Two nice WordPress plugins were released this week that might be of use to some.

First up is Local Analytics. This plugin caches the urchin.js file on your local server, allowing  faster loading of the script. It also adds an admin configurable host of options that allow better tracking of outgoing links, downloaded files, and email address links. Definitely worth a try if you like Google Analytics (and you should).

Next up is the WordPress Super Cache plugin. Heavily modifying the WP-Cache 2 plugin, Donncha O Caoimh has created another great plugin for WordPress. If you’ve got a lot of traffic and fairly static content, it might be just the thing you’re looking for. Comments suggest there might be issues with AJAX or other interactive features. So try it out and see how it works.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait on Super Cache. Despite a nice modification to use the plugin on a Windows IIS or Apache server, it still requires the ISAPI_Rewrite 3.0 package for use on Windows servers. With most of my work involving .NET development now and the site up and running fine on WordPress, maybe I should migrate to a PHP account?