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:

I had imported Brian Gardner's one of free themes -- Blue Zinfandel -- to NucleusCMS for one of my blogs. Now I am thinking about switching to WordPress for that blog also, I may use his Blue Zinfandel theme for the WordPress blog. It is a clean and elegant theme.

There are quite a selection of WordPress themes available online for free. I have not purchased one yet but if I were to purchase one Brian Gardner's Revolution Themes will be on the top of my shopping list.

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.

Well it worked! Followed the basic upgrade instructions and everything went without a hitch as it should.

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

WordPress 2.5

First Impression: Admin area looks a lot cleaner.

I will be posting about my experience with WordPress including the plugins and themes I use and recommend.

Not long after I switch to WordPress from NucleusCMS, a new version of WordPress available...

NucleusCMS updates were pretty easy. I will be updating this blog to the latest release of WordPress. Hopefully everything will go smoothly.

 A fresh install of WordPress 2.5 at www.SwiftPreApproval.com went pretty smoothly. Swift Pre-Approval is a service of Swift Jeep Chrysler Dodge in Davis. It was supposed to be a site with one landing page where visitors are directed to apply to get pre-approved in second for a car loan. I decided to use WordPress with red-matrix-pill-10 theme by WPDesigner and have extra pages and posts giving information about vehicle financing and leasing. Having the educational and informational material on the site will also help with search engine results positions.

We'll see how the update will work on this site...