Here’s how I keep track of all my plugins .. On my local hard drive, I have a folder something like this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress

Whenever I find a plugin I like, I copy it into a folder such as this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress\plugins\

If there are specific plugins - e.g. - my translator plugin configured for the PetLvr blog only .. I would do something like this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress\special\petlvr\plugins\

How To Install Wordpress Plugins

If you see something you like, I have linked the name of the wordpress plugin to its author page. Although, I recommend that you try to obtain it through the WordPress Plugin Directory or better yet .. scroll down to the bottom of your PLUGINS page in your dashboard, and use the built-in Plugin Browser/Installer functionality link … you just type the name of the plugin into the search field, and install. This way .. when plugins are outdated or, there is a new version available - you will know because in wordpress, there will be a message below the plugin to warn you. It is very possible that plugins are not updated by the author on major development versions, and if the plugin is private, paid or not in the Wordpress Plugin Directory, you many never know if your plugin is out of date or not.

Here They Are - In Alphabetical Order

* AccessQontrol - To make your site private, or not…

* Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.

* All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.

* Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Gold - This is NOT a FREE plugin. Translator Plugin Gold translates your blog dynamically to forty-one additional languages - German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latin American Spanish, Filipino, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh, Turkish, Latin. Catalan, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithunian, Slovak, Ukranian, Vietnamese. We support blogs written in forty-two different languages - (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latin American Spanish, Filipino, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh, Turkish, Latin. Catalan, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithunian, Slovak, Ukranian, Vietnamese) as the base language of the blog. This is an extremely versatile and easy to use tool to instantly increase your pages by a factor of forty-one, all SEO optimized, to make your blog accessible to a much wider audience. The translated pages can be bookmarked for future use.

* Audio player - Highly configurable single track mp3 player.

* Auto-hyperlink URLs - Auto-hyperlink text URLs in post content and comment text to the URL they reference. Does NOT try to hyperlink already hyperlinked URLs. Improves WordPress’s default make_clickable function, along with adding some configuration options.

* Auto Social Poster Gold (aff) - Increasing Your Blog’s Traffic and Authority .. Download a selection of Wordpress plugins!

* Bad Behavior - Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.

* Clean Archives Reloaded - A slick, Javascript-enhanced post archive list generator for WordPress 2.5+

* Contact Form 7 - Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

* CommentLuv - Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

* CyStat - Statistik-Plugin

* Datafeedr (aff) - This is NOT a FREE plugin. You can only get this plugin from Datafeedr.com as part of a Datafeedr.com membership. Never Before Has It Been This Simple To Build Your Own WordPress Affiliate Datafeed Store!

* Datafeedr Random Ads Plugin - The Datafeedr Random Ads plugin is a free plugin which allows you to simply and easily show random ads anywhere in your template files or using widgets.

* Evermore - Abbreviate all posts when viewed on multiple post pages. This makes all posts behave as if there is a “< !–more–>” at an appropriate spot inside the content.

* Exec-PHP - Executes < ?php ?> code in your posts, pages and text widgets.

* Featured Content Gallery - Used to create a customizable rotating image gallery anywhere within your WordPress site.

* FeedBurner FeedSmith - 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. By FeedBurner.

* Full Text Feed - Prevents WordPress 2.1+ from adding a more link to your website’s feed.

* Get Recent Comments - Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.

* Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

* Insights - Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.

* Lucia’sLinkLove - Where a commenter has commented at least some number of timeslinks are made “dofollow”. User interface permits blogger to do follow author link or links inside comments.

* OIOpublisher Direct 2.0 (aff) - Control your Ad Space with OIOpublisher.

* phpBay Pro Plugin for Wordpress (aff) - This is NOT a FREE plugin. Add eBay auction listings to your Wordpress posts.

* Random Redirect - Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.

* Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form - 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.

* Sensitive Tag Cloud - This wordpress plugin provides a highly configurable tagcloud that shows tags depending of the current context.

* Simple Forum - Simple:Press is a feature rich forum plugin for WordPress. It fully integrates into your WP based site utilising the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page. It is fully customisable and comes with a number of skins and sets of icons to get your started. Current users have shown it to be fully scaleable whether your site membership numbers the tens or the thousands.

* StatPress - Real time stats for your blog

* Supr by StumbleUpon - Su.pr is the only URL shortener that gets you more traffic and save time posting to Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

* Theme Test Drive - Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail.

* Tweet This - Adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs in advance through Th8.us, eating up only 19 of 140 characters.

* Visual Recent Posts - Visually represents your most recent posts by extracting the first image from each post and displaying it along with the post title and excerpt.

