This is the first of what will hopefully be many “How To” posts I make. While it’s technically less of a  “How Do You Do…?” and more of a “how I do”, you’ll be able to find this, and all other how tos under that category.

Anyway. Back in August of 2008 (after having much fun working on “Maxwell Pink Tells Stories“) I decided to breathe new life into “AWSCBB”, which had previously been a standalone, page by page, website. Converting it to a blog has been interesting as I figure out how each section will be represented. Thankfully, WordPress and the themes and plugins developed for it have given me many creative ideas.

Since Weblog Tools Collection has been blogging about plugins lately (they even have a contest going on — inspired by moi — to guess how many plugins they are using), I decided to make a list of all the bells and whistles I use on this site so that you, too, may be inspired.

First and foremost, this blog is powered by WordPress (of course) and is hosted by DrakNet. It is currently using the theme, “Hanging“. Then there are the plugins I use:

Active Plugins

  AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button
» AddToAny (url)
Help people share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg and many more. [Settings]

  Akismet
» Automattic (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need an API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  AntiVirus
» Sergej Müller (url)
AntiVirus for WordPress is a smart, effectively solution to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections.

  AVH Amazon
» Peter van der Does (url)
This plugin gives you the abillity to add multiple widgets which will display one or more random item(s) from your Amazon wishlist, baby registry and/or wedding registry. It also has the ability to show items, with their link, in posts and pages by use of shortcode.

  Block Bad Queries (BBQ)
» Perishable Press (url)

  Blog Metrics
» Joost de Valk (url)
Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget!

  Buy Me a Beer
» Sherief Mursyidi (url)
Allow your blog visitors to buy you a beer by sending you money through PayPal. A special BlogClout plugin

  del.icio.us for Wordpress
» Ricardo González (url)
Displays your recently listened links. Based on Pownce for Wordpress by Cavemonkey50.

  FeedBurner FeedSmith
» FeedBurner (url)
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

  Google Analytics for WordPress
» Joost de Valk (url)
This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.

  Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

  Login LockDown
» Michael VanDeMar (url)
Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range. Distributed through Bad Neighborhood.

  Ozh' Who Sees Ads
» Ozh (url)
Manage your Ads. Decide under when circumstances to display them. Make more money. For WordPress 2.5

  Post Avatar
» Vicky Arulsingam (url)
Attach a picture to posts easily by selecting from a list of uploaded images. Similar to Livejournal Userpics. Developed with Dominik Menke.

  Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
» Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley (url)
This powerful yet easy-to-install contact form features exceptional accessibility and usability while still providing extensive anti-spam and anti-exploit security features. A marriage of communication and peace-of-mind.

  Secure WordPress
» jremillard (url)
Little basics for secure your WordPress-installation.

  Shorten2Ping
» Samuel Aguilera (url)
Sends status updates to Ping.fm or Twitter everytime you publish a post, using your own domain, Bit.ly, Tr.im, and others for shortened permalinks.

  Sidebar Login
» Mike Jolley (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to let users login

  Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

  TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)
» builtBackwards (url)
TAC scans all of your theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code.

  Template-Overide
» Simon Prosser (url)
Use this little plugin to overide your templates css. This is useful when you use the wordpress theme update function.

  Top 10
» Ajay D'Souza (url)
Count daily and total visits per post and display the most popular posts based on the number of views. Based on the plugin by Mark Ghosh

  Tweetbacks
» Joost de Valk (url)
Show the tweets about your posts and pages as comments on your blog!

  Twitter Digest
» Tim Beck, with input from Paul Wlodarczyk (url)
Create a daily or weekly post on your blog containing the tweets from your Twitter account.

  Where did they go from here
» Ajay D'Souza (url)
Show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on your page. Much like Amazon.com’s product pages. Based on the plugin by Mark Ghosh.

  WordPress.com Stats
» Andy Skelton (url)
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.

  WordPress Database Backup
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started.

  WordPress File Monitor
» Matt Walters (url)
Monitor your website for added/changed/deleted files

  WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP Security Scan
» Michael Torbert (url)
Perform security scan of WordPress installation.

  WP Super Cache
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

Inactive Plugins

  Configurable Tag Cloud
» Keith Solomon (url)
A tag cloud plugin for WordPress to give you more flexibility with the styling of your tag cloud.

  Hello Dolly
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly. When activated you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.

  URL to Feed
» Best Blogs Asia (url)
This bit of code adds your URL, added to each feed post. Helps for greater site promotion.

  Wordpress Firewall
» SEO Egghead, Inc. (url)
Blocks suspicious-looking requests to WordPress.

  WP-PageNavi
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan & scribu (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog

  WP-UserOnline
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan & scribu (url)
Enable you to display how many users are online on your Wordpress site

  WP Greet Box
» Thaya Kareeson (url)
Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

  WP Render Blogroll Links
» Tanin Ehrami (url)
Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your Wordpress links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with CSS. Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”.

  WP to Twitter
» Joseph Dolson (url)
Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.

I’d love to hear about some of the plugins you use!