Getting plug-ins from the WordPress site is a good idea because there are reviews of the plug-in and opinions of known issues such as incompatibility with the latest WP version.

Also, you can be pretty sure that the plug-in is clean (without malicious bugs) – which may not be the case for a plug-in downloaded straight from someone’s site.

You can see other plug-ins listed that might do the same job or suit your purpose better.

Having said that, I usually click through to the site of the plug-in maker and try to get a feel for the plug-in and the person behind the plug-in. The comment section (if there is one) on the maker’s site is often useful too.

The broken link plug-in, for example, looks great and can be downloaded at

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

- though I see that older versions of the plug-in are available from the site for anyone running versions of WP before the 3.0 release.

I admit it. WordPress gets me hot. (Er, in a dispassionate, non-weird sense. If indeed there is one).

A few plugins I can recommend:

- Akismet
- TanTan Noodles Spam Filter

(these are for keeping the Reformed Pork Luncheon Meat Crowd at bay – because with a bigger reach and bigger traffic comes a bigger target for spammers)

- Wassup

Realtime traffic stats, so you can track down all the lurkers (muhahah) and see who is popping by.

‘Kay, I’m done.

/geek

Now I come to think about it – maybe you are (!) – but to anyone else reading this – I’m not – and I’m still glad I switched.

Ooops. I kinda meant “full-fat version”.

….but I rather like “full-fate”. Sounds epic. ;)

(And the new site looks terrific, BTW. Nice work).

Shifting to WordPress is the best thing I’ve ever done with a blog. I started at 20six.co.uk, then moved to Typepad, then finally made the leap and bought my own hosting package. When I did the latter, my traffic soared and the amount of creative freedom went through the roof. In its full-fate version, WordPress is simply colossal in its adaptability. The plugins, the spam control, the look, the feel, the one-click upgrading…it’s simply terrific.

To anyone mulling over a shift to WordPress – I cannot recommend it enough. Even if you spend the next month rebuilding links by hand (yup, I’m still doing that myself, and yup, it’s a pain in the rump)…it’s still worth it by a long mile.

Head to Blogger>Settings>Basic and export your blog in the same way as you would back it up (folks, don’t tell me you don’t back up?!)

Then in your shiny new wordpress blog head to Tools>import>blogger and it should be plain sailing from there.

If you’re not worried about old links or anything fancier than that then it will only take about 5 minutes.

Blogger also backs up uploaded photos to your PICASA web albums – a bit of added security.

I know what you mean about internal links – it feels a bit like doing housework. But I will get there in the end!

In the end I was so worried about losing all my photos that I literally copied and pasted every blog post across which was a mamoth task. I still have some of my old internal links pointing to the wrong place.