As you may know, this blog is running on self hosted wordpress. WordPress do have a hosted solution as well as one like this, you may read this post to know more.
WordPress has plugin support. You can attach functionalities to your blog without even touching the core code files ! Yes, thats through plugins. Check out wordpress plugin directory to see what are the functionality additions available.
I am currently using following plugins in this blog.
- Askimet: A must for a blog like this. It prevents comment spam. You need an API key to activate this plugin, which is available at wordpress.com.
- Google-analytics-for-wordpress: You can add Google analytics code by directly editing your theme files. This poses a risk of no data being captured when you change the theme and forget to add code to the new theme. Solution is to use this plugin, which adds analytics code on your pages automatically – Yes, no code editing and pasting analytics code is required each time you change theme.
- Lightbox-2-wordpress-plugin: Lightbox.js is a JavaScript framework to display images and web pages within overlays. You can see lightbox in action on the post – public/private key authentication with PuTTY on fedora 10. View those snapshots by clicking on them, it opens in a layer on the same window rather than opening as a new page !
- official-statcounter-plugin-for-wordpress: This is another plugin similar to the Google analytics plugin mentioned above, only differene being, it embeds statcounter tracking codes on pages automatically. Statcounter is the first web analytics tool I have used and still using. It is cool !
- wordpress-mobile-edition: This website has a mobile friendly version too ! This feature is achieved by using this plugin as well as a different theme compatible for mobile browsers.
- wp-contact-form: I am using this on my contact page. You need not code a contact form and the server sided script to handle the form yourself. This plugin can do the job.
- FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin: This is to use feedburner as my default feed manager than the one built in in wordpress. This plugin automatically redirects visitors to the built-in feed url to the feedburner feed url.
- youtubebrackets: This is one of the plugins I have used a lot in my other blogs. This helps us embed youtube videos on wordpress posts.
I am sure this will not be an exclusive list as days pass. I might be adding some more cool plugins on this blog. I will update this post as and when a new plugin is added.