Most analytics software do provide users with plugins to insert code into themes, but why use plugins to insert simple HTML code into your theme? I have been using a very useful plugin called Footer Stuff (WP repo link) which allows me to add code to the header and the footer of the site without having to manually edit the theme.

The best part of the plugin though is the fact that it will insert the code into the theme no matter how often I change the theme without having to constantly edit the theme.

Footer Stuff Walkthrough

Head over to the plugins page in your admin dashboard and do a quick search for footer stuff, install and activate the plugin and you are ready to add code to your theme.

An option to personalize footer stuff is present under Appearance. Clicking on the Footer Stuff link will display a HTML form containing two text boxes. The box on the top is to add content to your footer, and the second one is to add content to your header.

Once you add the code you want, footer stuff will automatically insert it into your theme, no matter which one you use. However, your theme needs to make use of the functions wp_head() and wp_footer(), without which the plugin won’t work.

Overall I found the plugin to be very useful. Also considering that many people do not have the skills to edit HTML and PHP files, they can do away with several plugins by using this plugin, all you have to do is copy the code from the source and then add it to footer stuff.

Have you used this plugin before? If not, will you use it to simplify theme edits? Do let me know.

Now I consider myself pretty decent at geeky things but directly editing and messing with my site’s SQL database does not top my list of things to do.  Neither does manually going through nearly 1,000 postings to make changes.

What I found was a terrific plug-in that lets me perform a few different functions to make corrections or change info throughout my site.

Caveat: Before I get started – this plugin does make changes to your database. Play it safe and back up your info to protect your original data.

With that said let me now introduce you to the Search Regex Plugin written by John Godley.

The author provides the following description in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory:

Search Regex adds a powerful set of search and replace functions to WordPress. These go beyond the standard searching capabilities, and allow you to search and replace almost any data stored on your site. In addition to simple searches you have the full power of PHP’s regular expressions at your disposal.

The plugin is currently at version 1.4.9 and is dated from July 2009 however it is fully compatible with WordPress Version 2.9.1.

So once you have downloaded and installed the plugin head to the Tools menu in the Admin interface:

Click on Search Regex to get to the main admin page:

From this spot you can either Search; Replace or Replace and Save. Only the last one makes permanent changes to your database when you push the button.

Lets review the options you can set for each one:

Source Dropdown Menu lets you pick the areas in the database that will be searched.

Limit to Dropdown Menu restricts the number of entries that will be searched. This can be handy on a large site.

Order By lets you choose to display the results of a search in either Ascending or Descending order.

Once you make those choices you are ready to search.  Type the phrase you want to find in the Search pattern box. I found that multi-line searches do not work so well with this plugin so I recommend you keep it short and exact.

If all you want to do is find a handful or articles that have a certain phrase or word in them then click the Search button and you will see the following type of results:

Each entry is on an alternating color line and if you look all the way over to the right on each line there is a link to either View the post as it appears on your site or Edit the post using the normal WordPress Edit screen. No changes are made to your database by using the Search button.

The next button you can use is the Replace button and this one lets you preview the changes that would be made for each entry that matches your search and replace criteria. Those results show up like this:

Just like with the Search button results, if you look over on the right hand side you will see links to either View the post, perform the Replace function for that entry only or open the post up using the standard WordPress admin edit screen. If your only making a few changes this is very handy to do them one at a time to make sure your changing the info you want to change.

The last option you can use is one of the most powerful because it makes the change after you press the Replace and Save button.  With this one you want to make sure the edit is exactly what you want to do.  I recommend using the Replace button first to preview the matches it finds before executing the Replace and Save.

I do not have a screen shot to show you that function because honestly I do not have a change to be made right now. However, the results page looks a lot like the Replace results except they have been made instead of just displayed for review.

So there ya go – a very powerful tool in a small package.  Let me close by repeating an earlier reminder – back up your database before executing any major changes using this plugin. You will be thankful that you did if you hit the wrong button

So which do you prefer – this permanent change or the on the fly changes that are made by the Real-Time Find and Replace Plugin?

A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut.

Many WordPress plug-ins make use of short codes to easily make a call to a plug-ins functionality.  This can make maintaining your WordPress based site very easy but what happens if you decide to shift from one plug-in to another and that specific short code is not used in the new plug-in?

