Rocket Science

So…I chose to continue to host my own website for a few reasons, I can: control the site, customize both the front and back end, and more importantly, gain experience with the tools.

Since I know quite a few techies, I thought it might be interesting to detail some of the initial technical details of the new website.

• WordPress 2.7 (blog software)
• Akismet and ReCaptcha (reduces comment spam)
• WordPress Stats (links into WordPress.com stat system)
• Google Analytics (enables Google Analytics sitewide)
• CiteThis (creates a citation for each page, to meet the attribution requirements of my terms of use) <currently disabled>
• Random Image (puts a random image in the sidebar)
• Yoast Breadcrumbs (puts breadcrumbs on each page and post, though I suppose I could have coded this by hand) <not needed in the iNove theme>

I also did a number of minor tweaks to the template to change the display of individual items. (I’m sure I’ll have fun redoing those tweaks when I upgrade or change the template.)

All in all, nothing too major, but stuff that I couldn’t do on the WordPress.com free account. Over time, I do hope to add in plugins to continue to extend the features of the site.