Writing Articles

Most experienced WordPress users could spend hours discussing their favorite—and least favorite—WordPress plugins. If you’re still fairly new to WordPress, though, you might be wondering which plugins you really need.

Below is a breakdown of four WordPress plugins that all new users should consider installing. There are a lot more great plugins than the ones listed below, but the following list represents the core group of plugins I find essential to maintaining the optimal health and functionality of a WordPress blog.

BackUpWordPress

With traditional, static web sites, it’s easy to keep backups of all your files right on your own computer. With interactive, database-driven sites, however, the content is always changing, so you consistently need to create new backup files. For instance, if you have a WordPress blog, all of the site’s posts, pages, comments, and registered users are stored in a database on your hosting provider’s server. Because of this, it’s important to make regular backups of everything stored in the site’s database. That way, if anything goes wrong—if someone hacks into your site or your hosting provider accidentally wipes out all your files—you’ll be able to restore your web site with relative ease.

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If you have a WordPress blog on your own web site (not through WordPress.com) you should configure both a robots.txt file and an XML sitemap in order to provide indexing information to search robots.

If you don’t know anything about configuring robots.txt files, I encourage you to learn more about them by visiting http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html. If you don’t know anything about configuring XML sitemaps, I encourage you to learn more about them by visiting http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php.

Below is an outline of special considerations that WordPress users need to be aware of when setting up these files for their blogs.

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There is a fantastic new review of an essay on translating literature over at The Complete Review. Not only am I constantly impressed by the number of foreign-language books reviewed (either in translation or untranslated) over there, but the insight with which he addresses not only the merits of the work but the translation as well. This review deals with a new translation of That Mad Ache by Françoise Sagan, translated by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

What is especially interesting is that the book has two covers—a front and back. The front is for the text, the back, when turned upside down, is the cover of the long essay on translation by Hofstadter included with the text. I haven’t read it, but having read the review I think it’s safe to say that I will likely disagree with his discussion of translation in major parts. I would not translate Bonjour tristesse as Howdy, Blues, and don’t feel the need to elucidate texts as a translator—that is the job of the critic, teacher, or student. In any case, having not read it I was still struck by the magnitude of giving the translator not only so much page space in the book, but his own cover. And, according to The Complete Review, listing him on the front not as a translator but co-author.

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