Plugins Currently in Use on the Blog (Updated 11-11-20)

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28,622 characters2011.01.23

I’ve been tinkering with the new blog for several weeks now, and I still haven’t even gotten around to writing new posts; I’ve been pouring all my energy into debugging the technical environment. WordPress really is a great thing. It’s very easy to get started with, yet it also offers endless room for development—if you know nothing at all, you can install it in two minutes and start writing entries right away; then you can begin changing themes, installing plugins, modifying CSS styles, editing php code, and so on, going deeper and deeper, with unlimited room to fuss around.

Of course, no matter what, content is always the main thing, but a flashy technical environment is by no means meaningless either; as the saying goes, “the medium is the message.” Just like writing entries, building a blog’s technical environment is itself an expressive activity, and like the text of an entry, it has an interpretive significance.

Still, by now this media environment can be said to be more or less in place: the theme is basically fixed, and the plugins worth trying have more or less been tried. From here on, it’s just a matter of some fine-tuning, and then waiting for the filing process to be completed before the site can be officially launched. Major tinkering is no longer advisable.

So, as a sort of summary—and also to force myself to stop tinkering—I’ll list the plugins I’ve enabled so far, with brief explanations:

First, the theme I use is the domestically original prowerV2. Of course I’ve made many modifications, but I haven’t touched the original author’s copyright information, and I’ve kept the original author’s link in the site footer. His theme has already been released in a V3 version, but because V3 is too plain, and because of other little matters of preference, I’m still using V2. Since many of the detailed modifications made to accommodate plugins are completed in the theme files, changing to another theme would mean a major overhaul, so in the short term I’m probably too lazy to switch. But I may still look for a suitable banner image or background image to decorate it with.

Below I list the plugins I currently have enabled, a total of as many as 35. WordPress plugin usage seems to be split into two extremes: many people use only three or five plugins, while those who use a lot may well have twenty or thirty, or even fifty or sixty. Of course, using many plugins may slow down the site, but for a site like mine with not many visitors, that probably doesn’t matter much. Besides, for experts, the functions of many plugins can be easily implemented by rewriting the program code yourself, but for an amateur like me, finding ready-made plugins to use is the most convenient approach.

Automatic Post Cut

A plugin that automatically truncates post text. After using this plugin, there is no need to add a more tag when writing posts to perform text truncation. It uses UTF-8 mode to cut text, so Chinese characters are not garbled.

Version 0.7 | Author: Jens Törnell ; Mark Lin Chinese localization revision | Visit plugin homepage

——This makes only the beginning of the article appear on the page, and viewing the full text requires clicking through.

Add Post URL

This plugin allows you to insert a user specific text (such as copyright, credit, etc.) at the beginning/ending of all your posts.

Version 1.1 | Author: Easwy Yang | Visit plugin homepage

——Adds copyright information to the end of the article.

All in One SEO Pack

Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist

Version 1.6.13.1 | Author: Michael Torbert | Visit plugin homepage

 

——The legendary search engine optimization plugin, one of the most widely used plugins. Although I don’t know exactly how useful it is, I installed it anyway. WordPress’s built-in search function is terrible, so this theme’s sidebar uses Google’s search function instead, but that requires my pages to be indexed by Google as much as possible.

BackWPup

Backup and more of your WordPress Blog Database and Files.

Version 1.4.0 | Author: Daniel Hüsken | Visit plugin homepage | FAQ | Support | Donate

——A backup plugin that can back up the database and all files, can back up automatically on a schedule, and can send email automatically~

Beauty Orange WordPress Commentator Wall

A plugin for WordPress, show the all commentators’s avatar.

Version 1.00 | Author: leo | Visit plugin homepage

——A plugin that displays a reader wall; see the message wall page.

