ankurb – Page 147 – Ankur Banerjee's personal blog

WordPress plugins I use

(Pre-article) post-script: A lot of people have asked me whether I sit down to write blog posts every day. I don’t. I prefer to write when I feel like on a particular day in a sort of ‘writing session’ where I write multiple posts. Then I set them for scheduled publication on future dates. Mystery solved.

Akshay asked me recently what WordPress plugins I use, so I thought making a blog post about it because other might be interested too. This is obviously for people who are running self-hosted WordPress. Here’s my list (in alphabetical order):

µAudio Player: Lightweight Flash player for playing MP3 files inline. First installed for VoiceTAP posts, but I plan to do more podcasts / vlogcasts in the near future.
Akismet: Blog spam can be quite irritating and I stick to the popular Akismet plugin. I’m not very happy with it though. Oftentimes it flags legitimate comments as spam, which means every once in a while I need to sift through spam, which can be quite a lot. I’ve been meaning to switch to Mollom for a long time. It’s a system similar to Akismet made by Dries Buytart, the creator of Drupal – but it’s a bit more advanced. It allows more filtering on the basis of low-quality / profanity. What I find to be the killer feature is that normally, it uses an Akismet-like silent evaluation system, but if it thinks a comment is spam then it presents a CAPTCHA for the user to solve. That way, bot spam can be blocked, but if it’s a legit human comment then the user can solve the CAPTCHA and go through. I haven’t gone ahead with this since I haven’t come across a demo of how the CAPTCHA thing works – the kind of CAPTCHA shown, how it’s presented to the user etc. I’d like to see that before using this. Anyone know of a site currently using Mollom?
AntiVirus: It’s a deceptive name because this plugin is actually searching things like hidden iframes, Javascript eval expressions etc which are often used to infect sites. It’s good to have this installed because you never know when this might happen and you get blocked by Google for being a malware distributor.
NM-Delete-Revision: I wouldn’t want to turn revisions in WordPress off completely, but I occasionally want to purge my database of revisions I don’t need any more. You’ll die a miserable death due to excessive laughing if you ever dare to use the original plugin.
FD FeedBurner Plugin: Although FeedBurner itself suggests FeedSmith, that plugin hasn’t been updated for a while. Granted there isn’t much to update, but FD FeedBurner adds a few extra options such as ‘Don’t redirect category / tag feeds’ (I suggest you enable this) and the option to redirect your comment feed too.
Google XML Sitemaps: Creates a sitemap which can then be used by search engines for indexing your site. Despite the name, it goes beyond Google and supports other search engines too. You can assign priorities to different sections of your blog – which you should definitely set. Don’t make the stupid mistake of assigning a high priority to all pages.
Grunion Contact Form: Simplest contact form you’ll get. It’s made by Matt Mullenweg. Mails are first checked by Akismet then sent to the email ID of the person who created the page where it’s put. If you want something with a bit more features use Enhanced WP Contact Form.
MobilePress: Creates a version of your blog for mobile devices. It makes life so much easier for those browsing through a phone, and a lot of people do!
Official StatCounter Plugin: I use StatCounter instead of Google Analytics because I find that Analytics gives reports completely out of line with StatCounter, WordPress.com Stats, and IzeaRanks. Not necessarily need because you can insert the tracking code manually, but having this plugin ensures that if you change a theme and forget to re-insert tracking code then you won’t lose data. (It happened to me. I’ve been using this plugin after that incident.) If you use Google Analytics then you’ve many plugins to choose from.
One Click Plugin Updater: WordPress (since v2.7) has plugin update functionality, but it requires multiple steps with first needing to fill FTP password. This plugin not only makes upgrades a one-click affair, but also provides an easy way to install plugins / themes.
Optimize DB: Run this occassionally to optimize the size of your WordPress database.
Photo Dropper: I mentioned this on my blog earlier. Allows you to search Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr and insert them in your posts. Good for giving a bit more visual appeal to your posts.
Share+: I don’t like ShareThis / AddToAny / Sociable kind of plugins because unless you have lots and lots of visitors, you aren’t going to get Dugg / Reddit’d regularly. However, adding these (excluding Sociable) slows down your blog as it makes a request to an external server for the files needed for the button. If might even bring your blog to a standstill if the external site is not reachable. While this is true for Share+ by Grouptivity too, it offers the option of easy emailing which none of the others offer. Bookmarking site options are available in another tab and the whole thing is configurable.
Subscribe To Comments: Essential! When people leave a comment, they are actively choosing to a part of a discussion. If you force them to come and check manually for responses, it dampens the motivation to have such interesting conversations. Subscribe To Comments makes it easier for commentors to stay in the loop, and possibly encouraging discussions.
WordPress.com Stats: To verify StatCounter results. Just a backup option.
WP-DB-Backup: Essential! Allows you to create on-demand database backups or scheduled backups of your WordPress database. Weekly scheduled backups is a sensible option.
WordPress Video Plugin: Allows you to insert videos without having to paste code. This can be convoluted process otherwise in WordPress as it tries to ‘correct’ HTML on pasting code in. Instead, you use shortcodes to just mention the URL you want to embed. There are many such video plugins. I chose this one because it supports the largest number of video sharing sites – and more importantly, Yahoo! Video. (No seriously, there’s no better place than Yahoo! Video for movie trailers – I do movie reviews often – because Yahoo! itself puts up videos in tie-up with movie studios. So there’s no danger of, say, embedding a YouTube video and then finding a few days down the line that the trailer has been deleted due to copyright infringement.)
WP-Print: Creates a stripped-down version of a page tailor-made for printing. This removes sidebars, styling etc. Needs a few more steps after installation which you should read up after installing.
WP Greet Box: Allows you to set customized welcome messages for first time visitors, visitors arriving from search engines, visitors from Twitter / Facebook / social bookmarking sites, et al based on the referrer URL.

