There are two runner ups in the competition this year with the exact same scores and a final Grand Prize winner who eked past their competition by a single point. The runner ups will win a cash prize of $500 each and the Grand Prize Winner will receive a cash prize of $2000!

To break from tradition, we will release the runner ups today, followed by the release of the Grand Prize Winner on Monday. The following runner ups are in no particular order since they had the same final score.

The first Runner up is, drum roll please:

Advanced Export for WP and WPMU by Ron Rennick

Ron’s plugin provides WordPress users (both WordPress and WordPress Mu) the ability to break up their exports into multiple files with each file containing different sections of their blog. Ron wins $500 in cash.

The second Runner up is:

Live Blogging by Chris Northwood

Chris’ plugin provides live micro blogging functionality to WordPress blogs using Meteor technology. Both comments and posts are automatically updated on viewers’ blogs with the plugin. Chris wins $500 in cash.

Congratulations to the runner ups for their fantastic work! Check back tomorrow for the Grand Prize Winner of the Plugin Competition. A heartfelt thank you goes out to all the sponsors, judges, well wishers, readers, reviewers and to the plugin developers who participated in the contest. The winners will receive their prize money by the end of the following week.

WP-Table Reloaded allows you the following (not necessarily a complete list):

• manage tables in your WP admin area
• show them in your posts, on pages or in text widgets using a shortcode or anywhere else in your theme using a template tag function
• possible table features include (may be enabled for each table individually)
  • first row will be table header (HTML tag <th>)
  • alternating row colors
  • print table’s name above the table
  • print table’s description under the table
  • use Tablesorter-JavaScript to allow sorting of table data
  • individual styling of your table via CSS style-sheet possible (this may be used for different column widths or text-alignment)
• functions in the backend include:
  • add tables (by manual input)
  • import a table (from CSV, XML or HTML files, URLs or direct input)
  • export/save/backup a table to these formats
  • import tables from old WP-Table plugin (if found)
  • edit the table data and structure (add/insert/delete/move/swap columns/rows, sort columns)
  • easily add links or images to your table (from the Media Library)
  • copy/duplicate and delete tables
  • easily insert a table in to your posts/pages using a button in the editor toolbar

A lot more information, screenshots, a demo, other instructions and the download are available on the plugin website at http://tobias.baethge.com/wordpress/plugins/wp-table-reloaded/.

Offering direct control over more than 100 separate on-page characteristics important for SEO, while loading only around 600 lines of code for each ordinary page view and playing nicely with other plugins, this plugin has been designed from the ground up for performance and compatibility. (By contrast, the most popular SEO plugin configures only around 20 characteristics, demands more than 2000 lines of code for each page view, and employs crude output buffer hacks which can sap performance and trample on many other plugins.)

This plugin is intended for anyone who wants to help search engines find their material: it’s not just for professional marketers, it’s not just for those who make their living via the web, and it’s certainly not only for developers or full-time settings tweakers.

Should You Even Use an SEO Plugin?

It’s no secret that for years, most SEO professionals have recommended against plugins for any kind of serious WordPress SEO. While fine for ‘casual’ use, up until now plugins have been unable to compete with bespoke program logic and extensive manual theme integration for flexibility, completeness, performance and scalability.

Greg’s High Performance SEO now offers to everyone the kinds of benefits previously available only to those willing to invest in expensive bespoke coding and extensively hand modified themes.

The plugin will help you to leverage the built-in capabilities of WordPress — which is already a semi-decent SEO platform right out the box — by taking important content and meta-content that would otherwise not be included on the page and making it visible and useful to humans and machines alike. This is not automatic: it will take a little effort on your part. (Genuine SEO is never automatic.) But this plugin is designed to provide a sufficiently rich palette of tools that optimizing your site as it grows can become second nature to you.

To help with that, in addition to extensive inline explanations for each of its over 100 separate settings, Greg’s High Performance SEO also includes a detailed 5000-word usage guide and introduction to WordPress SEO. So you’ll never be left in the dark as to what on Earth a particular setting should or could be used for.

