Last week I was checking out Ari Herzog’s blog post on 17 Plugins to Improve Your WordPress Blog, and it got me interested in putting together a video of my personal favorite WordPress plugins. Check it out and please share your favorites here or over on Ari’s site.
Learn about Akismet, Flexible Lightbox, Sociable, Google Sitemap Generator, Register Plus, WPtouch and User Photo. Just a note, make sure to verify any plugins you install are compatible with the version of WordPress you’re running.







I accidentally edited out the part where I mentioned the new Cook County, Illinois websites – built on the WordPress platform. Here’s an article on Government Technology.
Thanks for plugging (pun intended) my name and link, and after listening to your video I have a few comments:
First, do not use Akismet. It may work well in blocking spam but it also marks false positives as spam. It is for this reason that Gail Gardner, Andy Bailey, and Phil Hollows worked to create the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin, which enables a checkbox forcing anyone to check when commenting; if a robot spammer, the comment fails and if a human spammer, the comment passes through — but you can then manually mark that person as a spammer in your WordPress Discussion text box.
And, I also suggest you employ (on this blog) a means for people like me who write a comment to be notified if there is a follow-up comment. As is, I have no way of knowing if you or someone else replies to my comment. I suggest Subscribe to Comments and/or ReplyMe; the former provides a checkbox for anyone to subscribe to comments and the latter provides email notifications to commenters if they receive threaded replies.
The problem with Akismet like Ari says is that so many good comments get caught by it!
On my new project, Technology Bloggers (http://www.technologybloggers.org/) there have been 4 different users who have commented, and every one of them got caught in spam, but they are people I already knew online and post reputable comments!
Try GASP
P.S I found your site via your article on Easy Public Speaking blog