Strange – over the past two or three days, my site statistics have spiked. Already today I’ve received 319 unique hits, nearly all from unknown referrers – and I’m really not sure why. The vast majority of these hits seem to be directed at my Book Love entry from a few days ago. Again I’ve no clue as to why. Initially, I was thinking spambots, but the almost single-minded focus on this one entry would seem to preclude that idea (spambots generally run the gamut of archived entries). So, the only other thing I can think of is that someone submitted that entry to a social bookmarking site – yet I don’t see that site listed as a referrer, which naturally causes doubt.
So, anyone know if that entry got submitted somewhere? Or can anyone offer up a better explanation for the sudden spike in traffic to my site?
Tags: counterize, plugins, site-statistics, Technology, WordPress
WordPress has all kinds of nifty little crosspost plugins now. With one click of a button, anything I post here will automatically and simultaneously be posted on Xanga and LiveJournal, as well. So allow me to add another item to my WordPress wishlist – a WordPress to WordPress crosspost plugin. Why would I ever want something like this? Simple – there are selected items I post here that I might want to deliver to an alternate site or I might simply want to mirror my site elsewhere, kind of as a backup in case something goes kerplooey here. What features would such a plugin require? Here’s some to start:
- Preservation of all the post’s metadata – title, categories, permissions, date/timestamps, passwords, etc.
- Ability to crosspost to as many instances of WordPress as desired.
- Ability to select only certain categories for crossposting.
- Ability to crosspost to a wordpress.com blog.
I think that’d certainly do for starters. Any coding geniuses out there want to take on a new project?
Tags: crossposting, plugins, software, Technology, WordPress
I’ve a feature request for all you php ninjas out there, particularly those of you who develop plugins that do strange and wonderful things with tagging:
How about making the ability to tag posts in WordPress a little bit more powerful? For instance, I use Ultimate Tag Warrior to create a site index here, and it’s nice to be able to click on a particular tag and see all of the entries that fall under it.
Here’s the thing, though – I’d like to see it be possible to filter down still further into those entries. Instead of, for instance, being able to see the entries that fall under speculative fiction only, I’d like to be able to add more tag filters and see all the entries that have been tagged as both speculative fiction and tv shows, or to be able to add still more filters so that I could see all entries that fall under speculative fiction, tv, shows, and heroes, if I wanted to get that specific. It would also be cool to be able to filter by an ‘OR’ command, so that I could sift through all my entries and see all posts that have been tagged as either science fiction or fantasy, for a larger list. I believe that this could easily be done using AJAX to add and remove tags at will. bbPress already has something like this in place for individual posts, so I don’t think it would require much effort to modify that script slightly to make it do more and go further.
So, any javascript/php geeks out there looking for a new challenge to expand the functionality of some of useful tools to make them even more useful?
Tags: ajax, Coding, geek, php, plugins, software, tagging, tags, ultimate-tag-warrior, WordPress
I do wish developers would update their plugins to be compatible with WordPress 2.1…
Tags: plugins, software, whinging, WordPress
You can’t say I don’t take care of my readers. I’ve installed a plugin today – DoFollow – that removes the “nofollow” property from commenter links. So, provided everything is working alright, those of you who comment here should start seeing some more lovin’ from the search engines.
Lemme know if you spot any problems…
Tags: dofollow, plugins, software, WordPress
Earlier today I discovered that Feedburner was hating on my syndication feed. I was getting this error:
XML Parsing Error: xml processing instruction not at start of external entity. Line Number 2, Column 1:
It took me a while, but some research turned up an answer – apparently there are some plugins out there that push all the code on every page down a line. For syndication feeds, this is a very bad thing, since they are built on XML code and the XML identifier is required to be the first thing a reader sees in order for it to work. In my case, it was probably a plugin that was pushing everything down so I started shutting plugins off.
I’m chagrined to discover that my feed has probably been very unhealthy for several days now. I discovered two plugins that were creating problems, one of which I’ve had activated for a couple of weeks. Category Converter was the first, so if I find I need to use this one again in the future, it will get activated, used, and turned right back off again. The other was one I’d wanted to try out because I’ve noticed that some of my posts are getting scraped and posted elsewhere. Most of these have links back here but are being credited to those sites’ owners. I’m not all that upset about it, but it is kind of annoying and discourteous. So, I’d decided to give Antileech a try today. Except – this plugin also bumps everything down a line, thus rendering my feeds essentially dead. So, a no-go to that one, as well.
