Since I call this “your blogging classroom on the web”, I decided it was time we talk about homework; or that behind the scenes stuff we often put off.

Today’s Lesson

As many of you have noticed, I decorated my blog for the holidays.

Since I use a theme which has the “custom header feature”, adding the photo was simple. For the RSS widgets I searched for “holiday icons” and then recoded my widgets.

Listed below are a few new (to me) plugins I am testing.

1. First is Sexy Bookmarks by Josh Jones and Norman Yung which is visible at the bottom of each post.

   The Sexy Bookmarks plugin is easily customizable, looks good, doesn’t take up too much space and is positioned so readers will be reminded to Tweet, Digg, or use StumbleUpon, etc. to share a post.

2. The “Follow Me” plugin by WP Burn.com can be seen on the right of the page.

   This plugin is to remind our readers they can follow us on Twitter. The customization includes using different colors as well as different Twitter birds images.

3. The Wibiya toolbar can be seen at the bottom of the page.

   What I like about this toolbar is if you don’t want to clutter up your sidebars with an RSS feed, recent posts, etc., you can include them in the toolbar.This isn’t a plugin, but more of an add-on which requires an invitation. Just go to the Wibiya site and follow the instructions. In a matter of days you should receive an email from them and at that time you can set up an account and customize your toolbar.

4. Thanks to the suggestions from both Internet Strategist @ GrowMap and Betsy at Passing Thru I added Zemanta and Apture.

   In a nutshell, these two applications which work for all blogging platforms* make blogging easier and faster by suggesting photos, links, related articles, etc. for our posts. (Disclaimer: I’ve only tested them on WordPress.)

   Zemanta adds a interface to your dashboard from which you can drag and drop photos and/or links into your post as you’re writing it.

   

   Image via CrunchBase

   Apture adds icons which when clicked on, does the same.

   Zemanta also adds a “reblog” feature at the bottom of the post which makes cutting and pasting quotes much easier, plus and an option to add links to other posts which may be beneficial to our readers.

Thus far, the only downside I see to using some of the above applications is they do slow down the page load time.

Today’s Assignment

What are your favorite plugins or applications?

Care to share?

.

Footnote: When using Zemanta on a self hosted blog, the Zemanta plugin must be used. For WordPress, the plugin can be downloaded here.

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