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Behind the scenes: WordPress plug-ins, take three

This marks the third (one, two) in a continuing series of occasional posts about the plug-ins I use to run the site. Since the last update, things have changed a bit.

  • For various reasons, I've had to disable GrowMap Anti-Spambot and Stop Spammers. Anti-spam services are now provided by Akismet, JetPack's comments plug-in, and Sabre.
  • Sliding Read More also bit the dust, because it wasn't compatible with WordPress' built-in Gallery feature.

So much for out with the old…read on to see what's been added…

  • Crayon Syntax Highlighter: I'd rate this one as required if you ever post code on your site. It automatically color-codes text for over 50 languages, allows one-click copy-to-clipoard, and handles all sorts of nifty formatting tricks for your code snippets. You can see it in action in my A simple URL tester for WordPress post.
  • Date/Time Now Button: A super-simple, super-useful plug-in. All it does is gives you a "Now" button in the Publish box. This is perfect for blog posts that get republished, such as my long-running A useless analysis of OS X release dates post.
  • ELI's Related Posts Footer Links and Widget: This plug-in creates the "Possibly Related" section below each post. Sometimes it's useful, other times it's just entertaining to see what it considers related.
  • prettyPhoto Media Plug-In: This add-on handles image zooming duties, i.e. like the images in my "How I create digital versions of Blu-ray discs" article.
  • Remove More Jump: Makes it so the Read More link doesn't try to jump down to the viewing location; with the fixed header on the site, that jump is problematic.
  • Thin Out Revisions: WordPress has this "feature" whereby it saves literally every version of a post, and saves them forever. This plug-in lets you easily remove these revisions (saving database space), and you can do so manually or automatically via a schedule.

In total, there are 19 plug-ins used here. That's more than I'd prefer, but it's down from the 25ish that I used to use. Here's a quick full list of my currently-active plug-ins:

Akismet • Crayon Syntax Highlighter • Custom Meta Widget • Cyclone Slider 2 • Dashboard Commander • Date/Time Now Button • Easy Pie Maintenance Mode • ELI's Related Posts Footer Links and Widget • Gallery Shortcode Style to Head • Get Recent Comments • Jetpack • prettyPhoto Media • Recently Registered • Redirection • Remove More Jump • Sabre • Thin Out Revisions • Twitter Widget Pro • WP Hide Post