As part of the one year anniversary of this blog, I have done several updates over the past couple of weeks. I began with upgrading to WordPress 2.2, and in the process of doing so, I upgraded all the plugins that I have installed. I also added and tweaked several things on my sidebar. I finished up by adding a library section to my blog, which contains a list of my favorite books, books I am currently reading and books I plan to read.

Current Plugins:

• Add Meta Tags – Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives.
• Akismet – Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• Classic Posts w/ List Option – Allows you to select posts to be stickied and then randomly displayed or listed.
• Comment Timeout – Automatically closes comments on blog entries after a user-configurable period of time.
• FLV Embed – Standards compliant FLV embedding in your blog posts using SWFObject by Geoff and FLV Player by Jeroen.
• Google Sitemaps – This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• Now Reading – Allows you to display the books you’re reading, have read recently and plan to read, with cover art fetched automatically from Amazon.
• PJW Mime Config – Allows you to extend the list of mime-types supported by the builtin uploader.
• Share This – Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• Subscribe2 – Notifies an email list when new entries are posted.
• Subscribe2 Widget – Adds a sidebar widget for Subscribe2.
• Widgetize Anything – Provides a widget interface for any php code.
• WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.
• WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
• WP-Cache – Very fast cache module.
• WP-ContactForm – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you.
• WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog.
• WP-License – Allows selection of a Creative Commons license for blog content.

Sidebar Updates:

• Helpful Posts – I added a section listing a few of the helpful posts I have written. I used Widgetize Anything to run the PHP from the Classic Posts plugin.
• Ads – I put in logos and links for OrthodoxSermons.org, Holy Pimoly, Church IT Podcast, Mozy, as well as a few Google applications.
• Badges – Check out my profile on LinkedIn and on Facebook.
• Shared Items – Highlights from my daily blog reading, I currently have 284 subscriptions (nothing compared to Scoble). Take a look, you will find lots of interesting stuff and you can subscribe to it as well.
• Del.icio.us – I switched this from pulling new links via RSS to using their linkroll script.
• Now Reading – Shows the current books I am reading.
• Flickr – Shows the latest photos from my Flickr stream