What Can You Do With Greg’s High Performance SEO Plugin?

This plugin enables you to configure several important SEO characteristics in each of these five areas:

• Main title
• Head section: description, keywords, robots indexing and following instructions
• Secondary title, visible in the page body
• Secondary description, visible in the page body
• Paged comments and duplicate content

(Greg’s High Performance SEO focuses exhaustively and exclusively on genuine SEO characteristics, so if you want something to fix the coffee or insert your ad code, you’ll need a different plugin for that.)
The full set of SEO characteristics can be configured for each of the following types of output:

• Home page
• Posts
• Pages
• Paged comments
• Tag archives (including support for the tag descriptions introduced in WordPress 2.8)
• Author archives
• Category archives
• Search results
• 404 page (irrelevant to SEO but helpful to site visitors)

The plugin provides configurable additions for the Post and Page writing and editing screens, as well as for the Dashboard’s QuickPress feature. All writing and editing additions can be restricted so that only contributors authorized to publish posts can use them.

Automatic Conflict Checker

A built-in conflict checker will let you know if it detects that other plugins may be interfering with your SEO preferences.

Support for Legacy SEO Plugins

Greg’s High Performance SEO also provides built-in support for titles and keywords left behind by alternative SEO and other legacy plugins such as:

• All in One SEO Pack
• Autometa
• HeadMeta
• Headspace
• Platinum SEO
• Related Posts
• SEO Title Tags

WordPress itself seamlessly imports legacy data from several plugins, providing automatic support for the following additional plugins:

• Jerome’s Keywords
• Simple Tagging
• Ultimate Tag Warrior

Sustainable Plugin Development

This plugin also demonstrates the new Sustainable Plugins Sponsorship Network, which aims to connect plugin developers with sponsors eager to support their creative efforts. You can easily switch off any sponsorship messages with a quick visit to the ‘Contribute’ page of your SEO settings; please see the ‘Instructions’ page for full details.

Learn More — And Get the Plugin!

You can learn more and get the plugin here on its main announcement page: Greg’s High Performance SEO.

The simple to use One-Time Password plugin enables you to login to your WordPress weblog using passwords which are valid for one session only. One-time passwords prevent stealing of your main WordPress password in less trustworthy environments, like internet cafés, for example by keyloggers. For each login you can choose between using your main password or a one-time password. The one-time password system conforms to RFC 2289 of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Version 2.0 of this plugin has a new option to protect administrative actions by one-time passwords. This option is disabled by default and only available when you logged-in with a one-time password. It is possible to define exceptions. The default exceptions are viewing the dashboard, adding a post (but not saving it) and logging out.

Support

If the usage instructions and frequently asked questions don’t help, you can write a comment on the plugin home page.

Screenshots

The login screen displaying a RFC 2289 challenge:

The one-time password list with the requested password:

The OTPGen application on a phone that supports JavaME: (optional)

The window to authorize an administrative action: (optional)

The choice you have is:

• Point release nightlies – This contains the work that is occurring on a branch in preparation for a x.x.x point release.  This should also be fairly stable but will be available before the branch is ready for beta.
• Bleeding edge nightlies – This is the bleeding edge development code which may be unstable at times. Only use this if you really know what you are doing.

Once you enable the plugin it will by default switch your blog to the “Point release” stream and if you want to switch to the “Bleeding edge” stream then you will need to go to the Tools … Beta Testing page and configure the plugin there:

Please note: Once you have switched your blog to one of these beta versions of software it will not always be possible to downgrade as the database structure maybe updated during the development of a major release.

More information about the plugin can be found on the original announcement post and in WordPress Extend.

1. Register on the Plugin Competition Blog, wait to be given author permissions (within 24 hours)
2. Make sure you check all the Plugin Competition Rules and adhere to them in order to be eligible
3. Introduce your plugin(s) or your plans for writing plugins on the Plugin Competition blog
4. Once your plugin is ready, publish it on the blog and make it available for download via WordPress Extend
5. Provide initial support for the plugins through the Competition blog, your own blog or other place of publication and through WordPress Support and Extend.
6. The last step, but the most important step, is to submit the final code for your plugin to us via email. We do not publish this email or the instructions on what to put in the email till the final few weeks of the competition. Check back with us or on the Plugin Competition blog for that email address about two weeks before the end of the competition.

