As often in the open source world there is not just one solution to get things done. I tested different plugins locally and came up with a couple that fulfill my needs. Here I take a closer look at the plugins and their installation.
- Akismet checks your comments for spam. You have to activate this plugin with a wordpress API key. You receive this key via email when you sign up at wordpress.com.
- aLinks automatically links keywords you use in your posts, e.g. every time you use apple in a post, it’ll be linked to a pre-defined website, in this case http://www.apple.com. This plugin is highly customizable.
- Another Wordpress Meta Plugin adds the META-tags ‘keywords’ and ‘description’ with the user-defined values for each post to your pages.
- Simple Tagging and Simple Tagging Widget allow you to add tags to a post that can be presented in form of a widget in your sidebar. This plugin is highly customizable.
- Social Bookmarks Bar adds links to popular social bookmark sites like digg or delicious. I had to customize the plugin, so it doesn’t support all 39 sites (which is overload to me) and generate more cleaner html and smaller icons. I added the php-function to my themes in a manner to show the social bar in the post footer.
- Wordpress Database Backup generates a backup of your wordpress database on the fly or sends it via email. It’s also possible to schedule the backup, so you receive a daily or weekly backup by email. You have to allow wordpress to write in your wp-content directory.
- wp-cache caches your pages for faster access. It generates static pages that are returned to the caller instead of dynamically invoking php everytime a page is requested. You have to allow wordpress to write in your wp-content directory. Keep in mind that changes in themes might not become visible because a page is cached.
- wp-syntax highlights keywords in different programming languages. It also adds line numbers if desired.
