Webmaster-Source » WordPress Plugins

StatDash: Statistics on Your WordPress Dashboard

Matt — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:42:19 +0000

Wouldn’t it be neat to have an at-a-glance display of common statistical information on your WordPress Dashboard? The StatDash plugin does exactly that, adding a customizable widget that shows stats from Google Analytics, Feedburner, Twitter and even your earnings from the Envato Marketplaces.

You can choose which of the services are displayed, as well as hide the chart if you wish to have the widget be a bit more compact.

StatDash is my first item to be released on Code Canyon. It’s priced at $8, and is GPL compliant of course.

Tweetable Twitter Plugin For WordPress

Matt — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:38:25 +0000

Yesterday I released my newest WordPress plugin: Tweetable. It helps integrate Twitter into your blog. It tweets your posts as they are published and adds a configurable sidebar widget that displays your latest tweets (with optional follower count). The automatic post-tweeting can be configured to use the URL shortener of your choice, and Google Analytics campaign tags can be included.

Tweetable also adds facilities for updating your status and viewing those of your friends’. A Tweet menu option lets you update your status (an included widget for the Dashboard does that too) and keep an eye on your friends’. A Track screen uses the Twitter Search API to keep you up to date on topics of your chosing.

A few other options are available, such as automatic Tweetmeme button inclusion are available as well.

Tweetable does not store your Twitter password in plain text, like some scripts. It uses the OAuth standard to request a set of user tokens from Twitter, which are used to make API requests. So if someone manages to gain access to your database, they don’t get your Twitter password, just a few strings of numbers and letters that become powerless after a quick trip to your Settings page on Twitter.com.

You can download Tweetable from the WordPress plugin repository.

WP125 Plugin: Easy WordPress 125×125 Ad Management

Matt — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:14:43 +0000

After a few months of planning and work, I’ve finally released my new WordPress plugin. I’d had the idea sine around the time I started selling 125×125 ads on Webmaster-Source. I thought it was a bit of a pain to hard-code ads in and manually take them down after their run was over. And I don’t like figuring out end dates by counting ahead on a calendar either. That’s why I put together WP125, a WordPress plugin for easy 125×125 ad management.

I built the plugin to simplfy the management of 125×125 ads, and lower the barrier to get started selling them a little. Some of the features include

Custom ad layout options.
A widget to drop into your sidebar to make it easier to set the plugin up. Or you can use a template tag if you’re pro-code like me.
Click tracking.
Ads are automatically taken down on their end date.
The plugin can figure out an ad’s expiration date automatically, based off how many days you say the ad should run for (no more counting forward on your calendar!). It took a bit of time and effort to get this feature working, but it was certainly worth it.

Try the plugin out, and tell me what you think. It’s a first release (1.0.0), and it’s barely been out tweleve hours, so it may have some bugs or interface oddities that need fixing. (It’s not on WordPress plugin site quite yet either, but I’m working on that…) Tell me what you like, what needs fixing, etc.

I think WP125 is off to a good start, but I had to shave off a couple features I’d originally planned in order to get it out the door in time for the WLTC WordPress Plugin Competition. Sadly, that means I’m unable to use it on Webmaster-Source to manage my ads. I built the plugin to work the way I figured most people woud prefer, and pushed my preferences to the side for now. I handle my ads a little differently than other people, and it would have taken too much extra time and work to build support for that into the plugin. Hopefully I’ll have the time to include the settings I’d like at a later date.

Enjoy the plugin, and send your feedback along!

BlogBuzz March 1, 2008

Matt — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:03:11 +0000

Microsoft to launch beta of Internet Explorer 8 – Internet Exploder 8 is coming soon. Is Microsoft even listening to our protests about the meta tag? I will be talking about this insidious new “feature” more in-depth sometime in the next few days.
99 Sites ALL Designers Must Know About – There are plenty of familiar sites in this list, and quite a few ones that are new to me. The post lives up to its title; If you’re a designer, or an aspiring designer, then this post is definitely worth a look.
What’s it Like to Run a Popular Blog? – “Running a well-established blog, while challenging, is very much worth it. It takes a lot of hard work to achieve, though — and a lot of time.”
15 WordPress plugins that a professional blog should install – I use several of these plugins, though this post has encouraged me to try a few others. Oh, and I’m sure you can guess what the first one on the list is…
Bad flavor: ICANN, Network Solutions sued for domain tasting – Why ICANN? Network Solutions was the one tasting the domains. Why should ICANN be responsible for a registrar’s nefarious activity?
Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples – Navigational inspiration, Smashing-style.
WordPress 2.5 Plugin Settings Pages Style Guide – If you’re a plugin developer, you may want to see this post.
25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes
Voting has started for the 2008 Webware 100 Awards. Be sure to vote for WordPress!
Top 10 Worst Captchas – Don’t make your Captchas like these ones!
The Big Word Project – Another innovative concept along the lines of the notorious Million Dollar Homepage. It’s a dictionary of sorts, where, for $1 per letter, your site can be the new definition of the word. Instead of linking to a normal dictionary definition, the word will link to your site instead. Too bad the words I would consider buying aren’t in their so-called dictionary…
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
Smashing Magazine Best Of February 2008

301 Redirection Plugin For WordPress

Matt — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:29:50 +0000

301 redirects are useful for numerous things. If you change a post slug is WordPress, then you can place a 301 redirect so anyone going to the old URL will be redirected to the new one. This had the added bonus of letting search engines know (when they re-crawl your site) that they need to update the URL they have stored. Others use 301 redirects when they use affiliate links, so no PageRank is passed on, and so if the affiliate URL changes, they can update their links by just changing the redirect target.

There are plenty of ways to do 301 redirects. You can use the PHP Header() command, you can edit your .htaccess files (using the mod_rewrite feature), etc. Mod_rewrite is generally the most versatile method, but it’s a big pain in the neck.

The Urban Giraffe blog has released a neat plugin that handles all of this for you. Their 301 redirection plugin makes it insanely easy to add custom redirects. I’d thought of writing a plugin like this before, but it looks like they beat me to it. Take a look.