Alternatively you could do the following if you need new ideas for Plugin development towards the competition. You could:

• You could post your questions and your needs on this WLTC Community Forum Topic
• You could post your question on the WordPress Forums
• You could look at the most popular WordPress Ideas and find one that has not been done in a plugin yet
• Adopt a Kvetch

May we have a drum roll please?

Thank you prizes:

• $10 to every participant as a thank you for their hard work and dedication.

$250 prize from WPMU

• First Prize for the best WPMU compatible plugin from Incsub goes to Vote2Publish
• Consolation prize for the best WPMU compatible plugin goes to WP Wall

Consolation Prize Winner is Prelovac

• 12 month blogclub subscription from Blogalized
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Third Prize Winner is WP Easy Uploader

• $200
• Country codes of the world poster
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Second Prize Winner is Manageable

• $700
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas for the PC and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

The Grand Prize Winner is WP Comment Remix

• $2000
• Production of a professionally recorded song for the winner.
• Dedicated server for one year from iWeb (Intel Core 2 Duo, HD 160GB Sata2, 1GB of RAM and 1500GB of bandwidth per month)
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Thank you to all the participants and congratulations to the winners! Please use the contact form above or send an email to wpplugincomp [at] wltc [dot] net with your Paypal email address.

Please help us choose the winners by visiting each of the plugins below and rating them on the linked page.

• Adminimize
• AnyVar
• Attachment Extender
• Automatic Timezone
• Broken links Remover
• Click
• ComicPress Manager
• Dk Obama Gallery
• DoDo
• Editor Extender
• Flaresmith
• Flickr Gallery
• Fun with in-context comments
• Great Real Estate
• Idealien Category Enhancements
• Image Browser Extender
• Invite friends
• Live Blogroll
• MailPress
• Manageable
• Maxref Widgets
• Media in response
• MultiSiteManager
• Nonce! Please
• PhotoJAR: Base
• Picture Increment Cron System
• Post Groups
• Post Tabs
• Repost
• Role Scoper
• SEO Smart Links
• Sermon Management
• Show Me Options
• Sidebars
• Simple Flash Video
• SlideShare Presentation List
• Snazzy Archives
• Paypal API Subscriptions
• Tabbed Widgets
• tWPtter
• Vent
• Vote2Publish
• WP125
• WP Comment Remix
• WP Easy Uploader
• WP Sentry
• WP Wall
• Yank Widget
• ZdMultiLang

Remember to test the plugin properly before giving your vote.

• $10 to every participant as a thank you for their hard work and dedication

$250 prize:

• For the best WPMU compatible plugin from Incsub

Consolation Prize:

• 12 month blogclub subscription from Blogalized
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Third Prize:

• $200
• Country codes of the world poster
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Second Prize:

• $700
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas for the PC and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Grand Prize:

• $2000
• Production of a professionally recorded song for the winner.
• Dedicated server for one year from iWeb (Intel Core 2 Duo, HD 160GB Sata2, 1GB of RAM and 1500GB of bandwidth per month)
• Copy of OIOPublisher Advertising Plugin

Good luck to all the participants!

This one was made, to provide your registered users the possibility, to invite oders to your blog, even if the registration is closed.

Currently active functions:

• invitation sending
• invitation cards limit per site
• after activation, the user is logged in automatically
• after activation, the user can be redirected to a custom URL
• activation screen is using the same styles as the login screen (if you have customized login screen it will affect the activation screen as well)
• Dashboard for custom settings Plugins > Invite friends settings
• i18n support (localized messages)

Find out more about this plugin at WordPress.org Plugin Directory

Please send in your entries before the deadline to wpplugincomp [at] wltc [dot] net with the subject line as “WP Plugin Competition: Plugin Name“.

Have you signed up at the Plugin Competition Blog?

