6. Though my knowledge is very very very humble, I sometimes do tutorials (don’t laugh, what a shame :”>), for example, this and this which have been receiving a few of visitors from Google. In these tutorials, I posted some source code – HTML, XML, PHP, Javascript, CSS etc. In order for them to be clearer to read, I highlighted them. How? Did I have to color each and every span? Nope. WP-Syntax is the key. This Geshi supported plugin did everything for me. Install and activate it, then wrap the code block into a <pre></pre> pair with a specified lang attribute, there, it’s done.

7. Do you notice that out of the box, the comment boxes provided by WordPress look very simple (read: ugly)? I do. And I hate it, especially comparing with the much more functional reply boxes in those forums out there. So I looked for a way to add my comment boxes some extra power, and finally stopped at MCEComments, a plugin that integrates TinyMCE into a WordPress comment box, giving it a lot more features. I’m pretty sure there are some other plugins that share the same purpose, but I’m not that picky – since MCEComments perfectly worked for me from the beginning, I’ll stick with it.

8. Just like all other plugin developers, I have a development version of this blog, as described in one of my previous posts. That post mentioned that I used WP-DBManager to create a backup of my live database. Though in another post, I talked about the possible vulnerability this plugin’s users may encounter if by any chance don’t strictly follow the instructions, this plugin is still a must-have. Almost every database-related actions can be performed through it: you can optimize, repair, empty/drop tables, run specific SQL queries, and most important, set up an automatic schedule to back up your database. No matter how big your blog scale is, keeping backup(s) of your database is a must. For this reason, having WP-DBManager healthily activated is vital.

9. For user experiences and interactions, I use 3 plugins in a row: ShareThis, Digg This O’ Mine, and Referrer Detector. The first is so famous that I see it on almost every blog – it allows blog owners and visitors to submit a post which they feel interesting to plenty of social services: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious etc.

The others are my own plugins, very simple, but fits my needs .

11. It is also a good idea (that I borrow from others) to have an “Other Posts” section on a post page – this reminds visitors to explore other (interesting) contents. I used to use Random Posts plugin to randomly display other posts, until I one day realized that it doesn’t work so well with WP-Super Cache. So I decided to write and use my own AJAX Random Posts. It’s a humble plugin (just like all other ones from mine), but again, it fits my needs, so still I’m using it.

12. Finally, for all these plugins, believe it or not, I didn’t have to download any them from WordPress codex repository, ever. Everything was automatically done by an extremely useful plugin called WP Easy Uploader. I downloaded, uploaded, activated (and configured) this one the very first. From then on, every time I need to upload a plugin, I just need to head to Tools:Upload Files, paste the download link into the URL text field, specify that it’s a plugin, and click the cute “Upload” button at the bottom. The plugin archive file will be grabbed from WordPress codex server and extracted just in place.

Yes, I know that with the 2.7 version of WordPress coming out, we have a neaty plugin installer built-in. But WP Easy Uploader still remains one of my most favorite plugin. The first reason is that it works for almost everything, not just plugins alone. With it, I rarely have to fire up FileZilla anymore. And you can tell, this seriously satisfies my laziness. Hehe. Hehe. Hehe.

So how about you? Do you have any recommendations or cool stuffs to share? How about trying my MCEComments-powered comment box right now?

Well, enough of babbling. What I wanted to say is, today I’m going to write down here list of plugins I’m currently using on this site. For what, you ask? To show off, of course. Or – I prefer this – to share something that may be useful sometimes.

So in no particular order, here they come.

1. I use WordPress.com Stats to have a in-details view on my blog. Five or ten times a day, I click “Blog Stats” link in the admin panel to get an idea on the traffic, incoming/ongoing links, search terms etc. All these data are essential if I want to build up a high quality site.

2. To save a lot of clicks and keep the admin menu bar tidy, Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu is my plugin of choice. Agree, the new menu system in WordPress 2.7 is a good improvement, but it’s still nowhere near Ozh’s version. Write a new post, customize the theme, add a new plugin, change some settings… almost all the commands are now just one-click away from me. Huge productivity, I’d say.

3. When it comes to SEO, All in One SEO Pack definitely suits my needs. I didn’t need to do anything, just installed it and all the keywords, titles, descriptions were there beautifully. Sure, there are plenty more than just than for SEO (like the incoming links) but that should be basically enough for a good start. So if you’re coming from Google, this plugin deserves some credits.

4. And some other credits should go to Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin automatically generates a XML-Sitemap compliant site map for me every time I add/edit/remove my posts and pages, so that MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Google bots can easily browse (and index) my site. I don’t even want to imagine just how long and boring it would be if I had to manually modify my site map after there was a change in the architecture, so this plugin is a must-have.

5. I’m not a good writer. Especially when English is not my mother language. And my articles are boring. So I guess that’s why I’m not receiving many comments from my readers. From those darn spammers however, well, there’s a bunch of spams almost every day. But you don’t see any of them, right? It’s totally thanks to the Askimet spam fighter. I installed it from the beginning of this blog, and since then there is 0 missed, around ten false positives on over 500 spamming comments got caught. Impressive, huh?

(to be continued)