This simple WordPress plugin created by Måns Jonasson is useful for almost anyone who maintains a WordPress site of any size, but it’s especially useful if you maintain documentation of any kind and have a frequent need to update screenshots. It does exactly what the name implies — it makes it easy for you to replace one image file (or any other type of file) with another. No more uploading a new file and deleting the old one, or confusion over versions or file names.

Once you install and activate this plugin, you’ll find a new button labelled Replace Media at the bottom of the Edit Media page. Click this and browse and select a file from your computer. You then have two choices — you can either retain the original file name (renaming the file you’re uploading if necessary) or you can replace the file and use the new file name, changing all existing links to the old file to point to the new one. For the first option, you need to be uploading a file of the same type, but for the second option you can replace your original file with one of a different file type, like a gif with a jpg or a Word document with a PDF. Nothing fancy, but a great timesaver!

Enable Media Replace — Read more or download this popular plugin here

Enable Media Replace Screenshot

In no particular order, here are some of the WordPress plugins that we’ve found useful.

• sCategory Permalink — Allows you to set which category to use in the permalink
• WP Random Header — This simple plugin by Callum Macdonald automatically rotates the header images for the Twenty Ten theme. We’re using it on this site — reload to see it in action.
• WP-Table Reloaded — Manages tables for your posts and pages, with lots of options like row striping and column sorting
• Flickr Blog This to Draft — If you use Flickr’s BlogThing to send photos to your blog, the default behavior is to immediately publish the post. With this plugin, the posts will be draft so you can check formatting, add categories, etc., before publishing
• Broken Link Checker for WordPress — Alerts you to broken links, lots of options
• Google XML Sitemaps Generator — Creates and maintains a file for Google to use for indexing
• Facebook Like Button — Adds button to pages and posts

Twenty Ten, the default theme for for WordPress 3, features a prominent header image. It comes with eight header images installed, photographs by Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. (You can read more about these photographs on his blog: The Headers of Twenty Ten)

Here are a few ways that you can customize the header images for your site:

Change the Header
If you don’t want to use the default image, there’s an admin panel where you can select one of the others. Just go to Appearance –> Header and scroll down to Default images. Look at the thumbnails, and click to select the one you want.
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The Print Friendly plugin adds a makes it easy for people to print a copies of your posts or pages, convert them into PDF, or to share them by e-mail or Twitter. It lets them save time and paper by removing the images or paragraphs that they don’t need.

It’s easy to set up — just upload the Print Friendly plugin and activate it! There’s a page of settings if you’d like a little more control over how this appears on your site: you can choose a text link or button style, decide whether you want it to appear above or below your content, and decide whether you want this to display on everywhere on your site (including on your main page) or just on the individual posts and pages.
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WordPress.tv is a video training and support site, just launched today but already an amazing resource. You may never need to read a book, wade through the Codex or search the forums again!

The How To section has a large and nicely-organized collection of short screencasts showing how to use various features of your WordPress site, whether it’s on WordPress.com or self-hosted. This includes the most basic functions, like Writing and Publishing a Post, As a trainer, I was especially happy to see these, because they’ve done a whole lot of screencasts that I was planning to do myself, and done a much better job than I ever would have! I like watching these full-screen with the HD on. The quality is excellent, very crisp and clear, and they are all nicely embeddable, like the one below which shows how to rearrange the elements of the writing screen.

In addition to the how-to videos, there are also WordCamp presentations, interviews and much more. It’s much easier to learn how things work by watching a video than by reading instructions, and I’m looking forward to watching this great new resource develop!

WordPress.tv | WordPress.tv Blog