Wordpress plugins - Rebelic » Uncategorized

Dropping support for older versions

Timan Rebel — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:44:46 +0000

I was reading an article by OZH about ‘Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins‘ and besides that I’m doing some stuff terribly wrong, I also stumbled upon the follow paragraph:

Compatibility maintained with deprecated versions of WordPress

I’ve seen code comments mentioning stuff like “// we’re doing this for people using WP 2.5″. This one is more a personal choice, but I think maintaining compatibility with older versions is a terrible idea.

Terrible for you: fixing bugs and implementing new features is quite a task already, don’t add to the burden with more deprecated code.

Terrible for the users: it’s nice that your plugin is going to run fine on their obsolete, insecure and already hacked blog, but it really does not motivate them to upgrade, which is vital.

I know I’ve dropped backward compat with my plugins a long time ago, and always code for the latest release available. It makes life so much easier :)

I totally agree that it is a big mistake running an outdated blog and will drop support for all older versions of Wordpress immediately. Sorry folks running version 2.5, please upload the latest version and do the upgrade! Or let me do it for you ;)

Plug into a smarter web with f»dforward

Timan Rebel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:40:37 +0000

f»dforward is a widget based recommendation network that increases readership of blogs by more interested and relevant readers. f»dforward lets you connect with new blogs based on similar content and incorporates social elements like the “follow me” tools of Twitter, where they will follow content around the web instead of following conversations. f»dforward lets you grow your own blog network in a natural way by bringing you related and recommended articles connected to what you just published. f»dforward lets the blogger see who has been reading and makes recommendations visible and viral for their readers. In addition, f»dforward can help publishers improve reach and revenue through the analysis of what people are reading on and off their sites, which helps publishers like Het Parool and ILSE Media to create better content and make better connections with it.

More information about f»dforward can be found on getfeedforward.com.

Of course there is also a Wordpress plugin available to ease the integration. See the f»dforward recommendation network page for more info about the plugin.

Use Prezi presentations in your posts or pages

Timan Rebel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:37:47 +0000

Prezi offers a new way of using presentation software. Prezi presentations are slide-less and make use of moving and zooming into an infinate workspace. Unfortunatly they are a bit hard to embed. You could of course use an iframe tag, but everytime you edit your post or page, that iframe tag gets filtered out.

So I’ve written a small plugin to embed Prezi into your posts and pages. Just put [ prezi] and [ /prezi] (without the spaces) around your Prezi URL and your done! The plugin also adds a custom button to the Visual Editor so you don’t have to remember these codes and just insert your URL.

More info is available on the Prezi Shortcude plugin page.

Wordpress flavor: buddypress, Wordpress MU, Wordpress plugins

Achieve higher registration rates on your blog with RPX

Timan Rebel — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:02:30 +0000

JanRain RPX is a hosted service that makes it simple to enable OpenID (Google, MySpace, MS Live, Yahoo!, AOL, ….) , Facebook Connect and even Twitter Connect on your blog. Visitors don’t have to register on your blog and remember another username and password, but are still able to use all the features on your blog. At the same time, you as the blog owner receive valuable information about your users. Profile information, email addresses, avatars and even friends lists can be passed on to your blog when someone logs in through RPX.

RPX offers a single API and works as a proxy between your website and the identity providers, and is transparent to the end user. Adding RPX to your website doesn’t require any changes to your database and is the ideal solution for Wordpress. With their Wordpress plugin it’s really just plug and play.

Why RPX?

Because there are several protocols in use by different Identity Providers. OpenID is not compatible with Facebook Connect (proprietary protocol) and Twitter Connect (OAuth) for example. Besides the differences in protocols for identifying, there are also different protocols for the retreival of profile data, media and friends. The Open Stack way with OpenID, Oauth and PortableContacts is just one way to achieve this. Facebook Connect is another, but there are even more protocols out there.

That’s why most websites and blogs choose one of those protocols and stick with it. Only some provide them all. RPX takes away the hurdle of implementing all the different protocols and makes sure that if one of the providers implements something new, you don’t have to. You have access to all current and future Identity Providers through a single Restful API.

Besides offering an API, JanRain also created RPX libraries for all common programming languages and are offering a plugin for Wordpress. Install the plugin, select which Identity Providers you want to accept and you are ready to go. The free version offers you login and 6 providers, the paid versions are offering profile data, avatar, email address and contact list import. The Pro version offers synchronisation, so your userbase is always up to date even when your users don’t login. The pro version gives you also the option to post status updates to Twitter and Facebook.

If you want to provide remote login on your website through Twitter, Facebook or OpenID, you should really take a look at RPX. Not convinced? Take a test run by logging in below and leaving a comment ;-)

Plugin: rpx
Wordpress flavor: buddypress, Wordpress MU, Wordpress plugins

Twitter your new posts with Twitter Publisher

Timan Rebel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:44:21 +0000

With the Twitter Publisher plugin you can send automated tweets out when you publish a new post. It will add Google Campaign variables to the URL using the new URL shortener Awe.sm or Bit.ly. For larger blogs, with multiple authors, you can include the author’s Twitter name in the tweet and individual author’s can send Tweets from their account at the same time the main account is sending them.

You can download the plugin at Wordpress.org.

Plugin: Twitter Publisher
Wordpress flavor: Wordpress MU, Wordpress plugins

Add Google Campaign variables to your RSS feeds

Timan Rebel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:39:17 +0000

Always wanted to know where your traffic really came from? Did it come from Twitter? Or maybe from your RSS feeds? It’s now possible to track your incoming traffic with Google Analytics by using one of my plugins.

Add Google Campaign variables to your RSS feeds with my RSSLinktagger plugin.

Plugin: RSS Link Tagger
Wordpress flavor: Wordpress MU, Wordpress plugins