* Where did they go from here - Show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on your page. Much like Amazon.com’s product pages.

* Whydowork Adsense - Insert Adsense code in your pages without modifying the template. Show different ads for articles older than 7 days (or as old as you wish).

* WordPress Database Backup - On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

* Wordpress Video Plugin - (for wpMU) - A filter for WordPress that displays videos from myvideo.de, youtube, google video, Brightcove, Aniboom, 123video.nl, MyspaceTV, Yahoo! Video, Veoh, Wandeo, Glumbert, Gametrailers, Gamevideos, LiveLeak, sevenload.de, clipfish.de, break.com, Metacafe, dailymotion.com, Vimeo, videotube, blip.tv, revver, IFILM, Tu.tv, grouper, Cellfish.com, Sumo.tv, Last.fm, Vsocial, teachertube, SlideShare, Jumpcut, MSN, GoalVideoz, Guba, wat.tv, Smotri.Com..and many more.

* WP Admin Bar Reloaded - Adds a small admin bar to the top of every page.

* WP-Cumulus - Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress

* WP to Twitter - 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.

* WP-PostRatings - Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

* WP-Print - Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

* WP-RSSImport - Import and display Feeds in your blog.

* WP-SpamFree - An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

* WP Super Cache - Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

Hope you enjoyed this list. If you have any useful wordpress plugins activated in your blog - feel free to list it below in the comments, with a brief description what its purpose is, and how you think it helps with the running of your blog!

Thank-You. // HART

Here are some of “HART’s sweet-HARTs” that have been stumbled during the past week, ended Monday. I hope you feel compelled to go visit these great bloggers and see why I liked their post! Enjoy!

If you have a weekly roundup of posts and would like to be permanently included in this list - let me know in the comment section! Thanks // HART

A Few Great Stumbles This Past Week!

* A View From The Other Side - The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects
* Karaoke Lounge - 10 Awesomely Terrible 90’s One-Hit Wonders
* Netalot - Some Amusing Internet Quotes To Make You Smile
* PotPolitics - What role do you play in blogging?
* Remarkablogger - Should You Write an Ebook if Your Blog is Small?
* Small Biz Bee - The Key To Innovation And Growth Is Ignoring Fear
* The Power Publicist - Top 5 Ways of Repurposing your Content: Audio Articles
* WebDesigner Depot - 100+ Portraits of Iconic People of All Time

A Few More Weekly Roundups!

* Anthony McCune, The Lives and Times… - McCunications Weekend Mashup
* Kikolani - Fetching Friday - Resources Mashup, #FollowFriday, & Some Tennis Love
* Serradinho - Great reads ending 5 July 2009
* TechJaws - Feeding Frenzy Saturday – Featured Blog Articles

Around The HART-Empire Network

* 1-8-0-0-H-A-R-T - How People Count Cash Around The World
* And You Will - Urban Gardening
* Battling For Health - Music for the heart and the vascular system
* call HART crazy - SUMMER CLASSES – For Men and Women
* PetLvr - Providing for Pets In the Event of Your Death or Severe Disability

If you like any of these posts .. please support the blogger by stumbling and/or reviewing their posts .. participating and commenting on their blogs .. subscribe to their RSS feeds … follow them on twitter .. etc etc.

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Click on the banner if you are looking to find hosting for your new wordpress blog. This is an affiliate link, and I may earn something from you signing up - but, you will also receive benefit. Check out their green web hosting plan!

Enter code oak_c2e6dc40 to receive $30 off .. compliments of HART-Empire Network. Hilight CTRL-C to copy and CTRL-V to paste.

Tell ‘em HART sent ya!

So - I have added the “Top Commentors Widget” plugin .. umm, yeah .. there’s a lot of options but it’s not that scary I currently have it set to show the people who comment the most THIS MONTH up to 20 people. It will automatically reset each month, so if you’re trying to be my favorite and get the title of “Top Commentor” .. keep ‘em comments coming!

.. when google sends you an email letting you know that you ran out of room in your free google mail account!

(click to enlarge to a new window)

Today, July 6, 2009 I have literally run out of space in my secondary GMAIL account. I have used up 7,345 MB (7.345 GIGS) of space to freely store backups of all the blogs in the HART-Empire Network, dating back to April 2008 - when the last time I had run out of space. In April 2008, the same amount of space resulted in 5,300 MySql backups (and on 6,660 MBs of space!) however, it seems that some of the backups since then have been in ASCII format and not in MIME or sent as an attachment. I probably should be concerned, but I’m not going to cry over spilt milk.

