By Jeffro on January 30, 2012
Joost de Valk was one of the first to start the trend and now, he’s on pace to reverse it. Joost announced that he has decided to remove the dashboard widget which shows the most recent posts on his site from his SEO plugin.
Joost provided some interesting statistics that show where most of his visitors are coming from. As it turns out, the dashboard news are did provide additional traffic but very little in the way of conversions which is one of the reasons for the removal. Looking at the reactions of those that use the plugin, some applaud Joost for this action while others wanted the ability to choose whether to hide or display the news widget. While not mentioned, I think it’s a little humorous as well that within the Plugin UI Guide published by WPCandy recently, they featured the Dashboard News Widget of Joost De Valks SEO Plugin as what not to do.
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While I want to see the results of the poll question I asked, I’ll pose a few more questions for you to answer. When is it ok to have a dashboard widget such as the one that used to be within the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast? Is the dashboard considered sacred real estate reserved for only the most important information?
Personally, I like the trend of removing dashboard widgets generated by plugins. In this case, I think less is more.
Posted in Polls | Tagged dashboard, plugin, poll |
By Jeffro on January 18, 2012
If you’re using the self installed version of WordPress and looking to participate in the internet blackout day today, check out the SOPA Blackout Plugin. This plugin contains flexibility so that you don’t have to turn your entire website into a black hole. Instead, you get to set blackout dates as well as a myriad of other options to configure when and who sees your blackout message. One of the nice things about this particular plugin is that when it’s deactivated, all of its settings will be removed.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged blackout, piracy, plugin, sopa |
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
Earlier this morning, I discovered that while moderating comments, a small little X icon appeared that I’ve never seen before. After inquiring on Twitter why WordPress never gave me a new feature pointer to explain to me what this feature was, I was told that it came with the newest version of Akismet. On January 5th, 2011 Akismet released version 2.5.4 of their plugin and amongst the changes was the addition of a button that allows site administrators to easily remove the commenter URL. This particular feature is something I’ve become used to using as it’s part of the Ajax Edit Comments plugin. I think it’s pretty slick that this feature is now available despite it not actually being in core. In fact, if you didn’t know any better or forgot that you recently upgraded Akismet, you might think that it was added with WordPress 3.3.1 like I did.
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url |
By Jeffro on January 9, 2012
If you’re the owner of an iPad, you’ll likely love the sound of Touch Punch which is a newly released plugin by David Gwyer that enables users to use touch screen gestures to control the WordPress administration area. For example, with Touch Punch, you can now drag and drop widgets using your fingertips. Here is a list of activated WordPress admin pages that the gestures will work on.
- Admin dashboard – Drag to re-order admin dashboard widgets.
- Widgets page – Drag new widget instances into widget areas, and sort existing widgets.
- New posts/pages – Drag to re-order meta boxes on new post/pages.
- Edit posts/pages – Drag to re-order meta boxes on existing post/pages.
- Navigation menu page – Drag to re-order meta boxes, and individual menu items to change position/hierarchy.
- Add new links page – Drag to re-order meta boxes (Note: the first three meta boxes are fixed by WordPress but the others are sortable).
I don’t own an iPad so I’m not able to test this plugin but I know there are plenty of people within the WordPress community that do, so if you manage to try out Touch Punch, let me know in the comments what you think of it.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged gestures, ipad, plugin |
By Jeffro on December 19, 2011
One of my favorite WordPress plugins of all time WP Ajax Edit Comments, will soon be free again for all to use. According to a recent email sent out by iThemes, as of January 1st, 2012 they will no longer be supporting Ajax Edit Comments as a premium plugin. Instead, the full version will be uploaded to the WordPress.org plugin repository where users will be able to continue using the plugin with free updates. For iThemes customers that have recently purchased the plugin, they’ll have two options. The first is to request a full refund. The second is to receive a six month upgrade to the PluginBuddy Developer Suite which is valued at $100.00.
This is yet another twist for this particular plugin. Over the past few years, it’s gone from a small, free plugin to having a site built specifically for it with paying customers, managed by Ronald Huereca. Soon after, Ajay D’ Souza stepped in as co-developer of the plugin. Then, Ronald joined the team at iThemes which placed Ajax Edit Comments behind their pay wall. Coming back full circle, it will be available again for free.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, commercial, free, plugin |
By Jeffro on October 4, 2011
The e107 importer plugin for WordPress created by Coolkevman is in need of a developer or a group of community members to keep the plugin updated. The plugin was originally created by Kevin to migrate a number of e107 websites he managed to WordPress. His stance was that the plugin would be maintained and updated until he migrated all of his sites from e107 to WordPress. This occurred on July 5th, 2011 where Kevin announced that the plugin would no longer be maintained.
The reason behind this decision is simple and straightforward: I’ve recently migrated my last e107 website to WordPress. Now that e107 is no longer part of my life, I have no interest in spending time and energy working on this plugin.
So if you plan to get rid of your e107 sites in favor of WordPress, do the migration now, as the plugin will self-deteriorate as WordPress API gets updated.
While I have not personally tested this plugin, it has been tested by the author to work with e107 0.7.25, WordPress 3.2 RC2 and bbPress 2.0 Beta. Odds are that the plugin works just fine with WordPress 3.2.1 and bbPress 2.0. With regards to bbPress, Kevin points out that forum posts from e107 go into bbPress the plugin, NOT the stand alone version. e107 version 0.7.26 was released on September 14th with a full change-log located here.