Collapsing Archives

Allows users to expand and collapse archive links like Blogger. Options and Settings | Manual | FAQ | User forum

Version 1.3.2 | Author: Robert Felty | Visit plugin homepage

——A plugin that lists posts by date in a dynamic drop-down list form; see the post archives page. The only problem is that many symbols do not display properly—for example, the Chinese quotation marks “ ” appear as “”. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Collapsing Categories

Uses javascript to expand and collapse categories to show the posts that belong to the category

Version 1.2.2 | Author: Robert Felty | Visit plugin homepage

——Similar to the one above, but lists by category. See the browse all articles by category page or the Categories section in the sidebar. What’s relatively nice is that it can sort by a category’s alias (Slug), whereas WordPress’s default method can only sort by category name or category ID, which is very unfriendly. The Categories menu on my navigation bar can only be sorted by category ID.

Custom Smilies

Personalize your posts and comments using custom smilies. Previously named Custom Smileys. it (older than version 2.0) maintained by QAD.

Version 2.9.1 | Author: Crazy Loong | Visit plugin homepage

——A plugin that adds custom emoticons below the comment box.

Do Follow

Removes the evil nofollow attribute that WordPress adds in comments.

Version 4.0 | by Denis de Bernardy | Visit plugin homepage

—Supposedly this removes the nofollow attribute from comments or other parts, so that search engines will also read the comment content (normally they do not). —I got it wrong at the time; it turns out that nofollow means telling search engines not to trace back the URLs that appear in comments, so I’ll let that be… For those who comment here often, if you enter a website URL when commenting, your link will appear in the sidebar under the “Most Complaints” section, so my blog still provides search-engine-optimized backlinks to frequent commenters; deliberately removing nofollow as well would just be redundant.

Fluency Admin Chinese version

Equip your WordPress dashboard with a dazzling set of fashion. Fluency 2.3.2 fully supports the WP 3.0 series, and you can customize various features in Settings – Fluency options. The fully Chinese version was lovingly produced by Yu Zhong Man Bu

Version 2.3.2 | by Dean Robinson | Visit plugin homepage

—Changes the skin of the admin interface. The default look really is too ugly, or rather, this effect really is too good, to the point that the original interface is simply impossible to look at…

Google Analyticator

Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics’ UID and enable logging.

Version 6.1.1 | by Ronald Heft | Visit plugin homepage | FAQ | Support | Donate

—Automatically inserts the analytics code of Google’s Analytics to count visit information. Since there is that statistics plugin later on, this plugin may be considered for removal. But Google’s analytics really is powerful, so for now I’ll still keep it.

Google Pac-Man

Add Google’s mini Pac-Man game to your blog. Add the shortcode [p acman] to embed the mini game

Version 0.1 | by Brad Vincent | Visit plugin homepage

—Convenient for inserting Google’s Pac-Man mini-game from back in the day. See the Pac-Man page.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

Version 3.2.4 | by Arne Brachhold | Visit plugin homepage | Settings | FAQ | Support | Donate

—Automatically generates an XML sitemap and automatically submits it to the major search engines; it’s also an SEO plugin.

Multi-level Navigation Plugin

A WordPress plugin which adds a multi-level CSS based dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. Visit the WP Multi-level Navigation Plugin page for more information about the plugin, or our navigation support board for help with adding the menu to your theme.

Version 2.2.1 | by PixoPoint Web Development / Ryan Hellyer | Visit plugin homepage

—Generates a multi-level navigation menu. See navigation menu.

My Link Order

My Link Order allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.

Version 2.9.1 | by Andrew Charlton | Visit plugin homepage | Order Links | Support Forum | Donate

—You can customize the ordering of your friendly links. Why can’t WordPress just put a little effort into sorting functionality?

No Revisions

Disables post revisions in WordPress 2.6 and on. Activate the plugin to disable them. Deactivate the plugin to reenable them. Note that this does not delete any existing revisions, just stops wordpress from making any more.

1.1 version | by John Leavitt | Visit plugin homepage

—Turns off automatic saving when editing posts. By default, WordPress automatically saves post versions while drafting and revising, and does not delete them automatically, resulting in a good deal of redundant data in the database. The loss of posts I encountered when I first imported them may also have had something to do with this.

