The bin was empty, save two sad little melons not larger than a Texas grapefruit, while the surrounding bins of completely un-genetically altered food sat untouched. To add insult to injury, my grocery store is in a fairly poor part of town, where the majority of shoppers have little money for fresh healthy fruits. Spending  $3.00 on a completely unnatural one serving watermelon might seem like an indulgence for families that rarely splurge just to keep real juice in the house but apparently it was not, for anyone but me.

These are the plugins I recommend any WordPress users install, and which I install on all WordPress installations I manage as a general rule.

• Akismet- numero uno in your spam protection toolkit
• Bad Behavior- might be my favorite spam plugin.
• Tinfoil Hat- a few simple ’set it and forget it’ security and privacy measures
• Anonymous WordPress Plugin Updates-did you know you are sending pings to every plugin writer every time you update? Fix that with this.
• Custom Admin Branding- Because no matter how much I love WordPress, I want to see my own logo on my site’s admin panel.
• Add from Server- This makes it simple to add things to your posts or pages that are already on your server in addition to things on your computer; because it isn’t simple without the plugin.
• Google Integration Toolkit- Does just what it says.
• StatPress Reloaded- Great stats program that is easy to understand for non techies but still drills down through the data.
• Visitor Maps & Who’s Online- Just nice and stalkery.
• Blogroll Autolinker- Make your life simpler, use this for more than blogs. Enter a word you want to always link to something, and the link, and you never have to manually make that link again.
• Donations- Allows people to donate or ‘purchase’ text ads in a ‘cloud’ displayed on your website. A bit more than the standard donate button.
• Target Blank in Posts and Comments- save your SEO ranking and automatically target blank in links left in posts and comments.
• User Messages- Add private messaging capabilities for logged in users of your site.
• Maintenance Mode- locks people out when you need to do maintenance, but allows you and users with passwords in.

If you use your website to operate a business of almost any sort, the following plugins are very useful

• Terms of Use- Gives an easy way to present your Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, require users to accept it, and store their acceptance of the terms.
• Audit Trail- Keep an eye on what happens in your WordPress installation at all times
• User Tacker-Logs the movements of all logged in users.
• Appointment Scheduler- schedule employees, allow users to set appointments, use it to manage project schedules
• Task Manager- great for collaborating on tasks with different users
• Project Manager- if you use this plugin, some of the others listed here are overkill.
• WP TimeSheets- Great and simple.
• WebInvoice- Simple billing though your website, including recurring billing and credit card payments
• Inline Google Docs- if you use GoogleDocs for anything, this will make your day
• WP eCommerce- a fairly good shopping cart for WordPress
• Hidepost- gives you a way to hide parts of your posts from public, not logged on viewers. Can be used to facilitate a pay-to-read blog.
• Role Manager- allows you to more easily control who can do what in the back end of your website, and to create custom roles.

For bands, performance artists, and the like

• gigpress

For social networking

• facebook dashboard widget
• add to any subscribe button

For managing ads, affiliate programs, and other monetizing tools

For teachers, those who offer courses or training, online or on location

• gradebook

For designers, developers, and the more technically inclined

• Code Markup
• WP-System Health

I love to cook…real food. And it’s a dying art. There’s something special about having the instructions for these dishes handwritten in my grandmother’s script; and something very special about sharing them…recipes are meant to be shared. I thought it would be a wonderful tribute to my grandmother to scan them and make them available to anyone. In time I plan to put these on a site themselves, and try to convert them into text data. Please, download and make them to share with your family.

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