WordPress Hacks » Plugins

Don’t Build WordPress Plugins Into Your Themes

Alex Denning — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:25:28 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I read a post on WPLift “Build A Plugin (Twitter Widget) into your WordPress Theme)“ which in turn was inspired by a post on WPCandy from a couple of months ago “How to create your own WordPress functionality plugin“.

The WPCandy post was advocating that theme designers should stop bundling WordPress plugins and other functionality which limits how easily users can switch themes, something which I feel is absolutely a good idea. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post — I want to focus specifically on the issue raised in the WPLift post — building plugins directly into themes.

The post shows you how to add the DP Twitter Widget into your theme; it’s literally a case of copying a pasting the plugin’s code into your functions.php. In fact it’s so easy that there’s no reason not to build every single widget and plugin you can think of under the sun into your theme, right?

Not exactly.

Unfortunately it’s a little more complicated than that and for the rest of this post I’ll set out exactly why that’s the case.

Firstly, the second you build a plugin into your theme, you’re assuming responsibility and are obliged to support the plugin, so if anything breaks in future updates, you’ll need to be able to fix it. Say the plugin used Ben’s timthumb and updating was an absolute necessity, the onus would then be on you to provide the update by offering an entire theme upgrade rather than just a simple plugin update independent of the theme.

Second, what’s the point? The functionality you’re providing already exists and unless you’re significantly changing the plugin, I’m struggling to see the point of just duplicating functionality. Sure, you get to brag about how your theme has thousands upon thousands of built in widgets and it makes everything really fun and it’ll do everything you’ve ever wanted, but by just adding a plugin that already exists into your theme, you’re just adding something I can do already by installing plugins. Plus, I’ll not lose everything in two years when I decide I need to overhaul the look of my site! And hey, there are sites like mine out there which show you how to do things like building a WordPress powered email newsletter without plugins anyway!

I’m not just wagging fingers from the rooftops — this was a mistake I made when I launched my ill fated theme site, WPShift nearly two years ago. At the time having a ton of functionality in a theme was the way to go and we made a decision that we would go down the route of essentially just bundling plugins with the theme.

I’m glad to say this isn’t all the range any more, so please don’t do it, it’s just making a mess in the long run.

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Build Custom Facebook Page Themes Using a WordPress Plugin

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:36:34 +0000

Over the past couple years it has been impressive to see Facebook craftily grow its influence beyond the Facebook.com domain and expanding all throughout the internet. For example, it seems just about every major website now allows you to login using Facebook. With Facebook’s growing influence over the internet it isn’t surprising many WordPress developers have really stepped up, providing a number of great free and premium WordPress plugins to help improve WordPress and Facebook integration.

Once of my most recent Facebook plugin discoveries came from the developers at Premium Coding, a website which builds quite a few things, including a series of premium WordPress plugins. The plugin I want to talk about today is called Facebook Page Themes, and the title pretty much sums up what this plugin does. With this premium WordPress plugin users can generate a custom designed theme for your Facebook page, giving your business a professional look that promotes your product or service.(...)
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Create Your iPhone App with the WiziApp WordPress Plugin

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:40:00 +0000

As we transition to a new era of computing where people are getting their information via mobile phones, you are starting to see just about every high profile website or blog making their own iPhone app. But what about the average WordPress user who doesn’t have the time and/or budget to make their own custom iPhone application?

Not long ago I covered a free WordPress plugin called WPTouch which creates a mobile-friendly version of your WordPress blog to display for mobile web browsers. The unfortunate truth, however, is that outside of clicking on a link from Twitter on their phones, most iPhone, Android, or mobile users in general do not use the mobile web to view a webpage. In order to maximize convenience for your readers you really need a custom iPhone application. This is where an app I recently discovered, Wiziapp, comes to the rescue.

What is WiziApp? Wiziapp is a WordPress plugin that automatically turns your WordPress blog into a native iPhone app in real time, giving easy access to the following within the application: Posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, links, images, videos, and audio files. And if that wasn’t enough, Wiziapp even offers a push notification service to notify iOS users when your website has new content available!

Here is a complete list of the features provided by the Wiziapp team:

Create and personalize your iPhone application from your WordPress dashboard using the plugin’s wizard.
Deliver all of your blog content directly to your App in real time.
Notify your readers about new posts via push notification service.
Your readers can easily read and post new comments directly from your App.
Your App will display your images and galleries in native iPhone style.
All the media you have posted will be collected to video or audio libraries.
Your readers can easily search your blog directly from your App.
Playing video and audio using Wiziapp’s advanced players.
Enable your readers to navigate between posts by categories, tags or author name.
Integrate with your login system.
Your readers can easily share your posts and images via Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS.
Monetize your App by displaying ads using your own AdMob account.
Your readers can easily save your posts to their ‘favorites’ list.
We publish your App to the iTunes App Store and save you time & money dealing with an Apple developer account.
See daily stats of your App visits and downloads.
Stay up to date with all iOS and WordPress new features.
Check out the Wiziapp tour here.

