Looking at the tons of WordPress plugins out there I also found a lot of IM status display plugins.
So I thought that it might be nice to have a studivz.de online status plugin to display your online status on your blog or website, wouldn’t it?
I am posting this here before I actually do it because I really don’t have enough time to do it myself at the moment. So if anyone wants to give it a try, just do it.
While googling some more information about studivz I also found some …

For testing of themes/plugins etc I found it useful to replicate my online blog to my local pc.
I am using xampp as a windows environment for testing/debugging. It comes with a preinstalled apache,phpmyadmin,mysql database and much more. For me the lite version of xampp was sufficient, but have a look at the xampp site and decide for yourself.
What I did to get my local blog going:
WordPress

Copy all online files of WordPress to your local disk
e.g. “C:\path\to\local\blog”

Database

Backup the online database
import database backup to local database
edit the database informations in wp-config.php in …

I would like to know which plugins for WordPress are useful for you?
I will name the plugins that I use and I hope I will get some feedback from you.

Dunstan-style Error Page
A fuller featured 404 error page modeled from http://1976design.com/blog/error/ By Andrew Ferguson.
Just see what happens when you open this page:
Example of a 404 error page

Akismet
The famous anti spam plugin. I don’t really need it yet, but maybe in the future.

Code MarkUp
A filter that displays <code> blocks nicely while still allowing formatting. By Bennett McElwee.
I had a problem with displaying …

I had some problems with changing the permalink option in the site admin.
I wanted my posts to have this nice format:
http://blog.airness.de/2007/04/03/sample-post/
But somehow it did not work. I always got an “object not found” page.
I found this site which has a lot of information on the permalink settings of WordPress:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
First of all I had to install mod_rewrite for apache on my SuSE Server but there will be another post covering this.
My solution:
1) create .htaccess file in my blogs root directory
touch .htaccess
2) modify the file permissions
chmod 666 .htaccesss
3) set the permlink format …

My blog is up and running .. that was kind of easy.