Hello world!

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“Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!”

Ok, since I respect the consuetudinary ‘Hello World’ statement typical of any technological kickoff (be it a programming language, a bulletin board, or another CMS) I choose to edit it!

The first post is dedicated to the blog setup! In case you wonder what a blog is see this video.

First of all it is worth mentioning that this blog is yet another WordPress blog. This choice is pretty much self-explanatory. In case it doesn’t tell you much, see the features here.

I want this blog to be as much accessible as possible so a no-frill minimal template by Dojo will serve the purpose! Nevertheless I may change it in the near/far future. I did some minor tweaks to prevent recent comments and blogroll from showing up.

I know it doesn’t help security much, but here is a list of what I think are ‘Essential plugins to start a personal blog’:

  • Twitter Tools: A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
  • HeadSpace2: Meta-data manager on steroids, allowing complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets, and many many other goodies.
  • Permalink Trailing Slash Fixer: Quickly add a trailing slash in the URLs if it’s missing in the permalink structure.

Then let me now introduce you my ‘Essential tweaks for a new blog’:

  • Permalinks: I love Search Engine Optimisation, therefore I love Search Engine Friendly URLs. I use a customised configuration, which is /%postname%/%post_id%/

There are other plugins i plan to add, but I’m still evaluating which ones to install. Basically I want something:

  • That lets people with external identities (Facebook, Gmail, OpenID, Microsoft Live) be able to comment. I don’t want to install one plugin for each ID provider but only one that serves them all.
  • That enables social bookmarking

Any suggestion?