floydius it's almost like you've got nothing better to do

wordpress plugins

For those interested, here is a list of WordPress plugins I use for the site (listed alphabetically).

• WordPress Audio Player: Provides a sleek flash player for all my mp3 links. (example)
• Fallen Media Filter: Lets me embed pretty much any type of video or audio I would like with shortcodes. Old, but effective. (example)
• Google Analytics for WordPress: Posts my Analytics code properly so I don't have to edit every time I change themes.
• Header and Footer: Allows me to place custom code in my header and footer so I don't have to edit every time I change themes. Right now I use it to link my Pavatar on the off chance I visit a site that actually incorporates it.
• OpenID: Incorporates an OpenID provider and consumer into my blog. I can sign in/comment on other websites using my blog as an OpenID, and you can leave comments with yours. This requires XRDS-Simple, so I have that installed too. I used phpMyID at one time, but it did not allow my blog to be a consumer.
• Simple Facebook Connect: Allows you to leave comments via your Facebook profile. This plugin contains many modules for additional functionality.
• Simple Twitter Connect: Allows you to leave comments via your Twitter account. This plugin also contains modules for additional functionality.
• Spam Karma 2: This plugin hasn't been in development for over two years, yet it still dominates at separating the wheat from the chaff.
• Subscribe to Comments: Allows users to receive e-mail updates to comment replies.
• WP Social Blogroll: This is a great feed-reading blogroll for WordPress. It duplicates the functionality found in Blogger's sidebar.

blog list for WordPress

Since I've been blogging over the past 3-4 years, I've looked at several different software solutions. I've stayed with WordPress because it is simple and intuitive, but also allows me to maintain whatever level of control I desire through plugins and access to the code itself.

Nonetheless, Google's Blogger offers a lot of nifty features, and sometimes I get jealous when WordPress can't match up. One such feature is the blog list. Essentially, it is a feed aggregator that takes the form of a dynamic link list. My suspicion is that Google runs a specialized version of Reader to accomplish this. At the time of this writing, WordPress does not have this functionality included in the core version.

After much searching, I found Jan Weinschenker's Feed Reading Blogroll plugin. It does require some setup, but if you are savvy enough to host your own blog, you can probably handle it. (I am not sure if you can do this with a wordpress.com blog, as you need to be able to install the plugin.)

First, it requires that you obtain a key for Google's AJAX Feed API. This is easily done and only requires a Google account.

There is an option to enable feed discovery through the Google API, and that works very well. It appears that the favicon image can be automatically discovered too, but for some reason the widget would not display it. I had to define each link's favicon url in the link editor to get it to work; that can be tedious. My only other complaint is that some of the plugin's setup options are redundant, and it's hard to tell at first which takes precedent.

Overall, I'm very pleased that a plugin exists to match Blogger's blog list. Hopefully this will keep someone else from having to search as long as I did.

up and running

If you were wondering, I have not completely disappeared from the blogosphere. A couple of months back, I attempted to update WordPress to a newer version and experienced a complete data loss. I have finally located all of my lost data in a backup and restored all my old posts. I've also cleaned up some dead links and am ready to start posting again. Carry on, citizens.

anniversary

Hello everyone. Just thought I would announce that this is the one year anniversary of Blog.Floydius.com. Congratulations to all the writing staff (me) for all the mindless dribble (this). Cheers.