All posts in WordPress

WP Plugin: Smart Sort

I was searching for a wp plugin that is similar to Amazon’s “4/12 people found this useful” feature for my MalaysianIslandReview project. I wanted to integrate such a feature so that tourists can rate the reviews based on their usefulness. But so far no luck. What I found was this plugin below:

WP Smart Sort

It’s a very interesting wp plugin that can be used in many ways in various types of projects. Basically this plugin allows you to provide much more advanced search/sorting option to your wordpress based project. For example, if you are using wordpress for your e-shop project, you could use this plugin to allow users to search for products based on their price, rating, most commented products, most rated products..etc

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Unfortunately the premium version of the plugin is not free, it costs $35 which i think is quite reasonable if you have a professional commercial project.

I will bookmark the site for later, I think I will need this plugin in the future, now my hands are quite full. Back to my plugin search… if you find wp plugin like Amazon’s “… people found this useful” do let me know.

Website: http://www.dyasonhat.com/wp-smart-sort-premium/

Update: found this plugin and modified to suit my need.

WP Plugin: Breadcrumbs

breadcrumb.pngBreadcrumbs are a great way to improve navigational system of any website, especially directories and blogs with many sub-folders.

This wp plugin allows you to integrate breadcrumb links to your blog [see screenshot]. As you know WordPress by default only lists the folders that the article was posted in and not the hierarchical structure of the current post.

I think it will be useful for those who are using wordpress as a CMS for their website.

Website: http://mtekk.weblogs.us/code/breadcrumb-navxt/

WP Plugin: Simple Google Sitemap

Free services like XML-sitemaps is great for creating Google Webmaster Tools’ compliant sitemaps for your blog. But the problem is: Your blog is dynamic – it changes daily – and your sitemap is not!

simple_google_sitemap.pngLuckily there is a WordPress plugin called Simple Google Sitemap. Once installed it will create a dynamic sitemap that will update every time you make a new post. Sounds great, isn’t it? That should save a lot of trouble and time for you!

Now you don’t have to create your sitemaps manually and upload them throught FTP..etc.

Plugin allows you to assign ‘priority levels’ and ‘change frequency’ to your posts, pages and articles.

When you are done, just post your sitemap url to Google Webmaster Tools and Google will have up-to-date info about your blog’s changes.

Author Blog: http://suche.pytalhost.de/
WP Extend Plugin Page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-google-sitemap/

WP Plugin: Top Commentators (v.1.05) has a bug

showtopcomment.pngIf you are using Show Top Commentators plugin for more than a year and haven’t updated it yet, then you are probably using version 1.05 which has a bug – it allows people to replace the link of any top commenter in the list.

All they have to do is to put exactly the same “name” as one of the top commenters, and then put their own “link”, this would change the link of the “top commenter” to the new “spam” link. This would last until the real author comments again or the admin of the blog removes the spam comment. So the plugin somehow was allowing the last commenter with the same name to replace the URL displayed in the list for that particular commenter.

So if you are using the old version, do update it to version 1.06 which solves this problem.

Note: Thanks to Andrei for informing me about this bug, I was too using the old version and had two of my commenters complain about their comments being hijacked. I have updated my plugin.

WP Plugin: Twittar – twitter avatars for wordpress comments

Twittar is a wordpress plugin that uses twitter profile images for your blog’s comment section.twittar.png

Features

  • Loads user’s avatar by matching the email address to the user’s Twitter email address.
  • If user doesn’t have a Twitter account, it first tries to load user’s gravatar. If user doesn’t have a gravatar, it loads a default image. This is an optional setting.
  • You can set a 2-pixel border to the images (you choose the color).
  • You can choose the size: we suggest 24, 48 or 72 pixels.
  • You can set an image other than the default one to load if a user doesn’t have a Twitter account or a gravatar.
  • It builds a valid image for you (with alt and title attributes, etc.) based on user details.
  • Allows you to add a class to the image, so you can style it later.

I think it’s quite cool. It’s a plugin from smashing magazine.

Plugin Page: click here

WP Theme: FREEmium WordPress Theme

freebiesdock.pngFreemium Theme is a free premium theme for wordpress, it was designed by Paul Kadysz and developed by Dariusz Siedlecki and made free by http://freebiesdock.com.

You can see the demo here.

Some of the features of freemium theme are:

  • XHTML compliant
  • flickr RSS support
  • jQuery menu
  • 2 widget ready sidebars
  • completely free

Download: http://freebiesdock.com/freemium-wordpress-theme/

WP Plugin: Wordbook (posts-to-facebook)

wp_facebook.pngSocial networking sites are great for driving traffic to your blog. It’s even better when this process is automated (as long as it doesn’t go against their terms of use, otherwise you will be cast “anti-social” and your account closed ;).

Wordbook is a wordpress plugin that allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall automatically. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts. (see screenshot)

Plugin Page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbook/
Author Site: http://www.tsaiberspace.net/blog/2007/07/29/wordbook/

WordPress.tv launched: free video tutorials on WP

wordpresstv.pngAutomatic the founding company of WordPress launched a new project WordPress.tv. It will host free wordpress related “how-to” tutorials. Eg: Rearranging the post editor to suit your style.