So that’s what I use. What about other (self-hosted) WordPress users – do you guys use any other plugin which makes a blog experience better better for you / your readers?

Shoot ‘Em Up

Bullets + gore + boobs, in that order. That's a review of the movie within 140 characters. — Bullets + gore + boobs, in that order. That's a review of this movie within 140 characters.

My rating of Shoot ‘Em Up (aka The Movie Which Needed Just About Any Excuse To Be Made): B (Good)
Cast: Clive Owen, Monica Belluci, Paul Giamatti
Directed by: Michael Davis
Studio: New Line Cinema

Thank the heavens above for directors like Michael Davis. (Directors who’s first name is Mike are so awesome, aren’t they?) They make dick flicks to maintain the disturbance caused in the Yin-Yang balance by the directors who make chick flicks. Dick flick directors’ plot ideas are so succinct that it brings tears to the eyes of any script writer. Like, “Two college buddies on a road trip are being pursued by a terrifying monster truck“ or “A college freshman has sex with a girl during a power outage and never sees her face. When he goes in search of the mystery girl, he realizes there are about one hundred suspects to consider“. So when HBO said that Shoot ‘Em Up would be premiering for the first time today, I had to watch this. Including all the ad breaks it would take just 1.5 hours of my time. That’s how easily you can sum up this movie.

I really don’t feel like talking about the plot here – because I could sum it all up in a few lines and then you’ll have nothing to watch. Clive Owen is a mercenary who’s a cross between Bugs Bunny, Karamchand jasoos, and Hitman. Man. That guy eats more carrots during the entire duration of the movie than the number of bullets fired, and that is not underestimating the number of bullets fired. So there’s this baby whose mother is killed and he decides to protect it. Bad Guys LLC starts chasing Clive Owen (“Mr Smith”) around to kill the baby. (You’ll find out why if you watch the movie…come on, let at least this bit remain secret!) Since babysitters don’t accept carrots as a form of currency, Mr Smith brings a hooker (Monica Bellucci) into the picture to take care of the baby. Hilarity gunfight ensues.

