Category: Advanced

Plugins 028 – PodCamp Pittsburgh WordPress Coverage

In this episode, Angelo goes into detail of the WordPress coverage at this year’s PodCamp Pittsburgh.

Quick Announcement: I will be speaking on Friday, October 16th at the 2009 Blog World and New Media Expo within the WordCamp Las Vegas sessions track. I’ll be speaking on how to setup WordPress for Podcasting at 12:45pm. Friday and Saturday I will be present at the Blubrry/RawVoice booth, so if you’re at Blog World, please stop by and say hello!

PodCamp Pittsburgh 2009

The first session I attended was WordPress Knowledge Exchange hosted by Mike Woycheck (Woy) & John Carman. The session covered an array of recommended plugins and had a lot of insight on WordPress. Here are links to John’s and Woy’s recommended WordPress plugins. Plugins that stood out to me were Bookmarkify, Useful 404s, Time Zone, and Maintenance Mode.

The second session I attended was SEO Plug-ins for Your WordPress Website: Using SEO Tools for your WordPress Website hosted by Jami Broom of Clicks to My Site. Her session slides are available as a downloadable PDF. Jami covered a number of resources for SEO including Google’s Starter Guide, SEOBook.com and SEOMoz.com. Plugins that stood out during this session were Google Analyticator, Robots Meta, Redirection, SEO Friendly Images, Nofollow Case by Case, Platinum SEO Pack, and SEO Smart Links.

PodCamp Pittsburgh was a great unconference! The organizers and volunteers did a great job with the event. I can’t wait for next year!

Next episode I’ll be speaking with Max Sweet (TimeStampStudios.com), a WordPress plugin developer and web designer for WebmasterRadio.FM. Max discusses why his employer moved to WordPress and how the custom plugins he’s developed meet specific needs for the online radio station. We also discuss WordPress MU.

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Plugins 025 – Ohio Linux Fest This September!

In this episode, we speak with Beth Lynn Eicher, one of the organizers of the Ohio Linux Fest coming this September 25-27, 2009 in Columbus, OH.

Talking with Beth Lynn, we discuss Linux User Groups (LUGs) in the region as well as other Linux Fests that are taking place in other parts of the country. We also learn about what bug 1 (bug number one) is.

Later on in our conversation with Beth Lynn, we discuss her WordPress blog What Will We Use and some of the plugins she is using.  Beth Lynn highly recommends the W3Counter WordPress plugin and service to track web visitors. It can be used together or as an alternative to Google Analytics. From the looks of W3Counter, this would provide ideal web statistics if your interested in knowing the platforms your visitors are using.

Beth Lynn also goes into detail with her experience with poorly written themes and outdated plugins. This is a common problem with WordPress that many of us have dealt with at one time or another using WordPress.

I spoke with Beth Lynn for over an hour on a variety of Linux topics. The complete interview is available at the TechPodcasts.com Weekly Podcast avaialble at blog.techpodcasts.com.

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HTML Page Sitemap plugin Now Available

The Plugins Podcast is pleased to announce the availability of the new HTML Page Sitemap WordPress plugin.

This simple plugin adds an HTML (Not XML) sitemap of your blog pages (not posts) by entering the shortcode [html-sitemap] in the page content. This simple plugin is configured from the shortcode. Settings include the sort_column, sort_order, exclude, include, depth, child_of, meta_key, meta_value, authors, number, and offset. You can set essentially everything you can set in the wp_list_pages function.

This plugins is perfect for those who use WordPress as a CMS.

Please see the Template Documentation for the wp_list_pages function for detailed documentation of the available attributes and their values.

HTML Page Sitemap

The plugin may be downloaded from the WordPress Plugins Directory or by the following link: Download version 1.0.

Plugins 024 – Interview Mitcho author of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin YARPP and HookPress WordPress Plugins

In this episode we continue our conversation with Mitcho, the author of the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) and HookPress plugin.

Mitcho and I talk about jQuery, plugin development and plugin translation in WordPress. Mitcho goes into detail of the problems that come up that you cannot anticipate when creating plugins.

Further into our conversation we talk about providing translation support in plugins and the challenges with it. Mitcho recommended the CodeStyling Localization WordPress plugin to allow translators to translate plugins. Mitcho explains how to add code around your strings in your plugin to support translation. e.g. __(‘your string here’). The translation is performed using GetText, which is a very popular translation method and is very popular for software translation.

Mitcho goes on to suggest that a repository of translations be created and hosted at WordPress.org so translations can be managed and distributed independently of the plugins. I completely agree with Mitcho and think this is a great idea.

Near the end of the interview we talk more about YARPP features and how it can be added to themes.

Thank you so much Mitcho for taking the time to come on the  show and discussing your WordPress plugins and thoughts on translation.

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Plugins 023 – Interview Mitcho author of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin YARPP and HookPress WordPress Plugins

In this episode we speak with Mitcho, the author of the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) and HookPress plugin.

Mitcho goes into detail why he created YARPP and HookPress, where the plugins originated and and why he made them.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. YARPP includes many features and can be used by novice and advanced users. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently recommended YARPP as on of his favorite plugins.

HookPress plugin demonstrates how actions that occur in WordPress can be tied to external web sites via passing on information, similar to how pings work. It allows for push notifications to other web pages for custom development. HookPress uses WebHooks as its inspiration, so if you’re interested in learning more about WebHooks, check out WebHooks.org. It is important to note that HookPress is intended for developers, average users may be confused by the plugin and how to use it.

Part two will be available next week, stay tuned.

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