WordPress recently upgraded to version 2.2 which is a good thing for various reasons. But some widgets and plugins that worked in earlier versions no longer work. If you don’t know or care what a WordPress plugin or widget is, you may safely disregard this post.

I ended up spending a fair amount of effort finding plugins and widgets that would work on my site. I figured I’d turn this effort into something useful. So, here I present an alphabetical run-down of the plugins that I have in my WordPress 2.2 self-hosted installation. They work. If you are hosing your blog on wordpress.com, this may not apply to you.

What might be particularly useful is that each of the bits of software I’m listing here are at the time of this writing functioning right now on this blog. While that may not always be true (I may inactivate, remove, or replace something) in some cases you can see it operating. Click on the name of the item below to go to the website for instructions, downloading, etc.

Ad Rotator.

This widget is intended to display random HTML code from a given group of HTML-chunks on sidebar. Basically it shows different HTML every time you requesting page. Plugin implemented as widget for the WordPress Widgets (you should install it before using this widget and be sure that your theme supports widgets at all).

It works nicely. I’m using it to rotate through Amazon.com book recommendations.

Akismet. This comes from the makers of Wordpress.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. By Matt Mullenweg.

I’m not sure if getting the WordPress API key is a functional necessity of the plug in or just something they want you to do. No, let me rephrase that. It won’t work without the API key. I’m just not sure if that is some kind of plot on their part or if an API key provides critical functionality. Either way, it seems to work really well. However, there is another anti-spam device I’ve installed, and before I did that, Akismet did let a fair amount of stuff through. But I quickly add that this may be because I did not have it adjusted optimally. All these anti-spam techniques can be tweaked in many ways, none of which I actually understand.

Blog Copyright

Blog Copyright is a WordPress plugin that displays a dated copyright mark. When displayed on general, category, search and author queries it provides a range of dates (first-last post years); on single posts, Pages and archive queries the year for the content will be used. Name, copyright term and reservation of rights text can be fully customized through tag parameters, or completely overridden with a custom field.

I have installed the plugin and it works. It puts a copyright notice on the bottom of your blog. You need to go into the PHP code a little to edit it the way you want it.

Category Replacement Widget

This is a plugin that gives you a widget that you in turn put in your sidebar to show the “categories” (topics) you’ve assigned to posts. It is fine (look over there on the left, you can see mine) but I’m still looking for one with more formatting flexibility. I suppose I could mess with my CSS and get what I want …

There are others out there, notably Alex King’s widgets, but nothing that I’ve tried to date that works in WordPress 2.2.

Chunk URLs for Wordpress.

This is a VERY COOL plugin. It takes those incredibly long URLs that people like to put in your comments area and chunks them down so they fit. You need to download this. You also need to go to this guy’s site and give him some money. He is tens of thousands of dollars in the hole because he was accused of doing something he didn’t do by some giant corporation with lots of lawyers. So go download the plugin and send his lawyers ten bucks. Or a thousand bucks. Whatever.

Custom Query String

This plugin allows you to adjust the total number of posts that show up, and the sort type (alpha vs. by date) and the sort order, depending on the kind of query that the posts are being shown on. For instance, just paging through the posts as per normal vs. getting a bunch of posts by clicking on a “category” (topic) vs. using the search box. WordPress defaults to the same number for all of these kinds of queries (you set the number as an option) but this plugin lets you pick different numbers for different contexts.

Notice that there is no link to this plugin. I’m telling you about it because it works, but the project is no longer supported, and the link to the project developer is comatose. Go here if you want more info.

deUncategorize

This is brilliant. You have a default category (like, maybe, “uncategorized”) that any post you write gets put into. But if you check another category, that default stays checked. Thus, you can get posts that are categorized as “Summer Vacation” and “Uncategorized” which in turn makes you look like a moron or something. Install this plugin, and the default (i.e., “Uncategorized”) category will uncheck itself as if by magic.

