Delusions of Grandeur » wordpress

Five WordPress Plugins you SHOULD be using and probably aren’t!

mcangeli — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:38:32 +0000

It’s been a while since I shared a couple of WordPress Plugins with you. In fact, my Last Post on the subject is almost a year old at this point (ok, its 11 months today). On this list of five, only one from the original post makes a reappearance. Yes, I’m still using the other plugins listed in that post, but only one of them is going to be covered today. Mind you, this list isn’t in any specific order, I don’t think any one of these plugins is greater then another, but they’re all ones you should have on your site.

Add To Any – This plugin is a social media godsend and a must have for ANYONE who wants to benefit from Twitter, facebook, myspace, stumble, etc.. What it does is place a simple link at the end of the post which enables a user to send the post title and url to twitter, facebook, stumble, etc. with out leaving your site. Its brilliant and an easy way for your readers to share your post.
All in One SEO Pack – this little gem was on the list of ten last March and its still here. It makes my page titles look so much prettier (it puts the article title before the blog title) as well as some other cool stuff with the meta tags and descriptions that the search engines so love. If you’re trying to get your site out there, this is a must have.
Push up the web for wordpress – Nothing sucks more then having your site designed with all the latest bells and whistles only to have readers who are still on IE6 (or worse) and unable to see it. Push up the web works to solve that problem by helping users upgrade their outdated browsers. If you’re not using this plugin, you’re part of the problem!
TwitMe automatically tweets your posts in the format you desire when you hit the publish button. Twitter has become one of the leading drivers of traffic at the moment and twitme helps make it automatic for you. Once its setup, you can basically forget about it unless you want to go and retweet one of the last five posts you’ve posted. Its a plus for those who use twitter.
LinkWithin parses your site and ads a series of suggested posts at the end of your post that the reader might like. I’ve seen traffic stay on the site up to 50% longer through the use of this plugin as people discover older articles that apply to the same topic with out having to search for them. The suggestions are based off of tags and categories so the results vary from time to time but its a good way to keep your readers on your site

So that’s my five, if I had to give out a bonus this post, I’d have to say the ASMW plugin. Amie Street Music Wednesday is a seldom participated in meme (its like me and one or two other people) where every wednesday we post our favorite find from Amie Street. This plugin allows me to embed the preview of the song I’ve chosen along with a link back to Amie Street in case you decide to purchase it. Its a pretty cool idea and a good way to find new music.

If you have a plugin for wordpress you think I’d like, let me know, I’m a Plugin Junkie and always up to try something new!

Posting from Blackberry App!

mcangeli — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:44:12 +0000

So I saw on twitter this morning that the Blackberry WordPress app that *EVERYONE* has been waiting for was now in public beta and I had to jump at the chance to grab it.

So I did and while I’m learning the ropes, you have to be patient with me, but so far my first thought are about how absolutely AWESOME this app is!!

SugarSync Redux
Powered by Where did they go from here?

Woah. Look. At. That!

mcangeli — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:45:47 +0000

So I’ve been playing with the new theme a little more (in case you haven’t noticed). In addition to adding more of the ads back, I’ve added a couple of cool hacked up widgets thanks to the PHP Code Widget and a super cool article that I found at SmashingMagazine.

If you peruse the right side, you’ll notice to new additions to the list. Upcoming Posts and Past Year. Upcoming Posts is just that. Posts scheduled to be published sometime in the future. Could be tomorrow. Could be next week, could be in 2011. Whenever. It simply displays a list of the posts scheduled to be posted. Its pretty cool and for things that you want to have auto posted and you want your readers to know is in the pipe, it works well.

The code is simple and is making good use of the query_posts loop in word press. See?

else: ?>
No future events scheduled.

Granted, I cleaned it up a little and made some formatting changes to fit, but it works wonders.

