Many technologies are used to make Off on a Tangent, and deserve part of the credit. I am a proponent of open source software, and most of what I use to make this site is open source.
Core
- WordPress—the core of this site is built on WordPress, an open source (GNU-GPL) blogging and content management system.
- This site makes use, to varying degrees, of the following WordPress plugins (some of which with modification). As derivative works of WordPress, these plugins are also licensed under the GNU-GPL.
- Akismet—Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) Sign up for an Akismet API key, and 3) Go to your Akismet configuration page, and save your API key. By Automattic
- Better Blogroll—Pulls a configurable number of links and their categories from the WordPress Link Manager and gives you more control of your blogroll. By Jon Dyer
- Better Tag Cloud—A Better Tag Cloud than the default one. By Nicolas Kuttler
- Broken Link Checker—Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. By Janis Elsts
- BWP Google XML Sitemaps—A more lightweight Google XML Sitemap WordPress plugin that generates a Sitemap index rather than a single sitemap. Despite its simplicity, it is still very powerful and has plenty of options to choose. By Khang Minh
- CryptX—No more SPAM by spiders scanning you site for email adresses. With CryptX you can hide all your email adresses, with and without a mailto-link, by converting them using javascript or UNICODE. Although you can choose to add a mailto-link to all unlinked email adresses with only one klick at the settings. That’s great, isn’t it? By Ralf Weber
- Gallery Shortcode Style to Head—Moves the gallery shortcode styles to the head so it doesn’t break XHTML validation; allows disabling or modifying the default gallery styles. By Scott Bradford
- Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin—Very simple plugin that adds a client side generated checkbox to the comment form requesting that the user clicks it to prove they are not a spammer. Bots wont see it so their spam comment will be discarded. By Andy Bailey
- IFRAME Embed For YouTube—IFRAME Embed For YouTube will add a quicktag on WordPress Post Editor which will add the capability to embed Youtube Videos thru IFRAME, just you need to input the URL of the youtube video. By Tejaswini, Sanjeev
- Mail From—Change the default address that WordPress sends it’s email from. By Andrew Hamilton
- Quotes Collection—Quotes Collection plugin with Ajax powered Random Quote sidebar widget helps you collect and display your favourite quotes on your WordPress blog. By Srini G
- Wordbooker—Provides integration between your blog and your Facebook account. Navigate to Settings → Wordbooker for configuration. By Steve Atty
- WP-PluginsUsed—Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page. By Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan
- WP-SpamFree—An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By WP-SpamFree
- WP Render Blogroll Links—Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your Wordpress links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with CSS. Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”. By Tanin Ehrami
- This site also makes use of the following JavaScript libraries, which are included within the WordPress distribution:
- jQuery—For animations, effects, and various other things I am using the excellent open source (GNU-GPL/MIT License) jQuery JavaScript library.
- Thickbox—Image and gallery pop-up effects provided by the open-source (GNU-GPL/MIT License) Thickbox JavaScript library.
Underpinnings
- DreamHost—Hosting and domain registration services by DreamHost.
- Apache HTTP Server—The web server software that underpins both my development and production environments is the open source (Apache License) Apache HTTP Server.
- PHP Hypertext Preprocessor—The scripting language that powers WordPress and WordPress plugins, and much of my custom code, is the open source (PHP License) PHP Hypertext Preprocessor.
- Oracle MySQL—The database technology that powers WordPress is the open source (GNU-GPL) Oracle MySQL.
Development
- Adobe Fireworks CS5—The vast majority of graphics work for this site is done in Adobe Fireworks, a proprietary raster and vector graphics package (I tried several open source tools and was continually disappointed).
- ActiveState Komodo Edit—I do the majority of my coding in ActiveState Komodo Edit, an open source (Mozilla Public License), cross-platform code editor.
- Google Chrome—While developing this site, I do virtually all of my initial testing in Google’s Chrome web browser, which is based on the open source Chromium browser (BSD License). Only as I’m nearing the end of my development efforts do I begin in-depth testing in other browsers.
- FileZilla—The excellent FileZilla open source (GNU-GPL) FTP program serves a simple but important duty: it lets me upload files to the site, compare files, and otherwise manage the stuff on our server.