Future Calendar

This is something I wanted so badly I almost learned PHP to write my own. Actually, “Future Calendar” could have more functionality than it does, but it is a good start. It provides a calendar on the page where you write posts, down on the right. You can see days that are highlighted for which you have time stamped a post you want to come out in the future. If you click on one of the days, the current post timestamp takes on that date.

This is nice for when you write a series of related posts that you want spread out over time. Like sometimes, as you may have noticed, I’ll put up videos I like from YouTube. Well, when I do that, I usually spend a half hour or so going through videos, picking them out, and slapping them into posts …. maybe I’ll choose five or six. Then I put each one on a different future day (but not too far into the future, because sometimes YouTube videos disappear). This plugin lets me see which future days are blank, so I can distribute my posts more evenly than otherwise.

The same developer has a number of other neat looking plugins and stuff.

Get Recent Comments

This is an improved “list of recent comments” widget. The same developer covers a get recent posts widget, and you can also have a separate recent trackback widget. I found the trackback widget to be annoying for some reason so I don’t use it.

Google Analytics

This is really the best way to keep track of use statistics on your web site. It’s really cool. Just do it. You have to sell a small piece of your soul to Google and everything, but you’ve probably already done that even if you don’t know it. So just do it. Stop asking questions.

Lucia’sLinkLove

WordPress by default adds “nofollow” code to a commenter’s web site links … those little links that show up on the comment section with each commenter if they include their web site along with their name when they comment. The nofollow code invalidates this link in the overall Mysterious Calculation of Web Interconnectivity numbers that serve to rank us all in relation to each other. In order to reward your commenters, you can install a plugin like this one that deactivates the nofollow code, and apparently replaces it with a dofollow code instead.

No Self Pings

I ping myself all the time. I mean, everybody does, don’t they? Where you refer in one of your blog posts to another post you wrote earlier? The problem is that those show up as pings or trackbacks or whatever on your blog, and it is messy, unnecessary, even embarrassing. This plugin prevents your blog from pinging itself.

Sociable
This is the plugin that puts the thing on the bottom of my post that you can click to dig, submleon, or whatever (submit to a social network of some kind) this very post (if you want … go ahead, just do it… ). I have no idea if anyone ever presses this.

Spam Karma 2

My other anti-spam plugin. Once I installed this one the shortcomings of Akismet were overcome. I don’t know what would happen if I removed Akismet and kept only Spam Karma 2 going. It does not seem to be bad to have both. They are working.

However, the link that comes with the Spam Karma 2 plugin is dead. So I can’t give it to you. But the plugin works. Sorry!

Subscribe to Comments

This puts a checkbox down with the comment box. Commenters can check the box and if they’ve provided a valid email address (which I promise to not sell to anyone without cutting you in on the action) they will receive an email if there is a followup comment.

WP-Definitions

When I first installed this, I thought I was going to really like it. Then I found out how it actually worked and I didn’t like it. Then I used it a little and kind of liked it again.

If you put two brackets before a word, and another two brackets after a word, this plugin goes and gets a definition for the word and puts it at the bottom of your blog. Like this. Erudite¹. Pernicious². Parsimonious³. Abrogate⁴. I was hoping for something where I could provide the definition, then I could use this like a footnote plugin. There is a footnote plugin out there somewhere that I have played around with, but it is not currently installed.

One more bit of information. In my search for better plugins and widgets, I found the wordpress.com site somewhat useful but far too diffuse … there is almost too much information and older information that is no longer valid is mixed with newer information in a way that makes it difficult to parse. And don’t ask questions on that site… if the answer is already posted somewhere, someone will yell at you. While many who post on that site are brilliant and helpful, there are also gangs of miscreants who can’t stop themselves from being mean.

If you want a much more productive and enjoyable experience, visit Lorelle on WordPress. While the search function on Lorelle is also a bit diffuse, you can find good information there presented in a very useful way. Its the number one WordPress information and howto site in my opinion.

That is the whole story for now. See below for definitions of the ten dollar words I used in the last paragraph. And have fun hacking your site!!!