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Last week I attended a Biznik WordPress Chatter event hosted by Bob Dunn. One of the questions thrown out to the group was about must-have plugins. If you’re using WordPress, you’ve probably noticed there are seemingly endless amounts of plugins to do a wide variety of things from pulling in your Twitter feed to backing up your WP database (a REALLY good idea to do regularly) to making your coffee in the morning. Okay, there is no plugin to make you coffee, but you get the idea.

Here’s a short list of what I think would be necessary and very helpful plugins to have. Not every user needs every plugin, and you don’t want to go full tilt boogie installing plugins just because you can. Install only what you need, keep up with any updates made to them, be very mindful about updating your general WP installation and how that relates to any installed plugins (deactivate your plugins BEFORE updating WP!), deactivate plugins not in use, and delete what you don’t need. In other words, keep it clean, yo!

The necessities:

• Akismet – This comes pre-installed, but you need to activate it. Activation requires acquiring a WordPress API key. Don’t share the key, it’s user-specific. If you’re developing WP sites for other people, they each need their own key.
• All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WP website/blog for robots, and gives you control over page titles, meta tags, etc. SEO is a hot-button topic, and my 2 cents is that first and foremost, your website/blog should be optimized for human beings, not robots. Feel free to argue amongst yourselves ;)
• Contact Form 7 – Allows you to create multiple contact forms, complete with CAPTCHA.
• Google Analytics – Track visitors, where they come from, links, downloads, and AdSense clicks.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask-compliant XML sitemap that updates itself every time you create a new page or post.
• Login Lockdown – Logs all failed login attempts to your WP admin area, and can be configured to block IP addresses if a certain number of failed attempts happen in a specified period of time.
• WordPress Database Backup – You REALLY need to backup your database frequently, especially if you’re prolific. If you’re cranking out the posts on a daily basis, back that thang up weekly. If you’re posting infrequently, back it up every couple of weeks or monthly, but do it. This nifty-swell plugin will email you a copy of your database, which you should tuck away in a safe place. Please, please, please, DO NOT store your database backup on your server, it’s just asking for trouble.
• WordPress DBManager – For more control over your WP database, including repairing and restoring, running queries, as well as creating backups, this plugin is the one to install.

Stream your life:

• Flickpress – Pull in a designated number of photos from your Flickr account. Super easy to configure, and has a bit of flexibility with thumbnail layout and arrangement.
• Reliable Twitter – Your tweets, now on your blog/website! If your sidebar is widgetized, adding your Twitter feed is as simple as drag and drop.

While I’ve provided links to each of these plugins, it more efficient to search for, and install them within your WP installation.

When it comes time to start building a website for your client (or yourself), where do you do the build-out? On the client’s server? On your server? What if the client already has a live site, and you need to make major changes/additions but you don’t want to interfere with the site. What do you do? What do you do???

MAMP for Mac users

If you’re a Mac user, you can build the site on your own machine, for you have a built-in Apache web server as part of the Apple operating system. To be perfectly honest, I switched to the Mac world 9 years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows box since, so I have no idea what PC folks have pre-installed, but I do know you can install PWS (Personal Web Server) or IIS.

I choose not to use the built-in in server on my Macbook because it requires some tinkering with to use MySQL, something I use frequently. Instead, I choose to use a free, stand-alone application called MAMP, which is a PHP development environment that includes MySQL. It allows me to build a website on my laptop, so I can test layout and functionality without uploading anything to a live server, or running the risk of screwing up anything on a live site. The video explains it.

MAMP is a Mac-only product, but Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac users can use the equally free alternative application called XAMPP to accomplish the same goal of building and testing sites locally.

Click on the image to view the video. Flash 9 player or higher is required.

I’m very excited about being able to offer hands-on workshops and labs in Seattle. It wouldn’t be possible without the help of the wonderful folks at Q Cafe in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood.

Fostering community has been a focus of mine, both online and offline, since I first started building pieces of the web back in 1997, and I’m happy to be able to team up with Q Cafe, who also focus on building and maintaining community. One of my reasons for partnering with Q Cafe is their commitment to donating 10% of all their cafe sales each month to a local non-profit organization.

All of my hands-on workshops/labs will be held in Q’s conference room, and all coffee (Stumptown), direct trade espresso drinks, teas, pastries, bagels, water, will be provided for full day sessions. If you arrive early enough, you can snag one of the big leather chairs pictured below!

Q Cafe Conference Room

I chose Q Cafe for some practical reasons too:

• Plenty of free parking
• Right on the #15 and #18 bus routes
• Chill, comfortable environment
• Great coffee and tea (those things are important)

I plan to have regular workshops/labs at Q Cafe on a monthly basis in WordPress, Dreamweaver, and more. My video editing labs will resume as well. Jump on my mailing list for the heads-up about all workshops first.

If you’re in the Interbay neighborhood, drop by Q Cafe for a damn good cup of coffee or tea, check out the local artists work on display around the space, or sit back and enjoy some live music. You’ll be glad you did.

This screencast is a brief overview of the CSS box model. The model itself isn’t a very difficult concept, but understanding it is critical to diving into the world of CSS-based layout. Hopefully, this video will paint a clear picture of the box model.

Click on the image to view the video. Flash 9 player or higher is required.

CSS box model