Archive for the 'Add-Ons and Plug-Ins' Category

WP Authors plugin

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 16, 2008
in Add-Ons and Plug-Ins
. 0 Comments

Does your self-hosted Wordpress blog have multiple authors? Would you like a simple plugin displaying their names with the number of posts that belong to them? Well, look no further. The WP Authors plugin should easily do the trick for you.

After downloading, uploading, and activating, the last thing you’ll need to do is place the widget on your sidebar. If you’re already using several widgets you can choose the placement so your new author plugin shows up where you want.

runPHP plugin

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 16, 2008
in Add-Ons and Plug-Ins
. 0 Comments

If you’re wanting to use some PHP code on your blog, you’re going to need a plugin. If you didn’t know, your text editor can accept plain text and HTML, but not much of anything else. I haven’t used any plugins for PHP except runPHP, but I haven’t really had a need to look for anything different. As far as I know, Blogger, Xanga, and MySpace don’t have the option to add in a plugin for PHP. Wordpress and Typepad do, though.

In Wordpress installation is pretty simple. 1.) Download the plugin. 2.) Upload the folder to your plugins folder 3.) Activate the plugin from your Plugins menu. Now you can paste PHP code into a post or page and something should show up. Other plugins you setup may require runPHP because they utilize some PHP code. I found an archives plugin a while back that required runPHP to also be installed.

Akismet is my anti-spam

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 12, 2008
in Add-Ons and Plug-Ins and Getting Started
. 1 Comment

I was trying to think of something clever to title this post. I wanted to somehow tie in SPAM, the meat product, but couldn’t think of anything that would work.  So this is what you have - a play on a TV anti-drug campaign.  I’m sure somebody will hate me for it.

If you’ve looked at your Wordpress plugins, you’ve probably seen Akismet.  It’s one of those default things that gets installed just because.  It isn’t setup to go though.  You’ll have to activate it and input a code.  No worries though because that code is free.  All you need is an account at Wordpress.com and you get a free code you can use on all of your Wordpress blogs.

After you’ve done the setup work, all you have to do is wait for pretend-people to start posting comments.  If Akismet catches some suspected comments you’ll find them when you login to your blog and check your Comments tab.  There will be a new sub-tab called Akismet Spam (0).  If something accidentally goes in there, the number won’t be zero anymore and you can mark it as not-spam and rescue it.  On the same hand if something goes in there that should, you can delete it.  This is very similar to the spam catchers for your email inboxes.

I’ve been using Akismet for a while now.  On my personal blog it catches all of those annoying gambling/casino, wonder drug, and pornography comments that seemingly come from nowhere.  Another thing to check in the way of comments are your moderation settings.  Under Options…Discussion you’ll find some boxes to check or uncheck.  I usually have everything selected except requiring an administrator to approve every comment.  As long as somebody has already made a comment and I trust them, I’ll allow them to do so again without being moderated.  Also, just in case anything unwanted sneaks past, you can always mark a pre-existing comment as spam and/or delete it.  If you have any questions feel free to ask.  There are other spam plugins out there and I’ll be reviewing some of those in the future.

Google Analytics for Wordpress plugin

Published
by
Chalupa
on February 26, 2008
in Add-Ons and Plug-Ins and Other Software for Bloggers
. 1 Comment

If you have already setup a Google Analytics account and now need to add your tracking code to your Wordpress site, I highly recommend using a plugin. A plugin for this task eliminates the hassle of having to copy and paste that code into your template. Plus, you will not have to repeat this task every time you switch templates.

Google Analytics for Wordpress is very easy to install and setup. After you download and upload the folder to your plugins folder, you’ll need to activate it from the Plugins menu in Wordpress. Your next step will be to copy/paste your account number from Google Analytics into your plugin’s configuration page. Your account number can be found by logging into Google Analytics, clicking on the edit link for your account and then clicking on the Check Status link. From here you’ll be able to pick two types of code to paste onto your site or blog. The account number is within the code in both pieces of code.

You’ll then paste this account number into the appropriate box in your Google Analytics configuration page located in a sub-menu of Plugins. Some other options you can check are Track outbound clicks & downloads, Track AdSense clicks, Track extra Search Engines, Track the administrator and integration with Urchin.

To check your stats, you’ll need to login to the Google Analytics page to do so. This is normal. This plugin doesn’t import any stats to your Wordpress Dashboard.