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 34 plugins: 29 active plugins and 5 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)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need an API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  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
» Stephanie Wells (url)
Adds checkboxes to each widget to show or hide on site pages.

  Fast and Secure Contact Form
» Mike Challis (url)
Fast and Secure Contact Form for WordPress. The contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Includes a CAPTCHA and Akismet support. Does not require JavaScript. 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. Load just 600 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, or our navigation support board for help with adding the menu to your theme.

  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 for WP Admin
» Oliver Schlöbe (url)
WordPress 2.5+ only. 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 options and 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.

  SexyBookmarks
» Shareaholic (url)
SexyBookmarks 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.

  TweetMeme Retweet Button
» TweetMeme (url)
Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

  Wapple Architect
» Rich Gubby (url)
Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for Wordpress is a plugin that allows you to mobilize your blog in minutes. After activating this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Wapple Architect Dev Key | Donate

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

  WordPress Mobile Admin
» Rich Gubby (url)
Manage your blog from your mobile with this plugin. After activating this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Wapple Architect Dev Key.

  WP-Cumulus
» Roy Tanck (url)
Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress

  WP-dTree
» Ulf Benjaminsson (url)
A fork of Christopher Hwang’s WP-dTree, improving performance and adding useful features.

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

  Wp-Thumbie
» Sandip Dedhia (url)
Show user defined number of related posts with thumbnail images from BlogsDNA. Based on the plugin by Ajay Desoza. Configure…

  WP Ajax Edit Comments
» Ajay D'Souza, Ronald Huereca (url)
The most powerful comment-editing solution for WordPress. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.

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

  WP to Twitter
» Joseph Dolson (url)
Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.

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