I have several WordPress plug-ins installed and working. Unfortunately, WordPress does not yet have a decent site to list, rank, vote on, and download plugins. Here are a few that I’m using:

• Archivist – displays older posts on the front page that would otherwise be lost in the archives
• Subscribe Me – adds news reader subscription links to the sidebar on the right
• WP-TinyMCE – WYSIWYG editor that works for both main posts and comments
• ChenPress – Another WYSIWYG editor. This one based on FCK editor. Does not work with comments as far as I can tell. I’m comparing it to WP-TinyMCE to figure out which I like best.
• Subscribe To Comments – to allow commenters to receive e-mail notification of responses.
• AJAX Spell Checker – fancy (maybe too fancy) spell checker; unfortunately is does not work when using WYSIWYG editors.
• IImage Browser – Allows image upload and inserting into posts. I had to modify the premission on a directory to get this working.
• Google Site Maps – To create a search-engine friendly site map.
• My Netflix – to show which movies I’ll be watching

I’ve given up on the spell checker plug-in because it requires PHP Safe Mode. I’m having difficulty getting Gravatars to work due to my permalinks setup and I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.

I know WordPress 1.6 will have WYSIWYG, but I’m afraid it won’t do everything I need it to do. What I really would like to see is spell checking, image uploading and thumbnailing, and some simple formating controls. I’m betting it won’t cover all bases, but it has to be an improvement over the existing default text editor. What I’ve determined to be the best solution is ChenPress + IImage Browser + Ajax Spell Checker. I upload the picture using IImage, then activate the ChenPress FCKeditor to type, then save, then reopen and run Ajax Spell checker in text mode. Not an ideal solution, but that is the best I could find.

I did try WYSI – WordPress and it does everything except having a Firefox-compatible spell checker. Unfortunately, it can’t be easily toggled off to allow Ajax Spell Checker to run, so I don’t use it.

Extensions Wish List: A plug-in that would prompt to select a category instead of defaulting to “uncategorized” if you fail to select one.