Back in college on July 9th, 2002, I registered gogorichie.com through GoDaddy. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, driven by the curiosity of owning my own slice of the internet. Little did I know that domain would become my digital home for decades of blogging, experimentation, and tech journaling.

The Breakup With WordPress

From LiveJournal to Blogspot and eventually to a self-hosted WordPress install in 2011, my blog has lived many lives. WordPress gave me ultimate flexibility. I could mold my blog into anything I wanted thanks to its massive plugin ecosystem. Over the years, I posted nearly 3000 blog entries — trust me, a lot of it was garbage — but it was mine, and I loved that freedom.

It’s been four years since I wrote my last update about what plugins I’m using on my WordPress platform. I’ve gotten more simple about the plugins and what I need them to do for me. Last time I wrote a post about the plugins their were seven and now I’m only running five.

It’s a couple of months since my last post and even longer since I’ve logged into the backend of my site. So this morning I did a lot admining of my site, kicked the morning off by removing a bunch of old plugins, old backups, and decided to take the twenty twelve theme for a test drive. While I’m at it’s been two years since my original posting on which wordpress plugin I use. Well since then a lot of my favorite plugins have been consolidated or are now obsolete with the improvements to the wordpress platform. From that list of 10 I put out two years ago I’m still running 7 of them kPicasa Gallery, Google Analytics for WordPress, XBOX Live Gamertag, Akismet, Redirection, and Most Popular Posts. But the latest ones I can’t live without are Jetpack, KB Advanced RSS Widget, and BackUpWordPress.

Hey so I thought it was time to put out another top ten list and what better topic then WordPress !!!!

1. Akismet The best dam comment spam filter out there.
2. Simple Social – Sharing Widgets & Icons This is a great little plug in it allows you simple integration with basically any social network out there.
3. kPicasa Gallery I found this plugin last month it makes it easy to integration a Picasa album into your website quickly
4. Advanced Category Excluder OMG this is one of my favorite it allows you filter out post from your homepage or archives by category or tag.
5. Redirection Yeah so I sent out some links a while back and then changed the post locations this little plugin allows for you redirect those posts to their new homes.
6. Google Analytics for WordPress This is a great little plugin that allows for better integration with Google Analytics
7. Twitter Tools This a massive plug-in that bring a couple key integration features
8. XBOX Live Gamertag This plugin is just a widget that displays my xbox 360 gamercard on my website.
9. Most Popular Posts Just a simple little widget that displays my most popular on the sidebar
10. Social Profilr This plugin is just a widget that displays icon links to all my social network profiles on my website.

So there you go my top ten plugins for WordPress hopefully you find this post useful. If you’ve got some favorites I’d love to read about them so just leave me a comment.

When the Mount Prospect Jaycees needed a update to their aging website which i first built back in 2008. I worked with the chapter executive board to bring a fresh new look to their website. For this site it required moving over all the current chapter contain as well as introducing some new features. I choose WordPress as the platform to host their site because two of their board members were familiar with it and training the rest of the board wouldn’t be a problem. Also sent just about two hour training the sites webmaster and off she was running making updates and changes on her own. The Mount Prospect Jaycees is a leadership development and networking group for adults between the age of 18 and 40 in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Check out the groups website at http://www.MountProspectjaycees.org

When the Hoffman Estates Jaycees needed a update to their aging website. I worked with the chapter executive board to bring a fresh new look to their website. For this site it required moving over all the current chapter contain as well as introducing some new features. I choose WordPress as the platform to host their site because two of their board members were familiar with it and training the rest of the board wouldn’t be a problem. The Hoffman Estates Jaycees is a leadership development and networking group for adults between the age of 18 and 40 in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Check out the groups website at http://www.hoffmanestatesjaycees.org