Pagebar2

Adds an advanced page navigation to WordPress.

Version 2.59 | by Lutz Schröer | Visit plugin homepage

—Adds a page bar below index pages (such as the homepage). Although I use the PageNavi plugin more often, the current theme comes with Pagebar as a standard feature, so I used it. By contrast, WordPress’s default form can only jump to the previous or next page.

Post-Plugin Library

Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

Version 2.6.2.1 | by Rob Marsh, SJ | Visit plugin homepage

—This is also a standard part of this theme. Its main purpose seems to be to generate random posts. It appears in the “Take a Look Around” section below article pages.

Random Posts

Displays a highly configurable list of randomly selected posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

Version 2.6.2.0 | by Rob Marsh, SJ | Visit plugin homepage

—This comes from the plugin above; I don’t know why it is listed separately again.—“Take a Look Around” now, like the random posts in the sidebar, is also implemented through the WP Kit CN plugin.

Shockingly Simple Favicon

A simple way to put a favicon on your site.

Version 1.8.2 | by matias s | Visit plugin homepage

—Customize the site icon; I’m currently using a One Piece icon.

Simple Tags

Extended Tagging for WordPress 3.0 ! Suggested Tags, Mass edit tags, Autocompletion, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Related Tags, etc!

Version 1.8 | by Amaury BALMER | Visit plugin homepage

—A tag plugin that can batch add, delete, and edit tags. It also comes with features such as related posts.

Some Chinese Please!

This is an anti-spam plugin designed for bloggers who write in Chinese.

Version 1.0.7 | by 冰古 | Visit plugin homepage

—An anti-spam plugin. I replaced WordPress’s standard, most widely used plugin, Akismet, with this one. Akismet is powerful, but it also has a fairly high false-positive rate (at least in the way 爱写字 uses it). SCP, by contrast, can block all comments that do not contain Chinese characters. Since most spam-comment mass-senders at present are in English, this move basically cuts off spam comments once and for all. Given that the readers of my blog are of course in a Chinese-language context, this should generally not create any obstacle when commenting, either.

StatPressCN

shows you real time statistics about your blog, also support for Chinese perfectly

Version 1.9.0 | by heart5 | Visit plugin homepage

—A powerful statistics plugin that displays statistics in the homepage sidebar, and can also show detailed information in the backend: which IP visited which posts at what times is all visible, to the point of seeming almost like snooping on privacy. But please, classmates, remain calm; I only want to know how readers are clicking on the articles and how search-engine crawlers are fetching them.

Subscribe Me

Widgets that let you display subscribe links to RSS readers such as Google Reader.

Version 5.0.2 | by Denis de Bernardy | Visit plugin homepage

—Displays a small icon in the sidebar; when you move the mouse over it, some subscription links are shown.

WordPress Mobile Pack

The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog. It includes a mobile switcher, filtered widgets, and content adaptation for mobile device characteristics. Activating this plugin will also install a selection of mobile themes by ribot, a top UK mobile design team, and Forum Nokia. These adapt to different families of devices, such as Nokia and WebKit browsers (including Android, iPhone and Palm). If enabled, your site will be listed on mpexo, a directory of mobile-friendly blogs. Also check out the documentation and the forums. If you like the plugin, please rate us on the WordPress directory. And if you don’t, let us know how we can improve it!

Version 1.2.4 | Author: James Pearce & friends | Visit plugin homepage

—Automatically detects the visitor’s browser and provides a dedicated theme for mobile users. You can also switch manually by clicking Switch to our mobile site at the bottom of the page.

WordPress Related Posts

Generate a related posts list via WordPress tags

Version 1.2 | Author: Denis | Visit plugin homepage

—A related-posts plugin, and also a standard feature of this theme. It displays a “Related Articles” section beneath posts, matching by tags; if there are no related posts, it shows the most-clicked articles instead.

WordPress Thread Comment

wp thread comment allows users to reply to a specific comment and display related comments together; you can freely choose whether to use Ajax. It lets users reply to a particular comment and gathers similar comments together for display, with optional Ajax support.