The second one is the Past year articles. This one actually functions differently then I had expected. It figures out the date and it published the articles published on the 10th (for example) of the month for the past twelve months. You could modify it of course, to give you almost anything else or limit it to one post. I made a change to clean it up a bit and actually link to the article. Here’s my code:

$current_day = date(‘j’);
$last_year = date(‘Y’)-1;
query_posts(‘day=’.$current_day.’&year=’.$last_year); ?>

if (have_posts()):
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

>

the_excerpt();
?>

endif;
?>

Which is a little different then the code provided in the article and I’m still tweeking it a little bit.

Its amazing what you can do with WORDPRESS! Its almost easier then driving an rv.

A change is in the air!

mcangeli — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:36:00 +0000

Or maybe its the stale air smell you get in your car when you let it sit with the windows up too long. Either way, something has to be done. So, after almost two years with the same blog design, I’m changing things up.

The previous theme was a paid theme I paid some designer to throw together. Visually it was nice, but under the hood, it was a coding and layout nightmare. Tables everywhere, poor use of CSS. Its time to get back to a more userfriendly theme. So, here it is. TweetMeBlue by WebDesignLessons.com. Its a nice two column theme (which again, isn’t too different). The colors are warm and appealing and the design is nice.

There are some things I have to do to make it feel more homely and I find that using predone themes makes using wordpress a whole lot easier than buying life insurance from Wholesale Insurance.

I’d love to know what you think about the new layout, and also, don’t fret, I’ll be adding *some* of the old plugins back…

Fixed issues with WPG2 and Lightbox!

mcangeli — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:44:11 +0000

After a couple of months of messing with the settings in WPG2 to get my photos/images displaying in a sweet lightbox like container, I have finally managed to do it (go ahead, click on the peanut, you know you want to!). Turns out there’s an issue somewhere with the wpg2 lightbox script and something else that wordpress is running. I don’t know what it is, so don’t ask.

What I do know is that by using the laptop (though I could have done it on your grandmother’s old 386 machine as well) I was able to install a lightbox (version 2.2) script through the plugin manager in wordpress (I love it!) and disable the internal lightbox script in WPG2. This, coupled with my innate knowledge of all things technical corrected the issues and once again let my images live in Lightbox Glory.

Not that any of you cared…

10 Must Use WordPress Plugins…

mcangeli — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:02:47 +0000

I was reading around the web today looking for ways to make the blog better and I stumbled on a post over at sitepoint about 10 must have WordPress Plugins. Surprisingly, I’m already running most of the ones listed, but I thought it was time for me to make another list of my favorite plugins and the reasons I like them. So here goes:

Comment Timeout 2.0.1 – One of the worst things on a blog is comment spam (you know those “I read your post and it is good” comments that get left by ‘Super Duper Webhosting Wow’). Akismet helps keep down a good bit of that, but the comment timeout plugin gets the rest by doing something WordPress *should* do automatically. After a set time period (one month, one week, days) the comments close. It gets extended a bit every time someone comments in order to keep the discussion alive. It works rather well and has reduced my time editing spam to almost nil.
CommentLuv – One of the best ways to help out people who leave comments on your site. It crawls their site and if possible, grabs the latest post (though newer versions of the plugin also have the ability to allow the person to choose one of the last five posts) and links back to it. Giving both you and the poster some deep link luv. Its developed in to a kind of movement and has its own site and program to go along with it. If you want to see it in action, leave a comment here…
Google Site Maps – The big G loves to crawl your site. Providing them with a map makes it easier, and the google site maps plugin makes it mindless. Add the plugin, set the parameters and its done. No more worries and you have a good site map for the robots to find.
LinkCurl – LinkCurl takes the tags (or categories) you add to your post and grabs a handful related links and appends them to your post. It takes a little longer to post the post due to it crawling the web, but it helps add links to your site (and the little boost from return traffic is swell). I’ve edited the code a bit to make it work a little better. If you’d like my copy, let me know and I’ll send it to you (or post it here).
Quoter – Allows commenters to quote other comments. That way, if there’s something Gruntled said that you don’t like you can make sure to comment on his comment. Comment.
Related Posts – If your readers liked the post they read, maybe they’d like this other one? This plugin recommends other posts for your readers to read. After all, its all about getting them to stay on your site right?
Subscribe to Comments – Does what it says it does. It allows your readers to subscribe to the comments when they comment. Automatically emailing them if anyone else comments, that way they can follow the discussion.
Top Friends – Top Friends allows you to list your friends in a block on the side and post a link to their most recent post. This is cool as it gives some updating love to your friends or blogs you like. Also shows the frequency of their updates.
WordPress Mobile – In this day and age, there is no reason not to have a mobile enabled site. I pull my site up on my Blackberry all the time (as though someone else is going to update it) and I hate it when other sites aren’t enabled for mobile devices. You’d think that in the age of the iPhone and the Blackberry that everyone would be. Well, now with WordPress Mobile, its as easy as activate. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did. If you use it, let me know, I’d love to see your site on my phone!
All in One SEO Pack – This provides Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. You can control the keywords, description and more from the simple to use admin interface with this plugin. Now you have NO REASON not to be SEO approved!

