I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.1, and I’m really happy with it. I knew the time would come when I would need to sift through all my plugins to see which ones needed to be updated in order to continue to work, but it seemed like such an arduous task. I particularly hate updating the plugin that allows you see what I’m currently reading in the sidebar because the default templates do not work with my blog template, and I have to do a lot of tweaking. I have now upgraded to the most recent version of each plugin I use on each of my blogs. I also took the time to delete plugins I don’t use.

I have to admit that all the customization via plugins is one of my favorite things about WordPress. I noticed that Lorelle recently posted about the most popular plugins, and I discovered quite a few plugins I didn’t know about. I have to admit that I don’t sift through the plugins site very often. In fact, I don’t visit at all unless I have a specific task in mind, and I think I might be able to find a plugin to do it. I didn’t implement all the new plugins on this site, but you might notice a few new features.

Some of my favorite new site features:

• Autosave: Every few minutes, the post draft automatically saves so I won’t ever lose a post again.
• Redesigned login screen: This is something you’d never see, but I have to admit that the screen I see when I login is now much prettier.
• Tabbed editor: This allows me to switch back and forth between the text editor and html code, which is something that was kind of a pain before.
• Popularity Contest: This plugin places links to my most popular posts as determined by the number of comments and search engine hits, among other things, now appears in my left sidebar.
• Related posts: I elected not to implement this plugin at this blog, but on my education blog, I thought it would help readers find nuggets in my archives that might be useful.
• Bad Behavior: I admit that I had heard of this plugin, but for some reason, I thought it was only available to WordPress users at WordPress.com. I have been having trouble with spammers contacting me through my genealogy blog contact form. So far, since I installed this plugin, I haven’t received a spam e-mail via my contact form, but I don’t expect that particular problem to stop immediately. It looks as though Bad Behavior will stop spammers from getting at my site in the first place, so I should also notice fewer junk comments in my Comments Spam folder. Akismet does a great job preventing me from getting comment spam, but I figure one more layer of defense can’t hurt. I can’t believe we have to do things like this just to make sure all comments we receive are legitimate. Spammers are disgusting.

Let me know if anything seems broken. I had a plugin that interfered with my readers’ ability to comment on my education blog, so let me know if you are having any problems with anything on my site.