[wp-hackers] Recommended Themes & Plugins for a Workshop?

[Stephen Rider]

On Feb 21, 2009, at 12:41 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:

> Tomorrow (Saturday) I will be spending the day preparing the  
> workshop guide/handouts with the help of some of those 20 people. My  
> plan is to give the attendees a selection of ~5 available themes to  
> choose from, and have them install and configure ~10 plugins. Though  
> I have some ideas for which themes and plugins to choose from I was  
> wondering if any of you have suggestions regarding great starter  
> themes and/or your top 10 plugins for new users of installed  
> WordPress.

1) Some plugin that deals with Feeds -- as an intro to discussion what  
feeds are (Ozh's "Better Feed" is excellent).

2) Anti-spam.  Akismet is good, but requires an account.  I would  
suggest Spam Karma, but it badly needs an update (which it's getting,  
but not today!)

3) Some sort of good Contact Form plugin

Specific plugins I like:

4) AddQuicktag -- lets you add buttons to the post editor.
http://bueltge.de/wp-addquicktags-de-plugin/120/

5) Automatic Timezone.  'nuff said.
http://ottodestruct.com/blog/wordpress-plugins/automatic-timezone/

6) Tooting my own horn, JavaScript Pull-Quotes is a nice bit of visual  
polish. :)
http://striderweb.com/nerdaphernalia/features/wp-javascript-pull-quotes/

7) Subscribe to Comments is an absolute must-have if they want  
community discussion on posts.
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/

Stephen

-- 
Stephen Rider
http://striderweb.com/