Actually, because I had a little time to spend surfing over the New Year period, I came across these excellent suggestions “Check your Plugins this New Year“.

While WordPress is self sufficient to run as a system for a novice blogger, the more advanced bloggers like to enhance its functionality using Plugins. There are already a few hundred, if not thousand plugins … This wide choice of plugins can be very “tempting” and we end up installing a lot of plugins without giving a second thought; many of these we rarely use. … This post will stress on the importance of regular and continuous plugin maintenance.

While I won’t summarize the article here, I would like to say that some of the tips are quite handy, esp.

• 1. Install basic and necessary plugins first
• 2. Only install a plugin if you need it
• 3. Find a better alternative
• 4. Embed code in the template if possible instead of using a plugin
• 5. Remove files of deactivated plugins
• 6. Check regularly for updates. Security upgrades are mandatory

I do think that tips #2, #5 and #6 are quite within the realms of even the more basic users. If you know how to upload a plugin, I think you can manage #5 and #6. Tip #2 is quite difficult for beginners and even more experienced bloggers because we want to try everything! Tips #3 and #6 might require more effort and distract bloggers from getting their blogging done. But Tip #4 might be the MOST challenging even for experienced bloggers. And so I think perhaps #5 had best be done by those familiar with PHP to some extent, and who can understand that messing with PHP in their blogs can seriously damage the blog.

In general, I think that the best plugins are ones that enhance the reader’s experience either directly or indirectly. Indirectly might include making things easier for the writers/administrators of the blogs! After all, what is a blog without readers? Right?

I was recently taking a look at my stats for the blog. I noticed that my visitors were only reading one page or so, I recalled that I had at an earlier point had a better rate, but it had dropped to only about 1.13 pages per visitor. I couldn’t figure out why because I had installed it, and it was activated.

Turns out, I had changed the theme, and forgotten to include the tracking code for this plugin in the theme’s page for Single Posts. Well, once I edited the theme for that, my stats improved a great deal. In fact, Monday’s rating was now over 2.4, so that was an instant improvement. In fact, that improvement is the primary reason I am recommending this plugin. It works, it’s as simple as that. So you can go to the website here and read about it, download it, and install it yourself.

I’m considering installing the code on all posts that occur on the main page as well as the single post pages.

Happy 2007.