Haven’t posted a blog update in more than a year and I only realized that earlier today when I came across my last blog update. Blog updates are my way of keeping tabs on the stuff (changes/improvements) that I do here on JaypeeOnline, especially on the backend side of the system. At the same time, it is also a way to share with readers/visitors the different plugins that I use that they might find useful on their own blogs.
First major update that I’ve done recently is upgrading from WordPress 3.2.1 to WordPress 3.3.2. Another thing I’ve recently done was to cleaning up my blog theme’s code and taking out some unnecessary and obsolete pieces of code that add up to the total file size and page load time. I’ve also taken out the Alexa traffic widget and replaced the Networked Blogs widget with the Facebook Social Plugin.
Below are the different WordPress plugins that I’ve uninstalled and installed in the past few months:
Uninstalled Plugins
- Fluency Admin – WordPress admin dashboard theme. Changes in the admin dashboard design/layout in version 3.3, has made this plugin obsolete.
- Wibiya Toolbar – official Wibiya Toolbar plugin that integrates different social networking features, apps, widgets and other tools.
- WP SyntaxHighlighter – code syntax highlighter.
I’ve had the Fluency Admin plugin/theme for several years and it has been one of the most useful plugins I’ve had but I had to uninstall it because I no longer need it and it creates a “conflict” with the new WordPress admin dashboard user interface. If you’ve been following my blog updates you’ll know about my love-hate relationship with the Wibiya Toolbar. Although it does provide some benefits, I’ve decided to uninstall it to lessen the number of scripts running on the blog in an effort to lessen the page load time. Uninstalled the WP SyntaxHighlighter because for some reason it no longer works. I’ve edited and tweaked the pre and code tags stylesheet to make up for it.
Installed Plugins
- Comment Info Detector – plugin that detects and displays the commenter’s country, web browser and operating system.
- nRelate Flyout – plugin that displays a flyout of related posts on the side of the blog.
- TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner – plugin that keeps TimThumb installations up-to-ate and free from vulnerabilities. Also checks for signs of compromised sites.
- WP Security Scan – plugin that performs security scan of WordPress installation.
Reinstalled the Comment Info Detector plugin so I could get more information about my blog readers/commenters (country, browser, operating system). I installed the nRelate Flyout plugin to provide readers/visitors a way to find other relevant and related posts that they might be interested in and to help reduce the bounce rate. In the past, I only activated the WP Security Scan plugin whenever I wanted to perform a scan. Now I keep the plugin activated at all times.
So there you go. Those are the different changes and improvements that I’ve done here in the past few months. If you have any comments, feedback or suggestions to make this blog better, please don’t hesitate to share it via the comments section below or via the contact page.
[image source: flickr.com/photos/clement127]
