Entries Tagged 'Plugins' ↓

I started writing my first Wordpress plugin tonight, and of course the thing I undertake is not a simple thing. I’ve setup a couple of websites for two different groups, and it would be ideal for them to have their own calendar on their website. However, none of the currently available event calendar plugins really fits the bill for what I’m wanting to do. Enter me and my big idea of “well, I can just build it.”

Keep in mind what I said above, this is my first attempt at a plugin. What I’m trying to achieve with the plugin is this:

• easily add, modify, and delete events in a similar fashion to how Posts and Pages are handled
• events can be set as all day events or time specific events
• events can be multiple days
• reoccuring events is a must
• functionality to display a small calendar in the sidebar, with a variable number of months displayed
• functionality to display a list of the X number of closest upcoming events
• functionality to display a full page calendar

So, as you can see I have my work cut out for me. With a very active 2-year-old at home I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to dedicate to this. I’ll definitely keep the “world” updated with my progress.

Since I think most readers of this blog also blog with Wordpress, I pass along this plugin to you. This plugin places statistics from Google Analytics and Feedburner into your blog’s administrative panel. I always forget to go out and look at those sites for my stats, but now I can get them quickly and easily just by logging into my blog.

If you don’t already have accounts setup with Google or Feedburner, check those services out.  Both services are free and easy to setup.

[tags]Wordpress, plugin, Google Analytics, Feedburner[/tags]

Once again my del.icio.us links have backed up some, so get ready for a random collection of links:

• Launchy - This is another application launcher, similar to Colibri (featured by me in this post). I stopped using Colibri because it took too long to get it started up. Launchy starts rapidly, and at present is taking less than 2 Meg of memory to run. Another benefit of Launchy is the ability to choose which directories get indexed for launching.
• WP-Notable - “Notable displays a series of icons below each post allowing your readers to easily submit you to many different social bookmarking and networking sites.” This allows for easy posting to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Digg, and Spurl, to name a few.
• Jacktracker - More stuff for those 24 fans. This is a Google Maps mash-up, set to the travels during a day in the life of Jack Bauer.
• Bullfighter - “If you think you smell something at work, there’s probably good reason — Bull has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way.” Let Bullfighter put your corporate mission statement in plain English for you.
• Fav Wordpress Plugins - Business Blog Consulting has put together their list of their favorite Wordpress plugins. Anyone who takes the time to list their favorite plugins is worth a read.
• Warriors of the Net - If you’ve ever wanted to watch a movie explaining in fairly easy-to-understand terms how data gets transmitted on a network (or the internet), then this is the movie for you.
• Nifty Corners - For those that fancy themselfs as web programmers, this Javascript/CSS combo allows you to make rounded corners without the need for specially created image files. My current theme is using Nifty for its roundedness.

That’s all I got for now.

[tags]Bullfighter, Launchy, 24, Jack Bauer, Google Maps, Nifty Corners, Wordpress[/tags]

Building on my previous post, here are some more Wordpress plugins for you to check out:

• SimpleTags - “SimpleTags is a WordPress plugin that will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries. There are several plugins already available for this purpose, but they all require you to use custom fields within WordPress. The SimpleTags plugin eliminates this need…” You will notice the fancy Technorati tags at the bottom of this post (I just installed this one myself).
• Google Analytics - This is a different plugin for Google Analytics. The major difference between the one I highlighted earlier is the link tracking feature this one has. This plugin also adds the appropriate code to links within the posts to track what links people are clicking on to exit your site. If you click on this link it will register it with GA.
• Live Preview - This plugin presents a real-time preview of what your visitor is typing into the comment box. That way they can preview exactly what it will look like when they actually submit the comment. I’ve installed it, so you can try it out below.

[tags]Wordpress, plugins[/tags]

I’ve decided that I should pass along some links to my favorite things when it comes to Wordpress.

• Alex King hosted a competition for themes. He also setup a handy browser so you can see a demo of each theme.
• Comment spam is a nasty thing. I originally used a captcha based spam blocker (where you have to type in the text from a funny looking image), but have since changed to something more discrete: Spam Karma 2.0. The goal of SK2 is to “stop all forms of automated Blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters.”
• If you are an AdSense user, this plugin may be what you are looking for.
• If you use Google Analytics for site statistics, this plugin will add the necessary code without needing to hack up your templates.
• This blog is all about blogging. Topics covered range from general blogging topics, to specific Wordpress themes and plugins. There is also a post of his favorite Wordpress plugins.
• This site has an extensive list of Wordpress plugins.

You can see my Wordpress del.icio.us bookmarks here.

What are your favorite Wordpress links?