Odd thing is this – I’m subscribed to my own feed, primarily to monitor its health. Everything has been coming through just fine every day, albeit sometimes hours after the fact, but so long as they were coming through, I wasn’t all that concerned. So, I’ve no idea why, with my feed essentially being invalid, I’ve still been getting updates on a regular basis. Those of you who subscribe to my feed – have you been getting daily updates? And maybe someone who knows and understands XML and RSS coding a little better than I do can explain to me why the feed can be invalid and yet subscribers can still receive updates. I’m all ears.
So, lesson to the wise – every time you install and activate a new plugin, check your feed immediately and make sure it’s still working. Some plugins may not like your syndication all that well.
Tags: antileech, category-converter, feedburner, feeds, plugins, rss, software, syndication, WordPress, xml
Couple of new plugins to share with you:
- Identicon – Identicon is a pretty cool little plugin that generates a random avatar for every person who comments here. It’s a visual security tool based off 9-block IP identification to help identify phishers who might leave comments using previous commenters’ information. In its default state, Identicon actually assigns an avatar to a user based on their email address, and since Bad Behavior and Akismet do a good job of keeping spammers and phishers away, I’m not inclined to switch it over to IP identification at this point. So, the long and the short of it is, now everyone who comments here has their own unique identifying image. Personally, I think they’re kind of fun.
- WP-Amazon – I’ve been wishing for an easier way to look up links to Amazon for books, movies, and video games I review (or simply want to promote). This plugin adds a button to the Write page in the WordPress dashboard that enables you to look up any title and instantly transfer the appropriate information directly into your editor. It’s currently designed to work best with the Rich Text Editor, but it also has some limited functionality with the plain text editor (which is the only thing I use anyway). The plugin’s author has promised an updated version in the near future that works better with the plain text editor, but what he has at the moment works well enough for what I need. You pretty much need an Amazon Associates key to use it, though, so if you opt to use this plugin, you’ll want to sign up for the Associates program first.
Yes, I’m a plugins addict.
Tags: identicon, plugins, software, WordPress, wp-amazon
Ok, in theory, my entire site should now be indexed with tags using the Ultimate Tag Warrior. I’m sure I probably missed a post or two, plus I don’t think any of my asides or linklog entries came through the archives (which is actually fine, since those are technically already categorized in and of themselves). The site index is looking rather full and intimidating, but it is interesting to me which terms are most prominent. I tried to tag each entry using what I felt were the most important key terms. It’s makes for a highly diverse spread of search terms, but it should make it really easy for readers to simply click on a term of interest and read down through every single entry on my site that pertains to that term. It’s kind of cool, really, and I’m glad I did this.
I may play a little with the way the index page outputs tags, so if anyone has a preference for the look of tag clouds that makes them easy to read through, let me know. After all, the site index is there for you, not me.
Tags: plugins, software, ultimate-tag-warrior, WordPress
People always seem interested to learn about new and useful utilities for blogging, so I thought I would take the time to describe the plugins I use to help power this blog.
- Akismet – This is, quite simply, the best anti-spam tool out there. Akismet is a comprehensive tool for sifting incoming comments and filtering the garbage out of the legitimate comments. I’ve been using this for well over a year now, and to date I think I’ve had only one or two false positives that I’ve had to approve from out of the spam folder. Very little spam gets through this filter, and most of that only when Akismet’s servers are down (which is rare).
- Bad Behavior – This plugin makes a great complement to Akismet by simply and outrightly blocking spammers before they can ever make it to your site. I’ve watched as the number of spam in the Akismet folder has dropped (and the number of false hits on Counterize also drops). Between these two plugins, I’ve not had a single spam comment make it through to my site.
- Category Converter – I’ve been working to (hopefully) streamline navigation through my blog recently. Part of this effort has involved combining some categories. This simple plugin makes it very fast and easy to do this. The only hitch I’ve found is that if you merge a main category before merging subcategories, the subs sort of become invisible. It’s a relatively minor issue, I suppose, but something to be aware of, nonetheless.
- Counterize – I’m a stats geek, and Counterize makes my inner numbers man very happy by tracking total number of hits, as well as number of unique hits. It logs IP addresses, referrers, and even lets me see roughly what part of the world my readers live in. Bar graphs lay out stats by day of the week, day of the month, month of the year, and current month.
- External Links – I’ve always kind of liked Wikipedia’s external links icon. It makes it really clear which links navigate within the site and which will take you elsewhere. The icons are relatively unobtrusive, and so I’ve incorporated a similar look here.
- Footnotes – I like footnotes. They let me add little asides or clarifications to the things I write. And I especially like being able to throw footnotes in on the fly. This plugin lets me do exactly that.
- Our Todo List – A good portion of my online time is spent looking at my WordPress dashboard, so it’s a good place to leave myself little reminders. I’ve just recently installed this todo plugin, and it’s a handy little scratch space for me to set up a todo list.
