One of the greatest features of WordPress is the vast extent to which users can customize (through plugins, themes, and hacks) the look, feel, and functionality of their weblogs – allowing your blog to be simultaneously powerful and unique. As stated in the codex:

“Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins offer custom functions so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs”

WP plug-ins can do anything from addg technorati tags to your blog to grabbing your latest furl or de.li.cio.us links and automatically displaying them on your site to generating teaser previews of your posts.

But where do you get plugins for WordPress? Well, if you know PHP you can make them yourself, but most will probably want do download the plugins that others have authored and made freely available to the wordpress community.

I’ve found the following pages to contain links to many plugins. However, it is often unclear whether a plugin was designed to work in v1.5 or if it only works in older versions of wp (it is up to each individual plugin author to decide whether they want to update their plugins), so for now you’re just getting a bunch of links out of me, but I have plans to go through them all and put together a comprehensive list of plugins that work in wordpress 1.5+.

Sources for wordpress plugins:

• The WordPress Plugin Directory
• The WordPress Plugins Database (provides wp 1.2 & wp 1.5 compatibility information, although I haven’t always found it to be accurate..)
• Blogging Pro’s list of wp plugins
• The WordPress Plugin and Mod Competition Blog and Wiki
• MundoGeek’s wordpress plugin list – seems very comprehensive, but it’s in spanish (also does not give compatibility info)
• Plugins « WordPress Codex

Be warned though, some plugins do not play well with others, so if you experience a problem simply deactivate the plugin through the plugin manager (or, if for some reason you cannot access it, rename the file in your plugins directory)

WordPress plugins are generally easy to install, only requiring you to upload them to your wp-content/plugins/ directory and then go to your Plugin Manager and ‘Activate’ the plugin of choice.

For information on customizing the look and feel of your wordpress site make sure to read the following articles on templates and themes:

• How to customize an existing WordPress 1.5 theme just the way you want

Just in case would-be WordPress developers were feeling empty since the completion of Alex King’s theme competition, along comes Mark with Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin and Mod Competition!

Given the popularity of Alex’s theme competition, this Plugin and Mod competition is sure to spark the creative juices of many in the WordPress community (much to the benefit of the entire WP community!) This is utterly fantastic because who knows in what ways new plug-ins will enhance the functionality of WordPress 1.5! I can’t wait to see the entries roll in.

The contest will run for two months, starting on April 15th (ugh – tax day…guess you can’t expect folks to have time to work on much before that), and while the prize list hasn’t been fully determined, there’s at least $500 in it for one lucky developer courtesy of weblogs.us, and Mark may even contribute a Sony PSP (which, btw, has one of the best TV ad campaigns I’ve ever seen – every commercial I see REALLY makes me want to buy one (and that says a lot since I usually pooka pooka (tivo) my way through commercials), alas I lack the funds

Creating Static Pages using WordPress

WordPress creates dynamic pages on the fly, using PHP, which means that it takes a WHOLE lot less time to publish your pages/site with WordPress than it does with MovableType. However, some have said that the dynamic pages create an additional load on the server (hey, but so does the process of publishing using MT), and others want static pages as they are more easily cached. According to Jeff Minard, a plugin for WordPress called ‘WP-Statictize’, will make ‘WP will create static versions of pages on the fly and essentially act like MT by creating static pages, just in a slightly different (note: better ) way.’

Fighting comment and TrackBack spam with a WordPress Plugin

Craig from nuclear moose candy said, ‘If you use WordPess in combination with Kitten’s Spam tool plugins, you get fantastic comment spam moderation. I can delete a comment, flag it as spam, add the IP, email address, and some keywords to the spam words list with a single click of the button. The tool is intelligent enough to delete duplicates from the spam words list, as well. Additionally, Kitten created a ‘retrospaminator’ which will go back through all of you old comments looking for any you may have missed.

Note – his site has a lot of great WordPress tips on it which I’m gonna go check out right now!

Brad Choate has created an amazing plugin for Movable Type that allows you to create and reference additional fields, making it more easy to use Movable Type as a semi-full featured CMS System