• How to protect the site from comment spam?
• How to generate a Sitemap and tell search engines about it?
• How to promote the site?
• How to identify and display the more popular content?
• How to display images in a user friendly gallery?

At first I tried the most popular plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory that seemed to do what I wanted. However, I soon ran into trouble. Some were an overkill for what I needed, some interfered with each other, some did things I just didn’t like. I also didn’t like the cumulative impact these installs and uninstalls had on my database.

Eventually I built a duplicate site to install and test plugins, after which I rebuilt this site using only those I liked. Here are my newbie thoughts on the WordPress plugins I tried.

Akismet

An answer for how to protect the site from comment span. Included in the default WordPress install and does exactly what it says on the label. Akismet’s home at WordPress.

Google XML Sitemaps

An answer for how to generate a Sitemap and tell search engines about it. Can’t say much about this plugin, it seems to do what it claims with minimal fuss or configuration. Google XML Sitemaps’ home at WordPress.

All in One SEO Pack

An answer for how to promote the site. First impressions are wow, this tool does everything. However, it seemed to kill my RSS (Feedburner) link and after reading up a bit I decided to go with a Greg’s High Performance SEO plugin for Search Engine Optimisation. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with this plugin, it just didn’t work for me. All in One SEO Pack’s home at WordPress.

Greg’s High Performance SEO

An answer for how to promote the site. I selected this plugin in favour of the All in One SEO Pack based on its ability to disable mass modification of page headers and instead add the appropriate properties to my custom theme. This plugin offers a ’sledgehammer’ mode to operate the same way as other SEO plugins, but it is not recommended by the author. Greg’s High Performance SEO’s home at WordPress.

Google Analytics for WordPress

An answer for how to promote the site. This plugin does what it says. Add your Analytics Account ID and you’re set. There is also the option to specify many advanced settings, which I haven’t used as yet. Google Analytics for WordPress’ home at WordPress.

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button

An answer for how to promote the site. Giving readers the opportunity to share your content makes sense to me. This plugin works as expected and only has one snag I haven’t managed to fix yet. The link style for the buttons are faded by default which looks ugly. Add to Any’s home at WordPress.

Google Integration Toolkit

An answer for how to promote the site. This is another plugin I tried, but decided not to use. I experienced some difficulties with the site’s 404 Not Found handling and during the process of trying to resolve it uninstalled this plugin. As I ended up using more specialised plugins, this one didn’t fit into the collection I eventually selected. Google Integration Toolkit’s home at WordPress.

FD Feedburner Plugin

An answer for how to promote the site. This plugin is simply not needed. I found that after I installed the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin that this plugin added no functionality. FD Feedburner Plugin’s home at WordPress.

GD Star Rating, GD Simple Widgets, and GD Press Tools

An answer for how to identify and display the more popular content. GD Star Rating adds the ability for readers to rate content, GD Simple Widgets provides widgets to display the most popular content, and GD Press Tools is a pre-requisite for GD Simple Widgets. This set of plugins has a dizzying array of options and took much more effort to use than I liked. However, if is definitely worth persevering with these plugins if you want readers to be able to rate your content. GD Star Rating, GD Simple Widgets, and GD Press Tools’ home at WordPress.

Lightbox 2 (by Rupert Morris)

An answer for how to display images in a user friendly gallery. I wrote about my impressions of the Media Library and default Image Gallery in 9 Things you need to know before using WordPress, but in summary I found the output unfriendly for readers. After trying a few of the Gallery plugins I liked the results produced by this plugin the most. Lightbox 2’s home at WordPress.

In conclusion, I found that installing smaller more focussed plugins worked better for me that large do-it-all ones. The WordPress Plugin Directory lists thousands of plugins and I found it overwhelming to pick the plugins I needed. Additionally, there is much overlap and duplication of functionality that makes it difficult to find the right combination of plugins. Lastly, creating a site specifically to try out plugins worked wonders for me.

To date I’m happy with my decision and learnt much whilst migrating the previous version of this site to WordPress. Here is a list of the things I believe are useful.

