Woohoo! Major excitement for me. As mentioned before, there are two gallery alternatives that I feel are going to be great additions to any web site. And it just so happens that each of the developers have released updated beta versions of their software. Plogger beta 2 can be downloaded here, and Zenphoto beta 0.8.2 can be obtained from this link.
Meg mentioned to me about a website that you could use to produce a customized counter for various occassions, including when you’re expecting a baby. So we went there, she made one for her email signature, and I made one that could be displayed at the top of my blog. It’s so cuuuuuute! 
I’ve opened up comments on the site so that you don’t have to actually be registered and logged-in to comment on a post. You are required to enter your name and a valid email address, and you can optionally specify your web site before you submit your comment. Of course, I still recommend registering or being logged-in if you are going to be a frequent visitor. Registration has its perks. 
I do realize, though, that “frequent” in regards to my visitors means once a week or so. Hey, I’m just happy you’re here.
Plugins galore! I’ve added some more plugins to the site, in my never-ending quest to add as much functionality as I can into the site, without bringing it to a crawl (keeping the user experience pleasant). There are a lot of intelligent people out there that devote enormous amounts of time to developing plugins for WordPress, and I’m extremely thankful for their hard work and efforts. The newest additions to the plugin lineup include:
WOW. That was exceptionally easy. Kudos to the many hardworking and intelligent individuals responsible for creating and maintaining this wonderful piece of blogging software. I simply followed the steps that were outlined on the WordPress Support forum, and it may have taken me a full 10 minutes to finish the process! I’m very impressed.
It hasn’t even been a month since I installed the CMS software that powers this blog, but a fairly “major” update has been released and I might need to attempt an upgrade. I’m hesitant, though, because there have been a fairly large amount of users that have reported problems with migrating to this new version. On one hand, I’m thinking “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, whereas the other is tuned into the hushed discussions regarding the security fixes that are included in the updated release. Hmmm. I’ll have to think a little longer on which way I plan to go. I’ve already incorporated a few patches that supposedly take care of the “main” issues, but there isn’t exactly a straightforward list of all of the security problems that should be addressed by WordPress users that aren’t moving to version 1.5.1. I’ll sleep on it…
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:
Tonight, I’ve added two excellent plugins to the site to assist in keeping the comments spam-free. Now, I realize that I don’t get an exorbitant amount of traffic (ahem), but I think it’s very necessary to be proactive regarding the threat of spam with any online medium. Since I don’t have any real means of testing the new plugins, though, I’m not very familiar with the interface or error message a user might receive if they’re comment has been flagged as ’spam’. Luckily, I am the admin, and since the site’s userbase is so ‘compact’ and can get in touch with me easily through other means, we’ll see how these babies operate. Or I’ll remove them.