So I’ll be gone most of this weekend, off to WordCamp Toronto. So you probably won’t see anything posted till Monday. Looks like it could be a lot of fun and I’m hoping to make some new blogging friends. I figure since I haven’t done it before, I should list what’s under the hood and keeps the site running. Maybe give some of the new bloggers some ideas of what you can do with a self installed WordPress site.
Lyndonology’s Vital Statistics
I’m using Wordpress 2.6.1, although 2.7 isn’t very far away 
The theme is called Thesis and was designed by Chris Pearson. I’ve tried in the past to design my own, but I could never get it to look the way I want. I can picture it in my head, I just have trouble explaining it to someone, so I could get them to do it for me. Plus custom designs can cost hundreds, sometime thousands of dollars. I’d rather use that cash to get my new Mac or more lenses for my camera.
The best part of WordPress, are definitely the plugins!! I admit, I’m a bit addicted to trying and using different ones. Get ready, it’s a big list…
Akismet - It helps protect your site from comment spam.
commentluv - It shows a link from the last post of a commenter. Although it’s been a bit flaky lately!
Contact Form ][ - I think it’s pretty self explanatory.
Favicon Manager - Adds your favicon to your headers and/or rss feeds.
Flickr Photo Album - I think you can figure this one as well.
Max Banner Ads PRO - So I can rotate my banner ads.
Platinum SEO Pack - I don’t really use this as much as I should.
RSS Feed Signature - Add a customized signature or tag-line to your RSS feed
Sociable - Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. No one ever uses theses 
StatPress - Real time stats for your blog (I’m probably going to get rid of this soon)
Subscribe To Comments - Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
Top Commentators Widget - Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site.
UBD Block Ad Plugin - For the 125×125 ads that I run.
Whydowork Adsense - Insert Adsense code in your pages without modifying the template.
WP Ajax Edit Comments - Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. (It’s mostly for me, I’m a notorious poor speller)
WP Super Cache - Very fast caching (With all these plugins, if I didn’t have this installed the site would probably slow to a crawl.
As you can see, I have a bit of a problem. Well that and smiley faces Must try and stop myself…
Well that’s pretty much it. Oh and I like to use Windows Live Writer to write my posts, so I can see what they look like before I post them.
Later…
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Bill Masson 10.04.08 at 7:23 am
Hello fellow blogger and of course WordPress user.
I hope your weekend excursion brought you closer to your goal of achieving the right balance for your blog. I can see from your plugin list thet you include The Platinum SEO? Is there really much difference between that and the all in one SEO. I t does get to the stage of over doing it on some of these plug ins to ridicules levels. As for themes ; don’t get me started, I have went though so may of them that i am seriously considering learning to make my own.
Hope you bring back some interesting stories.
Susan 10.04.08 at 9:52 pm
Super Cache is a really handy and wonderful caching plugin. I don’t know what I would do without it.
Lorna 10.05.08 at 9:52 am
I do know about Flickr, but the rest was just like stopping off for an exotic cocktail in a foreign country—pleasant chattering going on in the background, but nothing I can join into.
Oh, and I recognized WordCamp from a past post….my God, will my coolness never end?
Lyndon 10.06.08 at 4:30 pm
@ Bill Masson - Sorry about the late response, but I’ve been kind of busy
I haven’t used the All-in-One SEO, but a lot of people like it. I might have to try out out and see if there’s any difference between the two. As far as stories go! It was a smorgasbord of WordPress content and knowledge; I couldn’t do it justice if I tried.
@ Susan - It is pretty awesome, isn’t it!
@ Lorna - It’s ok, at least you knew one of them
Michael 10.06.08 at 8:36 pm
I thought Supercache didn’t work well with AJAX Edit Comments, no?
Lyndon 10.07.08 at 9:55 pm
@ Michael - I haven’t had any major problems with it. But it doesn’t matter, with 2.7 you’ll be able to edit comments again, without the need of a plugin.
Stijn 10.08.08 at 7:14 am
That favicon manager looks interesting. I haven’t heard of it before. What I can gather from the info page, it allows you to directly manage your favicon. Right now, I’m not doing that. Just have my favicon in the root folder, which usually takes care of everything. If, as you say, this plugin lets me add it to my feed as well, that could serve as a new way to assist blog branding.
PS: I used to use StatPress as well, and did get rid of it fairly quickly. All those statistics added a new record to my msql database, which became huge and slow. So, I deleted the plugin and dropped the table(s).
nat 10.08.08 at 8:26 am
SO, I feel so LAME for continuing to use blogger!
Lyndon 10.08.08 at 11:36 am
@ Stijn - The root method works too, personally I don’t think many people pay attention to favicons anymore. But I just like having one.
@ Nat - Your not lame, but you could have probably been making a bit of money if you self hosted. Since your site has a decent size following.
Lorna 10.09.08 at 8:12 pm
OMG, there’s another Lorna commenting on this blog, LOL!
Anyways, thanks for the link love to the Top Commentators widget, I’m glad you’re trying it out. I use almost half of the plugins you list here mainly because my blog really can’t survive without them. Especially Super Cache!
Lornas last blog post..WordPress Comment hack: Display Gravatar on non-pingback comment types
Lyndon 10.09.08 at 9:44 pm
@ Lorna - Cool, I’ve never had a someone who created a plug-in comment on my site before. Absolutely love your plug-in!! Simply, clean and efficient, can’t really ask for anything more. Thanks so much for leaving the comment