Let me give you an example.  I used to use the WordPress Adsense Manager Plug-in on WindowsObserver.com to place my Google Adsense ads.  It allowed me to build the ad and then use a short code to place it on a page or in a blog post.  That short code looked something like this [ ad#post-top ]. 

I made the decision to go to a different ad source and the Adsense Manager plug-in was not compatible for me anymore. So what I decided to do initially was to just allow the Google Adsense ads to run on all of my old posts (at least 600 or so) and then run the new ad code on subsequent pages.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to do something about the old ad code and went in search of a tool to do this.  That is when I found the Real-Time Find and Replace Plug-in written by Marios Alexandrou.

The premise of this plug-in is very simple. It searches for text you enter in the settings and dynamically replaces it as the page is generated in a users browser utilizing the alternate text that you provide.

Here is now simple it is to use:

Once you have installed the plug-in you will find the menu item for it under the Tools menu in your WordPress Admin panel:

Clicking on that brings up the main settings page:

Here you click the Add link and insert the text you want the plug-in to find and then insert the text you want put in its place in the Replace text box. Click Update to save your settings. 

There it is – ready and able to find and replace any text you choose on the run. I used it to replace short codes but you could use it to replace anything you want to on your pages.

Final note about this plug-in: According to this plug-ins page at the WordPress.org Plug-in Directory it is only compatible up to version 2.8 however, I am running it on version 2.9.1 without any problem.

I would be very interested in hearing what plug-ins you use to find and replace text for your site/database.

I have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking for just the right plug-in to track stats on my WindowsObserver.com website and I think I may have hit the mother lode with my most recent discovery.

CyStats is written by Michael Weingaertner and has been downloaded from the WordPress.org Extend directory 32,435 times over the 23 months it has been available there. The last update was last October so it would be nice to see an update however, it works just fine with the current release of WordPress (2.8.4).

According to the author’s description CyStats provides:

• Bounce rate, ignore-by-cookie, ignore-by-ip/post-id/user_agent lists
• hits, visits for day/week/month/year – human or robots
• Top referring pages
• Most read categories and tags
• Most read, most commented posts
• Most read feeds, number of feed visits today
• Internal/external search words
• Operating systems
• Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics
• 404 error requests
• Browsers/clients/tools/…, w/o. version numbers
• Template tags for most read posts, user count,…
• Optional IP-anonymizing
• Multi language support (currently English, German supported).
• Optional tracking of admin area visits

Set up and installation is very easy – just install in the normal manner either via FTP upload or update within your WordPress Admin Plug-in area. Once it is installed and activated the first stop should be the Options under Settings>CyStats. Here you can configure various database settings, statistics tracking (disable userlevel tracking, admin page stats or anonymize IP’s) as well as setting filtering cookies to block IP’s, User Agents and ignoring requests by page or post ID. This page also has the Delete All function and it is highlighted in bright red – do not use this unless you want to completely remove all CyStats info from your database.

On the lower left side of your Admin panel you will see a link for CyStats and a click on that will take you to the main menu for CyStats:

The Index page is broken down into:

Hits and Visits

Pages and Comments

Referrers and Search Words

The Blog page shows recently commented posts; most active comment authors, tags and categories as well as some database statistics for your WordPress site.

The Clients page breaks down  as follows:

Browsers; Operating Systems; Browser versions and tools and scripts (including WordPress)

Robots and Tools; Unknown user agents

On the Referrer page you will find referrers today, yesterday, external referrers and search engine referrers:

The Robots and Tools page is another summary of visits broken down by search engines; email/feed readers; tools and scripts and the unknown user agents:

When you click on the Pages link you will find a summary of your most visited blog pages today; most visited overall; entry pages to your site; 404 error pages and page types (single, archive, feed, 404, home, page, month, category, search, author, day and year):

The last page is the Time page and this gives you a snapshot of your visitors per day; per hour; per weekday; per week; per month and per year. You also get hits per day; per week; per month and per year.

Bottom Line

As you can see from the screenshots this is a very thorough tool and really does give you an in-depth snapshot of your sites visitors. That in turn can help you better layout your site, establish a plan to write on popular subjects and focus your efforts on the areas of your WordPress site that really draws those visitors.  I like this plug-in above others that I have used because it breaks things down between non bot and bot visits which gives me a better idea of human eyes on my site as opposed to machines which can be misleading.

I am very interested in hearing what your favorite methods are for tracking visitors on your website.

