These are the plugins that are being reviewed:

• Fidgetr (v1.3.4) by Paul Kehrer
• Flickr+Highslide (v1.2) by Pim Linders
• Flickr Gallery (v1.3.0) by Dan Coulter
• Flickr Manager (v2.3) by Trent Gardner
• Flickr Photo Album (v1.1) by Joe Tan
• Flickrpress (v0.3.1) by Michael Tyson
• flickrRSS (v5.1) by Dave Kellam and Stefano Verna
• Flickr Tag (v2.4.6) by Jeff Maki
• Wordpress Media Flickr (v1.1.0) by yu-ji
• WP Decoratr (v1.4) by iDope

The first thing I did was to check whether the plugins added any overhead to the overall loadtime of the home page after being activated. You’ll be surprised at how many plugins add overhead without being in use at all (other than being activated).  The results are shown in the following table:

Note also that many of these plugins can optionally be configured to use extra javascript image effects (like lightbox) and that this will add more overhead.

Here is a quick review of the plugins after playing with them for a while:

Fidgetr

Fidgetr is a widget that lets you display a users flickr photostream in the sidebar. There are several themes to choose from, the default one will show only one photo, and display the rest when you hover over it. There are also that crossfades between the photos. A quick and easy way of displaying photos from flickr on your blog. You don’t have to authenticate with any flickr user, and it shows only public photos.

Flickr+Highslide

This plugin lets you insert the x newest public photos from a user using shortcode. This mean that you can insert photos anywhere where you can use WordPress shortcodes. The plugin uses the Highslide javascript image effect for showing the images when you click on them.

Flickr Gallery

This plugin adds a ready-made gallery into your post or page using shortcode. The gallery is complete with tabs that can show you a users photostream, photosets, collections as well as a tab showing interesting photos. The plugin requires a flickr API.

Flickr Manager

This plugin needs to authenticate with a flickr user account, but note that it gives the plugin full access to the account, not only read, but also to delete photos – so BEWARE! On the other hand, because of this the plugin lets you upload, modify and delete photos in flickr right from the WordPress interface! It also lets you insert photos from your photostream, from your sets, from public photos and also to upload images to flickr from the edit post screen. NOTE! I couldn’t get this plugin to work properly for me. It didn’t show any photos in my sets when I tried to insert a set in a post. I also weren’t able to actually insert any pictures into my post at all using this plugin!

Flickr Photo Album

This plugin needs a flickr API and to authenticate to a flickr account to work. It can be used as a widget as well as to insert photos from your photostream, whole albums and photos from other flickr users. There is a search box so you can easily find the images you want. When you insert albums you are given the choice of just showing the album cover or the images in the album (you can configure how many images to show). You can also show all your flickr albums on a separate page in WordPress.

Flickrpress

This plugin is a widget that lets you show photos from flickr in your sidebar.

flickrRSS

This plugin is a widget that lets  you show photos from flickr in your sidebar.

Flickr Tag

This plugin needs to authenticate with a flickr account. It then lets you insert photos from your photostream, your favorite photos and whole sets. It is not possible to browse or search for photos though, it just shows the last x photos in your stream.

Wordpress Media Flickr

This plugin needs to authenticate with a flickr account, and lets you add images from flickr into your posts. It is very easy and intuitive to use, but you can’t choose to insert multiple images or a whole set. You have to insert one photo at a time.

WP Decoratr

This plugin is not like the rest. It scans the text of your post and automatically finds public photos in flickr that matches the content of your blogpost. A wonderfull idea, and it seems to work well in the little time I have used it.

Conclusion?

I’ll let you make your own conclusions, but perhaps you have a little clearer picture of which plugins you want to check out? Please, also let me know if there are any other flickr related plugins that I should take a look at.

Install X

pacman -S xorg dbus

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add “hal” to the DAEMONS list.