Forget torturing someone with cigarette stubs. Bad guys shoot a few bottles to ‘heat up the gun nozzle’ and then use it to burn someone’s skin. Owen wants to track down the baby’s mother, so he decides to go to a club which plays heavy metal. Why? Because when switching between TV channels, the baby starts crying if news channel is on and stops if you switch to a music channel playing death metal <insert joke about the irony of the baby’s mom being dead>. The reason for this is given as follows: Baby’s mom spends a lot of time at death metal club > Baby heard a lot of death metal while in the womb > Baby (thus) stops crying on hearing death metal (as opposed to a lullaby) > Hence Proved (I’ve so desperately wanted to write these two words after class 10th.)

Don’t you ever let Rajnikanth see this movie. If he does, then he’ll commit suicide by snoring up milk through his nose to drown himself. Leaving aside the kick-ass (literally) gunfights, this movie has such memorable moments. Like when Clive Owen needs to kill THE Bad Guy (Paul Giamatti grinning like a vampire), so he puts bullets between his fingers and holds his hand close to a fireplace. (If you don’t know what that does, dumbass, the answer is that the bullets shoot forward just like they would from a gun.) The finishing touch is given by a little flame on Owen’s index finger which he blows out. You see how deep this movie is? That was a reference to a smoking gun!

Then there’s this scene where Owen gives a short anti-gun lecture on an airplane, kills a guy, then jumps off with a parachute. Ever-resourceful baddies (in large numbers) join in the skydive. There. Is. A. Gunfight. Mid-air. If you buy an original DVD of the movie and watch it with subtitles on, it says at this point “Ha! Up yours, Equilibrium“. Wanna know what level of gore is there? During this skydiving scene, a bad guy falls on the rotating blades of a helicopter (mid-air) and gets dismembered (zoom at this point to bloody hand).

Michael Davis snocks a cook at other movies in the dick flick genre too. Let me demonstrate. When Owen-Bellucci are discussing what to feed Oliver (the baby’s name – chosen because Mr Smith “…didn’t hate the book Oliver Twist”) while Bellucci and the baby are holed up inside a friggin’ tank (don’t ask, don’t ask…), Owen suggests ‘pureed carrots’ instead of ‘Beech-Nut Baby Food’. And the classic line (by Owen)…

I hate those lame action movies where they call only one ‘good guy’ and get double-crossed. So instead of just the NBC, I also called ABC, The Post…and the FBI.

If only getting in touch with top media outlets and the FBI was so easy, so many more crimes would get reported sooner. No, no, NO – I don’t even want to know the outrageous back-story on how Owen made it past IVRS systems / receptionists.

There are a few funny moments. Owen decides to lecture a mom who’s spanking her kid at a railway station by spanking her butt, giving a short lecture along the lines of “How do YOU feel now?”. And when Owen & Bellucci are having sex while the baby is howling for attention (edited out by HBO), a few bad guys charge in and Owen shoots them down; says, “Now that’s discharging your load.” Or the Rube Goldberg machine set-up that Owen uses to single-handedly take down a team of shooters when cornered in a gun factory.

The second best scene is saved for last. In a robbery holdup, Owen snatches a robber’s gun using a carrot (no kidding!) before proceeding to kill the robber and his pals. There’s a mind-bogglingly complex chain which involves shooting a dead guy in the arm, which in turn makes the dead guy fire a bullet, which in turn blows up a milkshake glass, which in turn…you’ve gotta see it to believe it.

[yahoo 3775792]

Watch the theatrical trailer for Shoot ‘Em Up

But you know what? All this stuff defines this movie. This is what it makes an enjoyable watch. It’s outrageous at such a FTW level that when you’re watching the movie, you can help but to cheer it wildly till the finishing line. I don’t like eating popcorn during a (potentially) thought-provoking movie because I find it distracting. I finished a BIG bowl when watching Shoot ‘Em Up.