This website, like most other sites, is a work in progress but I wanted to detail how the site is evolving and give credit to various developers who make their code available for others to use.

In case you haven’t guessed this site is powered by WordPress.

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

The theme, Ad Clerum, was bought for £9.99 from David Law’s (aka SEO Dave) SEO and Adsense template website.  I chose this template mainly because of the SEO optimisation and the incorporated Google Adsense features.  Whilst I am very happy with the SEO, I have implemented my own Google Ad placements for increased flexibility (if you want to keep the Ad placement nice and simple Dave’s theme is superb).

I’ve tweeked the header a little.  I moved the navigation bar to the top and reduced the number of white borders.  I also changed the background to a blue grad which I made on this web design website.  Their backgrounds are free and so are many buttons, logos, menu bars and styling options.  A cheap paid subscription gives access to a whole host of other options. UPDATE! As you can see, I have been busy! I’m now using two backround images, one on the ‘body’ and one on the ‘footer’. Behind them I’m using #F3F3F3 which blends into both images.

I also added breadcrumbs, which I always like to see on a website.  Other tweeks included widening the right sidebar a little, so that I could display a category tree more easily. I’ve also played with the sidebar and main content floats so that Google reads the interesting stuff first.

One of the great things about WordPress are the hundreds of Plugins that are available. If you need something for your website there will be a plugin, and probably more than one, that can do it. As of today, Slovenia-Walking is using 26 plugins: 23 active plugins and 3 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

  Admin Post Reminder
» Shawn Scammahorn / Es Developed (url)
For security reasons (so hackers won’t know your admin username), you should not publish posts from your admin account. When the admin is logged in, the plugin displays a gentle reminder not to write any posts.

  Advanced Excerpt
» Bas van Doren (url)
Several improvements over WP’s default excerpt. The size of the excerpt can be limited using character or word count, and HTML markup is not removed.

  Akismet
» Automattic (url)
Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) Sign up for an Akismet API key, and 3) Go to your Akismet configuration page, and save your API key.

  Breadcrumb NavXT
» John Havlik (url)
Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor's path to their current location. For details on how to use this plugin visit Breadcrumb NavXT.

  Broken Link Checker
» Janis Elsts (url)
Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.

  Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
» Dagon Design (url)
Generates a fully customizable sitemap

  Display widgets
» Strategy11 (url)
Adds checkboxes to each widget to show or hide on site pages.

  Fast Secure Contact Form
» Mike Challis (url)
Fast Secure Contact Form for WordPress. The contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. Super customizable with a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Includes CAPTCHA and Akismet support to block all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Settings | Donate

  Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

  Greg's High Performance SEO
» Greg Mulhauser (url)
Configure over 100 separate on-page SEO characteristics. Fewer than 700 lines of code per page view. No junk: just high performance SEO at its best.

  Multi-level Navigation Plugin
» PixoPoint Web Development / Ryan Hellyer (url)
A WordPress plugin which adds a multi-level CSS based dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. Visit the WP Multi-level Navigation Plugin page for more information about the plugin.

  Page Peel
» Nemanja Avramovic (url)
Adds page peel advertisement on your blog.

  Redirection
» John Godley (url)
Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors

  Reveal IDs
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See options page for information.

  Search Unleashed
» John Godley (url)
Advanced search engine that provides full text searching across posts, pages, comments, titles, and URLs. Searches take into account any data added by other plugins, and all search results are contextually highlighted. You can also highlight incoming searches from popular search engines.

  Shareaholic | share buttons, analytics, related content
» Shareaholic (url)
Shareaholic adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. See configuration panel for more settings.

  Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

  Subscription Options
» Tom Saunter (url)
Adds subscription option icons for your RSS Feed; your FeedBurner Email Service; your Twitter Stream and even your Facebook page. 12 colour options. Totally user-defined.

  WordPress Database Backup
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started.

  WP-dTree
» Ulf Benjaminsson (url)
Dynamic tree widgets to replace the standard archives-, categories-, pages- and link lists.

  WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  Wp-Thumbie
» blogsdna (url)
Show user defined number of related posts with thumbnail images from BlogsDNA. Configure…

  WP Super Cache
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

Finally, perhaps the greatest thing about WordPress, apart from the dedicated team of developers and testers, is the amazing amount of help that is available, either from the documentation or the user forums. Many times someone’s answer on the forum has got me out of a pickle!

Slovenia-walking would not be here without all those listed above, so a big “THANK YOU!” to you all.

Tags: Google Adsense, plugin, SEO, website, WordPress