There are a number of lightbox tools are available. Until I discovered ColorBox JQuery plugin, I wasn't completely comfortable using any of them.

Why ColorBox? Well, it is easy to use, lightweight and it supports all kinds of different content like photos, photo groups, slideshow, ajax, inline, and iframed content.

I am using ColorBox JQuery plugin on one of my sites but I wish it was as easy as the thumbnail viewer plugin when using on a WordPress site. With thumbnail viewer plugin all you need to do is add rel=thumbnail to any link tag surrounding your thumbnail. You'll see an example below.

There are a couple of WordPress ColorBox plugins available. I haven't tried the LightBox Plus yet. I haven't been able to get the JQuery ColorBox WordPress plugin to work. I'd rather use ColorBox JQuery plugin on my WordPress site without a plugin. I am still experimenting with that. Including JQuery functions on WordPress header is a little different. I will soon update you on that. Stay tuned...

UPDATE 03/06/2010:

OK! Now the image on this post works with ColorBox. Here is how I made it work:

Added the link to the ColorBox stylesheet on the header.php right after all the other stylesheet links.
After "wp_head();", I put the link to the ColorBox script and the JQuery function call:

$(document).ready(function($){
$("a[rel='colorbox']").colorbox();
});

Now, pay attention to the $ in the function bracket. You won't see it on ColorBox example pages. This is required when you are adding JQuery functions to your WordPress header. Without that all the $ within your code would not be interpreted correctly. This is the best way to add JQuery functions to your WordPress header.

Finally I added the rel="colorbox" to the link to the image. You can use a different name but make sure it is the same one you in the JQuery function.

One last point: If you have the WordPress Flickr Manager plugin as I do, disable the image viewer.

Here is the ColorBox example:

I have been searching for a good Google Maps Plugin for WordPress. Google Maps Plugin by Avi was the one I had found the most useful after trying a few others. After inconsistent results and css problems with different themes, I even tried using iframe embed on pages and posts within “code” tags as I explained here.

I have been looking to find a solution to accomplish the following tasks:

1) I want to be able put maps of places I visited on individual posts. I also want to have a single page with a map with markers of all these places I posted about. Clicking on these markers will open the info window with a link to the individual map.

2) I want to add a location mashup map for a business with multiple locations. This will work pretty much the same as above except the markers will link to the individual location maps.

I am happy to report that I found the right plugin: Geo Mashup Plugin for WordPress.

A single map page that can present your posts in many ways

• It can show just one category, for example
• Clicking on a post marker shows a summary of the post in an info bubble

A small search map on the post editing page to easily add location to posts

Template tags to make links from located posts to the map and other things

GeoRSS automatically added to feeds

Option show the full post for a clicked marker on the map page

You can see a working example of this plugin on my latest project CarDealsNet.com.

This is a must-have plugin.

Note on Word WordPress 2.6: While working to set this plugin up, I wanted to have the mashup page have a different page template. I noticed that my "page template" option disappeared. I found out that the page template I use did not have the header:

<?php

/*
Template Name: Geo Mashup
*/

<?

I am pretty sure the template without the header worked on the previous WordPress version. Anyways, if you don't see the "page template" option while writing a page even though you created one, it is because you forgot to add the template header.

Google Maps for WordPress plugin I posted about before has not been working consistently. Even after the latest update, it was not able to pinpoint the marker to the exact location on the map. After trying another plugin that gave JavaScript errors, I decided to use iframe embed on pages and posts within "code" tags which worked out great. The the moral of the story is that before you run out and try to find a plugin to accomplish a certain task, see if you can do it without a plugin.

Perishable Press has a good article titled Optimize WordPress: Pure Code Alternatives for 7 Unnecessary Plugins about this.

The process of embedding the Google Map on your blog page or post is very easy: After you searched for the address on Google Maps, you'll see a link on top left corner of the map that is titled "Link to this page". When you click on the link, dropdown box will offer you two options. Click on "Customize and preview embedded map" option and adjust your map size settings so that the map fits your blog page/post, copy the code and past it on your page/post within "code" tags. That is all there is to it. This is the easiest way to go if you only need a simple location map on your blog.

The same approach applies to WP iPaper plugin I talked about here. There is no need to use it at all. Get your iPaper embed code and insert it on your post/page within "code' tags. This way you can even include the document's text in embed code. Including the text of your document in the embed code will allow search engine crawlers to index the document. As Scribd explains:

This will mean people who search for relevant terms may end up at the page where you add the embed code. This will help drive more traffic to web pages where you embed the document.

Now on to another plugin I have started using:

WordPress Custom Admin Branding plugin is great if you have a blog/website you will allow others to register and use admin area to contribute. You can customize your WordPress login screen to look the way you want.

The Custom Admin Branding Plugin allows you to not only re-brand the WordPress login screen, but also the admin header and footer with your own custom images.

