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Hi there, ive just started a blogging community and want to know:

excluding all the premium plugins, what plugins on your site are essential

pick your top 5

thanks :slight_smile:

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:58:19
  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Outside of the ones here?

    1) The sitewide feed one -> http://www.itdamager.com/plugins/wpmu-sitewide-feed/

    2) List-All -> http://wpmudev.org/project/List-All

    3) A decent stats program (Gotta pick one that you like)

    4) An adsense plugin (Your users will annoy you for that)

    5) One of the “How much space do i have to upload to?” plugins. I think they’re all broken though currently.

    But to pick the top one here, I would be installing the multidb one right after installing. It’s a royal pain in the *cough* to do further down the road after you have hundreds of blogs and you have to move dbs.

    Hope this helps,

    -drmike

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    The list all plugin gets asked for a lot in the mu forums.

    The sitewide feed plugin is the basis of a number of other plugins, features and tricks you can do with your install.

    The stats plugin is an ego thing for a number of bloggers and the one I use can be used as a basis for other plugins, features….

    The adsense gets asked about so that hosts can setup a money sharing program to help support your mu install.

    Not sure why folks like the space available plugins. They were a big thing a long while back but yet get little mention anymore.

    A lot of it, as Andrea says, is a personal thing. That’s why I dislike folks who come into the mu forums with a “I need to know specifically what plugins to add in” questions. (That’s not directed at you.) It’s a matter of personal choice.

    That and I’ve yet to see a single web based program with any “required” plugins.

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    Oooo, thought of another one that is oft-requested/asked about: some sort of captcha on signup.

    There’s a fluffy plugin I liek to put on all my installs, MU and regualr WP, called “Life’s Little Instructions”. It’s a mod of the default “Hello Dolly” one with a one-liner tip to make you smile. I recently added a bunch of sentences about being a kid again, and on my sites, everyone loves it.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    I would guess for tags. I would recommend, from what’s available publicly (he he he) that the method drmike goes though be the one.

    It requires a second WP install, that you turn into either a subdomain or subdirectory, but here’s the “perks”. Less resource usage. There’s a plugin that is floating around, and another hack as well, but they aren’t exactly the “best” of options.

    A separate install that reads your sitewide feed, and makes the tags works pretty cool.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Actually I think most of us designed our own mainblog themes. Heck, I’ve seen Kubrick up on a couple sites. Gotta admit that those aren’t good wpmu sites though….

    I *believe* the sites doing “group all blogs into specific categories” are using a manual method. ie The site admin creating a Page within blog #1 and manually adding blogs to those lists. I would think it’s too easy to gum up the results if you tried something different. Even wp.com is manually creating the hawt post on their front page although I believe they’ve worked out an automated method for the top post within each category listings.

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    I really think this main MU blog theme is under-utilized. A few color changes and you can do all kinds of things.

    I’ve seen Freshy used a lot as well, but it’s getting old. I think some of the Hemingway-style theme work quite well as a landing page for MU sites. (huge footer, minimal sidebar, one or two posts showing).

    Hmmm, this gives me an idea for a post on the tutorial site…

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    “Even wp.com is manually creating the hawt post on their front page although I believe they’ve worked out an automated method for the top post within each category listings.”

    You’re kidding, right? Wow… All that brain power over there, and it’s manual? I can’t buy that. Really, I can’t. It changes too frequently.

    Overall, that kinda stuff is completely possible without manual intervention. I can’t imagine that even they haven’t figured it out.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    All that brain power over there, and it’s manual?

    I’d have to dig for the thread but I remember Mark saying that there was a script that determined what went there but a number of staff members had the ability to override it and did so often.

    They made it sound like they were bringing attention to specific posts they found of interest.

    It got discussed when they switched themes a few months ago.

  • James Farmer
    • Founder & Chair (honest)

    What would you reckon to auto closing older threads with the message:

    “This thread has been automatically closed as it is over 60 days since the last response was posted – please select a new forum to post in and, if required, reference this thread with a link – we do this to ensure that our help, support and advice remains as current as possible”