All of these plugins are in use here on the site and they are in no way all that I have. If you have a favorite plugin, let me know what it is, I’d love to check it out. Also, most of these can be installed directly via the plugin manager in WP these days…

5 Good Twitter Tools

mcangeli — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:47:14 +0000

Yar, I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and I’ve finally developed a list of five of my current favorite tools for twitter. I thought I’d share them with you.

Twhirl is perhaps my favorite desktop app for twitter. Its cool because its done in AdobeAIR and can run on Mac, Linux and Windows (making it fully crossplatform), you can reply, retweet, and tweet right from it and it updates on its own. Follow friends, keep tabs on whats happening and even view profiles for other twitter users. When I’m not twittering on my blackberry, I’m using twhirl.

SocialScope Its still in private beta, but this app for mobile devices is amazing. When I’m on my berry, its what I use to keep track of twitter AND facebook status. You can update both as well. If you’re rockin a smartphone, register for the beta. Its getting better every update.

I came across this next one on a post on Twitter Tools by Felicia Day. Twitterholic is a good ranking of top twitterers based on number of people following them. Its no big surprise Obama is number 1.

If you aren’t using Twitter Tools by alex king or TwitMe by Johnny Mast to update your twitter status with your blog posts (both wordpress plugins) then you’re missing out. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blogs and posts is by letting your “followers” know of current postings and both do an excellent job of that. Twitter Tools is the more robust allowing for a little more customization and options.

Lastly, Take a look at another wordpress plugin, TweetBacks by Joost de Valk. TweetBacks Show the tweets about your posts and pages as comments on your blog. This helps you gauge who is talking about your posts as well as drives more people to twitter. Works well.

Oh what the hell. I came across this gem today and I wanted to share. Twistori. Twistori makes use of the Twitter API to search out tweets with certain words (love, hate, believe, feel, think and wish) and then streams them to you live. Its a little earie to see it in action, but quite addicting….

My Favorite Plugins

mcangeli — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:40:32 +0000

One of my favorite things to do is to try out new plugins and I have to say, the new plugin interface in WP 2.7 is AWESOME. Absolutely Awesome. I can search and install without leaving my admin area. Something that other suites have been able to do for a while and its something that helps bring WordPress to the forefront of Blogging platforms. That being said, if you’ve ever checked out my Plugins Used page, you’ll know, I like me some plugins (I have about 55 active plugins at the moment).

