As a webmaster we are all concerned about the number of links that are coming into the blog and all the other stats that usually concern the traffic to the blog. However, another important thing we all miss to see is the number of outbound clicks from our blog to other websites.
Though this may not sound interesting to many people, it definitely holds some importance when you want to track links to sites other than your own site. One of the reasons I want to track this on my blog, is to understand and know what kind of software or services people download or visit, and then try and customize posts to include software or services that are liked by the readers.
Tracking outgoing links from your blog is pretty easy, all you need is a free Google Analytics account and the Google Analyticator WordPress Plugin.
Once you have installed and […]
Original post by Keith Dsouza
Technorati Tags: blog, google
Preface
The act of adopting an abandoned plugin reminds me of adopting an orphaned child. On the one hand, the new parents are taking on someone who they didn’t help raise thus far, which forces them to “learn” the ways of the new child to communicate well with them. On the other hand, the new parent is left with the fear that there will come a day that the old parent will come to claim their rights on the child.
The analogy I brought can go some way in building an intuition about the problem of orphaned plugins, but if we want to go beyond just intuition we need to take a more in-depth look at the subject. I hope such a look will inspire a discussion that will benefit us all.
The chase for a faster plugin installation
My prime example for an orphan plugin for this post will be the “Improved Plugin […]
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog
If you are a Dreamhost or MediaTemple customer and I know that many WordPress users are, it’s probably been a rough week for you. Just before Thanksgiving, an exploit was used on a subset of MediaTemple grid servers to redirect websites to a 3rd-party advertising website. Also, some customers passwords were compromised as they were stored in the database via clear text. MediaTemple has since switched to an encryption method of storing passwords in databases.
Over the holidays, Dreamhost encountered a fairly large network failure. This happened just before they conducted their largest data center move to date. The network failure caused a number of sites to go offline, including a number of Dreamhost official sites. However, as mentioned in a recent ZDNet article, the nightmare is still ongoing for a few customers, especially those running WordPress who are running into 500 errors. ZDNet published a list of directions from a […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, advertising
If you’re a developer and need to know some of the geekier bits coming down the pipe in WordPress 2.9, Joost De Valks article should fit the bill. In it, he lists a number of things that developers should pay attention to such as enhancements to wp_query, upgraded TinyMCE editor, performance updates to the options table and much more.
WordPress 2.9 is currently at beta 1 stage. If you are one of the beta testers for 2.9, let me know how it’s gone for you so far.
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
New Plugins
Lock Pages
This plugin lets administrators “lock” any or all pages. “Locking” here basically means preventing non-admins from Editing the page’s slug, Changing the page’s parent, Deleting the page.
YOURLS: Short URL Widget
Creates a fully configurable widget that outputs the short URL to the current post or page. Requires the YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter plugin.
List Pages at Depth
This plugin creates a more powerful version of the wp_list_pages() function which allows you to specify a start depth.
Updated Plugins
Smooth Slider
Assign a post as featured posts on a blog and then create a slideshow with them to show at any location on a blog.
My Page Order
My Page Order allows you to set the order of your pages with an easy to use drag and drop interface. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.
My Category Order
Gives you manual control over the order of your Wordpress post categories by letting you […]
Original post by Perurry
Technorati Tags: blog
Connections Reloaded v3
Connections Reloaded is a two column, fixed width theme derived from the Connections theme by Patricia Müller. The theme is gravatar ready, widget ready (with custom widgets) with support for custom header images and SEO titles and a options page for easy customization.
BlueBubble
Two column, widget ready theme with a ready made jQuery/PHP based contact form and an options page for easy customization
BlogStarter
BlogStarter is an emptied out WordPress theme that can be used as a starting point for custom themes. Version 2.0 has some great improvements, including compatibility up to WordPress 2.8.6, a cleaned up CSS system, and a re-organized functions.php
Be My Guest
Be My Guest supports widget, threaded-comments, theme-options and translation is ready. Also including page-navigation with multi level dropdown menu.
Original post by Perurry
Technorati Tags: blog
In somewhat of a tradition, I’d like to take an opportunity to spread my thanks considering Thanksgiving is only a day away here in the U.S. There is plenty to go around but this year, I’d like to especially thank those who translate WordPress, Plugins, and Themes into different languages. While I don’t know the technicalities involved with the translation process, I know the importance these translations have for the WordPress Project. These translations enable WordPress to be used all across the world in their native tongue which is awesome and really expands the reach of the software.
The last time I checked, WordPress was available in about 66 different languages. All of these translations are possible thanks to volunteers. These translators are the primary reason why WordPress has an international following. However, there are more than 66 different languages in use across the world today and if you’re […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
WordPress has a pretty decent role management in place, which allows you to create users and assign them certain privileges and functionality. However, there are few things which you cannot do right now with it. For example, creating new roles, modifying role privileges and so on.
The Role Manager plugin fills in that void and adds a very robust role management interface to WordPress. Though I won’t go into much detail about the plugin, I just wanted to highlight a simple trick, using which you can disable delete functionality for post and pages and retain it with only the administrator of the blog.
Disabling delete functionality may be done for several reasons, specifically on multi-author blogs. However, my sole reason for doing this is that “Precaution is better than Cure”.
To disable delete functionality for post and pages, install the Role Manager plugin (if you haven’t done it already) and click on the […]
Original post by Keith Dsouza
Technorati Tags: blog
Here comes yet another way to be notified of new upgrades for WordPress in case you need one. Google has announced that they will be using their processing power to scan the source code of websites to look for the version number of the publishing software they are using and send them a notification through Google Webmaster Tools letting them know that an upgrade is available. In the case of WordPress, the meta tag was moved to the core of WordPress in 2.5. Therefor, anyone running a version of WordPress from 2.5 and above should have it displayed in their source code unless it was either removed or edited out through an action in the functions.php file such as remove_action(’wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); Also, some plugins have been created that removes the version info as well, typically security related plugins.
Speaking of security, the security through obscurity argument regarding the public display […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, google
New Plugins
Additional image sizes
With this plugin, users can add and remove intermediate image sizes. The plugin can also make copies of existing images with these new sizes.
Online Leaf
Online Leaf presents a new standby engine for all WordPress blogs. Once installed, it will detect any user inactivity on the blog and cover the blog with a dark screen, which darkens the colors and hides animations and effects, so that the monitors do not waste energy displaying these untill activity is detected again, which happens when the mouse is moved across the website.
Updated Plugins
Smooth Slider
Smooth Slider is a WordPress Plugin for creating a dynamic slideshow for featured posts on a blog.
SEO Ultimate
This all-in-one SEO plugin can handle titles, meta, noindex, canonical tags, 404 monitoring, linkboxes, and robots.txt. Version 1.3 adds anchor text customization for the “more” link in posts.
WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will […]
Original post by Perurry
Technorati Tags: blog
