WordPress.tv: Cami Kaos & Dr. Normal: Bondage: How to Be Your Podcast’s Dom, Not Its Sub
Archive for September, 2009
Publisher Blog: NASA Glenn Research Center WordPress Users Guide
NASA has been using WordPress for a few years now, and recently the NASA Glenn Research Center launched a resource guide for WordPress development:
The site’s goal is to be “the guide to implementing and using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) with the NASA Web Accessible (CSS) template design on Glenn Research Center websites.”
With a strong emphasis on 508 accessibility compliance, it’s very impressive to see how NASA has built its own custom theme, and is successfully empowering its team to build feature-rich, accessible, and easy-to-maintain sites.
[Visit wordpress.grc.nasa.gov]
WordPress.tv: Embedding SoundCloud Tracks
Weblog Tools Collection: The Best-Of Series: Contact Forms
Over the years I’ve tried pretty much every contact form plugin available for WordPress. Some were pretty bad, some were almost there, and a select few really shined. Today I’m going to list those few that really do the contact form job right. Lets begin…
- Contact Me Widget
I really love the Contact Me Widget. I think this plugin takes the simple contact form to a whole new level. Not only does it have a contact form but also an IM function and a place to put all your other contact info. All in one neat little package. Do note though that this plugin relies on the ContactMeButton.com service. So, you may not want to depend on it as the sole option for your visitors to get in contact with you. If the ContactMeButton site were to go down or something, well… I’m sure you can imagine plenty of horrible scenarios… - Contact Form 7
The Contact Form 7 plugin is one of the most popular contact form plugins available for WordPress. It has a bounty of features. There is AJAX submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet filtering just to name a few. There are even a few “sub-plugins” to extend even further its abilities. I love the great amount of customization this plugin allows. You can customize almost everything! Another great thing is all of the available translations. There are a ton! So almost everyone can get their contact on. - SimpleModal Contact Form
The best thing about the SimpleModal Contact Form plugin is right in the name. It’s a contact form contained inside what is known as a modal dialog. That means it hovers above the page where it is right up front and center. It has the basic contact form functionality you would expect. Like, input validation, optional subject field, and even the option to “Send me a copy“. This plugin also has several translations available which is a major plus. - Visitor Contact Forms
Visitor Contact Forms takes the modal dialog contact form to another level with more options. You have your basic contact form, input validation, CAPTCHA protection, auto responder, and more. The really cool thing about this plugin though is the Geocoding. Not only can it show a map of where you are to your visitors, but also it can show you where the people are who are contacting you. Because this plugin works off a back-end site (VisitorContact.com) you can get more features automatically. However it also means it is subject to downtime like I mentioned about the Contact Me Widget plugin. - Fast and Secure Contact Form
Another contact form with lots of features is Fast and Secure Contact Form. This is a great plugin for those who prefer contact forms that don’t rely on JavaScript. It has all the functionality you would expect from a contact form and then some. It also has awesome security. With options like Akismet protection, the PHP CAPTCHA library from phpcaptcha.org, as well as manual filters, to call this plugin secure is putting it lightly. This plugin is also multilingual so everyone can try it out.
Well, there you have it; Five plugins to get you in contact with your site visitors. I hope you can get something useful out of this list. As usual, feel free to chime in with your opinion. I’d love to hear about any plugins I may have missed…
Do you have a good idea for the next article in the Best-Of series? Drop a comment here or contact us and your idea just might be next in the series!
Matt: Ask Matt: Which Email Client?
Video using VideoPress and filmed/edited by Michael Pick.
Going to set up a new form for these.
Mark Jaquith: Using PHP5 object constructors in WP Widget API
Someone mentioned to me that they couldn’t use PHP5-style object constructors when using the WP Widget API. I looked into it, and it turns out it does work. Example:
class My_Widget extends WP_Widget {
function __construct() {
$widget_ops = array( 'classname' => 'css-class', 'description' => 'Description' );
parent::__construct( 'css-class', 'Title', $widget_ops );
}
// Rest of your widget subclass goes here
}
The key is using parent::__construct() instead of $this->WP_Widget().
