After installation, users need to visit the Wats Options page within the Settings menu to configure the plugin. The top of the settings page has a donate button if you want to send a little coin to the plugin author which is not intrusive or bothersome. While configuring the plugin, you can click on each menu title to show detailed information about that settings group.

The only problems I met when configuring this plugin is the user interface. Like I mentioned above, you can click on the settings title to show a hidden message that gives more details for the settings group but it’s not obvious this can be done. Also, while adding and editing the ticket priorities, I noticed that there is an icon to edit existing priority levels but the icon did not have a tool tip so it was not obvious that it was used to edit entries. Last but not least, the first button I see under the listings is REMOVE. The ADD button is further down below a status indicator. I think things could be rearranged to make a little more sense. For example, place the ADD, REMOVE buttons next to each other with a text field only appearing after the ADD button has been clicked. Directions for how to use this area of the configuration page also need to be added before this group of settings.

If you want to use WATS in conjunction with your main WordPress install, you can add new categories that can be configured to be open to submission. WATS has a front end ticket creation tool but the information for how to add this to a site was no where to be found until I browsed the plugin authors page. You can use the following shortcode to add the form to a page or post: [WATS_TICKET_SUBMIT_FORM].

Once I approved the ticket, I was able to login and view its status.

Overall, the plugin performed as expected. My only complaints lie in the user interface but those could be addressed in an update. For those looking for a ticketing system that bolts on easily to WordPress, this plugin looks like it could be what you’re looking for.

1. How do I write a review?
2. Will my review be accepted?
3. What if my review gets trashed by readers?
4. Is it really worth the effort?

And so on…

We published a list of reviews from our readers, so that is a good starting point. I’ll guide you through a few tips on writing a good review.

Step 1 – Select the Plugin

The first step to starting the review, is well finalizing on which plugin you want to review, then downloading and installing the same on your blog. This could either be a dummy blog dedicated for this purpose or maybe your production blog itself.

Do you really need to install it? Well, the answer is obvious. Yes, you need to. Because without getting a hands on experience, you will never be able to write a good review. Unless you’re me J/k

Step 2 – Study the Page

Next, study what the plugin author has to say about his / her plugin. I love plugins that have a dedicated plugin page (not a post) on the plugin authors blog / website dedicated for this purpose.

I give negative points for plugins that don’t have their dedicated page or if they are bunched together with a plugin on a single page. Hence, this usually forms one significant portion of my WordPress plugin reviews.

Step 3 – Study the Plugin

Now, lets get down to studying the plugin. Here is where you have several options to select from and again this will vary from plugin to plugin.

First check if the plugin does what it is supposed to. This usually is the case, but while checking for this, you may stumble upon a bug or a point of contention that you’d like to bring to the author’s notice.

Step 4 – Feature enhancements?

Found something missing in the plugin? Would you like to see something that would make a significant difference to you? Maybe there’s a feature that would make you switch to this plugin, instead of a similar one you are using?

Jot this down.

Step 5 – Writing the Review

We’ve collected a lot of information. Now, it’s time to start the review.

Open your review with the plugin name. Maybe write a short intro on why you chose the plugin. Next write a description of the plugin as well as the features. Provide a screenshot or demo of the plugin if required.

While this is not part of your actual review, it provides an introduction to your plugin for the readers of your blog who are not aware of the same.

Next write your actual review. Include the information we collected in Steps 3-5. Remember to use heading tags i.e. <h3> and <h4> etc. to divide your post into appropriate reading sections.

Step 6 – Submit your Review to us

This week you have a choice of six plugins to choose from:

• Referrer Detector – (Our Review)
• MailPress – (Our Review)
• Post Avatar – (Our Review)
• Yawasp (Yet Another WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin) – (Our Review)
• Autoclose – (Our Review)
• WP Mollom – (Our Review)

You have until Saturday, March 21 – 11.59pm EST to send in your review to submissions AT wltc DOT net with the following information:

Subject line of the email: [APAD Plugin Review]:plugin name. Replace plugin name with the name of the plugin you reviewed.

Content of the Email:

1. URL of the review on your blog. Make sure this is a direct link to the post
2. An excerpt of your post. Maximum 50 words. This will be used by us.

Here’s the list. Do check out the links and read what the reviewer has to say. Did you like their review? Comment and tell them. Share your experiences of the plugins with them.

WP Greet Box

We reviewed WP Greet Box on January 18. WP Greet Box is a simple plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer URL.

