Arunn asked if I would post which plugins I used for my category and archives dropdown boxes. I thought about it, and decided to post all of the plugins I’m currently using, and what I’m using them for. After experimenting with a host of different plugins, there are a few that I simply can’t do without.

A few of the “bells and whistles” that I’m using are not plugins, however.

The music player (the little blue arrow next to my music file titles) is a Del.icio.us script. It works really well, and is browser/OS non-specific. Clicking on the arrow (instead of the song title) immediately begins to play the song. No one needs to download or have any music players for it to work. All I needed to do to use it is put the following piece of code in the header.php file:

< script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/js/playtagger">< /script>

It has to be placed just before the < /header> closing tag. You would need to remove the spaces to make the script work.

The Archives dropdown box feature is also not a plugin. Here’s how I did that:

< li>< h2>< ?php _e('Archives'); ?>< /h2>

< form id="archiveform" action="">
< select name="archive_chrono" onchange="window.location =
(document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono
[document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono.selectedIndex].value);">
< option value=''>Select Month
< ?php get_archives('monthly','','option'); ?>
< /select>
< /form>
< /li>

Please note that I’ve added a space in front of each command so that it would not be interpreted by the parser instead of printed to the screen, and I added a new line between “chrono” and “[document.forms.” in order to fit it all onto the screen. You would paste that bit into your sidebar, wherever you’d like the box to appear. For more information on how to further customize your Archives, see the following Word Press help files: get_archives and wp_get_archives.

And now, for my plugins:

Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. By Owen Winkler.

Active - The HTML buttons above the comment text entry field. Can’t do without them.

AJAX-ified tagboard. Derived from the “Jalenack’s Wordspew” plugin by Andrew Sutherland (http://blog.jalenack.com). This version has been modified to use the Wordpress comment systems to store the messages, in order to allow the normal spam prevention measures you use to automatically apply to your tagboard as well. By Jared Bangs.

Active - Nice shout box, but I need to get the Quick Tag Buttons off from it. Also available as a Widget.

This plugin will add a list of the most frequent comments posted to your blog. They are gathered in descending order (newest at the top), but then group them together by post title, so that comments from the same post are listed together. The list items will be links to the comments, and will contain the name of the commenter. Derived from the “Top/Recent Commenters” plugin by Scott Reilly (http://www.coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/) By Jared Bangs.

Active - most configurable of those I tried. Also available as a Widget.

Replacement function for getting fancy archives that use javascript for collapsable year links By Andrew Rader.

Not Active - I really liked this one, but some of the other plugins interfere with it, and I wasn’t able to make it work consistently.

View your website activity in real time. By Sean Hickey.

Active - This plugin rocks! ‘Nuf said!

Activate to supply users with a live comment preview. Use the function < ?php live_preview() ?> to display the live preview in a different location. By Jeff Minard & Iacovos Constantinou.

Active - This shows what your comment is going to look like in real time underneath the comment entry box. I always hate publishing a comment on someone else’s blog if I can’t see what it’s going to look like ahead of time - I make too darn many typos! ;o)

Adds A Poll Feature To WordPress By GaMerZ.

Active - Nice little poll program, simple to use … well integrated into Word Press. Also available as a Widget.

Simple script for choosing a random header image By Patrick David.

Not Active - This is not what I was using with my last theme. That one had a random header built into the theme itself, using a Kubrick Default Theme base. I may try this one out for changing my little moofs in the top right of the blog.

Ultimate Spam Killer for WordPress. Activate the plugin and go to Manage >> Spam Karma 2 to configure. See Spam Karma 2 >> About for details. By dr Dave.

Active - This is, hands down, the best comment spam plugin I’ve ever seen. If I could find something by this fellow for my emails, I’d get it in a heart beat. I haven’t had to think of my comment spam since I put this in. Somehow, it’s managed to sort the real comments from the spam consistently from day one. Once a day or so, it sends me an email with a link to the control page - letting me know how many spams it’s caught, and I log in and make sure they’re really spam before getting rid of them. Absolutely amazing.

Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. By Peter Harkins.

Active - This is the one that puts those cute little buttons in between the post and comments. I first saw them used on Light Along the Journey … Dr. Hollandsworth was kind enough to tell me which plugin he was using. Personally, I use Shadows and Del.icio.us for my social bookmarking, and this makes it quite handy.

Adds A Useronline Feature To WordPress By GaMerZ.

Not Active - Haven’t tried this one out yet. Not sure I want to, since the same feature is available through some of the external tracking sites I link to. We’ll see. Also available as a Widget.

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill.

Active - Default Word Press Plugin. Much nicer than the usual way of backing up your SQL database!

This plugin allows you to embed random quotes into your pages. It also has a spiffy management tool in the administrative console. By Dustin Barnes.

Active - But not in use … yet. Haven’t decided quite what to do with it. I had humorous comments in the sidebar of my last public blog, and rather more serious comments in the header of my Emanon’s Journey blog. I may or may not use these again. They are very intuitive, easy to use, configurable, and well integrated into Word Press.

Displays a dropdown list of links for every link category. By Corrado “Zelig”.

Not Active - Worked exactly as described, but I decided that I prefer to have my links openly available for perusal. If you want your blogroll tucked away, this is a great plugin.

Displays the categories in the sidebar as a simple dropdown list (select box) with the option to exclude some categories from the list. By Corrado “Zelig”.

Active - Excellent little plugin! Works as promised. Fairly configurable. I’m quite happy with it. My only wish would be to limit the width of the box.

Posted: Sunday, August 13th, 2006 at 9:15 am under: Blogariphic, Technomatics. Comment Feed (RSS 2.0). Interact: Comment or Trackback.