Last week I had to put together a site in a few hours that would contain videos, mp3 files and a simple contact form.  Considering the lack of time I decided to use WordPress to put this site together.

Step One was to pick a theme that I can quickly make it look distinct without spending much time. I found the Options theme by Justin Tadlock was perfect for the job. I have not studied the documentation and not even using most of the options available but it was a good choice since it fit the project.

Step Two was to add some static pages. One was a location page where I wanted to use Google Maps Plugin for WordPress I mentioned here before. Unfortunately it only displayed the map as a gray rectangle. Figuring that it was due to style sheet issues and not having time to go through it, I opted to use the iframe embed of the Google Map which worked perfectly.

I also wanted to have some documents available on this site. I like scribd and the ipaper format so I went ahead and got the WP IPaper Plugin. It did not work at first. Since I really wanted to have the IPaper version of documents on this site, I decided to spend a little more time to troubleshoot which led me to discover that the plugin works only if you do not put the access key in quotes. Cool!

It is time for the videos and I realize what a hassle to embed videos in WordPress... Well, after a quick search online I came across FLV-Embed Plugin. Since I already had FLV copies of videos available this plugin was a perfect choice.

To have the mp3 files embedded, the clear choice was Audio Player WordPress Plugin.

When it came to deciding on the contact form, I quickly scanned and tried a few plugins promising to accomplish this task effortlessly. Finally I decided to use cforms II. It is easy to understand, install, use and customize. It does the job!

In less than three hours Swift299Gas.com was up and running thanks to WordPress and all these theme and plugin authors who make them available.

Here is the latest plugin I installed here: WordPress Sphere Related Content Plugin. I think it is pretty cool.

The Sphere Related Content plug-in displays an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, Sphere finds blog posts and media articles related to your content. See it in action on over 1 billion article pages on popular media sites and blogs like the WSJ, New York Times, TechCrunch and Real Clear Politics. Our plug-in works best on English language blog posts and topics that are being actively discussed in the blogosphere.

WordPress Sphere Related Content Plugin

It has the new video widget and extra options for political bloggers. Too bad Skip Dunn can't use this one since he is still blogging on nucleusCMS platform.

If you want to have the option to have your blog posts translated from one language to another, WordPress Global Translator plugin is the way to go.

Global Translator is a free and open source WordPress Plugin which is able to automatically translate your blog in the following fourteen different languages:
English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Dutch and Norwegian.

WordPress Global Translator Plugin

Here is another plugin for WordPress I find useful:

Amazon Machine Tags Plugin for WordPress

Whenever I post on any of the blogs I have, I like to link to a book, movie, or product available at Amazon.com and relevant to what I am writing about. This is not a straightforward process. I have to open up a new browser window, login to my associates account, search for the product, create the link, copy and paste it into the post. I know of some solutions that are available to make this process easier but the plugin I started using on this blog is the easiest. All you do is to search for the product at Amazon.com get the asin and create a simple tag within brackets [ ] like this:

amtap amazon:asin=0470149469

You will need to have Amazon Web Services Access ID to make this work. If you are an Amazon Associate, your Associate ID is included automatically. The tag will be displayed as below with item information and a thumbnail image including prices:

WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Matt Mullenweg (Foreword). For Dummies 2007, Paperback, 408 pages, $21.16

Since I started using WordPress fairly recently, I want to keep track of the themes, plugins I choose to use for WordPress sites I have. It is good to make notes about the installation and usage of plugins with links to developers' sites in case you need to use the same plugin again at a different site.

On one of the sites I wanted to embed the Google maps in a post. This was pretty simple to do using NucleusCMS. With NucleusCMS, embedding Google Maps, flash or video content is a snap and there is no need to use any plugins. You just copy and paste the embed code.

WordPress does not render a Google Map when you just copy and paste the embed code.

After a quick search I found Avi's Google Maps Plugin for WordPress.

This software will let you easily render Google Maps anywhere on your blog as a web service. It also includes code for easy integration with WordPress blogs, but what the code does best can actually be used with any other blog system or plain web page.

It was pretty easy install and setup the map. I needed a pretty standard map that displays a certain location with one marker. Plugin website includes detailed instructions if you need to setup complex maps.

There was one problem with the marker shown as a black square and having black background for the buttons.  Well the solution was on the same page under troubleshooting that requires to check your site's css file for “background-” related properties. Easiest way to do is to use Firefox as explained. I did not have any other problems using IE7, Firefox or Safari for Windows.

I have not had time to read through the comments of the users on the plugin page. It always is a good idea to skim through these comments and messages to see how others use the plugin and what problems if any they are reporting.  it is not uncommon to find ideas you can use that extends the use of plugin.

Thank you Avi for Google Maps Plugin for WordPress.