Install and configure input drivers

pacman -S xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-synaptics

cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/

Edit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi

Find the line that say “… “input.xkb.layout” type=”string”>us” and replace “us” with “no”

Install Video Driver

pacman -S nvidia mesa

Choose “yes” to remove libgl

Install Fonts

pacman -S ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-cheapskate artwiz-fonts

Reboot

reboot

Test X

startx

X should now start. Type “exit” in the login window to exit X.

So now we know that running X works. Good!

Configure X

nvidia-xconfig --composite --add-argb-glx-visuals

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Update Section “Device” by adding:

• Option “NvAGP” “0″
• Option “NoLogo” “True”
• Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “True”

Update section “Screen”, subsection “Display” by adding:

• Modes “1920×1200″ “1600×1200″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″

Add new section “InputDevice” and add:

• Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”
• Driver “synaptics”
• Option “SendCoreEvents” “true”
• Option “Device” “/dev/psaux”
• Option “Protocol” “auto-dev”
• Option “SHMConfig” “on”
• Option “HorizScrollDelta” “0″
• Option “MaxTapTime” “180″
• Option “MinTapTime” “50″

Add to section “ServerLayout”:

• InputDevice “Synaptics Touchpad”

Let’s check that X still works:

startx

cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

Repeat the above command for all user accounts that you want to use X with.

Further reading at Arch Linux Wiki

• Xorg

I spent quite some time googling before I found the answer over at One Man’s Blog. It was really simple too. Just delete the upgrade folder under wp-content, and it works again.  Thanks John!

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Install the needed packages:

pacman -S alsa-utils alsa-oss

Change to my normal non-root user account:

su - [username]

Start alsamixer:

alsamixer

Unmute (press “m“) and adjust volume of the Master and PCM channels

Press ESC to exit the alsamixer

Test to see if you got sound:

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

If you got sound, write “exit” to return to the root user.

Store the mixer levels:

alsactl store

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add “alsa” to the DAEMONS list. I also added “!snd_pcsp” to stop Arch loading the PC speaker module

Further reading at Arch Linux Wiki

• ALSA
• OSS

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Install the necessary packages

pacman -S acpi acpid acpitool cpufrequtils pm-utils laptop-mode-tools

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following to the MODULES list:

• acpi-cpufreq
• cpufreq-ondemand
• cpufreq-powersave

Add the following to the DAEMONS list:

• cpufreq
• laptop-mode

Edit /etc/conf.d/cpufreq and comment out the min_freq and max_freq lines, and make sure that governor=”ondemand”

Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add “resume=/dev/sda2″ to the kernel options

Further reading on the Arch Linux Wiki

• Laptop
• ACPI modules
• ACPID
• Cpufrequtils
• CPU Frequency Scaling
• PM-utils

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The tested plugins:

• cForms II (v11.0)
• Clean-Contact (v1.2)
• Contact Form 7 (v2.0.5)
• Contact Form 8f (v1.0.0)
• Contact Form with Captcha (v1.00)
• Cool Contact Form (v1.00)
• Easy Contact (v0.1.2b)
• Fast and Secure Contact Form (v1.7.4)
• MM Forms (v0.9.4b)
• Quick Contact (v0.5.1b)
• Simple Contact Form (v3.0)
• SimpleModal Contact Form (v1.2.4)
• Tiny Contact Form (v0.5.1)
• WP-ContactForm (v1.5.1.1)
• WP Contact Form III (v1.6.2d)
• WP Form Creator (v0.9.8)
• Zero Conf Mail (v0.0.3)

I first wanted to check if the plugins added any overhead to my site just by being activated. The results are in the following table.

Plugin	Requests	Data	Memory	Comments
None	6	27kb	10.68mb	Baseline
cFormsII	9	55kb	na*	Tested this plugin a bit after the others, and in the meantime the baseline had changed. That's why there are no memory test.
Clean-Contact	6	27kb	10.73mb
Contact Form 7	10	96kb	11.41mb
Contact Form 8	10	96kb	11.38mb
Contact Form with Captcha	8	29kb	10.7mb
Cool Contact Form	8	28kb	10.7mb
Easy Contact	6	27kb	10.8mb
Fast and Secure Contact Form	6	27kb	11.18mb
MM Forms	12	117kb	11.11mb	Forms Creator
Quick Contact	7	36kb	10.77mb
Simple Contact Form	6	27kb	10.74mb
SimpleModal Contact Form	15	113kb	10.76mb
Tiny Contact Form	6	27kb	10.8mb
WP-ContactForm	6	27kb	10.74mb
WP Contact Form III	7	28kb	10.75mb
WP Form Creator	22	83kb	10.77mb	Forms Creator
Zero Conf Mail	6	27kb	10.74mb

