WordPress Plugins For The Not-so-everyday Blog.

By: Chris Murphy

The WordPress plugin section is rife with some great extensions for WordPress, each offering something unique that the WordPress "core system" doesn't offer out-of-the-box.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with plugins — WordPress offers the ability for software developers to extend the basic functionality of WordPress in order to display, perform or provide functionality that does not currently exist.

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, and WordPress is no exception. There are many plugins that offer surprisingly similar features with the exception that one might handle the same task in a slightly different manner.

Sifting through plugin lists isn’t fun either.

I thought I would share a short list of the WordPress plugins that I found to be useful without being too gimmicky.

Posts

Plugin: the_excerpt Reloaded

URL: http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/26/the_excerpt-reloaded/

Description: Displays the excerpt of a posting (or uses the content of your post if no excerpt is available), and formats the excerpt accordingly.

This plugin was developed in 2005, and there are other similar plugins that have come along since, but I like this one simply because it works as advertised. If you’ve downloaded and installed my theme, you’ll notice that I use it in areas such as the main posting, and in the archive or past postings.

Plugin: “Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button”

URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-to-any/

Description: Adding social bookmark features can be a bit of a pain, and implementations are inconsistent. This plugin takes the pain out of adding social bookmarking abilities to your postings using a very simple UI for the user to interact with.

Comments

Plugin: Get Recent Comments

URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments/

Description: Displays a formatted list of the most recent comments on your site. This plugin has a number of new features, but I typically use only the basic features — for me it’s a time saver, as well as a quick and easy way to implement a comment list without a lot of work.

Archives

Plugin: SRG Clean Archives

URL: http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/projects/clean-archives/

Description: Displays a formatted list of your archived posts with additional functionality for animation and user interaction.

I just love the fact that I can take this plugin and output an archive with minimal fuss. I disable all of the additional features and apply my own CSS to customize the look and feel. It’s really quite easy, and if you’re into experimenting with some of the extra JavaScript features, you can come up with some fun results.

You don’t need a lot of plugins to enhance the features of your blog, and I personally recommend against relying heavily on plugins; instead, I do recommend that you pick plugins that effectively suit the features you need to communicate better on your blog.

• Posted: August 25, 2008
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