With the recent redesign of the site, I thought it only fair that I update everyone on what actually helps to power the OptiNiche blog; though I’m still using quite a few of the plugins, a lot has changed since I originally wrote about powering the OptiNiche blog.

What’s Gone?

As the blog evolved and my needs changed, a couple plugins from the original list were phased out.

Because of a need to consolidate the blog and make my life a bit easier, I decided to combine the theme section with the regular blog section. That meant dropping support of the Multiply and Registered Only plugins. With a script I whipped together, I was able to transfer the posts from the themes blog to this one and by dropping support of the multiple blogs, I was able to decrease my database size and make managing the blog a bit simpler.

The No Nofollow plugin was also ditched because it was no longer necessary. Yes, WordPress still comes with the rel=nofollow attribute by default, and yes, I still allow free and clear links left by my contributors. I simply modified my core WordPress files to remove any trace of the the attribute (makes it much easier each time I install it on other blogs).

What’s New?

The spam was killing me and my moderation queue began looking like the big bad bogeyman. I had Bad Behavior installed previously, but it denied too many legitimate users access to the site, so it had to be nixed. My only other recourse was to install the Akismet plugin which has been my saving grace (with over 65,000 spam trapped).

On a brief side note, with the recent redesign of the site, I decided to add a challenge question to the comment form — only people who aren’t logged in will see this challenge question — and it has dropped my Akismet spam count from 300 per day to 3-5.

My previous design made me lazy. Because I was only showing excerpts on the front and archive pages of the site, I didn’t use the more tag as much as I should have. That meant, with the release of the new design, most of my posts were full length on the front page and I simply couldn’t have that. To quickly rectify the problem, I returned to a trusty friend that I’ve used on some other sites — Evermore. This plugin manually breaks up long blocks of content on the front page after the first or second paragraph. I may not need it for long as I fall back into good habits, but it’s nice to have right now.

After being online for the first year, I received a lot of questions that were already answered in previous entries, so I needed a way to let people scan the blog entries quickly. That prompted me to install the Clean Archives plugin (with a few slight modifications). It now powers the overview (sitemap) page.

The newest plugin in my arsenal was supposed to be the Digg Style Pagination plugin, however, after 30 minutes of coaxing it in the hopes of getting it to work properly, I decided to surrender to the PageNav plugin with a few key modifications.

PageNav worked straight out of the box and the mods I made had nothing to do with functionality, but everything to do with design. The key changes included adding some classes for styling, deleting some hard coded layout elements, and modifying how the total number of pages was displayed; I’ve always been a fan of the “# of X” pages format found in a number of documents, so I felt it would be appropriate for the blog.

The Updated and Revised List

All of that said, I present you with the new list of plugins that help to power the OptiNiche blog.

  • Akismet - Spam (and sanity) protection.
  • Evermore - To truncate the long posts on the front page of the blog.
  • Get Recent Posts - Custom written script for displaying the recent posts in the sidebar.
  • Post Levels - I use a modified version of this plugin combined with a custom script to restrict access to certain posts on this blog and manage the registered users.
  • Related Posts - Adds a list of posts at the end of an entry. (To see it in action, look in the “You May Also Enjoy” section.)
  • Sideblog Wordpress Plugin - Originally, the side blog was in the side column, but it’s since moved to its own page. It helps me jot down quick notes that don’t warrant a full blog entry.
  • SimpleTags - Slightly modified plugin which allows me to add Technorati tags to my entries.
  • Clean Archives - Slightly modified to display a full list of blog entries on the archive (sitemap) page.
  • Subscribe To Comments - Allows commenters to receive the comments left after theirs via e-mail. Easily customizable and managable.
  • Comment Relish - This allows me to automatically send a thank you e-mail to first time commenters. (I’ve done a write up with some tips at Appreciate Your Commenters).
  • Simple Link Manager - Though not a full plugin, it allows me to manage my simple link manager install from within my admin panel. I went ahead and transformed it into a proper plugin.
  • OptiNiche Plugin - personal plugin which makes doing certain tasks easier for me.
  • WordPress Email Notification Plugin - Heavily modified version of the script powers my weekly summaries newsletter.
  • WP-PageNavi - Adds pagination to the front and archive pages of the blog. (Go to the front page and scroll down to the bottom of the posts to see it in action.)
  • Customer/Download Manager - Personal plugin which allows me to manage my customers and products, plus allows my customers to login, review, and download their products.

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