I am extremely picky with the plugins I keep these days.
I have to be – since I typically check out 5-10 on a daily basis, I could quite easily end up with a seriously bloated blog.
But today, I found a plugin which found its way onto my own blog without a moment’s hesitation. That’s about the biggest compliment I can give it.
With that said, if you have ever found yourself frustrated by WordPress’ internal linking search engine, read on.
Better Internal Link Search
As some of you may know, I spend a lot of time looking at plugins.
In fact, I cast my eye over every single new plugin release on WordPress.org, and test any that I feel may of worth. So I end up testing a lot of plugins.
The ones that I like get featured here at WPMU. You never read about the countless plugins I test that don’t make the grade. Unless of course I need to vent about something (which I do today), in which case, plugins that I don’t recommend get free publicity.
What is a Subversive Plugin?
It was only last month that I announced the release of SlideDeck 2.1, with some pretty awesome new features.
Not ones to rest on their laurels, the folks at Digital Telepathy quickly got back to work, adding Pinterest to the available content sources just a few days ago.
But perhaps even more interestingly, they quietly released a free version of SlideDeck 2 just five days ago. Despite the release not being mentioned anywhere on the web (that I am aware of), the plugin has already amassed over 2,500 downloads, and a perfect star rating.
So what’s the fuss all about?
Like SlideDeck, but Free
So the theme customizer is here, and presumably here to stay.
Not only that, it would seem that theme developers are going to be utilizing it – which is of course key to its long term success. I am sure we will be seeing plenty of updates to WordPress’ biggest new feature in future versions, but for the time being, plugin developers will be toiling away to create their own custom functionality.
And today I want to focus on one such plugin – Live CSS Preview.
Real Time Formatting
I get Pinterest. I really do.
I don’t use it, but I definitely get it. Its a social network for sharing images (duh). When you think about it, it’s rather crazy that someone didn’t come with it sooner. We all missed out on a great opportunity guys.
As an aside, it’s interesting that I chose to link to Pinterest above. I would never do that with Facebook or Twitter. I guess it’s a second class social media citizen in my eyes.
Every weekday, I drag myself out of bed, have a quick shower in order to make myself feel human again, get dressed, and head downstairs to my home office (couch). I fire up my trusty MacBook Pro and get started on my writing work for WPMU.
My first port of call is a quick visit to the WordPress.org plugin directory to take a look at the freshest plugins. And there are a lot of them. A tentative count shows that over 30 new plugins were released yesterday. So more than one new WordPress plugin is being released every hour.
I have never quite gotten along with related posts plugins.
I’ve tried quite a few in my time, but ultimately, I have been bothered by the fact that the results returned just weren’t as relevant as I wanted them to be.
Whilst there is no doubt in my mind that related posts plugin help people to remain engaged with your blog, I really only want to keep one on my site if it returns truly relevant results.
And after a bit of a eureka moment this morning, I think I may have just found the perfect solution.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Blogging is ultimately an ideas game.
You have to be a creative type. If you’re going to create a successful blog, you must come up with inventive topic ideas that will get people talking.
One thing I have learnt is that if you have an idea, you need to get it down quickly, otherwise you may lose it forever. There are of course many different ways in which you can keep track of ideas. I personally use Evernote.
We all know that a lot of developers in the WordPress community rely upon the generosity of their products’ users. I have heard of many plugin users, for instance, who make a point of donating to any developer that has produced something of value that they use.
Whilst these donations may not add up to an enormous sum, they usually allow developers to enjoy a beer or two every now and then, no doubt toasted to the beauty of open source WordPress development.
I’m a sucker for pretty things, but common sense typically prevails over time.
I’ll leave you to imagine how far that statement stretches in my life, but for the purposes of this post, I am talking about pretty plugins. Plugins that do fancy whizzbang stuff.
I’m always initially impressed, but over time, I make an objective decision regarding its use. And more often than not, I move on.
However, I’m rather tempted to stick with Social Stream.
Social Showcase
