A time for a quick blog facelift I think.
WARNING. GEEKINESS FOLLOWS
I’ve switched to the Fiver theme and unusually for me I’ve left it virtually as it came out of the box. The only thing I’ve changed is used this trick (scroll to post #5) to stop WordPress from showing the word ‘Pages’ if you leave the title blank in the pages widget.
I find that each time I change theme I look for something even more minimal, while training to maintain some useful links to previous posts and other online gubbins.
Inspired by Ian Addison, I thought it might be useful (?) to share the list of plugins I’m currently using as well.
Anarchy Media Player – For embedding multimedia content
CG-Redirect – redirects to another URL from a post or page
Enhanced Meta Widget – Allows you to customize the ‘Meta’ widget
Fast Secure Contact Form – runs the ‘Contact me’ page
FD Footnotes – Allows you to easily add footnotes as you type.
FeedBurner FeedSmith – Sends the RSS feed via Feedburner
Google Analytics – Only just added this. Curious to see what happens in terms of hits as the year progresses
Smart Archives Reloaded – Allows me to easily create an archive page on which all previous posts are displayed
Spam Karma 2 – Great for spam catching!
Subscribe To Comments – Provides the option for people to subscibe to follow up comments.
Trackable Social Share Icons – Another recent add. Allows posts to be sent on to various other social media platforms.
Twitter Widget Pro – Powers the Twitter widget in the sidebar
So, there we are! What’s under your blog’s bonnet? Anything you’d recommend?
I’m forever tinkering with the theme, layout, and functionality of my blog, trying to find that sweet spot between minimalist and informative, and I think I’ve finally got it.
Theme: Blog.txt (tweaked, but not much)
Plugins:
Akismet – anti-spam
All in One SEO Pack – not sure how much it influences my SEO, but can’t hurt, I suppose.
CommentLuv – posts link to commenter’s latest blog post when blog URL provided
MobilePress – turns blog into a mobile version when viewed on mobile device
Odiogo – Converts text of all my blog posts to spoken-word audio. If reading is difficult, one can listen to my blog instead.
Statpress Reloaded – tracks traffic, referral info, etc.
Cheers Damian.
It’s quite ironic that 90% of the time I’m reading in my feedreader (as I suppose most people are), but I still worry about the appearance!
Thanks for the list of plugins – a couple there I’ll be investigating!
D