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WPTouch: Creating a WordPress Mobile Theme

Kyle Eslick — Sun, 29 May 2011 20:50:12 +0000

Thanks to the huge success of the iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, and other mobile devices, Apps have become all the rage. The problem for many webmasters and WordPress users is that most smaller WordPress websites/blogs can’t afford to have a custom app developed for their WordPress site.

Of course, thanks to beauty of the open source nature of WordPress, WordPress users have access to all sorts of great WordPress plugins. I recently found myself debating whether or not to develop an app for WordPress Hacks and decided that first I would look into what free WordPress plugins were available. My goal was simply to find one which would display a WordPress blog to mobile browsers in a mobile friendly format.

Based upon roughly 2 million downloads plus great reviews, far and away the best plugin I’ve found to accomplish this is one called WP Touch. For those that haven’t heard of WP Touch, this WordPress plugin automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, and will display this theme when your WordPress blog is viewed from an iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile device!

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your WordPress website to mobile visitors, all without modifying a single bit of code or making any changes to your standard WordPress theme. The mobile theme also includes the ability for visitors to switch between WP Touch view and your site’s regular theme if that is what they prefer.

If you are looking for a more feature-rich product, I discovered that users can also purchase a Pro version of WP Touch which includes a slew of new features like more style, color and branding customizations, themes, 10 languages, more advertising options, web-app mode, and even iPad support.

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Jetpack: Supercharge Your Self Hosted WordPress Site!

Jacob Zarobsky — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:02:30 +0000

This guest post was written by Jake Zarobsky, a blogger for Today’s iPhone, custom theme developer, and an amateur photographer. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

Ever notice how many features the standard installation of WordPress lacks? YouTube embedding, stats, and even a specialized Twitter widget? Well, if you have a self hosted blog at WordPress.com, these features are all given to you. In fact, many of these features are forced upon you by the sponsoring company, Automattic. Wanna learn how to get all of that “cloud-power” for your WordPress site?

If you are one of the people who would love to have these features at your disposal and already has a WordPress.com account, keep reading. Otherwise, you’re losing out on a great plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites!

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Best WordPress Widgets For Your Blog

Kuldeep — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:57:53 +0000

This guest post was written by Kuldeep, a a part time blogger from India who blogs about Indian political issues, WordPress, Apple and Technology. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

Today I’m going to share with you the best WordPress widgets that I would recommend for each and every WordPress blogger. I personally use a few widgets on my blog to help my visitors easily browse all of my blog posts. A nice WordPress blog would have proper utilization of widgets, plugins and footer & header bars.

When I started blogging I had lots of widgets in my blog’s sidebar and never really bothered worrying about the performance of the blog. All I wanted was to make my blog look cool. But one fine day lightning struck me and I decided to delete most of the WordPress plugins and widgets which were not necessary to my blog and were intense on bandwidth and resources. Having lot of plugins and widgets on my blog resulted in too much bandwidth consumption and made my blog sluggish, bringing down my site’s overall performance. So keep in mind, too much of something can be as detrimental as too little. A slow website or blog can equal unhappy visitors and a low score for your site’s search engine ranking. A smaller number of widgets means less content visible on your blog to the visitors, ultimately leading to a high bounce rate and/or low page views. The solution is to find a way to balance the two.

Do not confuse yourselves with widgets and plugins though. WordPress plugins are easy to install and activate which helps you to improve your blog’s functionality. Plugins can include widgets as well. Widgets on the other hand are visible and interactive to your visitors. Usually these widgets are shown in the sidebar, but are not limited to only the sidebar. Fortunately there are many themes available now with widgetized footer and header space.

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A Social Media Strategy for WordPress Users

Rikard Kjellberg — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:42:08 +0000

This guest post was written by Rikard Kjellberg, a Silicon Valley blogger who works on social syndication solutions for publishers. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

According to the numbers, over the past 12 months, the number of referrals from social networking sites to blogs has doubled. Social traffic is becoming more important than search traffic according to some. How do WordPress users adjust to this reality and exploit it to your advantage? The core strategy should be to embrace and focus.

Embracing the Social Trend

Some bloggers have shut down their blogs and moved to Facebook fan pages. Others have kept their blog and complemented with fan pages as stop-gap measure. Either way, there is a perceived threat that you are losing traffic to Facebook. It could very well be a real threat unless you embrace the trend and make it work for you.

Focus Your Social Media Efforts

In an effort to please all readers and maximize reach into social networks, bloggers are integrating a plethora of social tools. One favorite is the AddThis plugin which offers some 100+ options for sharing. In my opinion this approach will clutter your site and distract the user. Pick a winner instead. All indicators are that Facebook is becoming the de-facto standard for social syndication.

