12 Essental Plugins to Extend WordPress as a CMS

From Web Design Ledger, a look at 12 plugins that can take WordPress beyond blogging and into a CMS.

Using WordPress more as a standard CMS often requires some creative thinking when building themes and setting up the structure of categories and content. In this article we present to you 12 very useful plugins that will give your WordPress install extended CMS functionality.

12 Essential Plugins to Extend WordPress as a CMS

Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices

From Noupe, a nice article looking at style of site comment forms, with examples and best practices for design.

A good comment form should align with our website’s main design, but at the same time it should be interesting enough to encourage easy commenting. It must be usable and accessible if we want to capture all of our visitors’ feedback.

Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices »

Movable Type 4 Beta

Wow. It's been a long time since I've made a Movable Type post. Sadly, I just figured there wasn't a lot of interest out there for MT info. I'm still hoping that that will change :)

I've been a Movable Type user since 2002 and despite many an envious glance at the large and vibrant WordPress community of today (that MT once enjoyed), I've hung in there with MT.

Today, Six Apart released their latest version of Movable Type in beta and announced that they would be open sourcing this release.

Of course, being the early adopter type that I am, I had to set up a test install of MT 4 to check it out. You don't have to go to all that trouble though, as you can check it out at this Movable Type 4.0 Demo site.

If you plan on installing MT4, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is. It's not quite the one-click WordPress install yet, but it has been simplified remarkably. Basically, just upload the downloaded files to the server and the installation wizard will set-up everything. All you need to know is your database info to enter when prompted. Don't forget to chmod the cgi files though (probably to 755) and note that there are a couple of cgi files in the Plugin folder as well (in StyleCatcher and feeds-app-lite) that need to be chmod as well.

I've only had a bit of time to play around with this new release but so far I'm very impressed and if I can play Movable Type evangelist for just a moment, I would encourage others to give MT an opportunity to impress you, too :)

The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs

"You’d think that as a result of open-source development practices, blog architectures would be pretty close to perfection in areas like Web standards and maximum SEO impact. You’d be wrong."

The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs - a guide for iimproving your blogs mark-up, whether it's WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad or any other blogging software.

A great read for anyone who blogs and wants better mark-up for semantic reasons and better search engine results.

How to Protect CSS Mods for any WordPress theme

How to Protect CSS Mods for ANY WordPress Theme provides a great alternative to reapplying theme mods every time there is an update - a custom stylesheet for custom styles, that works by overriding the style in the default stylesheet. See the article for all the details. A great idea.

HTML Tricks for Bloggers

Useful HTML Tricks for Bloggers - Add a Touch of Style - how-to wrap text around an image or add a pull-quote etc. to enhance your blog posts.

How to turn your blog in to an OpenID

How to turn your blog in to an OpenID - not just the how to but the why to.

"Wouldn’t it be great if you could use the same account to log in to multiple sites and applications, without having to trust them all with your password? Wouldn’t it be even better if you could do this without having to hand ownership of your online identity over to some monolithic third party?"

A good primer for the openID standard.

Code Formatter

Code Formatter - prepares code snippets for inclusion in a blog entry. The code is formatted with line numbers, indentation is left intact and special characters are replaced with entities.

Code Formatter allows the user to set indent size, border and row colour and has the option to remove empty lines, as well.

The output code features the html and the css to properly display the code on a web page.

A great tool to bookmark for anyone who ever posts code snippets to their blog or website.

WordPressMU: Multi-user WordPress released

WordPress MU › Home - a multi-user version of WordPress that allows for unlimited users and blogs from one install.

Apparently it's not as user-friendly as WordPress itself to set up. Some experience with setting up programs on servers is suggested. But once set up, it supports regular WordPress plugins and themes.

Styling Dates

Design Melt Down ｧ Styling Dates - filed under "inspiration" for the next time I'm looking for ideas for styling dates for a site.

10 Best Wordpress Plugins Recommendation

My Top 10 Best Wordpress Plugins caught my eye as I have just set up my first Wordpress blog, after years as a Movable Type user.

The learning curve is a bit steep, particularly because I am php-challenged, but I welcome plugin recommendations like these. There are just so many plugin options for WP!

State of the Blogosphere Aug 06

Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, August 2006

"The blogosphere has been doubling in size every 6 months or so ...on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day." WOWSA!

Commentful

Commentful - keep track of blog comments and followups with ease

"Commentful is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr pictures, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, such as a new follow-up or comment, Commentful notifies you instantly."

I never had much luck with the other comment tracking services so I might give this a go. Comes with a Firefox extension as well.

Blogging Primer

PaulStamatiou.com - HOW TO: Start Blogging - a nice how-to write-up which outlines the things to consider if you'd like to start blogging..

7 Essential Books for Building your blog

Essential Books for Building Your Blog - StrayPackets, includes some great suggestions and I would highly recommend not only to new bloggers but those bloggers who don't know a bit of CSS/HTML. Blogging is so much more fun when you can tweak/add things yourself.

How to Install Movable Type on Windows XP

I love having a local install of Movable Type on my Windows XP computer. It's just so handy for developing and testing blog designs and set-ups well away from live blogs on the server. And a local install means I don't have to be online to use Movable Type, either, so when the connection drops I've got something o do ;)

I've used a number of methods to install Movable Type on my Windows XP computer, but thanks to a new laptop, I got the opportunity to install it yet again with a new windows server program - XAMPP. If you'd like your own local Movable Type install (or just local server install for playing around on), complete and relatively easy instruction on how-to follow ...

Continue reading "How to Install Movable Type on Windows XP" »

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