WP Greet Box topped our list with three reviews of the eight reviews we received.

JayPee had this to say:

WP Greet Box not only helps you promote your RSS feed and increase your RSS feed readers but having these targeted suggestions on your blog increases your blog exposure and loyal readership. Aside from promoting your RSS feed, encouraging social network bookmarking and article submission, WP Greet Box also displays related posts to the current post which leads to more pageviews and helps reduce bounce rate.

Read the complete review from JayPee Online >

David Porter, the WordPress Master talks about WP Greet Box:

As a blog publisher, one of the things I’m (and just about every blogger) always looking for is a new way to add more RSS feed subscribers and to get my blog to start out a bit from others.

There are a lot plugins to help with this out there, but not all plugins are created equal, if ya know what I mean.

Today, I want to show a plugin that I’ve fallen in love with, and that helps with getting those RSS readers and with making you stick out a bit in a over populated blogger’s world.

The plugin is called: WP Greet Box

Read the complete review from WordPress Master

Keenan Payne Pro Blog Tutorials reviewed WP Greet Box, pretty much following the pattern we have out here on WLTC.

Once you install and activate the plugin, it’s all self-explanatory from there. One thing you will more than likely do when you first install the plugin is activate various greeting messages. The default messages that come with the plugin are the ones like Digg, MySpace, FaceBook, and many, many more.

Read the complete review from Pro Blog Tutorials >

Improved Plugin Installation

We reviewed Improved Plugin Installation on March 1. This plugin is an improvement to the current WP 2.7 plugin installation methods. It allows you to install one or more plugins simply by typing the names of the plugins or the download URLs in a textarea. This means you can install all your favorite wordpress plugins in one go!

IPI came in as second with two plugin reviews of the eight.

The first was by Fyre Vortex:

Gone are the times that you have to scour to the ends of the Internet to find the plugin for WordPress that you wanted. But you couldn’t remember the name of the plugin/author of it.

Or that you just wanted to go to the plugin site, click a bookmarklet (You know, like the Is.Gd and Tr.Im bookarmklets that you drag up to your menu bar and click for something to happen?) and have it installed automatically?

Well, luckily for you, all of the features that I mentioned are all in this one plugin: Improved Plugin Installation!

Read the complete review from Fyre Vortex >

The second was by Lynette of Tech Based Marketing:

When WordPress released version 2.7 with better plugin discovery, and installation features, I literally did a happy dance – now let’s hope for something similar for themes but that’s another post for another day. So when I saw the Improved Plugin Installation Plugin mentioned over at Weblog Tools Collection…

Read the complete review from Tech Based Marketing >

WP125

We reviewed WP125 on January 25th. The WP125 plugin is designed to make it easy to manage 125×125 banner ads on your blog.

WP125 received one review from Izzat Aziz:

WP125 is WordPress Plugin that handled my 125 x 125 ads at the sidebar. It make advertiser job easier and faster. Even so there is some bug and need improvement.

Read the complete review from Izzat >

Feed Reading Blogroll

We reviewed Feed Reading Blog Roll last week. This plugin provides a sidebar-widget and a template-tag that add an enhanced blogroll to your sidebar. It checks on all your linked sites, when the most recent update has occurred.

FRB received one review from Aggelos:

If you got bored of these flat blogrolls, or if you want to offer something more to your visitors, then the Feed Reading Blogroll is what you are looking for. We are already planing to implement this plugin on our new Thessaloniki section. So, what is this plugin about? How it works? How or why are we going to use it on our new section? Just read the rest of the story.

Read the complete review from News Filter >

Simple:Press

This was the first plugin we reviewed on January 4. Simple:Press is a feature rich forum plugin for WordPress. It fully integrates into your WP based site utilizing the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page.

Simple:Press also received one review from Sebastian:

After a  bbPress rant in my last post about forum plugins, I reviewed Simple:Press now. I take you from installation over managing option, setting up forums and customizing the look straight to the posting action. Come with me.

Read the complete review from We Hate You >

The Others

Four plugins remained without a review this week.

• Referrer Detector – (Our Review)
• MailPress – (Our Review)
• Post Avatar – (Our Review)
• Yawasp (Yet Another WordPress Anti-Spam Plugin) – (Our Review)

Yet another plugin that we reviewed and I missed to mention in my earlier blog post was AutoClose.

If you haven’t reviewed any plugin this week, don’t worry. For next week, you have the five plugins above which did not receive a review, in addition to the one I’ll be reviewing later today. I’ll give you further details about the same in that post.