Comments on: 3 Under Rated Plugins

By: J.Backlund

J.Backlund — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:59:38 +0000

Hey thanks! No Self Ping solved my problmes!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:17:14 +0000

Another useful tip. Thanks

By: Horns

Horns — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:41:22 +0000

Wp-chunk and Highlight Author Comments sound great, I’ll give it a try. Thanks!

By: Epic Alex

Epic Alex — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:30:02 +0000

After seeing this post, I revisited the digg this plugin cause the way it works is pretty cool, and I wanted to have another stab at getting it to work. Unfortunately, for some reason, even posts that I know are on digg, and have been dugg quite a bit, still don’t have the button appear. Any ideas why?

By: Tadd

Tadd — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:48:01 +0000

I used to use the Highlight Author Comments but it didn't seem to do everything I wanted. I'll try out what Justin Tadlock suggested. The plugs I think are the more under rated? WP Auto Tagger Automatically finds tags based on your post content. TabStat Show Your Database Table Status(Rows, Data Length, Index Length, Size, and Overhead). You can optimize it too. Dagon Design Form Mailer The (Best, in my opinion) WordPress secure php form mailer script.

By: Otto

Otto — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:53:17 +0000

I used to use the DiggThis plugin, but his method of detecting incoming Digg links is not perfect and gave me a lot of trouble. I switched to just editing the theme to insert the digg javascript directly. This also gave me more control and let me make the digg buttons into submission buttons as well. It’s easy, just read this: http://digg.com/tools/integrate

I don’t much like the No Self Pings plugin, although I can see why some people would. If I post a new post about a topic I’ve talked about before, I want my old post to reflect that, so that people can continue to read about new things I’m talking about. Keep the readers around longer.

The Highlight Author Comments plugin is neat, but only works for the comment_text filter, which is a problem on some themes. Adding code to your theme’s comments.php file is really just as easy. I use the same technique that the plugin does, which is basically:
if ($comment->comment_author_email === get_the_author_email()) ...
And then I use that to set a class on the surrounding comment list item. This lets me give it a different background color easily. I kinda wish all themes would do this by default.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:05:17 +0000

Jeff,

Thanks for the mention!

By: Hendry Lee

Hendry Lee — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:35:39 +0000

I like no self pings. I think that’s how it should work by default. Seeing my own pingbacks are quite annoying. They clutter up the page unnecessarily.

By: Chetan

Chetan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:20:08 +0000

Just installed the author comment highlight plugin in my blog. Matt Cutts gave a trick for editing comment.php for doing that but this plugin is direct and easier.

By: ajua

ajua — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:09:05 +0000

Thanks for mentioning No Self Pings. It can be very useful because i don’t like pings to myself either.

By: Justin Tadlock

Justin Tadlock — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:42:05 +0000

I don’t have much use for Digg. I figure if I ever get a post that’s actually doing well on Digg, then I’ll just manually add it a Digg button.

Also, I prefer BM Comment Highlight as it gives you a wide array of options for highlighting different comments.

As many others have mentioned, I think self-pinging is a feature. It leaves a breadcrumb to older and newer stuff for users to read. Plus, it lets me see when and what I posted in relation to other topics on my blog. It’s a related post plugin without having to download another plugin.

By: Dougal Campbell

Dougal Campbell — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:53:06 +0000

I’m in the “self-pings are a feature, not a bug” camp. When someone lands on an older article, a self-ping from a newer one is a pointer leading the reader to more up-to-date related material. Internal links to relevant related material is also good for SEO, yes?

By: No Self Pings WordPress plugin » BoltPress

No Self Pings WordPress plugin » BoltPress — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:13:31 +0000

[...] this post: Weblog Tools Collection writes about three underrated WordPress plugins, the last being No Self Pings which struck my [...]

By: Judith Allen

Judith Allen — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:57:30 +0000

I’ve been finding http://www.addtoany.com/ quite useful, for the facebook/ del.icio.us / myspace etc etc users amongst my friends. And it doesn’t create seperate buttons for each service!

By: Álvaro Degives-Más

Álvaro Degives-Más — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:36:50 +0000

Yup, I see it in reverse, too: I don’t get people who don’t get the purpose of self-pinging. Simply put, it’s “related articles” restrained within the scope of the same blog.

Can’t be any bit simpler than that, and it’s a highly useful and visitor-friendly feature indeed. It worries me so many semi-pros don’t get it…

By: miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG

miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:35:51 +0000

Totally agree with #3 (Samuel) and #10 (Jesse). When I was new to WP and managed to make the first self-ping, I was like what the heck!! And I got around to deleting it right away.. but 2 or 3 posts down the line, it struck me as something that should better be left alone.

For the bigger blogs with high traffic, it may be a different story… coz with so many visitors, there’s always a chance (a big one) that someone or the other will stumble across the remotest of your posts.

Not so for the smaller blogs.. I believe, for them this is a very good way of leaving a trail for your visitors to follow! None of the related post plug-ins can fetch 100% perfect related results and there the self-pings are the guiding light.

By: BoltClock

BoltClock — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:33:04 +0000

I’ve never really seen self-pinging as a problem, but since the No Self Pings plugin exists, I think I’ll put a stop to those shenanigans. Thanks for the heads up!

By: Thomas Clausen

Thomas Clausen — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:47:22 +0000

Good stuff, I’ve been looking for the last two plugins. Thanks a bunch.

By: Not A Niche

Not A Niche — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:45:26 +0000

Hey Jeff, funny no one is mentioning their most under rated plugins.

I don’t know if they are under rated but my vote would go to:

1. Link indication:
It automatically opens external links in a new tab/window and if you want an appropriate icon if it’s a link to a .pdf .doc or whatever file.
http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/p.....ndication/

2. Flexible Upload:
It enhances the image upload functionality a lot. Chcek out the features
http://blog.japonophile.com/flexible-upload/

3. WP-chunk
It shorten URLs within submitted comments, so a long URL in a comment won’t break a template, which happens quite often.
http://www.village-idiot.org/a...../wp-chunk/

By: George Serradinho

George Serradinho — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:08:31 +0000

Hi,

I will try the ‘Highlight Author Comments’ plugin and see how it looks. Thanks for the info, really appreciate it.