If you haven’t yet done so then please signup there and send an email to the same address above with the subject line “Author Permission: Username” and we will give you the necessary access to make the post.

There is over $3800 in prizes to be won.

Do you wish to sponsor a prize? Please use the contact form to let us know.

Please give it a try – both WP admin panel and email based posting is available so there are no excuses … all feedback will be lovingly reviewed…

Current Features

• Upload any type of file to either the standard Uploads directory (just as images do when you are creating posts and pages) or to a path of your choosing.
• Manual paths are automatically created if they don’t exist.
• Easily upload plugins directly to the plugins directory and theme files directly to the themes directory.
• You can select to have archives automatically extracted to their destination. This means that plugins and themes will be taken care of for you, but it also means that you can zip up a large set of files and upload them quickly into a folder on your site. Currently zip, tar, gz, tar.gz, tgz, and tar.bz2 archives are supported.
• Options for overwriting existing files, renaming the fle if a file with that name already exists (or if overwriting fails), removal of the archive after file extraction, and forcing extracted files to be contained in a folder.
• Now supports WordPress Mu.
• Support for upcoming WordPress 2.6.
• Offers translations in German, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

More Information

• Download at the plugin’s WordPress.org Plugin Directory page
• Visit WP Easy Uploader’s home page for more information about the development and upcoming features

But many of us have not only one, but a couple of blogs. For example, a business and a private one. Or you administrate blogs of your friends, and will have to backup/upgrade them, too. So I think it will be gret to hear for many of you that with MultiManage, you can backup and upgrade all blogs you are in charge for from one panel.

There are no downloads available so far, because important features aren’t ready yet. But here are some screenshots, so you can get a taste of what it will be like:

Do you like the idea? What are features you’d love to see for this one? Let me know.

This is your chance to not only showcase your work to the WordPress community but to also win fabulous cash prizes. If you are planning on releasing a plugin for the competition, head over to the plugin competition blog, register yourself and post about your plugin there. We have had a spat of registrations but the number of announcements on the blog has been much less. Please tell us about your cool new entry; our readers would love to know and help test and fine tune your plugins for you!

For those that are following the competition and looking for cool plugins to test, there already are a couple of posts on the Plugin Competition Blog to whet your appetite. Please provide your feeback for the authors. It will help them make their plugins better and your votes (on the final entries, not on the announcements) will help tremendously in the judging.

The email address to submit entries is wpplugincomp [at] wltc [dot] net Please use this email address towards the end of the competition to send in your entries into the plugin competition. You do not need to send in your entries till the last day and sending in your entries early will not give you any advantage. On the contrary, waiting till the last moment will give you more chances to tweak and modify your plugin to your benefit.

Are you ready with a plugin?
If so, then it is time to create an entry on the Plugin Competition Blog. If you do not have author access then create an account and contact us to upgrade your account. Don’t forget to mention the plugin page on your site.

Are you still hunting for ideas?
Take a look at a post I made a while back.

Need some questions answered?
Ask away

Looking to sponsor the competition or donate some prize money?
Please contact us. Donating money is easy and quick and it helps out the WordPress community.

Remember we have just another month to go before the end of the plugin competition.

When should I submit my plugin?
We recommend that you submit your plugin to us at the end of the competition. This will give you enough time to test the plugin for any bugs and resolve them. You will have time to look into feature requests from your visitors. This will also ensure that you don’t need to submit multiple bugfixes to us. We prefer receiving a single final version for our records.

Won’t I be at a disadvantage if I submit it at the end?
No, of course not. Voting will begin only after the plugin competition ends. Also, our judges will take a look at the plugin only after the end of the competition.

Is okay to release it prior to submitting it for the contest?
Plugins released in these two months are eligible for the competition. In fact if you release it now, you have time to test it and receive feedback from the community so an early release to public is a good thing. Conversely, an early release to the public does not mean an automatic submission to the competition.

How do I know the plugin is new?
You can search to see if a similar plugin is available in WordPress Extend. You can also use any search engine to see if a similar plugin is available.