However I came across a really interesting and aesthetically done plugin that can draw attention to sharing. The plugin called Sexy Bookmarks definitely draws attention.

The plugin allows you to setup custom username that will be used for sharing on twitter, a custom category for sharing on Yahoo Buzz and also a choice of URL shortening service you can use, including your own custom URL shortening in the form of Twitter Friendly Links plugin.

I just started using it on my personal blog and definitely find that it adds more charm to sharing.

What are your thoughts about this plugin? do let me know.

Download Sexy Bookmarks Plugin

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.

However, even now, you need to go to your WP-Admin to install your plugins.

Improved Plugin Installation helps overcome this problem.

Description:

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!

Furthermore, a bookmarklet is included which lets you install plugins directly from an external site.

Review:

Firstly, I love the plugin page. I’ve always encouraged authors to write detailed plugin pages on their blogs as these ensure that your reader easily understands what your plugin has to offer as well what exactly do they need to do to use it. And, Improved Plugin Installation has the necessary details.

The plugin can be used in two main ways. One is from within WordPress Admin and the second is the bookmarklet.

From within the WordPress Admin, you can navigate to Add New Plugin page as usual and scroll down to find a textarea at the bottom. In this you can enter plugin names, plugin page URLS or even direct URLs to the zip files.

Improved Plugin Installation will then download these plugins and install them on your WordPress blog.

The second feature is the bookmarklet. You can install the bookmarklet by navigating to the Add Plugin page and install it from there.

Visit a plugin page, even on external sites and hit the bookmarklet to initiate the installation dialog. You may be asked to login to your blog. This is a necessary security measure and you’ll be able to quickly install yet another plugin.

Without doubt this plugin really enhances the WordPress interface. But, the question remains how often will you use it. For one, it’s excellent when you setup a fresh blog and know you have a certain set of plugins that need to be installed.

Another is if you are in the habit of trying out different plugins, or are a tester.

One feature I would like to see is the ability to mass upgrade plugins. Right now if new versions of two or more plugins are released, I need to update each individually, which can be a pain.

Are you currently using this plugin? What would you like to see in the future?

What is WP Greet Box?

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer URL.

For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction.

Screenshot

Features

• Show a different greeting message to your visitor depending on the referrer URL. You can add/edit/delete/disable these greeting messages as you choose.
• Greeting messages automatically get inserted into the top of your posts upon activation. There is no need to modify theme files.
• Ability to auto-insert greeting message to the top or bottom of the post.
• Greeting messages can be user closeable or not.
• Ability to detect the visitor’s search keywords from major search engines and automatically display related posts under the greeting message.
• Show a default greeting message even if the visitor does not match any of your configured referrer URL.
• Show a default greeting message even if the visitor does not have JavaScript enabled.
• AJAX greeting message in the frontend makes it compatible with caching plugins (such as WP Super Cache) and WPMU.
• AJAX administrative interface that uses nonce verification to discourage hackers.
• Ability to set a timeout to forget a visitor so we do not keep nagging them with greeting messages.
• Ability to set rules to exclude some referrer URLs from seeing greeting messages. Regular expressions is also supported (but not required!).
• Ultra customizable greeting message box (with CSS) allowing you to prefix/append HTML around the greeting message box.
• Currently the following referrers are installed by default, but you can easily create your own if your favorite referrer is not on the list!
  • blinklist.com
  • blogmarks.com
  • del.icio.us
  • delicious.com
  • digg.com
  • diigo.com
  • facebook.com
  • flickr.com
  • furl.com
  • google.*
  • ma.gnolia.com
  • mister-wong.com
  • myspace.com
  • netvibes.com
  • newsvine.com
  • reddit.com
  • search.live.com
  • search.msn.com
  • search.yahoo.com
  • simpy.com
  • stumbleupon.com
  • technorati.com
  • twitter.com
  • youtube.com

Our Review

WP Greet Box comes really feature packed as compared to Referrer Detector, possibly because WP Greet Box is more mature plugin as of this date.

Installation of plugin is extremely simple. You can download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory, unzip it to your host and activate the plugin. I chose to use the new Add New Plugin feature in WordPress 2.7 to install it on my blog Techtites from within WP-admin itself.

After activating the plugin, you can add / edit / delete referrers to your blog. The plugin comes inbuilt with several referrers including a default referrer who do not come from the fixed set of sites listed above. There are also a few referrers that are not activated by default, so you choose to activate those. I chose to stick with the default list.

