Well, it had to happen. It is amazing that I’ve been using WordPress so long without getting into its guts. While hacking on the Tweet this plugin ever so gently, I started to get the feel for how WP plugins work. So I wrote a couple myself. The first one is serious old school, as it’s modeled on some older plugins. The second one actually uses more object oriented methodology, and so should be easier to read, maintain, and hack on.
But I’m sure most of you don’t care about that as long as the plugins work. And probably you are wondering what they do.
Plugin # 1: Random Widget
You know how they say don’t overload your blog with widgets because it will grind itself to a slow death. Yeah but there are so many cool widgets and it might give your blog a little stickiness if people never knew exactly what widget they would see when they visited next. So I got the idea to store the HTML codes for the widgets in the database instead of embed them directly in the blog templates. Then when you place the random widget metamarkup in your sidebar, the plugin will choose one of the widget blurps randomly and display that widget. I thought I had so many little blurps of widget code but the problem is a lot of them count something. So it’s not really great to put the blog catalog recent visitors widget because it will only count the people who visit when the widget is chosen. There are plenty of widgets that don’t count anything, and those are good candidates for RandomWidget.
Plugin # 2 Comment DM
This plugin is for Twitter addicts who check their Twitter more than their email. Word Press can be set up to email you whenever anyone comments, but if you want it on Twitter as well, the plugin will send you a DM (from yourself) that tells you who commented on what post and when. It’s a little wanky to get DM’s from yourself but no one else needs to know. The Comment DM plugin has some PHP5 only code in it, so if your Word Press is still running on PHP4, it will not work.
I’m not ready to unleash these on the general public unless a few people try them out first and let me know what they think. Want ’em? Comment here or follow me on Twitter and DM me there. My Twitter info may be found in the Lijit widget on the left sidebar. It’s always there, not random at all. These plugins are beta but the worst they can do is make your blog look crappy (that’s more about what widgets you choose though!) or just not work. I don’t believe they will trash your blog but as with any software, caveat emptor.
I like the random widget concept here… Overloading the side-bars with contents all over is really so irritating when it takes ages for them to load….
I like the random widget but I think I’ll wait for some response first. I’m not a techie person and I’ve never been inside the ‘gut’ of any website so I have not enough courage to mess with mine. I hope the beta period will be over soon so that I could try this new widget. Thank you for being so innovative.
Twitting is so popular nowadays, and you are of saying that some people check their twitter more than their emails. I know somebody who is exactly like that. Twitting is very helpful in SEO anyway.
most of my collegues are twitter mad!
twitter and facebook will get banned here at work soon i think
i liked that widget unser “About you” … in your right sidebar 🙂
can u share abt it ?
Hi!
Interesting blog,.. well! I am a wordpress fan and to me the most important WP plugin remains the Http Error Manager 0.1. This SEO plugin allows you to manage the various error pages on your blog, complete and easely manage errors 404 (page no longer exists), handle errors 301 (Documents moved permanently) and 302 (Documents moved temporarily).
Hey Liam, it would be great if you’d include a link to the Error manager plugin. I use SEO all in one, and I think 404’s are handled OK in there. And as for you trucks, let’s see, the about you widget I just found that someplace and copied it. Probably if you just do a view source on this blog page and locate it you can just copy it if you want it. It does not pull anything dynamic from this blog. It would be a good one for a random widget too. I’ll get around to installing random widget in this blog one of these days. As for Comment-DM, I’m not that big of a twitterholic to where I’d want it, but some people are. 🙂
Seems like interesting….will surely try dis beta Word Press Plugin….
Very interesting blog i like the widget I download the beta and try it out. Now, just a few months later, WordPress is at it again with version 2.7 which is now in its second beta release. Its packing massive overhauls, visual and […]
@ admin – ok i will try to take that code of “About you” in ur right sidebar …
and yes nowadays many are getting into twitter putting tweets around … hv seen on other blogs too.
Thank you! I am addicted to twitter and the second plugin is what, I was looking for.
I could not imagine how I work at Twitter Without rightly should.
very innovative and it was a nice article… very interesting
bye
I have been looking for this info for ages and now I have finally found it 🙂 I am so happy!!!
Hope you all profit from this info!
cheers
I don’t how I could live before without this information. Thank you it will help me a lot. Your articl is really interesting and we learn a lot thanks to it.
Wow, just fantastic!
It is so nice that we now have this information! It is going to be really helpful for our job.
The article is also really well written!!!!
cheers
that was an innovative article….you done a great job.
I looked for this information a long time and now i have found it finally.
thank you for sharing
Does it work with PHP 5.3 ?
Don’t know. haven’t tried it yet.
Hi Davis,
php 5.3 should not be a problem, have try´d yesterday – woks fine
does this support WordPress version 3??
I don’t know. It never got any traction. I make computery things for either pay or for the pleasure of interaction about it. No interaction means toss it in a corner.
How did you make this template? I got a blog as well and my template looks kinda bad so people don’t stay on my blog very long :/.
thanks.