Themes Archives - Plugins: WordPress Plugins Podcast

Plugins 029 – Max Sweet from WebmasterRadio.FM

In this episode we’re 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.

Max explains why they’re using WordPress and a briefly explains the plugin he developed that manages the images that scroll across the top of the WebmasterRadio.FM web site.

We talk about Yoast and his Sociable plugin. Yoast is a plugin developer who has created a lot of very powerful WordPress plugins. Yoast also hosts the Press This podcast.

Further into the discussion Max explains WordPress MU and how to can be used for hosting multiple WordPress blogs.

We go into detail about some plugins that Max has developed that he may be releasing in the future. One that sounds very useful is a Module Switch plugin which would allow you to switch content on a page from say an advertisement to a live stream embed.

Max impresses me greatly because he is not only a plugin developer but also a graphic designer. Max explains the advantage of being both a designer and a web developer, which is useful when planning the development and coordinating CSS with the design.

If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback, please email angelo [at] pluginspodcast,com, use our contact form, or call (614) 859-9007 to leave a voice message.

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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 027 – TweetMeme WordPress Plugin

Today we’re covering TweetMeme Button WordPress plugin.

The TweetMeme Button WordPress plugin adds a Tweet me icon to your blog posts and pages. The plugin displays the number of re-tweets referencing your blog post. It is useful both to encourage readers to re-tweet your blog post as well as display how popular the post they are reading is on twitter. You can configure the plugin to remove the tweet me button from both static pages and from your home page. You can also customize the position and location of the button in your blog posts and pages.

The TweetMeme plugin is easy to configure and setup. One small note, some users may experience issues with the button itself depending on how well the theme is designed.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the TweetMeme Button plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/as well as the TweetMeme service at tweetmeme.com.

Announcements

PodCamp Pittsburgh 4: I will be speaking at PodCamp Pittsburgh this Saturday, October 10th on Plugins for WordPress to assist with Blogging and Podcasting. If you live in the area, please try to make it out, PodCamp Pittsburgh is a free event and covers not only podcasting, but social media, blogging and social sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Blog World and New Media Expo 2009: I will be speaking on Friday, October 16th at Blog World within the WordCamp Las Vegas sessions track. I’ll be covering 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 BlogWorld, please stop by and say hello!

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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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Plugins 022 – WPtouch Mobile Smartphone (iPhone, G1 Android, Palm Pre) WordPress plugin

Today we’re covering the WPtouch mobile smart phone WordPress plugin.

The WPtouch Mobile Theme plugin adds a mobile friendly interface to your blog’s web site. The plugin allows you to quickly add support to your blog web site for mobile phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android G1/myTouch and the new Palm Pre. Installation is simple and configuration options are easy to configure.

Features include:

Clean navigation interface in an iPhone friendly format.
Supports Blackberry, iPhone and iPod Touch
Supports Google Android, Opera mini and Palm Pre with some hacking
Settings for displaying categories, tags and author name in post listings
Settings for adding Google AdWords and Analytics
Customize the styling and colors and your logo (as an icon)
Support for other plugins

Here are some screen shots from an iPhone and from a Palm Pre:

If you’re familiar with editing PHP code and would like to enable WPtouch for Android, Palm Pre and Opera mini, please edit the wptouch.php, replace the array on line 250 with the following:

$useragents = array( “iPhone”, “iPod”, “aspen”, “android”, “dream”, “webos”, “incognito”, “opera mini”, “webmate”, “BlackBerry”);

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the WPtouch plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/.

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