ChrisBunting.com

I think I’m getting to the point that I’ve added so many plugins, the load time for generating the pages is a nuisance. I went from around 20-some queries in less than a quarter of a second, to 40+ queries in sometimes 3 or 4 seconds. That’s bad. But we’re still in the early development stages of the site…adding things, removing things, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. So if you don’t like something that’s been changed, let me know. Conversely, if there’s something you think would be a great addition or a wonderful idea, comment on that, too. With that said, here are the newest additions to the growing plugin family:

I added the Image Headlines plugin by Brian “Coldforged” Dupuis. This plugin simply changes the headlines from text to highly customizable images. I can change the color, the background, the position, add a shadow, and much more. The time to initially generate a new headline has some modest overhead, but the images are cached to prevent constant, higher load times.

Also added were the Comment Count, Post Count, Recent Comments, and Recent Posts plugins, all from Nick Momrik. These plugins basically do what they’re named. You can see the Recent Comments and Posts in action along the right sidebar, and the Comment and Post Count doing their thing at the bottom of the page.

Another plugin that was added is the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin from Alex King. I desperately wanted an easy way to browse my site on my Dell Axim X30, and this plugin lets me do just that. The plugin automatically detects mobile devices based on their User-Agent string, and directs them to a mobile formatted edition of the site. Very cool stuff. Most likely, though, the majority of my visitors won’t ever see this plugin in action.

Finally, there’s a plugin that I’ve been using for a while, but forgot to mention because it does its work behind the scenes. The Time Zone plugin from Kimmo Suominen helps WordPress users “automatically set the weblog time offset based on the time zone of the server, or by using an explicit TZ value. The main purpose of this plugin is to allow automatic DST handling.” Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t accurately handle DST, and my weblog time was off by an hour since we recently sprung forward. This plugin takes care of the hassle of manually changing the GMT offset whenever we fall back or spring forward.

Wow, what a post. Remember to post any comments you might have about any of the features that I add/remove/adjust!