I just noticed that I have somewhat neglected to blog about Wordpress in general. My navigation bar shows merely 4 entries. Hah! And since this is not the time to procrastinate, I thought I better share with you guys my personal favorite plugins ^^. Apart from being such an awesome blogger software, the community features a whole lot of plugins that you can use to tweak-up your site. I myself am using only a few that I have carefully picked.

Anyhow, here is a list of essential Wordpress plugins that, I believe, any serious Wordpress blogger should consider:

1. Askimet - The Ultimate Wordpress Antispam plugin
2. Contact Form with integrated Antimspam
3. All-In-One SEO - A plugin that optimizes your blog for Search Engines
4. Share this - Will allow your reader to share the content via a link with a friend via email
5. Instant WP Upgrade - This plugin allows you to easily upgrade your Wordpress
6. Photodropper - Allows you to use and embed your Flickr pictures
7. Easytube - Allows you to embed Youtube into your Wordpress site
8. Database backup - Allows you to backup your Wordpress database

Feel free to add any in the comment section!

Hope you guys had a great Christmas. Our Christmas had been pretty uneventful. We are still here in LA, enjoying my mother-in-laws awesome Korean food and chilling out for the rest of the year. So, what has happened lately?. I have tried passing an exam in my field called the RAC (Regulatory Affairs Certification) and am still pretty nervous about the results. I hope that I either failed completely or passed. Who knows. Also I am starting to co-write an article for the RAPS society that should be published sometime in February. The focus will be on German Medical Device Regulations.

I recently received an email from my uncle asking me about my blog and how I had set it up. Well, I back then stumbled basically over a Wordpress theme that I liked and that I had tuned to fit my design. Wordpress is one of the greatest free software tools out there for bloggers. It is supported by a great community that provides quite a variety of plugins and themes. I have recently looked into buying some more domains and setting up one or two more websites. Wordpress has been cool so far but I am always intrigued by new developments. My research has let me to come across a really wonderful software that is somewhat similar to Wordpress. It is called Squarespace. Founded a few years ago by some geek called Anthony Casalena it has some really nice and very thoughtful features. I have setup a testaccount and played around a little bit. The system is very user- and google friendly and above all, it comes with some nice designs that you can use as a base to create your own designs. It is definetly something I will consider when setting up those new sites. Squarespace definetly rocks!

I can’t wait for 2009 to begin. This year has been quite a roller coaster ride for us. The wedding and then the Wall street crash that had hit us quite hard. A new year is like a new beginning. Hopefully for the better. Cheers!

Some of you have approached me asking me to give an overview about different tools how to sell actual content and increase the awareness of your blog. So I have listed for you some of the most popular services out there that help you in getting your content sold or actually help increase the polularity of your blog.

Feedvertiser

Feedvertiser is a plugin for Wordpress users that allows you to run text link ads in your RSS feed. Ad’s can be generated either by you or any third party that you work with. Problogger and Techcrunch are using this tool too. Just sign up, download the plugin, activate it in Wordpress and you are set!

Scoopt

Scoopt is a service for those hobby photographers and journalists among you who are making great pictures but just don’t have the guts of driving their sales forward and calling up newspapers and magazines Scoopt is filling this hole. The Membership is free. The submission of the pictures is free of charge too. Scoopt will take care of the actual sales for you. While working with newspapers, magazines, news organisations and other publishers they will try to sell your pictures. For each generated sale they will split (50:50) the amount with you.

JPG Magazine

JPG Magazine has recently started with a new business concept. People can upload their best photographic showcases. The community will vote for the best shots who will make it into their print magazine. The winner will receive $100 plus a free one-year subscription. The founders have initially started out to print on demand via Lulu before they have gone into offset printing.

So what’s behind Lulu?

Lulu.com offers since 2002 as a web’s premier independent publishing company to anybody the possibility of publishing pretty much about anything and everything. Be it CDs, books, paperbacks, hardcover books, brochures.. The print will be done on demand. Lulu.com will participate on each sale generated. You can set your own price, there is no set-up fee. It’s easy as that. Pretty cool

Feel free to suggest any other tools that I may have left out in the comment section

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts I have tried several plugins to embed a YouTube video into my existing site. Unfortunately for some reason it did not work out. Since I know that this is still an ongoing problem for some wordpress users I decided to post a link for those who are looking for a plugin. Who knows, it may work for your site. The instructions are pretty clear and it seems easy after all. I wish I knew what I did wrong

Just playing around with some plugins. I have installed the Yahoo Smileys Plugin from Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo and it is working! How awesome!