Seeing as how I upload photos to Flickr on a regular basis, and regularly include photos in my blog entries, it only makes sense to span the distance between Flickr and WordPress with a plugin. Only, I didn’t think of that until recently. Now, there are several Flickr plugins available, but there’s only one that does what I want — include a handy link of sorts, that when clicked, will open up to display X amount of recent photos (and include links for searching by keywords, through photosets, etc.). And that plugin is WordPress Flickr Manager.

WordPress Flickr Manager does exactly what I want it to. It adds the Flick logo to the Upload/Insert ribbon that is located above the text editor on the Add New Post page. When clicked, it launches an overlay window that shows your recent photos (the number shown is customizable, of course). Clicking on any photo takes you to an individual photo customization page, similar to what WordPress’s Add an Image page does. There, you specify alt/title/caption (if desired), choose the size and alignment of the photo, and then click Insert to insert it into your post. The HTML coding goes wherever you have your cursor at. Simple, eh? That’s what I love about it. Intuitive, rich with the features I need, yet simple and quick. You can use this plugin to show off photos of your kids, the baby shower favors you’re thinking of having at your upcoming baby shower, photos of the products that you find effective at getting rid of blackheads, whatever. Whatever you upload to Flickr is there for you to add to your posts!

I will caution you, however: WordPress Flickr Manager, by default, does not work with newer (2.9+) versions of WordPress. But hacking it to make it work is quite simple. Simply open up the four .php files located inside the /js folder, and do a mass search/delete for the @ symbol. That’s right, find any instance of @ and delete it. Save, activate the plugin, customize your settings, and you’re good to go!

Lately I have been getting a lot of spam. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. And it’s not like I’m not accustomed to spam. Sadly, I am. But we’re talking hundreds of comments per day per blog. And that’s despite me using Akismet, Sparm Karma 2, and Math Comment Spam Protection. After a few days of deleting thousands of spam comments from all of my blogs combined, it dawned on me: instead of being reactive, I should be proactive. Why delete thousands of spammy comments about anti wrinkle treatment if I can prevent the comments from being left in the first place?

So after searching around, I downloaded and installed Comment Timeout. Comment Timeout is a simple plugin that allows you to specify, on a global base, that comments should be closed after X amount of days. A small options area is also added to the Add New Post page, in case you want to leave comments open longer on a particular post. You can set different options for trackbacks as well.

So far, the plugin is working great. I have noticed a definite decrease in spam, and that always makes my day!

A lot of bloggers use social networks as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Additionally, these and other bloggers use social networks to promote new blog posts. I’m one of those bloggers, and if you’re reading this, perhaps you are too. You can manually update your social network status to reflect a new blog entry, or you can use plugins that update just a particular social network. Or, you can get yourself a copy of the fabulous CR Post to Ping.fm and allow it — and Ping.fm — to update all of your connected social networks for you.

CR Post to Ping.fm sends a new blog entry notification (the exact notification is 100% customizable) to Ping.fm, who in turn distributes it to any social networks you have connected to your Ping.fm account. The plugin allows you to specify the categories in which new posts will trigger notifications. You can choose all, or specify the categories you want to include notifications for, or categories that you would like to exclude notifications for. This is handy if you participate in paid blogging, don’t want to start a war as a result of an opinionated post on the electronic cigarette, or simply don’t want to update your social networks every single time you hit the Publish button.

CR Post to Ping.fm is incredibly easy to install, and simply requires you to input your Ping.fm application key in order to get started.

Search and Replace is a WordPress plugin I would seriously be lost without. It does exactly what its name implies — it searches for a certain word or string of words and replaces them with whatever variable you’d like to use instead. It’s definitely great for application performance management. Recently I was playing around with stylesheets and renamed the elements I use to style the look of certain images. With Search and Replace, I was able to quickly go through eight years worth of blog entries and change all instances of Term A to Term B. It was done in under a minute!

WordPress 3.0 is still in beta stages, but thus far it’s clearly a joining of WordPress and WordPress MU. I have never used WP MU, but now that 3.0 is released in beta form, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to install it and play around. The only question is… where should I install it? I want it on an active blog so that I don’t get bored and forgot about or get discouraged from updating. But on the other hand, with so many specific plugins and customizations installed on each of my blogs, I don’t think updating to a beta version would be a very smart idea. The last thing I want to do is break something! That could mean significant amounts of wrinkle cream while I tried to figure out what broke ad how the hell to fix it.

So anyway… tell me your thoughts! Will you be giving WordPress 3.0 Beta a whirl?

I’ve gotten a lot of comments and inquiries wanting to know the simplistic bar I use on jenn.nu and That Fat Chick. The answer? Progress Bar. It’s quick to install, requires just one line of code to display in the sidebar, and has a fully configurable admin panel that lets me input the start, current and goal values. Through that panel I can also tweak border and bar styles and colors.

So there you have it. Looking for an easy and bare-bones progress bar to display your weight loss with? Progress Bar is the way to go!

Search Meter that keeps a list of all of the searchers visitors perform while at your blog. Each term is hyperlinked to the results (via the “Edit” interface within the dashboard), and you can even see what searches were done in the past seven days and thirty days.

Here is a list of some recent search terms that have been plugged into the search box at jenn.nu:

• track period
• Outer Banks rentals
• pulled breaks
• amazon
• eyeshadow
• hoodie
• ornament

Recently I was inspired by a logged search on jenn.nu to write all about Demand Studios. You can read that post here.

Official Comments is a WordPress plugin that is designed to differentiate different types of comments. Please note that this plugin is not to be confused with Author Highlight, which is designed to distinguish the comments of one individual user (it is based on email address).

So what does Official Comments do? Well, it helps you to distinguish certain groups of comments from one another. One of the easiest ways to use Official Comments is by distinguishing comments made by registered users from comments made by non-registered individuals — your visitors. At least, that’s how I am using Official Comments. I have customized it so that a special icon appears before registered users. Here it is in action:

See the star? That right there represents a commenter who is both registered and logged in.

Moderate Selected Posts is a WordPress plugin that I stumbled upon a few days ago. Actually, the timing is really funny: when I had a specific use for such a plugin, several months ago, one didn’t exist. Now it’s right there in front of me (along with several others), and of course I couldn’t think of any particular use for it. But I went ahead and downloaded and installed it anyway, and even tested it out.

I’m happy to report that Moderate Selected Posts is incredibly easy to use. Upload, activate, and select the checkbox in the post creation page to moderate comments for that particular post. That’s it — it works like a charm!

Author Highlight is a cute little WordPress plugin that makes it easy for you to distinguish the admin’s comments from standard comments. Because this plugin uses a CSS class to apply the elements that create a unique look for the admin’s comments, you can pretty much create any kind of “look” that appeals to you. Change the background color, add an image, change the link color, or simply add a border. It’s up to you!

Here’s an example of Author Highlight in action (taken from my personal blog, jenn.nu):

As you can see from the screenshot, I use a black background to distinguish my comments from standard visitor comments.