Coming to a Nursery Near You

Archive for June 6th, 2008

1. Idle hands are rare in my house!

2. I love silence in the shower.

3. My favorite time of the day is when the birds first start singing and everything else is quiet.

4. The last tea I drank was “Yogi” tea with St. John’s Wort.

5. I like to cook out in the Summer.

6. My mother always said says “I love you” whenever she gets off the phone.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to nothing much, tomorrow my plans include shopping for Jimmy’s birthday and Sunday, I want to celebrate Jimmy’s birthday with him and the kids with a picnic at the lake (it’s gonna be HOT!)

I LOVE plugins!  One of the main reasons why I moved my blog to my own domain was so I could use plugins.  It gives you so much more control over your blog.  As a web designer for over 10 years, control is very important to me.  Plugins are very easy to install and use, too. 

So I thought I’d compile my own list of the top 10 plugins that I use and enjoy.

My list, in no particular order:

• Trackback validator & Simple Trackback Validation.  Since I began using these plug-ins, the amount of spam track-backs has been cut drastically. 
  
• Comment Luv.  I’m sure you see this alot – but it’s a great idea.  It lists your commenter’s last blog posting, which gives them some linky love and that, in turn, gives them a little google boost (or so I’ve read).
  
• Lucia Linky Love – This enables you to turn on or off the no follow option for your commenters.  To tell the truth, I still don’t know exactly what it means for the nofollow or follow ‘movement’, but I know people like it LOL
  
• Twitter Tools – twitter tools not only posts your latest tweet on your page, if you want it to – it also sends a tweet to Twitter letting your followers know that you’ve posted a new blog posting. Automatic blog promotion! Woohoo!
  
• Akismet!  This seriously has to be on EVERYONE’S top 10 plug-ins list.  It’s HUGE for getting rid of those idiot spammers – just look at mine!  126,020 IN ONE YEAR!  That’s just crazy.
  
• Peter’s Custom Anti-spam – this has also cut spam out HUGELY.  (Can you tell I have a major thing for spam?)
  
• One Click Installer – Makes it incredibly easy to install plug-ins and templates right from your browser. I use this constantly.
  
• Theme Tester – this allows me to tweak things around and look at different themes without messing with my visitor’s minds
  
• Wordpress Stats – This one should speak for itself – This is what tells me where you’re coming from and what you’re searching for.  Sometimes, it’s kinda scary LOL

So those are my top 10 plug-ins.  I’m sure that once I’ve finished reading Barbara Ling’s tutorials, I’ll find more! Thanks Barbara!

Quote of the Day:
I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for eighteen months—I don’t like to interrupt her.
–Ken Dodd

So I’m curious to know… if or when you run across an ad on someone’s blog that you find is offensive, do you let that blogger know?  I ask because there’s this 1 particular ad that is shown on this ad network called “project wonderful” and every single time I see it, I find it obnoxious and offensive.  EVERY TIME.  I’m not easily offended, but this ad does it.  It’s the same ad everywhere, and it’s obnoxious.  I’m not going to link it here because they don’t deserve that, but because this ad is everywhere on the project wonderful network, I’ve come to think of project wonderful as anything but wonderful. 

So what do you do when you find something that offends you or just sticks in your craw?