In my continuing effort to give back to the web community and keeping with the spirit of open source, I present a brief description of my blog setup.

This site’s main setup is composed of the Wordpress CMS using Ben Gray’s modified K2 template Unsleepable. Dreamhost provides the hosting, Google Analytics the statistics, Filezilla the FTP access, and Firefox the main browser for writing. Behind the scenes I use the WP Tiger Administration interface. This site requires several Wordpress plugins described below:

Extended Live Archives (0.10beta-r16): Implements a dynamic archive. ELA uses AJAX to allow a user to dig through my old post via date or category. This one is great.

Adhesive (3.2): Allows easy marking of sticky posts in WordPress 2.0. Basically, this one allows a post to always appear on top of the home page and/or to only have post(s) (most recent first) appear on the top of a certain category. Makes sticky post a breeze because all you have to do is check a box in post status when posting.

Brian’s Latest Comments (1.5.10): This shows an overview of the recently active articles and the last people to comment on them. Used in my Footer. If you have Dunstan’s Time Since installed, this plugin uses it for the title=”" attributes on the comments and posts.

flickrRSS (3.0.2): You can see this one in action on my home page. It grabs the latest photos from your flickr account via RSS. You can specify the quantity.

Search Everything (2.1): By default Wordpress only searches posts. This plugin adds search functionality with little setup. It gives the option to search pages, attachments, drafts, and comments. Quite useful.

Subscribe To Comments (2.0.2): Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry that they check to subscribe to when they comment. A must have feature.

Dunstan’s Time Since (1.1): Tells the time between the entry being posted and the comment being made. You can see this in action when you do a live search or highlight a latest comment link on my bottom footer.

Ultimate Tag Warrior (3.1): It allows you to add tags (seperate from categories) either through the Write Post page in Wordpress in a tag box, on posts using an AJAXy box. From the write post page, you can also get suggestions for tags using the Tagyu service. Also supports the Tag Cloud on my archives.

Gravatar (1.1): This plugin allows you to generate a gravatar URL complete with rating, size, default, and border options. This is what gets the user’s gravatar when they submit comments.

intouch (1.1): It allows you to easily insert a custom built contact form with required fields. On submission will send the information via email.

Related Posts (2.02):Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. This is used on the sidebar of my post pages.

Noteworthy (1.0) Adds a Noteworthy category for posts. When this category is selected a star, or whatever image you pick, will appear on the post.

Akismet (1.14): Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If so it holds them for approval. This is a must, even if you don’t think you’ll get spammed.

Feedburner Feed Replacement (2.02): Makes using FeedBurner for your Wordpress RSS Feed a piece of cake. Essentially, it automates the .htaccess redirect code. Hard to see what it does, but it works.

Role Manager (1.4.3): Great if you have a multi-user blog. Only me and Lauren write, but this allows me to easily grant certain access rights. The Role Manager allows you to alter the capabilities of your WordPress roles, delete unused roles, and add new roles. Basically, you can set it up so that an author can log-in and only write new posts. An editor can write and change. An admin can do it all. Keeps non-tech people from messing up stuff because it can be used to remove links to options, plugins, etc. Very customizable.

WP lightbox 2 (0.3): A plugin to make use of Lightbox JS v2 in WordPress. Lightbox.js is used to to overlay images on the current page. Warning this is in a very early development, so use with caution.

WordPress Database Backup (1.7): On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Comes with Wordpress 2.0.2 by default. Don’t forget to backup!

Tiger Style Administration (2.01): This is more of a theme than plugin, but I decided to include it anyway. It beautifies the Wordpress Administration area. Makes it feel like a Mac application. Does not work in IE6, but looks and works great in Firefox.

Google Sitemap Generator (v2): This plugin generates a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Pings Google when you write a new posts. Who knows…it might improve your search rank.

Live Search: Adds an AJAX suggest feature to the search form. To see it, type something my search box and wait a couple of seconds. Nifty. Note: this is built into K2.

I’d like to express my appreciation to all of the authors of these plugins. My site wouldn’t be the same without them.

Find More Plugins

• Codex Plugin List
• WP-Plugins.net
• Plugins on Blogging Pro