Here’s a list of my favorites…

All in One SEO Pack – Anyone who isn’t using this plugin is shooting themselves in the foot. This plugin helps make it easy to add keywords, titles and other much needed objects to your pages and posts. Plus, its kinda cool… now you can say, “Yea, I’m doing the SEO thing. Are you?”
Comment Email Responder – I think I’ve talked about this one before. Its a godsend! Now, you can notify your commenter via email when you reply to their comment. This does two things, one, it lets them know you’ve commented and two, it pulls them back to the site. Often times to comment again. Its been a big help in retaining readers here.
CommentLuv – It started as a simple plugin to pull your commenter’s last post and has evolved in to a movement. Even cooler is the fact that they run contests that your commenters are automagically entered in. Its a good way to add links to your site as well and to help out your friends by Deep linking to their posts.
Comment Timeout – Yes, I run akismet, but with the Comment Timeout plugin, I have to clear a lot less spam. You can specify a time period for your comments to close (after the last comment was made). On here, its set for a month. A month after the last comment or the post, the comments close on that post. Helps keep a lot of spam out. A lot.
Google Sitemaps – The last one I want to talk about today is the google sitemap plugin. It simply generates a sitemap of all your pages (or just the ones you specify) and puts it in a location. You can then alert google, yahoo, ask, etc. that you have a sitemap and it will help the bots crawl. Its good for increasing your ranking and it does something that WP should do anyways.

Thats just a short list of some of the plugins I like and use, I’ll cover more next week, don’t you worry. Is there a plugin you use that you think I’d benefit from??

WordPress 2.7 and some problems…

mcangeli — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:13:30 +0000

So apparently WordPress 2.7 is out today (or sometime last night) and of course, they are recommending that you upgrade immediately. Your sites won’t die if you don’t, but don’t expect it to go smoothly.

Among some of the changes to wordpress are a new layout for the admin areas. I had just gotten used to the way 2.6 was doing things, and they’ve totally changed it in 2.7. Its a little smoother looking, but it seems to run about the same. Navigation is a trick, but once you pick up on it, its pretty good. There are options to install plugins directly from the dashboard and other admin sections which is a nice change. The layout is all web 2.0ish and rounded corner looking. In all it seems to be a decent upgrade, though they probably could have gone with a complete new version.

I did run in to a problem upgrading one of my sites to 2.7. There’s a reason they warn you to disable all plugins before upgrading. Several of the plugins I had on the site were not friendly with 2.7. I was able to move ALL of the plugins from the plugins directory to a different directory and then do the upgrade. Once that was done, I copied them all back to the plugins directory and added them one by one. It didn’t take too long, but I could have avoided it all together if I had just disabled the plugins to begin with. Let me know what you think of 2.7!

Commenting on Air

mcangeli — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:11:31 +0000

It doesn’t get much better then this. Adobe Air has allowed some developers to do some pretty cool things with code lately and I have to think, that from a blogger’s standpoint, Moderator by Daniel Dura is the best thing since, well, wordpress.

Moderator is a pretty cool wordpress plugin that adds the ability to approve, spam or delete comments right from your desktop. Its like digital signage on your desktop of your blog. Doesn’t get much better then that does it? The kicker, AIR is a multiplatform (mac, linux, windows) tool so anyone on the big three can make use of this easy plugin.

Installation was a snap, simply unzip the moderator files to your wp plugins folder and activate it in your admin section. Go to the moderator section under the settings and install the code (if you haven’t installed AIR it will do that for you at the same time). Start it up, put in your info and you’re off and running.

So far I haven’t had any comments *ahem* on the site to make use of it, but I hope to shortly… *ahem*. If you use it, let me know what you think.

Delusions of Grandeur » wordpress

Five WordPress Plugins you SHOULD be using and probably aren’t!

Posting from Blackberry App!

Woah. Look. At. That!

Related External Links

A change is in the air!

Related External Links

Fixed issues with WPG2 and Lightbox!

Related External Links

10 Must Use WordPress Plugins…

Related External Links

5 Good Twitter Tools

Related External Links

My Favorite Plugins

WordPress 2.7 and some problems…

Commenting on Air