ohnine

Domain, Sweet Domain.

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 09:42:00 -0700

Finally got this bad mamma-jamma back on a custom domain.

I believe this clip from South Park sums it up best - Nice....Nice

Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy
Tags: SOUTH
PARK more...

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[update] Sprint Android Hotspot.

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:54:00 -0700

Quick update to my previous post on using your Sprint Android device as a Wi-Fi Hotspot.

It seems Sprint finally got wise to people using the Hotspot Widget app that was available in the Android Marketplace. I've been geting "critical system update" messages throughout the past week on my Optimus S and it turns out this patch is to fix the Hotspot exploit. Good news is, this patch does not apply to the Quick Settings method I laid out in my previous post.

If you haven't accepted this update on your Sprint Android device yet, I'd advise against it (it doesn't do anything else from what I have read other than patch the Hotspot exploit). If you have, the Quick Settings method still works.

I'm not encouraging folks to do this as it is technically a paid feature from Sprint and tethering without that option on your account puts you at risk but if you choose to do otherwise on your own, that's your choice. :)

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[Updated 3.27.11] Safely Turn your Android in to a Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot for Free [No Rooting!]

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:23:00 -0800

Update 3.27.2011 : If you are a Spint customer and downloaded or automatically received the most recent system update this Hotspot method no longer works. If you haven't updated, njoi.

I recently got an LG Optimus S and I absolutely love it. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

It has a ton of features for an 'entry level' Android phone and a well-updated, recent version of the Android OS (2.2.1) that seems to not find its way to less expensive Android phones (I'm looking at you, Cricket).

One feature on the Optimus S which I was personally excited about was its ability to act as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot. Of course, I then found out it was $30 extra per month on my bill to have this luxury so I sort of forgot about it until.....

Earlier, I was researching rooting my Optimus S and came across two different articles both claiming to allow you to utilize the Portable Wi-Fi hotspot feature just by downloading a free app from the Android Marketplace. I tried the first method (found here) and while the hotspot function seemed to turn on on the phone, I was unable to connect to it with my laptop, even with full reception on the phone.

Then I came across a, seemingly, even simpler method that has worked aces thus far. Here's how to do it:

Download Quick Settings from the Android Marketplace, AppBrain or your app dispensary of choice. There are several different apps that carry the name 'Quick Settings', you want the one with the green 'gears' icon. Just click the link earlier in this bullet point and it will take you directly to the app.

Once you have downloaded and installed Quick Settings and start the application: Click your phone's 'Menu' key followed by 'Customize' in the Quick Settings app.

Scroll down until you find the Wi-Fi Hotspot option. Once located, touch to the right side of the Wi-Fi Hotspot bar (see screenshot) and drag the bar to the top of the list of options.

Exit out of Quick Settings and go to your phone's normal settings menu where you would normally activate the Hotspot feature. On the LG Optimus S, for example, you would press the phone's 'Menu' key, 'Settings' on the touchscreen, 'Wireless & Networks' and finally 'Portable Hotspot'.

Simply tap the check box to turn the Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot on and it should notify you within a few seconds (it has taken as long as 30 seconds on mine) to confirm it has been turned on. You will also see a blue 'Hotspot' icon in the taskbar at the top of your screen (see screenshot).

You can use your phone's normal Portable Hotspot settings as well if you would like to secure your network (recommended).

Speed-wise, it's not lightning fast but it certainly beats a blank, especially if you find yourself in a pinch somewhere where there's no open wireless networks. If you're need to quickly download a several hundred megabyte file, this isn't going to be very pleasing for you but if you're just looking to browse the web or check your e-mail, it's perfectly fine.

It is definitely better, such as in my case, than paying your carrier $30+ extra dollars per month for the Portable Hotspot service. On top of that, you do not have to make any potentially dangerous/damaging changes to your phone as you would if you were to 'root' it to gain access to the Portable Hotspot feature.

