For those of you who use Firefox in any of the recent incarnations, you’ll be quite happy to discover there are hundreds of ‘add-ons’ that you can use for your installation.

I have repeatedly reinstalled my add-ons as I’ve changed pcs over the last few months, but I can never remember all of the adds that I have so this post is to help me, and inform you of the plugins that I like to use…

AdBlock Plus: Blocks Ads. It’s that simple. Useful if you want to make sure you don’t click on your own Google Ads by mistake!

All-In-One Sidebar: a useful plugin that puts everything you need in a sidebar (yes, another sidebar!), just like in the photo on the right.

FasterFox: a plugin that automates the process of speeding up your browser.

Firefox Showcase: Make it easy to switch to the right window in FF. This is very useful for people who open multiple windows (as I do!).

FireFTP: I’ve been a fan of FileZilla for a long time, but recently found that the software isn’t as reliable as it used to be. Having an FTP client IN your browser really helps with little things that you have to upload, but forgot!

Foxmarks: Blogged here already.

Foxy Tunes: Adds a simple Media Controller at the bottom of the browser, and works with MOST media players nowadays. I always install it.

GmailSpace: An easy to add plugin that turns your Gmail into a kind of folder for your hard drive! Upload all sorts of stuff, and store it in Google.

IETab: Allows with one click the option to show pages through IE. This is fabulous if you have trouble accessing CERTAIN websites without support for FF. (it’s insane that all sites still don’t support FF! Even MSN does nowadays.). Anyway, it works well.

PayperpostOpps: for Payperpost Opps.

Reload Every: so you’re bidding on Ebay, and your worried about losing out on the auction! Reload allows you to auto-reload the page every x seconds/minutes.

Scribe Fire: The old Performancing plugin. I use it occasionally now, as I prefer BlogDesk for its no-nonsense use, and nice jpeg handling.

Search Status: Allows you to check the PR and Alexa ranking, amongst other things.

Tab Mix Plus: Adds extra options on each tab. Very useful, if you close a tab accidentally.

I’m including a jpeg of my desktop to show you what I mean. It’s a little blurry, but you can make out the obvious ones! Anyway, these are my favorite plugins right now. Any other ‘essential’ suggestions? Add them to our comments! Also, I would like to see who has the most! I have 16, but I can think of another six that I’d like! Anyone got more?

Since this is the second time today I had to trouble shoot an plugin/theme issue the only solution to which was simply removing the offending item(s), I’m becoming a little more untrusting towards plugins and themes! And with good reason!

I have spent more than three hours trying to fix problems with plugins and themes today, and they were driving me crazy! At first, I thought it was my own incompetence at using these tools in the first place! Everyone knows the phrase RTFM right! Well, of course I never do! But then when I went to check the documentation for the offending plugins/themes, it was very sketchy, 99% of which I either knew already or didn’t need to know! So, I stopped blaming myself and started removing them! Then the sun came out again! And the land was filled with rejoicing! Things worked again! So, to prevent hours of unnecessary frustration, and the ill effects of poorly written themes and plugins, I’m proposing the “Play Area”.

This, however, is only for blog authors who have their own full hosting/ftp/mysql, etc., it will save you a lot of extra heartache when you discover the theme of your dream or the plugin of your fantasy just don’t work, conflict with the theme, crash your blog, or corrupt your database! It’s only your ‘play area’ that fails, and you can always reinstall there! I call it a kind of insurance policy!

Here’s what you do:

1. create a special subdomain such as http://playarea.yourdomain.com (or a folder, perhaps?)
2. make a copy of your database and download it.
3. get and upload the latest version of Wordpress in your NEW subdomain in #1.
4. create a new Database in MYSQL, and upload your existing data to your new MYSQL database.
5. edit the wp-config.php in the NEW area so that the data there matches your new installation OR follow the installation process when setting up Wordpress.
6. (optional) you can also password the entire subdomain using .htaccess and .htpasswd, so that it is only available to you!

It’s also a good idea if your website makeover is bigtime, and you still need to check the original from time to time.

Please note: it can be tricky to get this to work properly, if you just copy all the files from one area to the new subdomain. That can work well, too. I did it several times, but it took me ages to get the installations working properly, as I had to hack the database on one occasion, and login repeatedly to get to the write place to configure the settings!

However, when you set yourself up with a play area, an identical installation of your blog but in a separate area of your website (perhaps with its own password, so only you get to visit it) and a separate database. You call it whatever you like! Every time you want to install a new theme, add code, add a new plugin, or play with stuff, experiment there, so that your main blog is still available. If it goes down, no big deal, you didn’t lose anything, and your main blog still works fine! It’ll save you a LOT of trouble. Trust me!

Visitors to my blog!

I’m having to apologize again for the comment challenge plugin being broken again. I had a period where I had no comments at all, and then I figured that the Comment Challenge was interfering with one of the other plugins. I removed the plugin and lo! everything was sunny in InvestorBlogger.land.

But then just recently the flow of comments just stopped! I didn’t think to check that the plugin was wreaking havoc with my visitors until a kindly person dropped me a note!

So, until this plugin plays nicely with my blog, I’m disabling it and removing it. I did check for problems like this on the author’s blog, but couldn’t find anything (but then the author doesn’t use this plugin either!). So, it’s good bye from Comment Challenge, and it’s goodbye to commenter frustration! Apologies!