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WordPress Plugin Review: StatPress

December 22, 2011 by 13 Comments

I really enjoy using StatPress. Let me re-phrase that – I really enjoyed using StatPress for a time. I would review StatPress Reloaded, but it is only compatible to 2.9.2 and seems to not have any updates since WordPress is on version 3.3 (December 2011.)

StatPress is a real-time statistics plugin for users to install on their WordPress blog and be able to check through their administration panel. Stats includes are visitors per day, feeds per day, what browsers people are using when visiting, referring sites, and IPs. The plugin was created by Daniele Lippi. Note: Recently Daniele introduced StatPress.org, but still has a StatPress support forum at his site.

The plugin is great, but word of caution is to make sure anyone using this plugin limits the days that they will allow StatPress to collect information. This is important as you can drive up your database. This is also a plugin that does not remove itself fully when you uninstall. You have to go in and manually remove the data tables. This plugin can be bulky and even crash at times.

Sometimes it is slowly when gathering data, so if you have a larger site, you might have to wait a few extra moments for this plugin to do its work. It is useful, but for larger sites, this plugin might not be ideal.

On top of that, if you forget to clear out your data, you will run up your diskspace before you know it.

In my humble opinion, it is probably better to try Google Analyticator or the WordPress.com statistics instead.

Do you use StatPress or have you? Or do you use another statistics plugin.

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Watch Out! Some Premium WP Plugin Companies On the Prowl

December 22, 2011 by 4 Comments

I have been tagging quite a few commenters for spam and noting at other WordPress related sites, that there have been a lot of people leaving comments for their premium plugins.

The message has nothing to do with the original post and in my case, it was on a post of a plugin that had nothing to do with the premium posts.

Rather than go about it this way, perhaps the plugin makes should consider releasing the plugin to notable people in the WordPress community to try out and write their feedback. Commenting and leaving a spammy link does nothing but go to the trash or get ignored.

There are better ways to get the word out including affiliate programs, effective advertising on various networks, and as I have said, through word of mouth through product testing. My concern is that these commenters are the type who were hired cheaply at some freelancer website and by someone with no grasp on how to use social media marketing effectively.

Of course, there are individuals that are merely affiliates and do not work for a particular company, but they can be just as much as a nuisance.

So, this is just a heads up to those in the WordPress community and even bloggers who do talk about WordPress from time to time. Yes, even if you talk about WordPress or WordPress plugins, you might be targeted for comment spam.

How can you prevent this?

Obviously blocking every IP address involved in spamming is not going to cut it as you could accidentally block one of your regular visitors.

You can install spam plugins, but you still get spam. What you can do it visit the site of the plugin and report it. Make sure that if it is an affiliate link, to include that. In the case that you get excessive comments, find out where the domain is hosted and report it on a host level. The host may do several or some of the following:

  • Terminate the violator’s account
  • Blacklist the user’s IP
  • Email the user to warn them of their violation and inform them of what actions will be taken if further behavior continues.

Have you experienced this? How did you respond to it (or did you)?

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper

December 17, 2011 by 11 Comments

Here is a wallpaper I made called WordPress Sunflower. Yeah, I know, fan art pretty much.

Anyone who has items they made as a fan of WordPress, you are welcome to pitch in to the readers. Just use the contact form to tell me what you have or would like to offer. You definitely get mention and link credit for your work.

WordPress Sunflower: It comes in 3 different sizes. If your resolutions is larger, please use the contact form and I will cut a larger from my larger raw image for you and anyone else who might have the same.

WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (800x600) (1245)
WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (1024x768) (1181)
WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (1280x1024) (1232)

Feel free to download them. Even though I do not put my name on them, please do not claim as your own. Hope you like them.

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WordPress Video: A Walk Through WordPress 3.3

December 16, 2011 by 13 Comments

WordPress 3.3 has been released and it comes with quite a few updates. Some of the major ones that are noticeable are the navigation structure, administration bar at the top, a welcome page with a tour of the backend, additional permalink structure option, and the media upload area.

I have put together a a video screencast on WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” to allow you to become a little more familiar with your WordPress install, OR if you have not used WordPress yet, hopefully this will entice you to begin your own WordPress powered site.

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Thoughts On Autoblogging Software for WordPress

December 9, 2011 by 26 Comments

At first, when I thought about this issue, I had a brain fart and about calling software that scrapes content onto WordPress blogs were autobots. See what happens when blond hair takes over the brain…

I think it is because of WP Robot, that started the idea off. WP Robot is a plugin for WordPress that allows a use to basically scrape keyword related content selected by the website owner. I see a lot of the sites out there that are using plugins like WP Robot. And you know what – I just shake my head sadly.

This is without anyone’s permission to post. Often, I see in my WordPress admin panel links to these sites and have to delete them. They have no real value! This is not autoblogging – it IS scraping content. There is no human interaction. How can such a product make people money? Forgive me, but perhaps I just do not understand or it is the fact I would rather physically write my own articles. These sites cannot provide valuable back links no matter how many articles a day the site auto posts. This defeats the purpose of having a site with original content.

Also, the majority of sites using autoblogging software are frowned upon Google. Not only is is a content farm, but it is duplicate content!

What are your thoughts about autoblogging and sites that use them as an article mashup?