So, try it out and feel free to leave a comment to let me know how it goes!

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Wordpress Social Bookmarking Plugin Rundown.

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:04:00 -0700

Social bookmarking has cemented itself as a nearly integral part of the web and has revolutionized how we not only pass along news, information and other tidbits but how we obtain it as well. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon or any of the other seemingly countless sites out there, web surfers are using these services to get the word out about what they are interested in. If you are a blogger, or more specifically – a Wordpress user, you are almost doing yourself (and your blog) a disservice by not giving your users the option to share your articles with their friends, family and internet pals abroad.

In making my daily blog rounds, it seems like there are a few plugins, such as Sexybookmarks, that have a pretty large share of the Social Bookmarking market but there are quite a few very nice plugins (and some that leave a lot of be desired) that handle the task quite handily. In this article, I will go through a fistful of Social Bookmarking plugins for Wordpress and cover the good, the bad and maybe even a little bit of the ugly. If you aren’t currently using a Social Bookmarking plugin, then I hope this serves as a great starting place for you. If you already have one in place, take a look around you may find a better alternative.

So without further, adieu..

Addmarx

Addmarx isn’t one of the best looking SB plugins out there but it does offer a fair number of features and customizations. Via clicking (or rolling over if you choose to set it up that way) the ‘Share/Bookmark’ button, the user is presented with a smooth dropdown box giving them the ability to bookmark the article using quite a few SB apps, share the article across a respectable number of SB sites, e-mail the article or get an HTML formatted (just cut-and-paste) link to the article. This drop down can be placed (via the plugin admin options) at the bottom of a post, the bottom of front page posts or the bottom of pages. You can also use the Addmarx dropdown box as a widget in lieu of placing it on each post.

Admins can customize the color of the drop down box as well as choose from a handful of different ‘Share’ buttons on a remote customization page. Once finished customizing, the admin then copy/pastes generated code in to a text box on the plugins admin page. There is also an interesting option to give the drop down extra spacing on sites with Flash/video to correct a possible browser bug.

All-in-all, Addmarx isn’t a bad choice however one thing I didn’t like is the fact that you cannot edit/remove/add SB sites to the menu which is something that is pretty common amongst competing plugins. I also don’t like that you cannot place the ‘Share’ button anywhere except at the bottom of an article/page. There is no option to pick up a site’s RSS feed either which is a major oversight in my opinion.

AddToAny : Share/Bookmark/Email

AddToAny is one of the more popular SB plugins out there and with good reason. It is comprehensive, robust, bursting with options and very easy to use from both an admin and end-user standpoint. By default, the plugin places a small ‘Share/Save’ bar at the bottom of your posts that, when rolled over, reveals a nice, cleanly designed drop down menu featuring the most popular SB sites and an arrow that expands to reveal a list of nearly 100 SB sites. Nice! Clicking on the ‘E-Mail’ tab gives the user the ability to e-mail a link to your article via Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, GMail or Hotmail as well as stand-alone e-mail applications such as Outlook and Thunderbird with just one click.

The options available for AddToAny is where it really shines. There are several different ‘Share/Save’ bar variations to choose from (including text-only and the ability to use your own custom image) or you can bypass placing the bar on your posts and choose from a massive list of sites to display individually on your posts. There is an easy-to-use menu styler that allows you to customize the color scheme of the drop down box. AddToAny also has its own API to encourage developers to make enhancements to what is already a great plugin.

Out of all of the SB plugins out there, AddToAny is the most complete package I have come across. Just in the number of bookmarking sites it offers alone, AddToAny stands out from the crowd. Even still, the drop down box is a little too clunky for me personally and just like with Addmarx an RSS feed selection is not available.

All-In-One Bookmarking Button

All-In-One Bookmarking Button is a very simple Social Bookmarking plugin. Almost too simple, in fact I barely consider it a plugin. It is certainly lightweight in and of itself, simply placing a clickable button at the bottom of your posts. When the user clicks the button they are taken to a separate site (SocialMarker) where they then choose which of 50 SB sites to submit the article to. The user can also title their link, include a brief statement about the article and add tags for those searching the SocialMarker site.

