More Plugin Goodness and Mint
Although I don’t like to add too many bells and whistles to this site, I enjoy keeping up with the development of plugins and add-ons for Wordpress. The ability to add custom functionality to the applications I use is invaluable.
If you’ve been coming around for a while, you may have noticed that at one time or another I’ve tested out a number of plugins. This includes Live Comment Preview, Comment Quicktags, Fancy Tooltips, and way too many others that were overkill for me, but that may fit your needs nicely.
I’m running most of the more standard add-ons/hacks, but I’ve added a couple of others in the past few weeks that are worth mentioning and that you may be interested in reading about.
- Subscribe to Comments
This allows your commentors to check a box and receive email notification when a new comment is posted to a particular article.
Yes, they could just subscribe to the comments feed instead, but I don’t think most people use the comments feed. I know I don’t. And on top of that, I’m not sure that too many readers know what a feed is. Especially you guys using IE.
This works great for me because I often forget which sites I’ve commented on, and I’d like to be able to easily follow up on comment threads.
- Auto Comment Moderation
This plugin holds new comments in the moderation queue after a post (or post activity) is older than a specified number of days.
Very few spam comments ever make it past my spam words filter, but since I’ve implemented the Subscribe to Comments plugin, it’s wise to take additional steps to protect users from receiving spam comments in their inbox. I’m still in the process of testing this out, but so far so good.
- Talkback
This is a comment history feature that I implemented several months ago, but I can’t figure out what to do with it. It outputs a list of all comments associated with a particular user. For instance, we could look at Clay’s comment history.
- Wordpress Database Backup
This plugin makes a backup copy of the site database. Options include the ability to email the copy to yourself, download it to your computer, or save it to the server. These features are (more or less) available through the control panel of my hosting account, but this brings it all under the WP admin panel, and I like that.
- WP-Cron
This plugin, by the same guy who made the Wordpress Database Backup, allows you to setup a scheduled daily backup of your site database, and have it emailed to the account of your choice.
Used in conjunction with the WP Database Backup, I always have a current copy of the site stored locally. In case of disaster, you can be assured that these incredibly important posts will not perish from the Earth.
And Finally, A Quick Word About…
I purchased Mint the day it was released, and I can honestly say that it’s great and I love it. It looks fantastic, and the default feature set combined with the promise of the Pepper API is very exciting.
But it should be said (and it has been said) that it’s not for everybody, and it’s not meant to replace more comprehensive stats applications. It is what it is. Just like Popeye. Check out the support forum to learn more, and feel free to IM me if you’re curious about my Mint experience thus far.