You can never be too careful about having backups of your blog and MySQL database and I’m thankful that I have never had to restore a backup to date - except when I moved host providers that is. I think I have a good strategy though, with all my blogs that I have created.

HART’s BACKUP STRATEGY

(1) MySQL Database Backup

* WordPress Database Backup - I setup daily backups to be emailed to my secondary GMAIL account automatically. Before I do any major wordpress version upgrades, I do a backup and send it to the server’s hard drive and then FTP that file over to my local computer.
* I am paying for an extra 80 GIG hard drive on my dedicated server, and have scripts to automatically perform grandfathering backups of all MySQL databases only.

(2) Template and Files Backup

* After I setup a blog, I do make a backup copy of the ../wp-content/. files to my local hard drive, but I never keep it current. I do it more or less to see what plugins I use when I created that blog if I ever want to compare I do make regular backups of my template theme however. Besides backing up the files from the server to my local hard drive (a mirror copy at all times) .. I also create extra backup folders within the active theme that was copies (e.g. /backup-2009-0706/) and create an archive backup of my template at specific point in time. Let’s face it - I can have a current backup, but with PHP i could make one bad change and have two copies of crap. This way, I can always revert to a working theme anytime.

MY GMAIL AFTER DELETION

I have deleted all of my old backups from my secondary GMAIL. I have a third gmail account, and forwarded the latest backups at June 30th for archive purposes .. but really I have no intention of every using them, so I deleted everything!

Backups are not meant to be restored, unless you damaged them and need to restore the data. This is not the case for me (knock on wood). In case you didn’t know - when you delete any emails or spam emails, you don’t actually delete them from your GMAIL Account. They are transfered to the TRASH folder, and if everything goes well - will automatically delete after 30 days - unless you trigger it to delete everything NOW - like I just did!

Today’s Task

I have a clean GMAIL account once again, and I will go back to each of my blogs over the next few days to be sure my blogs have the latest plugin installed, and then set each to automatically make a backup daily. Sometimes, on old backup setups .. everything may be already set, but in the meantime I might have added a new plugin or two that creates more MySQL database tables that are not included in the automated backups. This task will force me to fix that oversight.

How’s your backup routine? Does it exist? What are you doing to protect your database and your blog? Feel free to tell us in the comment section!

In the summer of 2007 my network of sites began to take a toll on the resources of my hosting plans, and I found the need to do something that would ensure that I was able to expand and grow online. I reorganized all my sites and consolidated 3 different hosting providers to one host. I did an interim report of how I felt with the decision to consolidate, back in November 2007 and I can’t say that my opinion of singlehop has changed since.

I like their service and support. If you are in the need of a dedicated server, consider SingleHop. By the way - that’s an affiliate link, and I might earn a little commission if you sign up with them. So, if you are seriously looking for a new host provider and dedicated server - feel free to ask me any questions .. maybe I can clear up some of the concerns you may have!

I’m trying to resurrect this blog. The original purpose was to discuss the inner makings of things that affected me and the HART-Empire Network. The HART-Empire-Network.com blog, which is the HOME of the HART-Empire Network online .. is meant to keep track of the news of my network. I currently have the code setup in widgets in each of my blogs, and - like you see in this sidebar in the section “HART-Empire Network: News” .. I am importing new posts from that blog to every blog simultaneously. I do this, so where there is news .. I can make one post and broadcast it to all my sites at once.

I’m using the WP-RSSImport Plugin to retrieve posts from HART-Empire-Network.com and broadcast it on all my sites instantly. At the time of writing, I had upgraded to the latest version 4.4 however, there is a current conflict that creates database wordpress errors everytime I post - so, I have downgraded back to version 4.3 or 4.2.1 around my network to avoid the conflict. This conflict had affected me in both wordpress version 2.7.1 and version 2.8. I have decided to NOT figure out which two plugins are creating conflicts for me, and wait for another upgrade in the plugin.

This is an H3 Chapter Title!

This is an H4 Chapter Title!

This is an H5 Chapter Title!

I just installed this new template the other day and testing. I did manage to remove that awful black formatting in the sidebar - WHEW! It was stylized to be black with white text on all links … I changed that to a slightly lighter yellow color, and switch to green when you hover over the links. Not perfect, but a fix that I approve!

NEW DIRECTION OF THE HART-EMPIRE BLOG

As time passes by, I am finding that I am not moving to different servers anymore or often, nor have I been publishing the monthly revenue and expenditures of my online activites. As a result, this blog seems to be slowly deteriorating. I plan to stop this from happening.