I Love Social Bookmarking

I Love Social Bookmarking is another relatively simple SB plugin out there but, unfortunately, it leaves some to be desired. By rolling over a link placed at the bottom of each of your posts, the user is presented with a drop down menu of SB sites (and, thankfully, RSS) to share the article with. The downside is that there are only a small number of SB sites that this plugin is compatible with. Admins have the ability to change some standard options including which SB sites to offer as well as the color scheme and even the font of the drop down box. I personally wasn’t a huge fan of this plugin mostly due to its limitations and lack of options and the small list of sites to submit an article to is a major drawback as well.

S-ButtonZ

S-Buttonz is a basic SB plugin that is somewhat limited in features but if you are looking for a simple solution, this may be a good route for you. Currently, S-ButtonZ only gives admins the option of adding links for Digg, Facebook, dZone, Reddit and Yahoo! Buzz – definitely a downside. The admin panel gives you options specific to each of these sites as well as button/graphic options and placement options. Compared to other SB plugin options, this is probably one you won’t be missing out on if you choose to go in a different direction.

SexyBookmarks

SexyBookmarks is probably the most popular SB plugin amongst design bloggers and it lives up to the hype. It is the most visually attractive as well a the most customizable SB plugin I’ve come across. Admins have the ability to choose from over 70 social bookmarking sites (including RSS, yay!) to display, all in the form of a very attractive interface where the site’s icon ‘pops up’ when rolled over by the user. The admin panel is bursting with options including the ability to enter your Twitter ID, choose a URL shortener for automatically shortening links to your articles, category and media type variables, nofollow links, placement options and jQuery options as well.

Really the only thing I don’t like about SexyBookmarks is when you have more than one row of icons. The user needs to scroll over the icon set to see the additional icons revealed below the top line. Maybe I’m just being nitpicky but if your theme has a narrow content area, this may be confusing to users if they don’t immediately see the SB site they want to share your article with on the top line of options. Even so, SexyBookmarks is the best SB plugin I’ve yet to come across and gets my pick as the ‘must-have’ SB plugin.

ShareButtons

I would love to tell you about ShareButtons but it apparently isn’t working. The plugin seemingly relies on a third-party site (picturesurf.org) to allow users to share your articles and – guess what? – picturesurf.org is offline. According to Host-Tracker, it’s down/timing out all over the world so I guess so much for that.

Socbookmark

With the number of SB plugins out there are are literally plug-and-play, I was disappointed to find that in order to utilize Socbookmark, the admin must cut-and-paste code in to a theme file in order for it to work. So disappointed, in fact, that I’m not even going to mess with it. If just installing the plugin requires the effort of editing code, then I don’t even want to know what it takes to edit/customize it. Next.

Sociofluid

Sociofluid is a nice looking, functional SB plugin that should fit the bill for most users. It features a smaller number of SB sites compared to other plugins but does output the options in a nice display. When rolling over the share icons at the bottom of an article, the selected icon “grows” (much like on a Mac) and produces the name of the site in text below the icon. I don’t like how this display turns out at the text often overlaps the icon and presents the opportunity to be somewhat confusing.

On the admin end, you can choose to display buttons at the top or bottom of your articles, open links in the existing or new window/tab, select the size of the icons both stagnant and when rolled over and whether or not the icon “grows” up or down. You can also use your own custom CSS styling for the

that contains the icons.

All in all, I like this plugin but the overlapping text bit I mentioned before does take some attractiveness/professionalism away from the appearance of the plugin.