Kevin did say that if someone were to send in a code contribution that he would add it to the project and possibly release version 1.5 but it’s not guaranteed to happen. Now would be a great time to either ask Kevin to take over the plugin or create a fork of it before the differences between WordPress and e107 become so great that the importer needs to be recreated from scratch. One last thing to mention. The plugin was developed and maintained on Github with the WordPress subversion hosted plugin acting as a mirror for the sake of distribution.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged e107, importer, plugin |
By Jeffro on October 2, 2011
WPBeginner has published a review of the Post Admin Shortcuts plugin that enables users to pin a post, page, or custom post type to make it easier to find and edit the next time your in the back-end of WordPress. Definitely a convenience type plugin that can come in handy if you’re routinely editing an old post that is deep within your archive. ∞
Posted in Plugins | Tagged plugin, review, wpbeginner |
By Jeffro on September 16, 2011
Scoot Kingsley Clark who is the lead developer of the Pods Development Framework has successfully acquired the funds necessary to complete development work for Pods 2.0 along with the community website. After launching his project on Kickstarter.com, he managed to get the $1,500.00 goal necessary within 24 hours. However, the project has been so successful at getting pledges, he is nearly 200% or $2,000.00 above the original goal with 7 days left in the pledging period. With regards to what Scott plans on doing with the extra cash, this is what he says under the FAQ section of the project page:
All additional money raised goes towards the Pods Foundation to help fund future development, travel for WordCamps and presentations, and hosting costs. So really, 2.0 is now funded – BUT you can still fund the foundation and everything it stands for.
You might be wondering what he means by Pods Foundation. When I had a chance to speak with Scott the other day, he told me that the purpose of the foundation as well as how it’s structured is very similar to the WordPress foundation. I’m pretty sure this is the first WordPress plugin to have it’s own Non Profit foundation attached to it unless you know of another one? Because of the foundation, you can be assured that the money donated will go towards improvement of the plugin and accompanying community website.
Congratulations goes out to Scott as well as his community of users. I have yet to see any other plugin or theme developers use Kickstarter in such a way. Do you think this was a unique opportunity for something like the Pods plugin or could other plugin authors leverage Kickstarter successfully to fund development of their projects?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged cms, kickstarter, plugin, pods |
By Jeffro on September 9, 2011
The WP 101 Tutorial Plugin is a combined effort by Shawn Hesketh and Mark Jaquith. The premise of the plugin is simple, to showcase video tutorials of WordPress from within the back-end of WordPress. After using the plugin and watching a few videos, I think it delivers on all levels.
A view of the player within the back-end of WordPress
From what I could tell, the video player is powered by Vimeo but don’t go to Vimeo.com looking for a way to view these videos for free, I already tried that. The player supports watching videos at full screen or in HD which is a nice touch. The audio within the videos is easy to understand and follows the flow of the animation. As far as the settings go, there is only one to worry about, your API key. Once you pay for your monthly subscription, you’ll be given an API key that gives you access to the videos.
I believe there are two groups of customers that will really benefit from these videos. The first are consultants. I’m sure many WordPress consultants dread the time they spend having to teach someone where to click and what does what in WordPress when they could be spending their time doing something else. The second group are those looking for educational materials at a low cost. There are 17 videos in all covering everything from the Dashboard to the media library, to changing the theme. Basically, just about everything a novice WordPress user should know before they decide to tinker with the inner workings of WordPress on their own. So, for $48.00 for one month, you can cram in all 17 videos and then cancel your subscription. In this instance, I think $48.00 for one month of viewing is a great value for this content considering the production quality. However, $48.00 per month for 12 months is $576.00 per year which is a hefty price to pay as a user who just wants to learn about WordPress. This is why I think the majority of customers for WP101 will most likely be consultants who are the ones with recurring revenue through jobs that can afford subscriptions lasting three months or more.
Overall, the plugin is simple to install, simple to use, and definitely delivers when it comes to professional quality training videos for WordPress. You can watch a sample video that’s part of the package here.
*Update*
As mentioned in the comments, this video package is different than the one offered on WP101.com where individuals can access the same video content by paying a $19 one time fee for a lifetime membership which is extremely more affordable for individuals than this package. They are the same videos but clearly, the Plugin reviewed in this post is aimed at consultants, not at individuals.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged commercial, plugin, service, Tutorials |
By Jeffro on September 5, 2011
Not sure if any of the plugins or themes you have installed within your WP-Content directory contain the outdated version of TimThumb? Good news, there is a simple plugin that not only scans your content directory for the outdated version of the script, but also provides a link to quickly upgrade to the newer version. After installation, you’ll find the options page within the Tools menu. After running the scan on WPTavern for the first time, these were my results:
This plugin is especially useful to those who have more than a few themes or an abundant number of plugins installed as it checks the entire contents of the WP-Content directory. According to a post within the plugins support forum, it has not gone through specific testing with WordPress Multi-Site but the author sees no reason why it wouldn’t work.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged plugin, security, timthumb |
Akismet 2.5.4 Adds Easy Link Removal Button
By Jeffro on January 12, 2012
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, editing, plugin, url | 9 Responses