There’s a Plugin for That.

Excuse the unpaid advertisement, but working with WordPress is … complicated. Extending or revising the core functionality, accessing undocumented data, and sometimes even just serving the right content at the right time requires patience, hacking around, and, most importantly, Google. In addition to my  custom scripts which, trust me, you don’t want to see, I’ve collected a few helpful plugins along the way to making this site happen. You’re not reading this blog so I can tell you to use Akismet, so this list won’t be exhaustive. Here’s the current tale of the tape:

Extended User Profile

You might have noticed WordPress doesn’t offer a field for your Twitter handle in your profile. Sure, you could use an alternative field like Yahoo! IM, but we want to be consistent right? Extended User Profile allows you to use WordPress’s native User Meta fields to add custom profile attributes like the ones you see on my profile.

User Photo

No profile is complete Let’s be honest. People like photos, and having one makes you at least marginally credible (fact). You can’t do that without a plugin. The one that works for me is User Photo. Combine with previous ingredients for best profile taste.

TinyMCE Advanced

While WordPress has made great strides in improving the editor, it’s hardly perfect. TinyMCE Advanced allows you to customize which icons are visible (you don’t really use the underline button, do you?) and adds a handy drop down for applying custom classes.