Submit To Any

Submit To Any is a very basic SB plugin that is ready to go right out of the shoot. Sounds nice but there are no options and no real depth to the plugin. Featuring only 8 SB sites (if you include RSS) to submit to, Submit To Any does not give you the option to add additional SB sites and, as you can see in the image above, one of the icons shows as a broken image – not good. The plugin also inserts a by-line for itself beneath the icon bar which takes a little away from things on the aesthetics side as well.

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So what the hell happened? Plus.. My thoughts on migrating to Posterous.

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:19:00 -0700

Things were going on really well over at ohnine.org..really, really well actually. I was getting steady, continually growing traffic with just a handful of articles and the Halcyon theme and then *poof*. Looking at the domain now, the content is obviously different. To make a really long story short, here's the just of what I've been told by the domain name registrar: Apparently "someone" "pre-bought" or "reserved", or whatever the hell you call, the domain after I renewed it last year. For reasons that totally boggle my mind, the registrar (a large, well-respected one) ran their credit card batch for renewals after 12am on June 12th so instead of renewing the domain for me, it released it and the squatter snapped it up. That may be total bullshit but that is what I was told by their support folks. Aggravating.

I am really sad to see ohnine.org go, I had owned it for over 5 years and I had countless forums and other various accounts registered at addresses under the domain. One odd thing I did notice is that when I do a WHOIS on the domain, it still shows me (at an old address) as the registrant but the technical contact information has changed. At this point, I can't find a seemingly legitimate way to contact the new owner and I'm sure they either wouldn't sell the domain back to me or would want a ridiculous price if I did get in touch with them..so I'm over it. It's just a domain name, right? Lol.

So, in the meantime, I am in the process of moving most of my web operations, aside from FullMoonReviews, over to Posterous which is seeming ideal at this point. I've been toying with Posterous since earlier this year and must say it is a joy to use. I've spent the last several years customizing, tweaking and re-customizing and re-tweaking self-hosted Wordpress sites and Posterous is a walk-in-the-park by comparison. But that's not to say that Posterous lacks depth, on the contrary. It is chock full of features and options and is highly customizable. I'll even venture to say that it does some things better than platforms like Wordpress or Blogger.

Basically, the way Posterous works is that you can make posts (ie blog posts), photo posts, video, audio, whatever posts directly from your e-mail. Simply type out your message, attach whatever media you wish and send it off. Posterous then takes your e-mail and displays it in a themed, web-based format. It even automatically e-mails you a link to your post. That's nice enough in and of itself, however Posterous takes things a step further by formatting the media you upload and publishing it in a universally friendly format. Post an MP3 file and it loads in a flash-based (AND iPhone friendly) player. Upload a video and it converts it and puts it in an attractive web-based player. Any media you upload, regardless of how it is published, is always offered for download too. A web-based editor is also available and while I'd still like to see something more comprehensive than what's there (standard text formatting, lists, indent, page break, link entry and paragraph alignment), it has improved dramatically with the addition of the upload tool that was absent just a couple of months ago. Overall, the entire web interface itself (screenshot), in fact, is slick, well-designed and user friendly.

Aside from being an "easy way to post stuff", Posterous is chock full of options and additional features as well. One of the more recent (and definitely welcomed) additions has been the ability to make static pages and link listing (ala pages and blogrolls in Wordpress). As with the rest of the administration interface, creating and editing pages and link lists is simple and straight-forward. Another nice feature is Autoposting. With Autoposting, you can choose where you want your content posted in addition to your Posterous. This feature is extremely convenient and is compatible, amongst other platforms/sites, with Facebook, Twitter (posts over 130 characters are snipped and a shortened post.ly URL is included), Flickr, Blogger, Wordpress, and even competitor "micro-blog" provider Tumblr.. Posterous also provides built-in Google Analytics (just paste in your Analytics site ID), allows you to use a custom domain name, creates instant podcasts from posted MP3s and has an outstanding import feature. Simply put your currently blog's URL in, press 'Let's Go' and Posterous imports, converts and formats your existing posts. I'm not sure how well it works with every platform but I did a test import on a dozen or so posts from a Wordpress-powered blog and it worked flawlessly.

