whats-in-yer-install

i’ve set up, built, designed - whatever you wanna call it - 4 or 5 dozen Wordpress based sites/blogs. And I was thinking the other day on how I do it. I’ve come up with a process.

I Use cPanel for everything I can get away with. Whether its Fantastico or Simple Scripts, always install Wordpress from within your admin panel. It’s faster, it more secure in that the system creates your passphrases and it’s just less headache. The downside is that it doesn’t give your DBs cool names.

As a tech, I often get stationed places with all kinda of government firewalls that block things like FTP. I’m sure I could get around or thru them, but then tools in cPanel allows me to install and edit things in real time. A lot of times Its often faster than FTP.

I was also thinking about the plugins I use in my installs. I should prolly standardize my plugin packages. So I’ll list here the plugins I use here at C-Net.:

Dashboard Editor Allows you to customise the dashboard. By Aaron Harun.
MiniMeta Widget Mini Version of the WP Meta Widget with different logon types and some additional admin links. By Daniel Hüsken.
Post Avatar Attach a picture to posts easily by selecting from a list of uploaded images. Similar to Livejournal Userpics. Developed with Dominik Menke. By Vicky Arulsingam.
Register Plus Enhance your Registration Page. Add Password Field, Invitation Codes, Disclaimer, Captcha Validation, Email Validation, Profile Fields and more. By Skullbit.
StatPress Real time stats for your blog By Daniele Lippi.
Subscribe To Comments Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.
TinyMCE Advanced Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE. By Andrew Ozz.
TinyMCEComments A simple hack to enable WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE on the comment field. By Thomas Au(MK).
WordPress Email Notification Plugin v2.3.1 Allow People To Sign Up For E-Mail Notifications By Brian Groce.
WP-SpamFree An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By Scott Allen, aka WebGeek.
About Me widget Adds an “About Me” widget to your sidebar.
DBC Backup Database Cron Backup By Chris T.
My Page Order My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages. By froman118.

I’m sure there are other plugins that I use on my other sites. Stay tuned. I’ll be doing an inventory and I’ll let you know what’s what. I may even go ahead and package them together.

What I’ve done is unzip them one at a time, removed the top level directory - if the plugin isn’t already in that directory- and then zipped them back up. Then I upload them via cPanel and extract them in the plugin directory. So now i’ve installed a dozen or so plugins without much fuss. Sure, the same thing could be done via FTP, but it eliminates a tab in my browser and I know it ain’t being blocked. There are, of course, a multitude of ways to do this, this is just my method. Can you imagine my heartbreak when I got to my desk and realized FTP was blocked?

I cried.

Real tears.

Seriously.

Tell me what plugins you love and hit me in the comment section.

Curt

PS - i ued to use simple tagging. I’m not sure if i’ll incorporate it into this site or not.