Here is what they posted as the objective of the website:

To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations.

This is pretty good I would say. It will be very useful for the beginner bloggers.

Website: WordPress.tv

Brian Gardner’s New Project – StudioPress

Brian Gardner, the person who revolutionized premium wordpress themes by his first project RevolutionTheme, has came up with a new project – StudioPress.com

Since it’s a newly launched project, currently there is only one wp theme available. However, more themes expected to be added very soon. The first theme is for real estate sites.

studiopress.png

If it works, don’t fix it

As you all know, RevolutionTheme project had been replaced with R2 (RevolutionTwo), and became Open Source. That meant, as I predicted no more less income for both affiliates and Brian Gardner himself. Brian wanted to change his business model from selling themes to selling support.

Before revolution themes were open source, they were selling like hot cakes. Obviously after they became “free”, no one wanted to pay for the support. Because most bloggers are very familiar with wordpress and most of them wouldn’t need a paid support to customize their themes.

Revolution2 was a huge misstep for Brian (from financial point of view). In order to correct this business decision, he had two choices; to bring back the old revolution themes or to launch a new project. Brian has chosen the second option. And I think that was a wise decision. Otherwise it would have been even more confusing for his existing customers from revolution-1 project. Because they are already confused with the whole discontinuation of revolution-1 project and revolution2/open source thing and how it affects them.

Making Money for Bloggers

StudioPress.com is a great news for bloggers. Because it means “back to making money” for most bloggers. Brian Gardner is a great designer, and his themes are one of the best wp themes on the net. Therefore, I have no doubt that this project will be a success.

His affiliates are paid 25% of the sales, that means if you sell one template worth $79.95 you will get $20.00. And if you sell all-inclusive package ($299.95) then you will get $75.00 of commission.

Are you ready to make money?

URL: StudioPress.com

Different Uses of WordPress (as Social Network Site & Contact Manager) – part4

Today, in Part-4 of our series of “Different Uses of WordPress”, we will be looking on how you can use WordPress as a Social Network Site and a Contact Manager.

WordPress as Social Network Site

    wp_as_social_community.png
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    BuddyPress will transform your WordPress MU into a social network platform. It is a set of plugins that has one core plugin (which acts as the main platform for all the other plugins) and a collection of other individual plugins that add distinct features to BuddyPress (e.g private messaging, activity streams etc).

    Each BuddyPress component is independent. This means you can pick and choose which features you’d like. In that sense, it works more like a Joomla, deactivating one plugin won’t cause any errors with the rest.

    It has lots of other features, see full features here.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://buddypress.org
    Demo URL: http://testbp.org

WordPress as Contact Manager

    wp_as_contact_manager.png
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    WP Contact Manager as the name suggests, is a WP Theme that turns your WordPress into a contact manager. Adding contacts will be through admin interface just like you create a “new post”.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://artisanthemes.com/themes/wp-contact-manager/
    Demo URL: http://people.thedesigncanopy.com/

    P.S There is another wordpress based contact manager called WP-CRM. It’s a free theme plus plugins that turn WP into a contact manager.

Discounted Ninja Affiliate WP Plugin ($50 OFF)

Pawan’s Ninja Affiliate WordPress Plugin is going for only $47.00 for the next 3 days only instead of the normal price $97.00. If you were considering buying this plugin, now is the time to get it!

Ninja affiliate is a great plugin that will make linking texts in your blog posts very easy. More info on the plugin here.

Screenshots

ninja_affiliate.png

ninja_affiliate_add_link.png

Plugin URL: http://www.mbpninjaaffiliate.com ($50 OFF)

Different Uses of WordPress (as Discussion Forum and Membership Site) – part3

We continue our reports on different uses of WordPress, besides using it as a blogging platform.

Today we will be looking at two more uses of WP; as Discussion Forum and Membership Site.

WordPress as Discussion Forum

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    Simple:Press is a free wordpress plugin that will turn your blog into a discussion forum. It’s surprisingly very advanced and feature rich.

    It fully integrates into your WP based site utilising the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page. It is fully customisable and comes with a number of skins and sets of icons to get your started.

    Price: Free

    URL: http://www.simplepressforum.com
    Demo: http://www.contestblogger.com

WordPress as Membership Site

    suma.png
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    Suma Plugin for WordPress is a membership and subscription management plugin for the WordPress. It turns your blog into a pay-to-view, membership (i.e subscription-based) website.

    You can restrict access to any pages, posts and comments. Members without subscriptions see only the title, or excerpt of the post depending on the administrator’s preference.

    Suma also manages the recurring billing of the subscriber according to the details of the subscription plan they choose. The administrator is able to define different types of subscription plans and has the option of including one-time initial setup fees, free-trial periods, and discounted periods as well as flexible billing periods defined in days, weeks, months or years.

    Price: $199

    URL: http://www.sumaplugin.com
    Demo: http://www.camacit.com/suma/demo