While it sure sounds like I love Posterous, and I do, but it does have some things I consider to be drawbacks and does have places where it could be improved. The biggest "drawback" has to do with size and is two-fold. First and foremost, Posterous does limit your disk space usage at 1 GB. Granted, 1GB is likely more than sufficient for the vast majority of Posterous users, disk space is cheap these days. I'm pretty familiar with Posterous' host and their pricing structure and I would like to think they could easily upgrade the amount of space users get at a relatively low cost. The second side of the size issue is that when you are posting by e-mail, you are limited to the size limit your e-mail provider has set for e-mail attachments. Any more, you're had pressed to find an e-mail provider with attachment limits under 10MB so unless you're uploading a video, large MP3 or something along those lines, it's really not an issue. In my case, I have plenty of hosting space elsewhere and could always FTP and then link to a large video or audio file. Even if you don't have your own hosting, there are still plenty of other viable options out there for hosting video and audio these days and I bet Posterous automatically embeds their content when linked to, haha.

Another area I feel Posterous has enormous room for growth is in the theme category. 18 default themes are included and while the newer additions (especially the Obox themes) are an improvement, for the most part all of the themes are somewhat sterile and, at times, generic. There really isn't much of a "scene" (that I could find anyway) for Posterous themes out there on the web, so that may be something to keep an eye on given the massive explosion in the "premium" blog theme industry over the last year or so. I've read about folks using Tumblr themes with Posterous, however I didn't have much luck with my attempts. I tried probably 3 or 4 Tumblr themes and they all had display errors/inconsistencies, errant snippets of code Tumblr uses and Posterous doesn't (so it displays as text) and other various annoyances.

Posterous' biggest technical deficiency is that it does not handle Javascript very well...not very well at all, in fact. This is a pretty big detriment given the commonality of Javascript on the web and is also frustrating and limiting from a theme development standpoint. Even something as simple as adding a Twitter widget to your page gets convoluted to the point of where you have to put an (BOOOO!) in your theme and load a remotely hosted page with the widget code in it. If you don't have space elsewhere to host the file, you're basically up a creek...and did I mention I hate ? As long as I've been following Posterous, they keep pledging to add better Javascript support but I've yet to see much materialize. I sincerely hope the development team can put the necessary pieces together to make it happen.

All-in-all, as you can probably gather by this point, I really like Posterous. Is it on the same level as Wordpress as an overall package? Definitely not and I don't know if it's meant to be even a rival. Having used just about every blogging platform out there, I will say that Posterous easily takes a strong second place in my opinion. It's far superior to older platforms like Xanga and LiveJournal, has grown past competitor Tumblr and is quickly catching up to Blogger. The best part is is that Posterous has only been public for just over one year. For that amount of time, CEO Sachin Agarwal and company have built an extremely impressive piece of software and I'm looking forward to its future.

So anyway (now that was a tangent and yes, I am ADD), over the next few days I'll be migrating posts over from the old ohnine.org blog to Posterous. Unfortunately Wordpress is being difficult with how it loads images on the old posts (it still tries to load them from ohnine.org despite running the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin and changing the ABSPATH.) so I will be unable to utilize Posterous' import tool. I swear, it's always something

I've also got a few new articles and projects in the works (don't forget about my Posterous theme, Halcyon!) and will be updating much more frequently, especially now that it's so damn easy.

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Halcyon - A Posterous Theme - Version 1.25.1 [Updated July 9th 2010]

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:23:00 -0700

Download Latest Version

Version 1.25.1

Released July 9, 2010

[Right-Click/Save As] [txt file, 23.89kb]

[Demo]
Scroll down for Installation/Customization assistance.

About

Halcyon is a theme for the Posterous blogging/social media platform and is based on the Austero theme by Cory Watilo.

