• WordPress Flickr Manager

I use flickr for photo sharing just because of the sheer amount of people on flickr, and it easily syncs with most other services, and especially with this plug in. It allows you to set and organize all your photos on flickr, and then those changes can be seen on your blog.

• All In One SEO Pack

I always use this plug in to create the titles and urls, and set site wide keywords and such. Pretty straight forward and easy to set up.

• Google Analytics for WordPress

If you have a google account, then you should be using analytics on your site, with this plug in you can simply enter your anayltics tracking code and you’re done, everything else is taken care of.

• Twitter Tools

If you twitter, and this really only applies if you do, you can tweet from your blog, or blog from your twitter, a lot of features makes this handy for tweetheads.

• WP-DBManager

Backing up your WP database seems important, so I install this too.

• WordPress Mobile Pack

Simplest way to set a site up for mobile browsers, it can detect and change the CSS depending on the user’s browser, and comes with a collection of mobile ready themes.

Let me know if there’s any plug-ins your WP blog can’t live without.

Finally got around to fixing some of the graphical/style elements of the HeadShot Blog and our Impulse One Blog.  Both were in need of some tweaking, so check ‘em out and let me know what you think of the progress so far.

I’m now in the process of learning adsense, because we don’t actually have any money to pay for adwords, so let’s see if there’s anything to placing unobtrusive text ads on our blogs.  I’ve started by testing a few banners on iNeed while it’s still operating.  Next I’ll learn to start placing it unobtrusively on all of our blogs, and then to any other blog that I make in the future that may need it, seems to be the thing to do these days.

Currently testing out a few adsense plug-ins, but nothing’s really standing out as a useful solution yet, maybe I’ll find it out there, and then actually post that plug-in article I’ve been working on, but that’s all in the future, unless your reading this now, then it may be in the present or past, or may not have happened at all, the unknown has yet to decide, or has it already been done….ooooeeeeeooooeeeeeeeuuuuu…..

Some minor visual fixes and suddenly a site can turn feel so much better.  I finally got back to cleaning up the visual flaws that were bothering me on 15roseave.com, and added some new functionality as well.

Re-worked the header,

added a global translation plug-in,

polished the social sidebar and now it includes the recent tweets,

Made the reservation button a fixed tab, and easy to understand,

and did a complete overall to the Rooms & Rates page, as well as the room pages themselves.

The wall is getting some action,

and I was finally able to write a few posts for the experiences.

And using the wonderful Twitter Tools plugin I have a tweet digest reporting all the tweets of the day, which is actually quite useful as I’m using the 15 rose twitter to RT any and all awesome things happening in the Venice/Santa Monica Area, so follow us if that’s your thing.

Head over and check out 15roseave.com sometime, let me know what you think.  And if your looking for a place to stay in California, well, you know where you can go…

Still plenty of work to do on it, but the framework is in place, and that’s what matters at the moment, the graphical fixes and extended features will come in time, but for now I’m focusing on the filling it with some content.

While in Big Bear after the wonderful NYE party we were walking around Big Bear Lake when we came across a flock of ducks standing in the snow.  While we stood there staring at them, they started walking towards us, and then surrounded us, we soon found ourselves in the middle of all these ducks just trying to find any water and probably hoping we would feed them, like most of the other humans they encounter.  I’ve thrown up the new pictures on my flickr and I’m trying to figure out one of these wordpress plugins so I can just show the photosets on this site…

edit: well I haven’t gotten the flickr manager to work exactley the way I want it, but it kind of works for now, I did get distracted enough to update the css, now I can read everything much better…

edit 2: Trent, the author of the flickr manager plugin, helped me out, and now there’s photo galleries on the site. yay! I’m so motivated by this new wordpress backend that I may make a few more posts tonight to keep playing with this plugin.