OK, I admit, there might be some people out there who think that I am doing nothing else but writing about WordPress plugins - or better: that I am installing plugins over plugins over plugins just to have something to write about on my blog.

Hm, that might even be true… but I don’t mind.

Do you?

If so: just don’t read any futher, because this post will be ALL ABOUT PLUGINS - I have found so many in the last few days - and forgot to write about some others that I am already using for quite some time - that I thought it would be best to collect them within one single post - this way, you do not have to read 7 single posts.

OK - let’s start…

• Admin Drop Down Menus (aka Advanced Admin Menus)
  This plugin replaces the menus in the admin panel with nice CSS dropdown menus.
• AskApache RewriteRules Viewer
  I never understood how permalinks really work - taking a further look at the .htaccess was disappointing and not of any use. Now, this plugin comes in really handy, because it shows you every single rewrite rule your WordPress installation is using - perfect!
• Dashboard Editor
  This one comes in handy if you want to integrate some statistics or anything else into the dashboard to be seen right when you enter the admin area - just write some code and it will be shown there! In addition to this, you can choose which sections shall be shown, i.e. you can choose to remove e.g. the incoming links section or the WordPress developers news section.
• Headache With Pictures
  Not quite sure about the title… but with this plugin, you can add some notes to the dashboard like “post about plugin XY”.
• Search Phrases [de]
  Show a chronical list of search phrases (including the search engine) that people used to find your blog. In addition to this, you can show the most popular search phrases. The plugin site is in German.
• Sphere Related Content
  Quote from the website: “The Sphere Related Content Widget finds blog posts and media articles related to your content. It gives your readers additional info on the things you like to write about, and they like to read about; making YOU look like a hero.“
• The Excerpt Reloaded
  This plugin does what I always wanted to be done: instead of your post being truncated without any option and shown plain (and boring) by the original “the_excerpt()” function of WordPress, this plugin - that was originally written by Kaf Oseo - gives you control over the length and the format of your excerpt. While truncating the post, this plugin tries to prevent tags from not being closed - it works in most cases. Sometimes, properly closing the tags does not work, which will break XHTML validity - e.g. if a link is created at the very position where the post is truncated. Anyway, it works in most cases, and I am sure they find a way of further improving the plugin.

OK, that’s it for now… thanks for staying awake!