The initial goal of Halcyon was to balance out Austero’s sidebar-heavy nature and to provide more room for content making it more like an actual blog theme that you might find for Wordpress or Blogger as opposed to the narrow-natured offerings that dominate the theme landscape of Posterous and its competitor, Tumblr. I realize that Posterous and Tumblr are often seen as a middle-ground between the short and fast pace of Twitter and a standard blog but I feel that Posterous has the power and features to be taken seriously as a full-fledged blogging platform and I made Halcyon to give it the room it needs to stretch and reach its maximum potential.

Perhaps Halcyon's nicest feature is the inclusion of customizable CSS navigation tabs on each page. Not only does this give you the ability to link to pages on your Posterous, you can use them to link to your other sites or any site for that matter! Customizing the navigation tabs is quick and easy as well, just copy/paste in your link and you're good to go. Taking things one step further and borrowing from and expanding on an idea gleaned from a Wordpress plugin, I have also included buttons for numerous social media sites. Like myself, your Posterous is probably just one of the several social media and web communities you utilize. I wanted to make it easy for your visitors to be able to link to your other profiles, whether it is your Facebook or your Flicker portfolio. Customizing the button links is easy, as is removing the buttons for the sites you don't wish to link to. The buttons (and all Halcyon-related images) are optimized PNG files and are hosted on a fast, reliable private server as to not have to worry about the sometimes sluggish and unreliable performance of free image hosting services.

Future plans for the theme include plug'n'go alternate navigation tab styles as well as different theme colors.

I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions for Halcyon. Please feel free to e-mail me any time or send me a message on Twitter.

New for Version 1.25.1 (July 9 2010)

Fixed/updated image SRCs (no more broken images).
Added Photobucket icon.
Added Facebook 'Like' buttons for each post.

New for Version 1.25 (January 2010)

Customizable CSS navigation tabs.
Social media link hub with buttons for sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, DeviantArt, Flickr and more.
New Posterous favicon.
Reordered sidebar layout.
Minor font and color tweaks.
Minor alignment tweaks.

Installation

Installing Halcyon is a snap, even for novice users, and takes just a few minutes. Follow the proceeding steps to install Halycon as your Posterous theme:

Log In to your Posterous account and click the ‘Post by G-Mail’ icon. From the options that drop down, choose ‘Theme My Site‘

Select a theme and click ‘Advanced‘. When prompted thereafter, click ‘Enable Advanced Theming‘.

Type in a name for your new theme and press ‘OK‘.

Select all text in the editor box and delete it.

Copy/Paste the contents of the Halcyon text file you downloaded in to the editor box.

Click ‘Preview These Changes‘ to see how Halcyon will look with your content.

Finally, click ‘Save, I’m Done‘ and your Posterous blog will reload with Halcyon as your theme!

Customizing Halcyon

The two main things to be customized in this theme are the navigation tabs and social media buttons. To customize these options, please follow the proceeding directions.

Editing Navigation Tabs

Editing the navigation tabs is simple, just follow the proceeding instructions

Log In to your Posterous account and click on 'Theme My Site' from the dashboard.

Click 'Advanced' then click the 'Expand' link on the top right of your page to load the theme editor.

Find the navigation tab code in the theme editor. To make things easy, just hit (Win) Ctrl-F then paste in "

" (without the quotations) That query will take you directly to the navigation tab code. Once you have found the code, you can edit the links to point to whatever pages you wish. You can add additional tabs by just typing
http://www.linkgoeshere.com
on a new line within the

code (be sure to close the tag,, after finishing typing in your link). You can remove tabs by deleting the line of text that starts with
and ends with
.

Click the 'Save, I'm Done' button to save your changes. Review to ensure your links are directing properly.

Note: You can use all standard HTML formatting tags for your links. So if you want the link to open in a new window, for example, you would add the target="_blank" bit to your link tag as usual.

Customizing Social Media Buttons

Editing, removing and changing the social media buttons included with Halcyon is a quick and easy process.