Version 1.4.9.4 | Author: 偶爱偶家 | Visit plugin homepage

—A nested-comments plugin. Since WordPress 3.0 has long included nested comments natively, this plugin seems somewhat obsolete. But in addition to nested comments, it also includes a few other features, such as Ajax mode, which lets you submit a comment without refreshing the whole page, and email notifications when new comments arrive. Although these features can be implemented by other plugins as well, this one is also a standard feature of the theme, so I’ve been too lazy to switch.

WP-Cumulus

Flash-based Tag Cloud for WordPress

Version 1.23 | Author: Roy Tanck | Visit plugin homepage

 

—A tag-cloud plugin, with a Chinese localization optimized by an expert from within China. See the sidebar or the Tag Cloud page. In the sidebar, the tag cloud displays different colors according to tag frequency; the bluer, darker ones are the less frequent tags.

WP-Polls

Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

Version 2.60 | Author: Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan | Visit plugin homepage

—This is a plugin for running polls, though I haven’t used it yet; still, I might as well keep it installed for now.

WP-PostViews

Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.

1.50 version | by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan | Visit plugin homepage

— Counts how many times posts are clicked, displays the most-viewed posts in the sidebar, and marks each post’s click count in the post index. This function seems to have been integrated into some earlier plugins as well? But I can’t be bothered to care. It’s also standard equipment for this theme.

wp-share-list

Generates a list of article-sharing sites at the end of a post; you can freely control how many sharing sites are shown, their order, and so on. At the same time, there’s no more third-party redirection: clicking a sharing site takes you directly to that site’s page.

1.6.1.2 version | by 明河共影 | Visit plugin homepage

— As described above. Though I don’t know whether anyone will share my articles, the buttons it generates do look pretty nice, so I’ll leave it there for now and see~ When should we hold a poll to see whether this plugin is actually meaningful……

— Now I’m using the service provided by Jiathis.com, which offers a sharing list on the left side of article pages. Although Jiathis requires calling external JS and going through a third-party redirect, it really is quite well done. Another similar service is bshare.cn; comparing the two, Jiathis still seems a bit better. Many sites of all sizes use this service as well. Even People’s Daily, Xinhua Net, and Extreme Animation are using it~

WP Keyword Link

A SEO plugin that helps you to automatically link keywords to articles. And displays a list of posts similar to the current post. | Add keyword links to your WordPress blog, more internal and external links, better SEO! Adding internal links to posts helps search engines index them. Perfect support for Chinese and English keywords. Recently added a related-posts function.

1.5.5 version | by 柳城 | Visit plugin homepage

— Automatically adds links to keywords. I’ve now enabled this for all tag words. But for the sake of reading experience, I’ve removed the special styling from these keyword links in the CSS, so they don’t interfere with reading at all; they only change color when you hover over them with the mouse. Of course, when you copy the article elsewhere, these links will become very conspicuous~

WP Kit CN

Used to solve Chinese-related problems that the official WordPress didn’t take into account. With this plugin, you can display random posts, latest comments (latest trackbacks), the posts with the most comments, the netizen who has commented most often, as well as real post excerpts, and so on—true truncation, with no garbled text. This plugin was modified on the basis of 桑葚, and supports emoticon display in the latest comments. It supports specifying the number of characters to truncate in the latest comments. It uses a truncation algorithm that is more compatible with Chinese, so character counts are now more precise.

8.12.19 version | by Charles Tang | Visit plugin homepage

— This plugin is said to be a must-have for Chinese WordPress. But its main functions seem to already be included in the plugins above…… so why am I still keeping it installed?…… Anyway, I’m too lazy to change it…… The only function from this plugin that is actually being used is displaying the “netizen who has commented most often” in the sidebar (the one with the most complaints). In fact, this column is roughly an automatic list of friendly links, so classmates, please fill in your blog URL when commenting~

WP RC Reply AJAX

1. Display recent comments in your blog sidebar. 2. with it, you can reply everyone from widget sidebar by Ajax type.

2.0.13 version | by QiQiBoY | Visit plugin homepage

— Displays a dynamic latest-comments section in the sidebar, and you can reply to comments directly in this section.