- Paged Comment Editing – It’s not often that I need to go back into the comment archives looking for things or to make minor edits, but when I do, it’s nice to be able to simply page back through them.
- Plugins Used – And then, of course, the curious who stumble across my blog like to reference what plugins I use, so I have them listed on a separate page. This plugin automatically generates that list and keeps it updated, so I don’t have to.
- runPHP – Some of my pages require a snippet of php code to be pasted into the page content itself. WordPress’s natural state is to simply show that as text. This plugin allows me the option of turning php on in that page, so that any php code pasted automatically runs as a native command.
- Share This – This is another recent addition as a way to generate some extra visibility and traffic. I’ve no idea if anyone actually uses it, but readers have the option of automatically submitting entries to any of a dozen different social bookmarking sites. So, if you like something you read here, please do me a favor and Digg it (or Technorati it, or de.li.cio.us, or whatever).
- Sidebar Widgets – I’ve become such a huge fan of widgets now that I won’t even use a theme that isn’t widget-compatible. It takes all the pain and agony out of manually editing template files and lets me place exactly the content I want where I want it. I also run a php-compatible widget, which is a separate addon for the widgets directory, to let me run a little specialized php code in the sidebar if I need it.
- Sideblog – This is probably my favorite sidebar widget. I love the idea of being able to put little, one-line remarks in the sidebar or quicklinks to various websites that I’ve found interesting. Kates’ plugin makes this simple and painless while keeping everything very classy looking.
- Subscribe to Comments – Sometimes the easiest way to keep track of a discussion thread is by email subscription. Commenters and readers are able to subscribe to the discussion of any entry on this blog simply by checking a box near the comment form or entering an email address. This way, whenever a comment is left, you get the updates instantly.
- Text Control – This is my most-used plugin, since I use it on every single entry. Text Control lets me format text on the fly, insert hyperlinks, and basically tweak the way text looks, all without having to mess with HTML coding. It’s a whole heckuvalot easier than messing with braces everywhere.
- Ultimate Tag Warrior – I’m still in the process of indexing everything, but I’m using UTW to create a comprehensive site index. Just by clicking on any tag, you can read any entry I’ve written on that topic. It’s much more extensive than the category system that’s built into WordPress. As Lorelle stated, categories are like the table of contents, and UTW tags are the index. Hopefully, I’ll have all the indexing done within a few days.
- WP Contact Form – And the final plugin I use is the contact form, allowing readers to simply fill out the form and submit it to send me an email. The one I’m currently using is a bit vulnerable to spam, but those cases are rare enough that I haven’t bothered to upgrade to something a little more spam-proof.
These are my babies, so to speak, the plugins that let me run Writer’s Blog exactly the way I want to. They get tweaked here and there – most stay while some go – but all the plugins listed above are safe to use with WordPress 2.1. Feel free to give them a testrun and see what they do to improve the usability of your WordPress blog.
Tags: plugins, software, WordPress
I’m willing to recant a previous statement and admit when I’m wrong. I’ve been avoiding using any kind of tagging plugin for this blog because I’ve always felt that tags were somewhat pointless and created a lot of unnecessary clutter. Most of the tagging I’d seen were links to Technorati, and I couldn’t justify leaving a bunch of those lying around with no good reason. I know that doing so would likely have generated some more traffic to my site, but for me that wasn’t good enough reason to use something that like.
Lorelle was kind enough, though, to put tagging into perspective for me – she views categories as your site’s table of contents and tagging as your site’s index. That notion has stuck in my mind for the last couple of weeks, and I’ve had to admit that that approach has a certain kind of appeal to it. So, I’ve decided to give Ultimate Tag Warrior a chance, setting it up on my test blog yesterday and figuring out how to install, configure, and integrate it into my current template. The only downside is that I now have 3.5 years of entries (numbering 720 total) that now need to be indexed – a daunting task, but one that should make things around here a little easier to find. I’m also now using Technorati tags, but you won’t know it since I’m keeping them invisible (and already I’ve seen a little extra traffic coming my way from Technorati).
I’ve also used the Category Converter plugin to merge some of my categories into more general topics, leaving the tags to make things more specific.
And if anyone uses the Navigation 1.0 theme for WordPress and would like the modified files to integrate UTW into their own site, let me know so I can bundle them up and make them available. It took me a few minutes to rework the files and shuffle some code around to make everything look right.
I’ll do a more comprehensive writeup soon and detail what I like about this plugin – and all the others I use – and what I don’t like.
Tags: category-converter, plugins, ultimate-tag-warrior, WordPress
