I’ve been using Firefox for longer than I’ve been using Linux. First I used Netscape as an alternative browser in Windows, swiftly migrating to Mozilla Firefox when it became available. Firefox as a tool in it’s own right seemed like an unnecessary change, but I soon came to love it. Firefox 2.0 was a breath of fresh air, and the more I use it the better I like it.

The best thing is its extendability. I run Firefox on about half a dozen different PC’s. Some mine, some work, some Linux, some windows. On all of them I install a suite of extensions that make life easier for me. I’ve been using most of them for so long now that I don’t even think of them as extras, and I’m always surprised when there not there on a new PC.

I’ve split this list into two chunks to stop it from getting too unwieldy… Here’s the first four, I’ll get to the other four tomorrow…

English Dictionary - For in line spell checking on any website. The WordPress installation on my UkLinux server is a bit flaky. When you hit the button for a spell check it just returns an error, but with this extension it doesn’t matter. The same in Google Docs, no need to wait and click a button. Simple spell checking everywhere. Indispensable.

Adblock Plus - for blocking ads. I hate ads. You hate ads. Chances are you already have this installed. If you don’t, every ad you download eats bandwidth and costs you precious time. Install this now. (Dangerous words from a man who has advertising on his site…)

FlashBlock - for blocking flash. The only thing that annoys me more than ads are Flash ads. No, I don’t want to download your multi-megabyte ad on the off chance that I’m interested. Life’s too short. With this extension you never have to suffer them again, and you can always turn it back on again if it’s absolutely needed for site navigation…

RIP - for removing anything Adblock or FlashBlock misses. RIP stands for Remove It Permanently and it does exactly what it says on the tin. If there is something on a site you never want to see again, use this. One of my favorite uses is to remove a load of rubbish from social networking sites.

Anyone can make use of these tools, Firefox makes them so easy to install. Tomorrows batch are a bit more specialised, a bit more oriented towards what I spend my time doing. (I’ll do the jokes…)

This I think is going to be the hardest thing to achieve. If any of you use the social bookmarking site (digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon etc) then let me know. If you don’t already use these services, then consider signing up for an account, so you can help me in my endeavor to get the word out there.

I had considered setting up multiple identities and posting to many blogs and sites with links to onecubicmetre, but that seems rather dishonest. And in these interconnected days there are ways of joining up the dots.

So I guess it’s gonna be a long slow slog to get the name out there. Not sure whether it’s worth leaving comments on sites if ocm isn’t up and running yet. It would have the benefit of getting links into Google’s PageRank system, but they probably penalise sites for linking to 404’s and holding pages.

Degree turn, turn that is… This is where the blog stops being purely about testing wordpress and more of a personal blog for me. That doesn’t mean there won’t be anything about getting WordPress to do what I want, it just means that there is likely to be a fair bit of other nonsense piled in there as well.

I’ll be adding various bits from Flixster, Librarything and Facebook in the sidebars about what I’m watching and reading, and you’re likely to get a bit more about what I’m doing on a day to day basis.

In order to use WordPress as an online store, the standard blog layout simply will not do the job. I’m imagining a really stripped down grid affair, with no advertising from Google or Amazon, because that would look really unprofessional.

I’m hoping it will be possible to kick a WordPress theme into shape in order to use it as a store. Not that I’ve found much evidence to support this yet, apart from a vaguely remembered website promising to make WordPress do things it’s creators never envisaged…

More research and theme hacking is about to be undertaken I imagine.

I know, it’s hardly the sexiest topic in the world, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to place highly in search results. To this end I’ve followed some handy tips from the man at thesitewizard, who’s obviously done this before.

All my post now have proper names instead of search engine unfriendly ‘?post_id=<a_number>’ type identifiers. The only thing I can’t get rid of is the little double arrow in the title bar of the browser. It’s almost as if it’s hard coded into WordPress. More investigation needed…

The other thing I learnt recently was not to put links away from your site in the opening few sentences of your post. (Fairly obvious when you say it out loud, isn’t it) So if you do want to see what thesitewizard has to say for himself, click here.