Have you ever noticed that many blogs put up a daily post that is simply a bunch of links to other websites? This is actually done automatically, and if you have ever wondered how to set that up, you’ve come to the right place. That feature is called Del.icio.us Daily Blog Posting, and this post will explain how to accomplish this if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog.

First thing you need is to sign up for an account with the popular social bookmarking service Del.icio.us. The account is free and allows you to store your bookmarks online in a nice and convenient location. Once you’re registered and ready to set up your daily blog posting feature, you’ll want to follow these easy steps:

1. Click Settings.
2. Click Daily Blog Posting.
3. Click Add a New Thingy.
4. Now fill out the following information in the appropriate fields:
   job_name : Enter the title of your choice
   out_name : [WordPress Admin Username]
   out_pass : [WordPress Admin Password]
   out_url : http :// [Blog URL] /xmlrpc.php
   out_time : Enter the time you want the posts to appear each day. 0= 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time
   out_blog_id : 1
   out_cat_id : Enter the category I.D. you want to use. It may post to your default category.
5. Click Submit Query.

Now that you are set up for daily blog posting, you’ll want to visit the Del.icio.us Buttons page. This page allows you to add a button to your web browser of choice. With these buttons, you can simply click the button while on a page you want to bookmark and it will automatically be bookmarked on your Del.icio.us account. Each day during the time you established above, it will then post your links automatically to your blog.

It wasn’t so long ago that Gravatar was all the rage around the blogosphere. Who wouldn’t want a globally recognized avatar? But problems with the service, combined with the emergence of the popular MyBlogLog avatar, seemed to have spelled the doom of Gravatar.

Now it looks like the service has been revived with Automattic’s recent acquisition of Gravatar. If anyone can turn this service into a success, it is the makers of WordPress. So what does this mean for Gravatar? And will the MyBlogLog avatar lose its popularity? Here is what Automattic has to say about their plans for the new service:

• We’re going to make all of the Premium features free, and refund anyone who bought them in the last 60 days.
• Move the gravatar serving to a Content Delivery Network so not only will they be fast, it’ll be low latency and not slow down a page load.
• Take the million or so avatars we have on WordPress.com and make them available through the Gravatar API, to compliment the 115k already here.
• From Gravatar, integrate them into all WordPress.com templates and bring features like multiple avatars over.
• From WordPress.com, bring the bigger sizes (128px) over and make that available for any Gravatar. Currently Gravatars are only available up to 80px.
• Allow Gravatar profile pages with Microformat support for things like XFN rel="me" and hCard.
• Develop a new API that has cleaner URLs and allows Gravatars to be addressed by things like URL in addition to (or instead of) email addresses.
• Rewrite the application itself (site.gravatar.com) to fit directly into our WordPress.com grid, for internet-scale performance and reliability.

It looks like the main beneficiaries of this plugin will be WordPress.com users, but I would expect to see the revival of Gravatar plugins appearing on WordPress.org blogs around the blogosphere once everything gets implemented.

Over the coming months, I will gradually be compiling an ongoing list of my favorite wordpress plugins into a single post that will hopefully prove useful to those that are new to WordPress. Included in the post are brief descriptions of what each plugins does and links to full reviews I’ve done of each individual plugin.

A little while ago Stasys actually took this a step further by compiling a list of the Top 3o of the Most Popular WordPress Plugins. Stasys actually went through and compiled a list of the most popular plugins recommended by various WordPress users and tallied them. He then figured which ones are the most often recommended.

For your reference, here are the top 5 most recommended plugins from around the blogosphere:

1. Akismet
2. Google Sitemap Generator
3. Related Posts
4. WP-Contact Form
5. WP-DB Backup

I have no real complaints with these 5, although I’m surprised Related Posts wasn’t #1. To see the other 25, click over to Staska!

If you are a WordPress user, you are probably aware that their are hundreds (if not thousands) of great Wordpress plugins scattered all over the internet.  These plugins are created by your fellow WordPress users that want to make the software better and more functional, and most are available to you at no charge.  Of these plugins, many I would consider to be situational plugins, but there are a few that all WordPress blogs should use in my opinion. 

Subscribe to Comments is one of the important plugins that every blog should offer to their readers. This plugin will automatically place a subscription box in your comments form and allow your readers to receive e-mail notifications each time a follow up comment is left on your site.  If you’d prefer to tell the plugin where to display the box, you can do so by placing the following code into your comments.php file where you want the subscription box to appear:

<?php if (function_exists('show_subscription_checkbox')) { show_subscription_checkbox(); } ?>

I recommend placing this just above the Submit button (or whatever your button says to submit the comment). This will allow readers to see the “subscribe box” before reading the comment and check it if they want to be notified of any responses to their comment.  

It is important to note that you should NOT have this box checked by default (you can control this in your plugin’s Option panel).  This will significantly annoy potential commentators as well as turn away some readers.  I’ve noticed a few websites that have it checked by default and there is nothing more frustrating than leaving a comment and finding out you were subscribed to a post you commented on against your will.  Make the box visable and people will use it if they want notification.   I will sometimes check this box when I want to see any follow up comments, but I generally will not comment on sites that have this checked by default.