Skip to navigation | Skip to content
Spam is the bane of bloggers. The internet may yet be rendered close to useless thanks to the deadly combination of the low-cost, high-volume mechanized advertizing it facilitates and our culture’s emphasis on consumption and competition.
Still, we’re not going to make it easy for them.
Not having a list of favourite plugins on a WordPress-related blog is like not having a cute picture of your cat on your personal blog. Also, plugin developers deserve as much credit as possible! (I’m sure they appreciate donations, too ;-)
So, with thanks to all these generous developers, here’s my run-down. I’ve highlighted the ones that I include by default with the majority of my WP installations.
I well and truly cut my WordPress security teeth last year when my server got hacked. I summarized my lessons learned in that post, but the post also included a lot of things specific to the attack I was subject to. I thought I’d round up my WP security measures here for easy reference.
There’s many, many things you can do to secure WP. I’ll give links for further reading at the end. Documented here are my “baseline” measures that I make sure are in every WP deployment I create.
Given my increasing use of WordPress for fun and profit, when I saw a notice for WordCamp UK 2009, I thought I should sign up.
WordCamps are informal conferences revolving around everything WordPress. This year’s UK gathering is on the weekend of 18-19 July 2009 at the Future Inn, Cardiff. Seems like a great opportunity to catch up on the latest ideas, and to meet people. I much prefer socializing offline… Maybe see you there?
First off, hi to anyone who’s been reading my occasional posts here. I’ve just redesigned my site and I’m hoping to blog here a little more regularly. I’ve opened up the comments, so please say hello; I’m especially interested in anyone else working on similar things in WordPress who has ideas to add to my own.
I’m going to post a series of collections of code snippets and tips from my recent work with WP. I’ll try and group them together logically, though I’ll certainly end up with a “bits and bobs” post. I’ll also try and keep each post updated as I learn new stuff.
Many of the tips come from my current habit, when developing custom WP themes for clients, of minimizing plugins. If I can add a bit of code to functions.php rather than install a plugin, I’ll often do the former. Plugins are of course fantastic for more complex modifications, or for offering specific hacks to people who aren’t comfortable editing their theme’s PHP. But if neither of these apply, and the modification is very simple, it seems that it’s worth just slipping the code into your custom theme. Many of these snippets are just included in my default theme “skeleton”, which I edit as necessary for each project.
I should also stress that not all of these are results of my own ingenuity. I’ll credit people where possible, but often I’ve forgotten the source of the code.
OK, without further ado, here’s some media-related stuff.
Welcome! I build websites - mostly based on the brilliant, free & open 
