLB and Technorati.

The main problem is that both TTLB and Technorati seem to slow down the loading time of my blog, freezing it for a wee bit while the scripts do whatever they do. I’m not really sure how it works.

It would be great if faster-loading solutions were implemented. I’m not sure what I can do on this end. I did try a WordPress plugin to speed up the loading time of TTLB with some kind of cache, but it doesn’t really do anything that I can tell.

Also, I can’t view the Technorati site with Firefox. It doesn’t appear to process the style sheet at all. When I go to the site, I have to open IE. Even then, the site loads very slowly. I can’t tell whether it is more to do with my own settings, or with their site.

The last problem is about my own settings, I’m sure. On every computer but my own, I can see the Technorati image and links on my sidebar. Here I don’t see it, either in Firefox or IE. I’ve played with settings for my firewall, antivirus, spyblaster, and everything else I can think of, but it just doesn’t show. Is it considered a malicious javascript?

Suggestions welcome.

Using a New WordPress Theme

Using a New WordPress Theme

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Again, I’ve grown bored with my WordPress theme. Until such time as I have the time and energy to design my own, I’m just using a modified version of the Remember theme by Becca Wei. I’m still customizing it for my content, so check back in a day or so. You might have to refresh the page if you’ve visited recently.

I’ve got the image I want now for the header, but there are some buggy bits of the footer and sidebar, and I’ve lost the tag display on each post, as well as my guidelines for comments. Please play nice while I get all that fixed.

Internet Freedom Preservation

Internet Freedom Preservation

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I just signed on as a citizen co-sponsor of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, an important bill designed to keep the Internet open and free.

Today, the Internet is an open marketplace of ideas where anyone can join in. With traditional media, like TV, radio, or newspapers, it’s been difficult for average citizens to have a voice. But now, new technology is giving a wide variety of citizens the voice to speak out — anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can set up a website that’s just as accessible as those owned by a large media conglomerate. The result has been an incredible diversity of new sources of information and opinion.

Now, this open architecture that makes the Internet so powerful is being questioned. Some argue that it would be better for companies to give certain traffic on the Internet — content that they are paid to deliver faster — higher priority.

But this kind of preferential treatment could make it harder for individual voices to be heard.

Please join me in protecting Net Neutrality by signing on as a citizen co-sponsor of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act at HillaryClinton.com:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/net/?sc=x.netneutrality

Religion as a Virus: Dawkins on Religion

Religion as a Virus: Dawkins on Religion

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Richard Dawkins (Oxford prof., father of meme theory, author of The Selfish Gene) argues against irrational, militant religion in the two-part Channel 4 UK documentary “The Root of all Evil?” (Jan. 2006).

Dawkins goes too far by including all forms of faith – not all are in direct contradiction to independent thought and constructive doubt! (Please chime in on this – esp. Progressive Faith Bloggers!)

Still, his arguments are very persuasive in terms of the malignant, dangerous, and destructive forms of “faith” that we see once again today – both here and abroad.

This from the Channel 4 description:

He describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science.

In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress – to become more enlightened and more tolerant.

The Root of All Evil? Part 1 – The God Delusion
The Root of All Evil? Part 2 – The Virus of Faith

Here is Part 1:

The God Who Wasn't There The Selfish Gene : 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author The God Delusion