WP Super Cache

Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

0.9.9.8 version | by Donncha O Caoimh | Visit plugin homepage

— One of the famous caching plugins. It improves access speed by caching static pages (WordPress is a PHP-based dynamic structure; article information is all stored in the database, and the site itself has no actual HTML files).

11-03-11 modification:
So far there have been some more twists and turns: some plugins have been disabled (indicated by strikethrough), and the following plugins have been added:

EzEngage

Adds social-network and microblog account login functionality to your site

1.0.2.5 version | by The EzEngage Team | Visit plugin homepage

Feedback by Paragraph

Displays a pop up comment on each paragraph. Designed to provide student feedback.

0.6 version | by Andy Dickinson | Visit plugin homepage

— See Adding annotations to any paragraph: enabling the Feedback by Paragraph plugin

— This plugin was temporarily disabled because it introduced a database-injection vulnerability; the original author has already developed a new version of the plugin, but it still causes some minor conflicts, so it has not yet been enabled.

Shortcode Exec PHP

Execute arbitrary, reusable PHP code in posts, pages, comments, widgets and RSS feeds using shortcodes in a safe and easy way

1.25 version | by Marcel Bokhorst | Visit plugin homepage

— You can set a set of PHP program code as a shortcode and call it at any time in posts, pages, and the sidebar.

WordPress Gzip Compression

Enables gzip-compression if the visitor’s browser can handle it. This will speed up your WordPress website drastically and reduces bandwidth usage as well. Uses the PHP ob_gzhandler() callback.

1.0 version | by James Socol | Visit plugin homepage

— I temporarily disabled Super Cache, and to keep the Gzip compression function, I added this plugin. Gzip downloads webpages in compressed form and decompresses them on the browser side, greatly reducing bandwidth usage, and it seems to be able to get around keyword blocking as well.

WP-RecentComments

Show the recent comments in your WordPress sidebar.

Version 2.0.6 | Author: mg12 | Visit plugin homepage

——Replaced WP RC Reply AJAX

WPtouch

A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for visitors on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.

Version 1.9.23 | Author: Dale Mugford & Duane Storey (BraveNewCode Inc.) | Visit plugin homepage

——I disabled Mobile Pack and switched to this one; it’s more suitable for smartphone access~

11-03-27:

Mingle Forum

Mingle Forum is growing rapidly in popularity because it is simple, reliable, lightweight and does just enough to keep things interesting. If you like this plugin please consider making a donation at http://cartpauj.com/donate/

Version 1.0.29 | Author: Cartpauj | Visit plugin homepage

——Added a lightweight forum.

Cartpauj PM

Cartpauj PM allows you to add a simple Private Messaging system to your WordPress site. The messaging is done entirely through the front-end of your site rather than the Dashboard. This is very helpful if you want to keep your users out of the Dashboard area. Enjoy! 🙂

Version 1.0.09 | Author: Cartpauj | Visit plugin homepage

——Added an internal messaging function for the above Mingle Forum.

 

Modified on June 17, 2011:

This time, the plugins that were disabled are marked with strikethrough and underline, and the newly added plugins are as follows:

 

@ Reply

This plugin allows you to add Twitter-like @reply links to comments.

Version 3.1.3 | Author: Yus |

——Adds an @ function to comments. When you click the “Reply” button for a certain comment, it automatically inserts @ + the link to the comment’s target. Although nested comments are still retained, you can also turn off nested comments and still keep the @ links; you can also click multiple people to add multiple @ links. In addition, in the text-only version, or once nested comments are turned off, @ replies can still preserve the logical relationship among comments.

 

CKEditor for WordPress

Replaces the default WordPress editor with CKEditor

Version 1.0.8 | Author: CKSource | Visit plugin homepage

——This is a very good editor. Since enabling the new blog, I switched from writing in Word to writing in Windows Live Writer, and now I’ve started shifting back to writing directly online. But WordPress’s default back-end editor, Tinymce, isn’t powerful enough; this CKEdior is much more capable.