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WordPress Plugin Review: Thank Me Later

December 9, 2011 by 11 Comments

I have gotten quite a few emails asking me on how I sent an automatic email to those who commented on my blog. First off, it is not just an automatic email, but a thank you email. I wanted to make sure that people remembered my site and knew that I constantly updated it. For those who are regulars, I blog almost on a daily basis.

I use the WordPress plugin called Thank Me Later by Brendon Boshell. It is not your normal auto-responder type email as it really does not sign you up for anything. As the blog owner, you can specify in the plugin settings when the email is sent out and how often. For me, usually it is sent 1 hour after a visitor commented on the site and only once. Others might want to send out once a month.

I think it is a great plugin. Unlike the Twitter Auto-DM (Automatic Direct Message) ability, this tool is great to help your blog visitors feel welcomed. The message that is sent can be customized and you can include links to special parts of your site or your RSS feed.

I think there could be potential to turning this plugin to have auto-responder features. However, I am fairly content as this is a good tool to inform visitors at least once about attracting them back to your website.

Have you tried this plugin?

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Mastering Pretty Permalinks in WordPress

December 9, 2011 by 8 Comments

What is pretty permalinks? Well for a brief explanation that is not difficult, it is changing the settings in your WordPress URL structure from yoursite.com/?p=2 , title ‘About’ to yoursite.com/about/ ( /%postname%/ ). To use this ‘pretty’ permalink structure and incorporate both pages and posts, you need to remember your hierarchy structure of your site.

For example, if you used (as a generic example) Webmistress, Domain, Contact, Sitemap as your the parent pages, you cannot name a blog post after these as it would interfere. Yes, each post and page is naturally numbered when it is created, but in the pretty permalinks structure, it could interfere with each other. You would be trying to call two pages at once. While I created yoursite.com/?p=2 that was titled ‘About’ and then later on in yoursite.com/?p=48 also blogged in a post with the title ‘About’, the structure would both be yoursite.com/about/

So for short:

Parent Pages MUST be differently titled from your blog posts.

I hope not to boggle anyone, but I am not completely done with this especially if you self host your WordPress blog. :!:

So, now with the scenario of your pages now having the ‘pretty permalinks’, you decided to store images and information into your public html folder (in cPanel, or for Plesk users- your httpdocs folder), and you made a subfolder named ‘about’. The same rules come into play. You cannot make a subfolder OR even a subdomain that is named like your parent pages.

So, as I said, when you are using pretty permalinks, you need to recall the names of your pages hierarchy. Some like this style. I have come to like it for the past year. Some argue that it bloats that database. Others says pretty permalinks are great for search engine optimization. However, I think of it as a personal choice. I kind of like the ability to see the title of my post or page in the URL.

What do you use for your site structure while using WordPress (for those who do use it)? Have you had issues with the pretty permalinks technique? I am including a few articles to help you read more on the issue as I might talk more about pretty permalinks as another topic in the future.

Related/ Recommended Links:

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Tag Cloud Dos and Don’ts

December 8, 2011 by 12 Comments

I have been seeing a disturbing number of blogs with some creepy tag clouds. Some have no CSS spacing implemented and others, well, they really are a ‘drag’ on the layout’s load time. I am not going to draw this article out, as I would like feedback from you all on your tag cloud practices.

I get a lot of questions whether if people should use tag clouds on their site or not. I usually ask them if they tried one on their site and made an opinion of its look and whether it fits with their site. Then, I would ask them if they had categories and if it was necessary that they have the tags when they also offer a search form. These are just a few factors I have always considered.

However, I want to focus on the aesthetics of the tag cloud. I have pulled one example of a ‘do’ and one of a don’t. Then I will give you my best advice. Out of respect of the webmasters the screen shots of these tag clouds belong to, I am not naming them.

Tag Cloud Don’t
This tag cloud was actually rotating the tag words. This slowed the load time of the site down and it was annoying as I tried to play catch to click on the tag word. It looked like the big bang theory happened in the sidebar of this person’s page. It was definitely a do not. The tag cloud had no real value except to look like a nifty tool. In fact, the webmaster used it on a Compositio WordPress layout by Design Disease and it severely detracted from the original layout. Also, as a note, the small screen shot was cut down in length from the actual size.

What can be learned from this Don’t:
:arrow: There is no reason to make a tag cloud look like it is a blog all on its own or something you tossed cookies on. Keep your tag clouds simple and relevant to your site.

Tag Cloud Do

This tag cloud is much better than the previous. The tags are spaced well and they are in alphabetical order. Another great example, although the webmaster does not have the tag cloud up anymore. It is a shame as I thought it was one of the best yet. What they did was instead of alphabetical order, they specified the parameter of their tag cloud as largest count to smallest and from that, adjusted the CSS to have a pleasant rainbow type color effect.

The WordPress Codex talks about customizing your tag cloud template by changing the parameters like excluding certain tags, specifying how many should be listed and even the tag order. I recommend taking a look at it and finding out what is best for your blog if you do like to use tag clouds. You may just want to create a tag cloud archive page instead of listing your tags in your sidebar. In fact, it might be a nice addition to your 404 page.

Do you use a tag cloud? Why and what are your suggestions on improving how a tag cloud should be displayed? Any tricks to share?

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: , ,