WordPress Plugins for your World of Warcraft blog

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If you’re running a WordPress installation of a World of Warcraft blog (which you should, since WordPress is a beast), you might be looking for different ways to customize it. The WordPress repository has thousands of plugins and it’ll take a long time to sort through and figure out what you would benefit from. With that in mind, I wanted to recommend my own list of plugins for any aspiring bloggers looking to make life easy for themselves.

Security Plugins

Take it from a blogger who has been hacked. Never skimp on security.

Akismet: Best anti-spam protection you can get for your blog. You might think to yourself that your blog will never get spam, but as your audience grows and your popularity increases, so will your spam.

Login Lockdown: This plugin limits the amount of failed logins from any range of IPs. If someone can’t login after say… 5 attempts, it automatically prevents any further attempts. You better make sure you get your login right the first time!

WP Bans: Tired of trolls? You can whip out bans based on IP, range, host name, user agent, and referring URLs.

SEO Plugins

All in One SEO Pack: Whenever you write a post, it’ll optimize your titles for search engines and create META tags automatically. You can use it right after it’s installed without having to configure anything. But, you do have the option to override certain aspects. People keep asking me how do I get people to find my blog? This is one solution.

WordPress SEO by Yoast: Another excellent SEO alternative.

Advertising Plugins

AdRotate: Should you feel the need to run advertisements on your blog to help support your expenses, I highly recommend using AdRotate. It’s extremely convenient and easy to use.

Mobile Plugins

WPtouch: Formats your site with a mobile theme for visitors using touch-based smartphones.

Mobilepress: If you really want to make sure your site works on all mobile platforms, look into Mobilepress.

Utility Plugins

Jetpack: Adds various additional features to your blog. If nothing else, get it for the After the Deadline aspect which checks your style, grammar and spelling before you hit the publish button and prevents it from going live until you’re happy with it.

Broken Link Checker: As you add more and more links to your blog (you are linking to other posts and blogs right?), you’ll notice that sooner or later, blogs will die out or their URLs change. This plugin helps you by constantly scanning your blog for broken links. I wish I had this earlier. I have over 2000 broken links throughout my entire site somewhere.

Livefyre Realtime Comments: Completely overrides your comment system and uses theirs instead. If anyone tweets about your post or mentions it on Facebook or something, those conversations will show up here. Even does it in real time. Tr

Smart YouTube Pro: Allows you to embed videos and galleries from YouTube, Vimeo, and others more conveniently.

W3 Total Cache: Big time performance increasing plugin. The more you write, the more readers you get. Eventually your blog’s going to slow down a little. There were days were my site was sluggish before I switched to W3 Total Cache.

WP Maintenance mode: Throws up an emergency splash page in the event your blog needs to get taken down temporarily. Very handy for any upgrades or theme changes.

WP Polls: If you ever need to poll the audience, you can use this to help.

WordPress Popular Posts: Your blog posts are often timeless. Sure you’ll be writing patch specific or instance specific content. But every once in a while, you’ll write content that’s relevant no matter what expansion it is. Don’t bury it. Have a sidebar widget rotate through previously popular posts.

WordPress Editorial Calendar: Great scheduling and planning plugin for any serious power blogger. Use it to track and schedule posts throughout the week.

Are you a WordPress user yourself? What plugins would you recommend for newer bloggers?

Pet Battles, Rapture, Symbiosis, and Monks

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This week in The Herald.

  • An overview of pet battles
  • Why Rapture needs to retire
  • How to make Symbiosis better
  • Mistweaver Monk FAQ and Guide
Last weekend, I was over at Fan Expo Vancouver (think of it as Vancouver’s Comic Con). Not a bad event. I believe it was one of the first ones that was being organized and they were using it to test it out for future comic-ish cons. They hit capacity multiple times actually. Those who wanted to buy tickets the day of were denied shortly after lunch hour and the line was cut off. I heard both days saw around 12000+ people go in and out. Came home with this:

I miss that show.

Also, Kevin Sorbo is freakin’ tall. He was sitting next to Worf. I wonder who would win in a hand to hand fight. Hercules may be a demigod, but Worf is Klingon. Saw Marina Sirtis (Counselor Troi and might I add she aged really well). I bumped fists with Tony Amendola (Master Bra’tac from Stargate).

Hope we get a bigger and better one next year with a larger gaming presence, as well.

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An overview of pet battles

This post has a video demonstration of several pet battles from start to finish along with a preview of the new pets pane interface.

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Why Rapture needs to retire

Derevka lays out his thoughts on Rapture for Discipline and why he believes that mechanic must go. In a word, I agree with his sentiments.

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How to make Symbiosis better

Jasyla offers her opinion about the related spells of Symbiosis and offers up some alternative solutions instead.

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Mistweaver Monk FAQ and Guide

EGTactics has an up-to-date guide on the basics of playing the Mistweaver Monk. It covers aspects like suggested talents, ability usage, and gear.

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Are Good Healers Born or Created? 

Personally, my belief is that good healers can be created. But great healers are “born”. You can teach the technical skills to a player but you can’t really instill the burning desire to keep everyone alive.

