deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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So I'm getting to grips with building dad's new website using WordPress. Not as simple as I thought i.e. everything being plugin based.
I can see most plugins have a star rating but how do you generally gauge that the plugin is worth using?
For example, I want to create a Contact form which I understand is a plugin but there is 1,194 to choose from  is there a specific plugin that will work with my theme, or will the plugin work with any theme because it is all WordPress based?
Any guidance on how best to choose would be appreciated 
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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Use Contact Form 7.
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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Will give it a go, cheers.
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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Crikey, bit complex 
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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Is Akismet recommended?
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
Use Contact Form 7.
Generally experience will really help.
CF7 is great.
Some others I would recommend:
- Reveal IDs (displays the ID of the post, category etc - used for shortcodes)
- Display Widgets (allows you to hide a widget on certain pages/posts whilst keeping the widget on all other page types)
- Wordpress Statistics - better than the default google analytics app.
- TinyMCE Advanced - a decent wysiwyg text editor
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Rob_Quads
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: southampton
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While it might be difficult to find the right plugins it a hell of a lot easier than coding it yourself 
When I was messing around with it I found go for the highly rated plugins that have been around for a while and you generally can't go wrong. There is a lot of trial and error until you find the right one for you. What lots of people rave about might not be to the style/function that you are quite looking for.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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My recommendation is to not fill WordPress up with plugins unless you absolutely need them. The way they load and are triggered can cause the site to slow down, loads.
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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Changing "Posts" to "Projects". I essentially want to add all of dad's building Projects into the posts section, so all the widgets etc grab it into dynamic content.
I have edited the functions.php based on a guide on the internet, but it hasn't changed much and certainly hasn't changed Recent Posts to Recent Projects.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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You probably want to setup a custom post type for that rather than using the blog posts system. But you might find that some of the stuff you're trying to change will be hard coded into the theme - certainly titles for things that say stuff like 'Recent Posts' are generally just HTML within the PHP files.
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deano87
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Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
You probably want to setup a custom post type for that rather than using the blog posts system. But you might find that some of the stuff you're trying to change will be hard coded into the theme - certainly titles for things that say stuff like 'Recent Posts' are generally just HTML within the PHP files.
Turns out it acts like a widget in my chosen theme, so I could just change the title
I'm using Vantage for anyone remotely interested. Seems to be working well and has a "Site Builder" function, so good for a beginner.
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