Weblog Tools Collection

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This post is based on a question that was posted on reddit.com which really intrigued me. I have seen a lot of WordPress blogs that are so simple and so well constructed that they blew me away and inspired me to do more to make my blogs simple(r). I just have a hard time finding them when the time is right and I am about to make changes to my designs.
In that spirit, what is the simplest and most elegant WordPress design that you have come across? Lloyd’s blog comes to mind as a good example.

For those who are not completely happy with the usability or the look and feel of the back office in their blog, there are a few plugins around, compatible with or made for Wordpress 2.0, that rework or enhance the admin area. I’ll name :

• Paged Comment Editing
  By default, “Manage Comments” only list the 20 last comments. What if you were on offline holidays for a month and have a blog that receives quite a few feedback ? This plugin allows browsing of older comments with paging through them.
• Cat 2 Tag
  If you create a lot of categories, this plugin makes selection easier when writing a post : a handy “tag cloud” avoids cumbersome scrolling through a long category list. There is also a fancy “suggest category” feature that proposes categories as you type them.
• Wordpress Admin Drop Down Menu
  The lazy and the productive will love it : you can go from any to any admin page without having to stop by the “top level” page first. For instance, no more loading “Manage” first , and then “Comments”, since all admin links are available in a CSS driven drop down menu (demo). Admin menu the way it was meant to be (and even compatible with Tiger Admin)
• Tiger Admin
  While adding no particular feature, this plugin completely revamp the admin part of your blog by heavily tweaking the CSS, giving your admin pages a brand new look (for Safari, Camino and Firefox only)

If you are using a plugin that adds functionnalities or redesigns the admin interface, feel free to pimp it in the comments. Also, I advise plugin authors to update their plugin descriptions over at WP-Plugins.net once the administration pages will include “Wordpress 2.0″ in the compatibility check list.