1. Pretty permalinks vs. Internet Information Server (IIS).

WordPress is aimed at Apache and “switch hosts” seems to be the standard answer for questions about WordPress hosted on IIS. I had many difficulties using pretty permalinks on IIS6, mostly related to redirecting pages. After upgrading to IIS7 with the Rewrite Module installed it worked as expected. I also found Ruslan’s Blog invaluable when configuring the rewrite module.

2. Handling of missing content can be temperamental.

For a long time I had “404 Not Found” error pages simply display the home page, or worse an empty blank page. I never truly found the cause, but if you are experiencing this problem you can read my trails and tribulations here.

3. Finding suitable plugins is difficult.

The WordPress Plugin Directory lists thousands of plugins. The Most Popular and Highest Rated links provided good candidates, but once I installed a few I realised some are a complete overkill for my needs. There is also a tremendous amount of duplication and overlap between plugins. Read my post Which WordPress plugins and why? for more information.

4. How do you use the ‘new’ Media Library?

My first attempt at using the Media Library to create an Image Gallery was very frustrating. I’m still not comfortable using this functionality and recommend watching the Manage Media Library video and reading the Using image and file attachments Codex page before trying to do either.

5. How to create an Image Gallery?

Initially I used the WordPress default gallery, but found both the in-post display and the navigation between pictures clunky. After some experimentation I settled on the Lightbox 2 plugin by Rupert Morris. You can view the outcome of my experimentation and the plugin in action here.

6. FileZilla is your friend

If you do not have a favourite FTP client already, give FileZilla a twirl.

7. Read the WordPress Lessons page

You will have to go a long way to beat the Lessons page for an introduction to WordPress.

8. How to create your own Theme

I knew before migrating that I was going to create a custom theme. I really enjoyed creating the Tawny Lion theme and would encourage everyone to try it for themselves. The WordPress Theme Development page is a good start.

9. The best thing about WordPress is its community.

A shameless attempt at currying favour.

Even though we never used this banner it certainly captured the concept of SLBounty. It clearly shows how SLBounty intended to help bridge the gap (or is that river) between content creators and those who wanted custom content created.

You can view the full size image at this deviantART page.

If you wish to know more about what SLBounty.com was, how it looked, and what it tried to do, you should read A tour of SLBounty before continuing.

I think we got much right, a few things wrong, but most important of all we made one fatal mistake.

The good

• For a while SLBounty.com was the first Google result when searching for “Earn Lindens”.
• SNOOPYBrown Zamboni, then of Electric Sheep, requesting Daisy Daisy avatar.
• Reaching a 100+ registered users.
• Receiving an offer to purchase the site.

The bad

• The home page was slow to load at times.
• The workflow for reaching an agreement was too complicated.
• Ridiculous password policy for users.

The mistake

I think the biggest mistake we made was trying to formalise what is essentially an interactive and iterative process. In general the process for getting custom work done isn’t as procedural as specifying what you want, reviewing tenders for it, and then selecting a supplier. There are too many subtleties that can’t be coded for. Most people have some vague idea of what they want made, but struggle to specify all the details up front. Also, the exchange of money for creative work depends very much on the relationship. What works for one client may not work for another at all. In short I believe we delivered the wrong service. A general job advertising board may have been a better option.

Lessons learnt

• Making a site work isn’t good enough. It needs to work well!
• Selling is vital. The hard work starts after the site has been created.
• There is always at least one user of a site that finds every flaw. (Thank you!)
• Do everything you can to assist your users, especially the early adopters.
• Developing internal web applications is much easier than public facing ones.
• Development takes much longer than you imagine.
• ASP.Net makes web coding easy, doing it well though is a different story.
• Make the site as easy as possible to use. E.g. having a password policy that requires lowercase, uppercase, numeric, and symbolic characters is not friendly.
• Make sure you have website usage statistics. How else can you know what is working and what isn’t?
• I could list more, but these are the first to spring to mind.

Conclusion

Developing SLBounty.com was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you to everyone who registered and sorry it didn’t work out.

SLBounty is an online marketplace for getting custom Second Life stuff built. We created the service to enable residents who want Second Life things done to collaborate with those who have the skills to supply them.

The process for facilitating this can be summarised as follows:

Take a virtual tour of SLBounty.com, click any image below.