 

Comment Reply Notification

When a reply is made to a comment the user has left on the blog, an e-mail shall be sent to the user to notify him of the reply. This will allow the users to follow up the comment and expand the conversation if desired. Comment reply notification plugin: when a comment is replied to, an email will notify the author of the comment.

Version 1.4 | Author: denishua | Visit plugin homepage

——Although WordPress now supports native nested comments, the WordPress Thread Comment plugin is still meaningful: it lets users of old themes easily implement nested comments without having to modify the theme themselves, and it also comes with Ajax functionality and a new-reply email reminder feature. The key reason I stopped using it was that the plugin had not been updated for many years. I didn’t want to be tied down by it, only to end up at a disadvantage if it ever conflicted with a new plugin. Of course, one day I was just feeling a bit bored, so I looked into it and implemented native nested comments with new code. As for the bundled Ajax function, I implemented it by following a method I found online and adding the downloaded related js file into the theme; the email reminders, meanwhile, were implemented through this plugin.

 

Configure SMTP

Configure SMTP mailing in WordPress, including support for sending e-mail via SSL/TLS (such as GMail).

Version 3.0.1 | Author: Scott Reilly | Visit plugin homepage

——After a few times on the 华夏名网 server, I discovered that my server could no longer send mail using the PHP mail() command, and the original comment-reply and similar functions had all been sending mail this way, with the sender suffix as @yilinhut.com. Now that this function had broken, I had to find another way. This is a plugin that replaces WordPress’s default mail-sending command with SMTP. So I could set my Gmail mailbox as the sender, and now all mail is automatically sent through my own Gmail account.

 

Front-end Editor

Allows you to edit your posts without going through the admin interface

Version 2.1.1 | Author: scribu | Visit plugin homepage

——I actually started using this plugin from the very beginning, but after trying it I turned it off; I still enable it when needed, so I thought I should mention it anyway. It provides Ajax post editing on the front end. The plugin is very well made; when I need to modify posts frequently and in bulk, it’s very useful. And in fact, the editor it provides is pretty good too.

 

Lc.Archivers

Lc.Archivers is a text-only version, concise version of the wordpress blog browsing tools. Generate a static full-articles archive and Site Map. |A Discuz!-style Archiver imitation, generating a fully static article archive and site map. Lc.Archivers is a text-only, streamlined blog content browsing tool.

Version 1.4.2 | Author: 柳城 | Visit plugin homepage

——As various functions have been added, my blog naturally won’t run very fast, and the interface may also seem flashy. I’ve already added a “hide sidebar” function based on readers’ suggestions (it’s a fairly hidden function; you have to move the mouse to the top of the sidebar to discover it); recently I also hid the formatting tools and emoticon buttons in the comment box (click the onion head at the lower left of the comment box to open them). But what if it still isn’t simple enough? I happened to discover this plugin, which can create a purely static, almost text-only archive for all posts. I’ve already added links to the text-only version in the blog’s navigation menu and footer, and every post now also includes this link, so you can switch to the text-only version. Those pages open extremely, extremely fast, and friends who need them as well as search engines can all access them. Of course, the loss of formatting occasionally causes some problems, such as the fact that all the strikethroughs in this article are gone.

 

Search & Replace

A simple search for find strings in your database and replace the string.

Version 2.5 | Author: Frank Bültge | Visit plugin homepage

——This is also a plugin I’ve always used, but only when needed and then I turn it off. It’s for searching and replacing specific strings across all posts.

 

Subscribe2

Notifies an email list when new entries are posted.

Version 6.3 | Author: Matthew Robinson | Visit plugin homepage | Settings | Donate

——Through this plugin I added a subscription feature. The effect seems pretty good. There are already several subscribers now. However, a few subscribers directly reply to the email to leave comments. Well, although the emails I send basically include the full text of the new post, I still hope that if they want to comment, they’ll come back to the blog to add them.