By default, the following buttons are included:

To Edit Buttons:

Log In to your Posterous account and click the 'Theme My Site' link.

Click 'Advanced' then click the 'Expand' link on the top right of your page to load the theme editor.

To find the proper code to be edited, hit (Win) Ctrl-F on your keyboard and paste in "

Edit the link code to match your profile/screen name. All URLs have been pre-setup so that all you should need to do is plug your profile/screen name in.

Once you have edited the desired buttons, click the 'Save, I'm Done" button at the bottom of the Posterous theme editor and review your changes.

To Remove Buttons:

Log In to your Posterous account and click on 'Theme My Site' from the dashboard.

Click 'Advanced' then click the 'Expand' link on the top right of your page to load the theme editor.

To find the proper code to be edited, hit (Win) Ctrl-F on your keyboard and paste in "
Find the links to the buttons of sites you wish to remove and select/delete the code.

Click the 'Save, I'm Done' button on the bottom right of Posterous' theme editor to save and subsequently review your pages.

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[Halcyon Users] Whoa, hey..what happened?!

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:43:00 -0700

So if you use the Halcyon theme for your Posterous, first and foremost..thanks! Secondly, you probably noticed that all of the images disappeared from your pages. Through a series of convoluted occurrences I won't bore you with the details of, I lost the domain name that the images were hosted on. My apologies for that.

I have now edited the theme with correct SRCs for all images and will be uploading it momentarily.

If you still continue to experience issues, please leave a comment on the release post and I'll get it sorted for you promptly.

Dave

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Ten Useful Wordpress Plugins You May Have Missed

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:05:37 -0800

With over seven thousand plugins available, it's understandable that we all can't be on top of every single Wordpress plugin that is released.

Bloggers have done their part in putting forth an effort to share their opinions and shed light on useful plugins but I noticed a strange trend. The vast majority of the people blogging about plugins out there all seem to recommend the same ones. If I had a dollar for every time I've read why I just have to have wp-super-cache (although I prefer W3 Total Cache) or All-In-One SEO Pack, I wouldn't be rich but I would definitely have enough decent beer to make it through a weekend-long Chuck Norris movie marathon. So over the past couple of weeks, I have dug deep in to the Plugin Directory and put together a small collection of plugins that I found helpful and sadly overlooked. From Twitter to diagnostic services, these plugins all bring a unique feature or service to the table that carries the potential to help improve your blog. All of these plugins have been tested and working on a clean install of Wordpress 2.8 and were also considered based upon performance and the (generally small) amount of system resources they use. I hope you enjoy the plugins, I'll be back shortly with another plugin-related article - what plugins I use on my Wordpress - as well as a list of must-have diagnostic, database and systems tools for Wordpress. Now, on to the plugins...

WP Quote Tweet

WP Quote Tweet is a simple, lightweight plugin with one purpose in mind - to allow users to quote Tweets from within a Wordpress post. This is done by locating the tweet's ID number and pasting it into a shortcode command. It does a nice job formatting the output and even gives you the option of choosing between 7 templates for the quote.

Stealth Login

Stealth Login is one of those things that just makes good sense. It gives you the ability to create custom URLs for logging in/out, administrating and registering for your blog. It's best attribute is the 'stealth mode' feature where direct access to login files is forbidden. It could be helpful in preventing a break in using a compromised password or a brute force bot attack since neither know where to go.

TPC! Memory Usage

Similar to System Health, TPC! Memory Usage is a diagnostics and monitoring tool for your Wordpress. It displays both current and peak memory usage via a thermometer and system allowances/settings (including Wordpress and PHP memory limit) on the dashboard and pertinent server and database information as well as basic and notification settings on a back-end module. TPC! Memory Usage can be set up to monitor your blog's memory usage and e-mail you if it reaches a pre-defined threshold which is a great feature. After using both System Health and now TPC!, I have to give TPC the nod based on its memory usage monitoring abilities, especially the notification feature.