Currently …

* Feedburner Feed Count show that I have 23 subscribers of my RSS
* Feedburner Email Subscriptions shows that I have 0 subscribers of my RSS via email
* PR=0 or unranked
* Alexa rating is 1,214,675

Implementations …

* New template
* DO FOLLOW - on comments
* CommentLuv - shows your last post in your blog when you do comment

Still In Progress ..

Ugh. Tags … Most of my archives do not have tags associated with the post. I also used to have a gabillion categories. I have cleaned up some of the categories, combined them, and added a few tags … but it will never be complete. Ideally, I would like to just go to my archives and DELETE old posts, but I believe they build character to this blog. There are many nonsense “quickie” and “Hmmmm” type of posts, that may seem like nothing but crawl forward to inspiration of major posts in this blog that I believe deserves to remain intact. Now, if I delete all of the “muse” and leave the “meat” .. will they still make sense? I’m not sure - so, I have decided to leave it.

Stuff I’d Like To See In This Blog

By far, this is nowhere near to be a complete list, but only a partial list of ideas that I hope to maintain and blog about over time:

1) HART’s DAILY TASKS - My HART-Empire Network “to do” list. Although, these may not actually take me a day to perform them .. I would classify these tasks as something necessary part of the operation of my network of sites, that take less than 24 hours to do such as .. making sure I am backing up every blog up, updating plugins around the network, upgrading to latest wordpress versions, etc. It could also be simple things to do - like, run to Canadian Tire and get some more water for my water machine in my office!

My goal is to get things done - and maybe teach by example, of what I do that might spark ideas or assist others in getting things done as well

2) WEEKLY sweet-HART POSTS - It’s catching on .. with all my social media contacts and friends, I help promote a lot of my friends and acquaintances blogs each day, week in and week out. I hope to link out to the special posts that come my way. I’ll try not to interfere with some other “Fetching Friday” or “Feeding Frenzy Saturday” .. and might gear this for either a Monday or Tuesday post - with the cutoff from the last week ending Sunday.

My goal is to showcase some of the best stuff out there, that I see everyday when I stumble and/or RT on twitter

3) HOW HART MAKES MONEY - Although I am not actually posting my earnings anymore each month .. it is still publicly accessible, as I have not been deleting any of my archives! Although, I should say that I am not current in updating the 2009 figures and slow in breaking it down by ‘division’. However, I will try to showcase certain monetization techniques that I perform and companies and programs that I use and will promote and give examples of how I am doing with that.

My goal hopefully is to also get some new affiliate earnings by recommending you to new programs! Although, that may not be my agenda all the time

4) BLOGGING ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS - I’ve got over 40 active sites, and that used to be over 70 sites. I am familiar with blogs and blogging and have been doing this since May 2005. There are things I do and know that, in general, others do not know how to do. There are ways that I do things that are much simpler or faster than what others do - or pay others to do - and, perhaps by me documenting this .. you will learn a thing or two, or pass along the information to another. That is the nice thing about the internet. Not everything needs to be monetized. I like to help, and as long as you don’t copy the content of my blog word for word or aggregate it automatically in your blog .. FEEL FREE to pass along any of the tips that I provide for your own use. If you give me a ‘hats off’ link that would be great If you want to donate money to my paypal account, that would be fine too

My goal is to build this blog into the operating maintenance blog for my entire network, and show people what it’s like to be running a multitude of blogs and websites, and trying to jump from that “hobby business” stage into a full-time and financial supporting business venture.

Thanks for dropping by! Hope to see you soon.

Feel free to sign up to receive daily email updates on future posts of this blog!

When I first started this blog, the idea was that each post related to a specific blog will a separate category. But, now that I look over them content - I don’t think it is worth it anymore. After having about 70 active blogs and categories, if I wasn’t talking about a specific blog I seemed to have post the entry in the “Woohoo” and “Hmmm Things” categories.

Today’s Task

* Today I will be coming up with NEW categories and shuffle and try to make things more manageable and take a look at my archives.

Hit? or Miss?

I’m trying to figure out how to get that annoying black overlay on the text and links in the sidebar. If this was a week ago, I would have started up my AArdvark Firefox Addon and find the class and fix it. Unfortunately, I upgraded to Firefox 3.5 version yesterday and this is one of those Addons that has yet to be upgraded.

As soon as it is upgraded, I will fix this - however, as you probably would have guessed .. I usually tend to tweak things all the time and might figure it out on my own before that time!

I will be experimenting with the settings and how it affects my spam control, but currently .. I have disabled links IN the comments to remain a NoFollow. Comment and get some juice! Spam me with links and you get nothing…

HART