Courtesy Gawker Media

After their launch of Open Graph in April this year, Facebook has grown from 15% to 35% of all social networking referrals. This assumes that Gawker Media is a good reflection of the industry average. My personal choice will therefore have to be Facebook, however StumbleUpon is another good candidate. Twitter is already prevalent but it is a typically a disappointment in terms of referrals. There are two reasons:

Twitter is undoubtedly the noisiest channel on the web.
People in general are not spending any significant time on Twitter.

What are my Tools?

With Facebook, you have some excellent tools. You also have some great plugins for WordPress integration. Most likely you already use several of these tools today. The key is how you use them and how you combine them.

The Facebook Fan Page

The fan page is a great tool for dialog and brand promotion (yes, you are a brand and you should cultivate it):

Do use the fan page as a personal relationship tool by engaging your audience in discussion and dialog around the topics you are focused on. Use it as a place to share news about you, your brand and your site. The purpose is to create an “exclusive” community where your dedicated followers get the inside scoop on everything you.
Do not use the fan page to push your RSS feed and manage relationships at the same time. First, your relationship efforts will drown in your content updates. Second, you are creating an intermediate (proxy) between your audience and your blog. Thirdly, the updates are indiscriminatory, lowering relevance which results in fewer revisits to your fan page and web site. Instead use a Like button for your feed (see below)
Do one or the other of the above.

Get a Like Button for your WordPress Site

In its basic form, the Like button provides a one-time sharing function. There are tools that connect the Like button with your RSS feed, thereby providing a way to connect directly between your site and the Facebook News Feed (no Fan Page intermediary). Explain to the user that you want to connect for updates in conjunction with the Like button. Use a text widget to insert the button HTML on your site. If you want to connect your RSS feed to your fan page instead, Pheedo offers a solution with Dlvr.it.

Get a Like Plugin for my Posts

Let people “Like” your posts. There are WordPress plugins that allow you to automate the insertion of Like buttons. The Like button offers a one-time sharing event. It can also connect with the user for ongoing updates related to the topic of the particular post (a.k.a “Like for Tags“).

We recently did a case study on CNN.com. If they implemented these strategies, they would see 25%-40% increase in page views over time. CNN is already a user of Facebook social plugins but they are currently not using them as described in this article. The increase in page views is significant from a revenue perspective, most likely seven figures.

Note: This article includes opinions of the author based on working with the blogging community to develop social syndication tools. Your reactions to these opinions are greatly appreciated.

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Facebook Like for Tags WordPress Plugin

Rikard Kjellberg — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:09:59 +0000

You may have noticed that Facebook social plugins are everywhere these days with the popular ”Like” button, primarily because of its ease of use and how it integrates with the social graph. This is because the button represents a one-time sharing event vs. establishing a lasting connection with your readers. Now imagine instead how you could get ongoing updates on topics that interest you!

A recent addition to the WordPress plugin directory does just that! Facebook Like for Tags transforms the Like button into a personalized user connection for ongoing updates and sharing based on tags or categories.

For example, say you have a travel blog. One day you write about southern France. In your post you assign categories “Europe” and “France” to the post. Some of your readers really enjoy the article and share it in Facebook by clicking on the Like button. Some time later, you again write about France. Those readers who had “Liked” the previous article will now get an update automatically in their Facebook News Feed!

Since the automatic update is based on user interest, it will be relevant to the user and thereby more likely to grab attention. The result is more revisits to your site and more reach into Facebook due to additional sharing. Over time you will commonly see in excess of 25% more page views.

A more detailed description of the plugin and installation can be found here. Grab Facebook Like for Tags today and transform the Like button into a trusted recommendations engine!

Disclosure: I am co-founder of IngBoo, the provider of this WordPress plugin and the cloud-based change-detect-notification service that powers the function.

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Automatically Tweet WordPress Posts with WordTwit

Kyle Eslick — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:00:44 +0000

Twitter has exploded in popularity over the past year as many mainstream media sources have been using the service to communicate with their readers/viewers, but did you know that bloggers can now use Twitter to promote their content as well?

While searching for a WordPress plugin that could automatically publish my blog posts on Twitter, I was thrilled to discover the WordTwit WordPress plugin. With this plugin, simply upload and activate, then enter the Twitter login information for the account you want the tweets to appear under. Once done, all your WordPress posts will start to appear on your Twitter account (almost instantly from my experience).

[Download the WordTwit WordPress Plugin]

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Optimize Your WordPress Database with Optimize DB WordPress Plugin

Kyle Eslick — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:49:33 +0000

If your WordPress blog has been around for awhile, chances are there is some clutter in your MySQL database. For these situations, Joost De Valk of Yoast.com has an easy to use WordPress plugin called Optimize Database.

This free WordPress plugin simply needs activated, then whenever you click Optimize Now, the plugin runs an optimize table command on your WordPress tables, effectively defragmenting it. This is very useful for tables that are frequently updated. If you’d like to learn more about why this WordPress plugin might be necessary, you can read more information on this post.

Great plugin Joost!

[Download the Optimize Database Plugin]

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