Recently I decided to move this latest blog I started from wordpress.com to wordpress running on my own server. The primary reason being for more control over the templates and installed plugins. I can’t dispute that I like to play with this technology more than I seem to actually write entries, which has been true for years. Wordpress.com makes it braindead easy to start spewing your thoughts while trading off some tweaking ability. Having to pay to edit CSS and being unable to mess with the template was too much for me. Plus, Dreamhost makes it push-button to install Wordpress 2.1. And since it was WP to WP, the export and re-import was very smooth. After tweaking things for a while, I went hunting for some plugins:
- Akismet, of course. Spammers are everywhere. Your mom might be one - don't trust anyone.
- Permalink Redirect. Have "story1" redirect to "story1/" so there is a single URL for each entry, which helps search engines.
- Google Sitemaps plugin. Reads all the posts and generates a standard sitemap readable by Google, MSN and Yahoo. It also pings Google directly to get the ball rolling.
- Feedburner StandardStats. Simple plugin so that Feedburner can gather stats on your site. A plugin is almost overkill to add the snippet. A nice addition if already using Feedburner for feeds, which is the only way to fly. (Not being able to change the embedded RSS url was one of the things I wanted to tweak at Wordpress.com that prompted me to switch.)
- I played around with the theme to make it Wordpress Widget friendly, but I don't mind installing plugins so it didn't buy me much yet. Maybe they will make it easier for most folks to customize their blogs.
- I haven't found a syntax highlighter that I like yet. I tried Dean Lee's Source Code Highlighter and while it is easy to install, the color choices don't work well with my theme. </ul>