Pretty Link

Pretty Link is one of the coolest plugins I have seen in some time. The primary function of the plugin is to act as a URL shortener (like bit.ly) so you (and your visitors) can take long URLs and shorten them to something similar to http://www.youdomain/ab123 . It includes numerous URL features and variables like full-fledged URL shortening scripts including temporary or permanent redirects and nofollow links. Pretty Link doesn't stop there though. It then tracks and can generate reports on the number of hits and unique hits generated URLs receive via an attractive statistics dashboard. Pretty Link even includes a bookmarklet for you to use so you can create links on the fly. The only thing I don't like about Pretty Link is that it is well, bloated. The statistics portion of this program, while extremely nice and convenient, isn't necessary and I try to avoid plugin statistics systems to begin with as they are often resource hogs. Even still, Pretty Link is one of my new favorite plugins, I look forward to getting a lot of use out of it.

Reliable Twitter

I've used several plugins/widgets that all claim to be the best at displaying Twitter feeds in the sidebar but all of them have either tried to do too much or not enough. The biggest problem I've found with other Twitter widgets is in the output area, where it matters most, with misaligned posts, out of place avatars, intrusive ads from the developer and other poor display practices. Luckily, I found Reliable Twitter. Based on the Twitter Widget, this plugin uses Google's AJAX API to display and cache tweets. It's quick, easy to set up and tweets are displayed in a separated, readable fashion and not jumbled together like with similar plugins.

Karailiev's Sitemap

When it comes to sitemap generators for Wordpress, everyone seems stuck on the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. While it is definitely a great plugin and a great sitemap generator, it is absolutely murder queries and memory usage when set to automatically rebuild the sitemap. After trying a couple of other options, I've settled on Karailiev's Sitemap as it gets the job done and doesn't seem to be near as hard on a server as its peers. This plugin allows you to set page and post priority, exclude posts/pages at the write stage. It creates standard and news sitemaps and also pings Google when your map has been updated as well.

Link Juice Keeper

Link Juice Keeper is a simple plugin that accomplishes one smart goal - do whatever you can to not lose any traffic! The plugin takes all broken, missing or invalid links that normally result in a 404 Not Found error and performs a permanent redirect on them, landing the visitor on your front page. Nice.

W3 Total Cache

When it comes to caching plugins, there's two things you should know - 1)everybody should run one if they like their blog to perform at its peak and 2)wp-super-cache and DB Cache Reloaded aren't the only games in town and, from my experience aren't as good as W3 Total Cache. It caches or minifies just about every active part of your blog, from posts and pages generated to CSS and Javascript in your theme, all the way to RSS feeds and simple HTML files. W3 Total Cache includes the most thorough control panel I've seen for a Wordpress plugin allowing you the ability to tweak and fine tune minute settings as necessary. If you are currently using one of the competing plugins, I think you will find it worth the time and effort to clone or imitate a production blog with this as its cache tool. I think you will be pleased with the results.

WP Widget Cache

WP Widget Cache is to widgets what wp-super-cache is to posts and pages and I'm kind of surprised this plugin doesn't get more attention. Widgets can create just as many queries as posts or pages themselves, especially if you are running a lot of them, and this plugin does a great job at reducing them. It is very sparse on options but which is fine because it simply works. If you are running several widgets, you owe it to yourself to give this plugin a try!

WP Smush.It

If you're hosting the majority of your own images on your server then this is a must-have tool. This plugin integrates the smush.it in to Wordpress to optimize jpeg compression, convert certain GIFs to PNGs and strip un-used colors from indexed images. All of these can contribute to smaller image sizes and therefore faster page-loads and less bandwidth usage. Smush.It works automatically every time an image is uploaded to your gallery and it can be used to optimize existing images as well. Well, there's the list. I hope you found a useful plugin or two out of this or at least had an interesting read. Thanks for browsing.

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