Tag Archives: plugins

Google Maps plugin

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Here’s a great plugin if you ever need a map on your website. The Google Maps for WordPress plugin lets you easily embed a map into your WordPress blog without having to mess around with code or embeds. All you need is a Google Maps API key and you can then use shortcodes to add maps to your posts and pages.

It’s a great tool to use on a blog which can be supplemented with maps. So, for example, if you have a travel website, there’s nothing better than a map to help someone out in a travel emergency. They say a picture can convey a 100 words, well; a map can convey just as many.

Coping with the load

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Are you ready for the big time? What’s the difference you may ask? Well, if your site gets really really popular you may be getting thousands of page hits an hour and unless your server is designed to handle the load, you may find your blog suddenly unavailable. Let’s say, for example you have a blog about consumer electronics, you know LCD TVs, Projectors and other such gadgets. One day you write a blog post with a review of the latest 3D TV and it gets linked to from a major website. All of a sudden, you have a deluge of traffic and your server just can’t handle it.

This is where a plugin called WP Super Cache can help. It builds up static versions of each of your pages so that your server can use them without having to process any PHP. It’s an essential tool for anyone expecting potentially large traffic spikes. So, install it and set it up, and feel free to write all the projector reviews you want; you know your blog can handle anything you can throw at it now.

WP Auctions 3.7

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There’s a new version of WP Auctions in town, the plugin that turns your WordPress blog into an fully fledged auction site.The new version has some new features, like the ability to customise the automated emails sent by the plugin, the image upload process has been improved and there’s now a facility to allow remote debugging (if it’s ever needed).

The great thing about the plugin is that it allows you to auction anything you like on your site, whether it’s a Mustang or mbt shoes. Give it a whirl, there’s even a free version for you to try.

Check out all the new features

Speed up your site with WP Super Cache

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Here’s a plugin you really need to know about if you have a popular site. It’s called WP Super Cache and is the best way to handle a surge of traffic that could bring your servers to their knees. The plugin works by generating a static HTML version of your page, which can be served to a user at a fraction of the machine load of a normal PHP page. When a user hits the site, the page is generated, handed to them and kept in storage in case another user turns up asking for the same page.

It’s pretty useful if you have lots of traffic and can make your website leaner and meaner than any diet pills you know about. Check it out if you’re expecting your site to be popular!

Using reCAPTCHA to stop spam on your WordPress blog

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Image representing reCAPTCHA as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Akismet does a brilliant job of keeping your blog free from spam, but sometimes, just sometimes you need that little bit more. This is where a service called reCAPTCHA can come in handy. It’s a pretty cool service that lets you protect your site from bots, while at the same time help you scan books by translating words that can’t be recognised by a machine. It’s a classic case of killing two birds with one stone. Protect your blog from spam while helping to translate scanned books.

There’s a WordPress plugin for reCAPTCHA that lets you add the service to your blog in a couple of minutes. It’s installed in the standard way of uploading the contents of the ZIP up to your website and activating, but has a further step that requires an API key (which is free). After that it should all be automatic. So, if you’re tired of cleaning up comments about Nigerian generals or that diet pill that works, check out this plugin; you’ll be helping others while helping yourself.

WP Hide Dashboard

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WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

Do you ever open up your WordPress blog to let your subscribers set up and modify their profile? Well, if you do, you might want to lock down your blog a bit to stop them from wandering around. This is where WP Hide Dashboard comes in. Just like it’s a good idea to get rid of blackheads before going out on a date, it’s always a good idea to hide extra functionality before letting visitors mess around with your blog.

One for the toolbox methinks.

What should super-plugins be called?

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There’s an interesting post on the WordPress blog that talks about canonical plugins, a set of plugins aimed at enhancing WordPress. They are going to be a special class of plugin in that they will have teams working on them (as opposed to individuals) and will carry a certain amount of support.

It still hasn’t been decided what they will be called, there are more choices than types of tile flooring you can buy, but here are the names being floated:

Standard - Implies that these are the standard by which all other plugins should be judged, as well as the idea of them being the default plugins.
Core - Makes the close relationship to core WordPress development very clear, and has the implication of bundled plugins (even though we don’t need to actually bundle them now that the installer is right in the admin tool).
Premium – Identifies these officially-supported plugins as best-in-class and of the highest value, and could potentially disambiguate the word Premium as it is currently being used in the community (to refer to anything from commercial support to licensing terms to actual code quality).
Validated - Focuses on the fact that the code is reviewed for compatibility with core and for security.
Official – Makes it plain that these are the plugins officially endorsed by the core team as being the best at their functions.
Canonical – Maybe once people get used to it, canonical wouldn’t confuse so many people?

What do you think? If you want to have your say, cast your vote here

WordPress Plugin Compatibility

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Have you ever upgraded WordPress only to find that your favourite plugin doesn’t work any more? Well, this may be a thing in the past thanks to the Plugin Compatibility enhancements that have just been announced. It’s a new feature in the Plugin Directory driven by user’s votes to try and identify any compatibility problems between particularly versions of WordPress and plugins. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s no box cutter for a perfect solution, but it will help warn people if there’s a problem with a particular plugin. Will be interesting to see where it’s heading.

WordPress Auction Plugin

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Ever wanted to auction your stuff, but were worried about the charges eBay levies on you? Well, there’s a brand new release of WP Auctions, the auction plugin for WordPress that lets you sell items right off your blog. The new release has a number of new features, including:

  • The ability to restrict bidders to verified WordPress users
  • The ability to place auctions in a post or page
  • Different payment methods are accepted
  • Loads more new features

Personally, I think the biggest different for me is that I switched from using Prototype for the AJAX functionality to jQuery, mainly because Prototype doesn’t play nice with other libraries. I’m quite impressed with jQuery and will definitely use it more in the future.

So, if you want to use your blog to auction off ballet shoes, Naot sandals or even stink bombs, check out WP Auctions.

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2

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Looks like there’s been another public drop of WordPress 2.8.1 labelled Beta 2, as more issues with the 2.8 release are quashed. Here are some of the things that have been fixed in this release:

  • Translation of role names fixed
  • wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
  • Upload error messages are now correctly reported
  • Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
  • Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
  • SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
  • Switched back to curl as the default transport
  • Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

There’s a warning on the release post for plugin authors to make sure they test their plugins with this release, so there may be some bits that have changed or been refined in some of the hooks or API that WordPress exposes. So, if you have a plugin that lets you reply to comments, or send out Halloween invitations, then make sure you test it well just to make sure it works fine.