Rodent Regatta

I think I’m missing out by not using plugins with this Movable Type weblog. I see a great feature on a weblog from time to time, and I think about how much markup had to be written to get the feature. However, there are apparently quite a few plugins that do the heavy lifting.

Showing the depth of my ignorance, I offer this excuse and question for why plugins haven’t been used here. Don’t plugins conflict with one another? Is it possible that plugins might step on one another if the wrong two or three are installed on the same weblog?

My concern dates all the way back to the TSR (terminate-stay-resident) days of the DOS operating system. Let me explain.

In DOS days lots of little programs, utilities and helper applications came out that would boot up with your operating system and sit resident in memory waiting to be called on. I saw lots of computers in those days that eventually stopped booting properly because of all the memory that those TSR’s were using. Worse than the memory-utilization were the TSR’s that conflicted with one another.

I understand that plugins are not about memory management. However, can you get a weblog so tricked up with foxtails, mudflaps and curb feelers that it stops working properly?

I suspect not, but I’ve been cautious because of my ignorance. Now a couple of great uses for plugins get pointed out. One handles the problem of absolute vs. relative URL’s – something I have no clue about.

Another handles cited links. There’s a redesign in this weblogs future and I want plugins to be a part of it.