As you can see, quite a few of them does. So even if you never use any contact forms on your site, they are still taking up your resources! So far, the nice ones are Clean-Contact, Easy Contact, Fast and Secure Contact Form, Simple Contact Form, Tiny Contact Form, WP-ContactForm and Zero Conf Mail.

I then used each plugin in turn to add a contact form in a post, and checked again for overhead.

Conclusions

Given these results, I would say that the first prize for the contact form plugin that adds the least amount of overhead to your wordpress blog goes to

• Easy Contact
• Tiny Contact Form
• WP-ContactForm
• Zero Conf Mail

Congratulations! But there were others close behind as you can see for yourself from the tables.

Perhaps it’s abit unfair for the 3 form creaters tested, as these can be used to create any number of other kinds of forms as well. I guess I will have to give cFormsII a prize as well, as it used the least system resources of the three (though I didn’t have a change to test WP Form Creator, given it’s beta status)

pacman -S openntpd

This installs openntpd and adds new group “ntp” and new user “ntp”

Edit /etc/rc.conf and add “openntpd” to the daemon list

Further reading at the Arch Linux Wiki

Network Time Protocol

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Create new user

useradd -m -G users,audio,lp,optical,storage,video,wheel,power -s /bin/bash [username]

Set password

passwd [username]

Give the new user sudo rights

EDITOR=nano visudo

Find the line “root ALL=(ALL) ALL” and add a new line under it: [username] ALL=(ALL) ALL

That’s it. Our new account is created and ready to use.

Further reading at the Arch Linux Wiki

• User Management
• Groups

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Ranking the mirrors

But first I’d like to rank my mirrors. The first thing I need to do is to prepare the mirrorlist by removing all mirros that are far away physically from me. The idea is to only have servers in the list that are close to you. If it is closer to you it is probably fairly quick as well (relative to you).

Edit the mirrorlist

nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

and remove all sites that you don’t need and uncomment all the sites that are left.

Install python (needed to run the script). Note, if a new version of pacman is installed you will probably be prompted to update pacman itself first.

pacman -Sy python

Change directory

cd /etc/pacman.d

Make a copy of the mirrorlist

cp mirrorlist mirrorlist.backup

Run the ranking script (this may take some time)

rankmirrors -n 6 mirrorlist.backup > mirrorlist

Updating the system

Syncronize the package databases

pacman -Syy

Start a full system upgrade

pcaman -Su

Very good! You now have an up-to-date Arch Linux system installed. Now will be a good time to do a reboot.

reboot

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The following plugins will be tested:

• Add to any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button (v.9.9.3.5)
• I Love Social Bookmarking (v.0.3.1)
• ShareThis (v3.0.1)
• Sociable (v3.5.1)
• Social Bookmarking RELOADED (v3.0.5)
• Social Bookmarks (v4.1.3)

I have decided to test plugins that works in posts and are more or less plug-and-play. This means that plugins that requires you to edit your theme to work are not taken into consideration.

Note on SexyBookmarks
I tested SexyBookmarks as well, but the plugin broke my dashboard, giving me “An Unexpected HTTP Error occured during the API request” messages all the time.  A quick search gave me this link where you can read more about it: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/296622, where a work-around is offered.

Conclusion

So what can we learn from this? Well.. almost all plugins adds overhead to your site, so the choise is not always an easy one. Should you choose the fancy one? Or the fast one? I can’t choose for you, but according to this little test, if you care about your site loading fast, you should at least take a closer look at ShareThis and I Love Social Bookmarking.

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