 

WordPress连接微博

Supports logging into WordPress blogs with 11 third-party website accounts, and also supports synchronizing article titles and links to the 16 major microblogging and community sites.

Version 1.6.5 | Author: Shuimai Yanxiang | Visit plugin homepage

——Replaced EzEngage with WordPress Connecting to Microblogs. Another plugin offering similar functionality is Social Medias Connect by qiqiboy; after an initial comparison, Shuimai Yanxiang’s is still a bit better. But both still have room for improvement… If I find that the plugin author might be willing to accept some of my suggestions and ideas, this may become the first plugin I donate to.

 

Revised on November 20, 2011

 

Today I switched themes; I had been using the original Prower V2 theme for a long time. That theme is fairly old now (V4 has long since come out), and I had been constantly tinkering with and patching it; although it gained many features, it had long since become bloated beyond reason. After I finished being busy for a while, I finally made up my mind to replace it. The new theme is:

Mystique 3.1, by digitalnature

Feature-packed theme with a solid design, built-in widgets and a intuitive theme settings interface. Version 3.0 built around the Atom Framework. Designed and developed by digitalnature.

This new theme is quite powerful. It has robust backend settings, allowing me to patch the theme’s CSS and even its Functions without directly modifying core files, and it can call translation files. Thus, even after modifications, it can still keep up with core updates; it is a sustainably developable theme. In addition, this theme’s front-end features are also very strong. After installing it, I immediately cut ten-odd plugins. I won’t list exactly which ones one by one; they were the ones removed above with strikethrough.

Below are some plugins newly added since the last update to this post:

Akismet

Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) Sign up for an Akismet API key, and 3) Go to your Akismet configuration page, and save your API key.

Version 2.5.3 | Author: Automattic | Visit plugin homepage

——In view of the growing number of Chinese spam comments on my blog, Some Chinese Please! alone could no longer hold the fort, so I disabled SCP and re-enabled Akismet.

 

Enmask Captcha

Plugin to validate/render Enmask captcha.

Version 1.3 | Author: Enmask.com | Visit plugin homepage

——In view of the growing number of spam registrants on my blog as well, I added a captcha to the registration page~

 

Filled In

Generic form processor allowing forms to be painlessly processed and aggregated, with numerous options to validate data and perform custom commands

Version 1.7.7 | Author: John Godley | Visit plugin homepage

——I used this plugin briefly and then stopped, but that brief period was important: it was used to create the registration form for the Beijing Graduate Student Academic Forum on History of Science and Philosophy of Technology~

 

Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.

Version 4.2.2 | Author: Joost de Valk | Visit plugin homepage
——This replaced the earlier Google Analyticator; it’s basically about the same, but this one ranks higher, and there’s one less widget on the front end.
Grid Archives

Grid Archives offers a grid style archives page for WordPress.

Version 1.5.0 | Author: Samson Wu | Visit plugin homepage
——It generates a more ornate archive page.
PTM AJAX Comments

AJAX enabled comments, no more page reloads

——No longer enabling Ajax comments by code; I installed a plugin to do it.
Social Medias Connect

Provides social media site connection and synchronization features for WordPress, supporting binding of microblog accounts

Version 1.7.3 | Author: qiqiboy | Visit plugin homepage
——This replaced WordPress Connecting to Microblogs; this function is a bit better, but it also has its share of problems. I had practically already decided to donate to WordPress Connecting to Microblogs, but unfortunately the author’s response was unfriendly, so I no longer wanted to donate.
WP-UTF8-Excerpt

This plugin generates a better excerpt for multibyte language users (Chinese, for example). Besides, it keeps the html tags in the excerpt. 为使用多字节语言(如中文)的Wordpress用户提供更好的摘要算法,以解决Wordpress默认摘要算法只考虑西方语言的不足。此外,此插件产生 的摘要可保留原文中的格式。

Version 0.6.2 | Author: Betty | Visit plugin homepage
——This replaced the earlier automatic post truncation; this function is better.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.

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