WordPress.tv: Setting Up Akismet for WordPress.org
Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 Winner!
And the winner of the Grand Prize of the WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 is:
Section Widget by Godfrey Chan
Godfrey’s plugin provides a way to display section specific content on your WordPress sidebar with an easy to use interface. This new version comes with tabs support, so creating your tabbed section widget is just a few clicks away. Plus, with shortcode support, the possibilities are limitless! This plugin is well rounded, consistently preferred by all of our judges and reviewers and was well liked by the audience as well.
Congratulations to the Grand Prize Winner!
Thanks to Keith D’Souza, Ozh and Jeff Chandler for taking on the mammoth task of judging the competition and helping me put it all together. These people have done it all for the love of the community and their passion for WordPress, and I commend them for all of their efforts. Along with the judges, the competition sponsors played a major role in making all of this possible. WPMU, BuySellAds, WhiteShadow, WPWebHost, Ozh and Techtites were very generous with their donations and we hope to garner their support in future competitions as well. To all the well wishers, readers, reviewers and the plugin developers who participated in the contest, thank you for all your help. Please check back next year for another exciting Plugin Competition. The winner will receive their prize money by the end of the following week.
| Working with a single large export file can be difficult. Use this plugin to create multiple export files that contain sections of your blog. This plugin has been tested on WP& WPMU versions 2.7 – 2.8.2 |
Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 09/28
New Plugins
CDN Rewrites allows a WordPress user to specify two important variables: an orgin host (says http://www.yoursite.com) and a “destination host” (like http://www.static.yoursite.com). It will then find all the static contents from that orgin host and rewrite them into the destination so that they will be delivered from there.
Integrate skaDoogle.com tools with WordPress, including skaDoogle Link Sense that dynamically links keywords in your blog to Top paying products from Clickbank and PayDotCom. Instantly turn static content and articles into a Cash Pulling Magnet.
Updated Plugins
This SEO plugin can handle titles, meta, noindex, canonical tags, 404 monitoring, linkboxes, and robots.txt. Version 1.0 fixes bugs, reduces database usage, and adds a new canonicalization feature.
The AVH Extended Categories Widget gives you two widgets for displaying categories. One is a replacement of the default category widget to allow for greater customization.
Socialize is a WordPress plugin that gives publishers the ability to selectively add actionable social media/social bookmarking buttons to their posts without having to edit the meta keys/values like most other plugins require. The plugin also adds some actionable text to the bottom of your posts that encourages the reader to subscribe and comment.
Fluency Admin give the WordPress admin interface a boost, with a new style and some cool features.
Smooth Slider is a Wordpress Plugin for creating a dynamic slideshow for featured posts on a blog. The slideshow created by Smooth Slider are JavaScript and Text based, that’s why bloggers will get full benefit of Search Engine Optimization as the texts are readable by Search Engines
Lightbox Plus implements ColorBox as a lightbox image overlay tool for WordPress. ColorBox was created by Jack Moore of Color Powered and is licensed under the MIT License. Lightbox Plus permits users to view larger versions of images without having to leave the current page, and is also able to display simple slide shows. The use of the dark or light background, which dims the page over which the image has been overlaid, also serves to highlight the image being viewed. Lightbox Plus captures the image title for display in the overlay.
WP Ajax Edit Comments (for WP 2.5+) allows users and admins to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments. This release fixes a potential security issue.
GD Press Tools is a collection of various administration, seo, maintenance and security related tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, change some aspects of WordPress, see detailed server settings and information. Plugin can also track posts and pages views for various popularity lists. Some of the features don’t work with every version of the WordPress. If you have some suggestion about potential features for this plugin, please leave a message.
Offers an elegant and easy way to present all your posts on a single page. Version 1.7 features a new “fancy” format.
Front-end Editor is a plugin that lets you make changes to your content directly from your site. No need to load the admin backend just to correct a typo.
AVH First Defense Against Spam
The AVH First Defense Against Spam plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before any content is served.
Spammers are identified by checking if the visitors IP exists in a database served by stopforumspam.com, the Project Honey Pot or a local blacklist.
WordPress.tv: Configuration du plugin Akismet
