The software running this blog is WordPress. It is probably the most popular self-hosted blogging solution, and I’m myself very happy with it. Hundreds of plugins are available for it, but I’m not using many. I prefer keeping this blog simple, centered on the content. The only plugins I use are there to help the conversation and discover new content. They are:

• Recent Posts: Many visitors come to this blog through a Google search and they end up on the some archived post. This plugin allows me to show them a list of the most recent posts on sidebar. The list appears only on single post pages.
• Smart Archives: This plugin powers my Archives page. I don’t like the way most blogs show their archives, only through a calendar view. When I arrive on a blog for the first time, I check first the About page, and the second what else the blogger has written. So I want friendly archive page. This is even more important on my blog as I don’t use categories.
• Cosmos Link: I use Technorati to track if someone is linking to me on another blog. This plugin simply adds on each post a link to the Technorati pages that lists all the other pages linking to my post. It nicely replaces trackbacks, which suffer from some spamming vulnerabilities.
• TechnoTag: Tags are hot currently, and many bloggers are tagging their posts. I think it will be a good way to increase my readership as more and more people are following discussions and what’s hot though tags. This plugin allows me to easily tag my posts.

That’s it. Two plugins to help a visitor discover other posts on my blog (Recent Posts and Smart Archives) and two to help him discover what other people are saying either about my posts (Cosmos Link) or about the same subject (TechnoTag).

wordpress, tags

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 6:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Linking Blogs