It also has the ability to display related posts, though it displayed no related posts for a query that definitely had related posts.

The plugin has its documentation in place, however, it could do well with more detailed instructions. Also, the documentation is a readme.txt file at the plugin repository, which isn’t the most presentable layout.

I would also like to see Ajaxed tabs as was in the case of Referrer Detector, as it make updating across options extremely quick. The plugin already uses AJAX for editing / updating referrer details.

I believe the author has plans for the plugin, though it is currently kept a secret.

Are you currently using WP Greet Box? Since when have you been using the plugin? Has it helped increase visitor loyalty, number of hits? What additions would you like to see to the plugin features?

What is Referrer Detector?

Referrer Detector is a WordPress Plugin that displays a greeting message to visitors that come from different urls (known as referrers).

For example, you may want to welcome Diggers with a message that reminds them to digg your story, or you may want to ask Del.icio.us users to bookmark your post, and so on.

Features

• A pure AJAXed admin interface with elements tidily divided into tabs. Entries can be added/modified/(de)activated/deleted without the need to reload the entire page, or even with just one click.
• The greet box position can be set to before or after the post. A [custom tag] can also be used in case you don’t want to show greetings on every post.
• Users can also put a tag (<?php if (function_exists('referrer_detector')) referrer_detector(); ?>) into the template to show the greet box anywhere of choice.
• Excluded URLs can be specified in order to hide the greet box from specific users (like ones from Google Reader).
• Ability to include WordPress attributes like url, title, author, category etc. into the greetings.
• A STAT panel to get data reporting about the visitor statistic.
• Compatible with caching plugins, since the core is written and run in JavaScript which is normally not cached.
• Many installed-by-default entries (which can be restored anytime with one click). Upon installing, you will have these entries available:
  • 9 rules
  • Del.icio.us and Delicious.com
  • Digg
  • Gizmodo
  • Google Search
  • Lifehacker
  • Live Search
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TechCrunch
  • Technograti
  • TechRadar
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo Search

Demo

The real way to test this plugin is to go to Google or Yahoo and then search for “phoenixheart.net” [Yahoo! Search Results] Click on the link to the site and check out the cool greeting image.

I performed a Yahoo! Search and got this cool greeting box.

Google Search worked only when the referrer was Google.com and not Google.co.in which is default since I am from India.

Our Review

The plugin is easy to use and install. It comes with out-of-the-box support for 14 sites which should cover a good portion of the traffic that you would receive.

This makes it a install and forget plugin unless you really want to bother about customizing it.

The plugin release post is well detailed, complete with examples on how to go about configuring / editing the welcome messages.

Adding a new entry is extremely easy. You need to enter details of the site where you are entering traffic from. The site has to be entered without the http or www e.g. digg.com or google.com.

The AJAX interface makes it easy to add / edit referrers. I was able to Edit and Add at the same time without visiting a new page. My detailed testing did raise a few points, which I have listed under improvements below.

Each tab has a small help section, so you’re not left clueless if you get stuck somewhere. The option for Excluded URLs is good since you can exclude those who are subscribed to online feed readers.

Suggested Improvements

Now, this is the important part, or I hope to think so! Some improvements I felt this plugin could use:

1. Making any modification i.e. adding / editing referrers requires write permissions for a JavaScript file. It also requires the user to know how to chmod and also increases one step in the installation process. I’d be happier if everything was stored in the database.
2. You can choose to deactivate certain referrers. Would be good if there was a checkbox for bulk actions, something like we now have in WordPress 2.7 management of posts, pages, comments, plugins etc.
3. Like I mentioned above Google.com worked but not Google.co.in. Google Search is such that it automatically changes the default search engine domain based on your location. The plugin should take care of this automatically. It’s a humongous task to add all the individual domains. One possible solution could be a wildcard entry i.e. google.* or *.yahoo.com
4. Default Message for domains not in the list of referrers. I believe the author plans on updating this in a future version.
5. Lastly, not an important point but it would be great to see the plugin have its own page instead of post. I’m not a big fan of posts being the default location for a plugin or theme since your plugin/theme is permanent and so needs a permanent location on your site. It also helps in standardization when you release more than one plugin. E.g. in my case I have all plugins on separate pages on my blog. Again, this is a matter of preference.

And, now it’s your turn. Have you been using this plugin? What has been your experience with it? Do you have any feature requests?

The plugin author is reading…