Poor Ji Firepaw

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I’m aware of the controversy surrounding the guy. I don’t actually know if they made any additional changes to the dialog or anything, but this quest dialog cracked me up when I ran the 1-10 Panda area again for the second time.

He’s referring to Aysa Cloudsinger, a female Panda who practices a separate Pandaren discipline. You can see her in the above shot meditating on a pole.

poor-firepaw

I know full well the problems ailing this poor Panda.

I mean seriously! How does one Panda tell another Panda that they got a fine tail without be construed as a creeper, right?! What’s a Panda to do?! I wouldn’t even know how to pick up a Panda. But his concerns do seem to be valid. Mention her looks, and Aysa thinks Ji’s an instant creeper. Mention her forms and stature, and she’ll go “oooookay.”

It’s okay Ji. I got some ideas for you.

  • “I like the way your fur glistens in the sunlight.”
  • “Your tail is well groomed.”
  • “You smell beertacular.”
  • “How about you and I get together privately and… meditate?”
  • “I’ll show you my martial arts techniques if you show me yours.”

Heh, I don’t know. I wish I knew the answer to this question! Can anyone help a Panda out?

Priest talent: Mindbender

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Mists of Pandaria - Mindbender talent for Priests

Really quick, my earlier post about Atonement is no longer accurate. Atonement is now a baseline, Discipline ability. It’s no longer a glyph and Holy has no access to it anymore. Edit: Discipline has access to Atonement at level 60.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwp5sElqS4

Mindbender
40 yd range
4 min cooldown

Creates a Mindbender to attack the target.  Caster receives 6% mana when the Mindbender attacks. Damage taken by area of effect attacks is reduced. Lasts 15 sec.

It’s literally a flying squid. And it sucks the mana out of opponents. Not sure if this is a placeholder model or not, but I rather like it.  Now that the level 45 talents are seemingly finished, which one of the three talents would you choose?

I’m not actually sure which one of these I would take. My default choice will most likely be From Darkness, Comes Light. I really like having those free, instant Flash Heals. Not exactly the most reliable and there’s an heavier emphasis on procs. Can’t ignore the benefits of Mindbender though. A 4 minute cooldown means it can be used twice on most raid encounters.

New Priest talents, Glyph of Dark Binding, and Tier 14 healing bonuses

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Mists of Pandaria - Panda by the lake

Mindbender is the third level 45 talent. It was a giant question mark before, but it looks like it’s another pseudo-Shadowfiend. On a 4 minute cooldown, the Priest creates a Mindbender to attack the target and the Priest receives 6% mana back when Mindbender attacks. It’s only up for 15 seconds.

Glyph of Dark Binding: You can now cast Binding Heal, Flash Heal, and Renew without cancelling Shadowform. Nice! I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a super, OP utility glyph. I wouldn’t call it a requirement or anything yet. But if it were up to me, I’d ensure every Shadow Priest in my guild had it on progression as a just in case measure.

Glyph of Penance: Increases the mana cost of Penance by 20% but allows Penance to be cast while moving. I can accept this tradeoff.

Glyph of Fade: Your Fade ability now also reduces all damage taken by 10%. Fade just became much more attractive.

Spectral Guise does not appear to be our level 87 spell (Watch it in action here). You can now find it as a level 60 talent (Check WoWhead’s talent calculator). Wonder what replaced it. Edit: According to Derevka, Void Shift is now learned at level 87.

Divine Insight has changed. It’s no longer just an improved Serendipity.

Original

Divine Insight
Serendipity
When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 20% and mana cost reduced by 10%. Stacks up to 2 times. Lasts 20 sec.

Shadow of Death
When your Mind Blast deals damage, there is a 40% chance your next Shadow Word: Death will treat the target as if it were below 20% health.

New

Divine Insight
Discipline:
When you cast Spirit Shell, there is a 40% chance your next Power Word: Shield will both ignore and not cause the Weakened Soul effect.

Holy:
When you cast Greater Heal, there is a 40% chance your next Prayer of Mending will not trigger its cooldown, and will jump to each target instantly

Shadow:
When your Mind Blast deals damage, there is a 40% chance your next Shadow Word: Death will treat the target as if it were below 20% health.

Can’t wait for beta servers to come back online. I want to check out Mindbender. I’m sure it’ll be mind blowing.

Have to admit, I’m a little sad panda at the loss of Serendipity. Maybe they made it a base line or something but I haven’t seen anything that indicates that yet.

Tier 14 bonuses

Priest

  • 2 piece: Reduces the mana cost of Flash Heal by 10%
  • 4 piece: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 4 seconds and reduces the cooldown of Circle of Healing by 4 seconds.

Shaman

  • 2 piece: Reduces the mana cost of Greater Healing wave by 10%
  • 4 piece: Your Tidal Waves ability now grants 1 additional charge each time it is triggered.

Paladin

  • 2 piece: Reduces the mana cost of your Holy Radiance spell by 10% (Overpowered).
  • 4 piece: Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second.

Druid

  • 2 piece: Reduces the mana cost of Rejuvenation by 10%
  • 4 piece: Reduces the cooldown of Swiftmend by 3 seconds.

Monk

  • 2 piece: Reduces the mana cost of Surging Mist by 10%
  • 4 piece: Your Chi Wave spell will now heal 1 additional target