What about the plugins in last year’s competition
If you need an idea of the type of plugins that have been submitted in the past, here is a list of plugins from last year’s competition.

I am a WordPress user. I have an idea, where do I submit it?
You can also post them in this post or this posting in our News Forum.

How do I sponsor a prize?
If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact us. We are actively looking for prize money.

Do you have any other questions about the competition? Please post them in the comments section below.

As part of my new assignment out here, I’ll be looking after the Plugin Competition. I’ll be maintaining the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog as well as making weekly posts both here and at the Competition Blog.

With the WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 beginning today, I thought I’d just write in with a few tips on making your entry.

Firstly, read the rules to be followed are listed in the post. Please make sure that your entry does not break any of them.

Getting Inspired

One of the important rules that we have is that the plugins should be new, i.e. no updates to already existing plugins. One great place to get inspired is WordPress Ideas. WordPress Ideas is a place where the people from the WordPress Community, both users and developers vote for what they would like included in WordPress. Some have been implemented, while some may actually appear in future versions and still others that may not be. So, why not make a plugin to accommodate for the latter two?

You can also hunt for ideas in these posts or this posting in our News Forum.

Offering the plugin for download

Something that many authors forget in their zeal to develop a plugin (or a theme) is its documentation.

Firstly, make sure your plugin zip file contains a readme.txt. If needed, include a full fledged help section as well. You can also put this on the plugin release page on your site.

Next, create a separate page on your blog / site dedicated for the plugin. Posts are a no-no! They get lost in the crowd.

Make sure the page has the following:

• Overview
• Requirements
• Features
• Installation Instructions
• Download Link
• License
• Method to get support

When linking to the download file, one method I follow is to link to a file without any version etc. e.g. it reads simply pluginname.zip. The purpose of this is that I can always update the zip file with the latest version of the plugin without bothering to change the link.

Old versions of the plugin can be archived as pluginname_v1.0.zip, pluginname_v1.1.zip and so on.

Sending it to us

You’ll need to send your plugin to us via email. We will reveal the email address that you need to send the plugins to in the second month of the competition.

The competition is on for another two months, which gives you plenty of time to release a feature rich plugin.

Before that, release a well tested version to the public. Fix any bugs that come up, try to provide more features as requested.

The WordPress community is demanding and extremely helpful at guiding you down your path.

All the best for now.

To the WordPress Community

I’m sure you’ll love the competition and many of the plugins that stem from it. Authors are always hunting for ideas and who better to tell them than you. Please feel free to post your ideas in the comments section below.

Or, you can also post them in any of these two posts or this posting in our News Forum.

If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact us. Lots of eyes see these competitions and your encouragement goes a long way in helping provide incentives.

Stay tuned and please help spread the word.

There will be prizes for first, second and third places and a consolation prize. The plugins should be officially submitted through email and this blog which should be used as a launching ground for plugin ideas, updates, development news etc. The plugins will be judged by a panel of at least three judges and reader feedback will be an essential part of the judging process. At the end of the contest, we will put up posts for each submission and will open them up to our readers for two weeks. The contest results should be declared by the beginning of August.

All code must be GPL and should be available for download through the Competition Blog and preferably through WordPress Extend. The plugins can be modified and tweaked till the last day of the competition or until the author sends us an email with the final version of the code. In essence, this blog is the preferred vehicle of communication for all contestants.

Some relevant details:

• Running time for competition = 2 months starting the 10th of May till the 10th of July.
• True WordPress plugins only. No manual modifications can be required of users.
• You cannot submit plugins that have been released already. New code only please.
• Plugins can only be submitted via email. We will make that email address public later on in the competition.
• Plugins cannot have opt-out links back to the authors’ pages (from the main blog pages, admin pages are fine). If you have links or donation forms, please make them opt-in.
• All plugins require documentation as in the WordPress Extend pages. Documentation will be one of the judging criteria.
• Preliminary support for the plugin has to be provided to the public.
• We are looking for innovation, documentation and elegant code.
• Any and all prizes/controversies/issues will be judged and decided at our sole discretion.

More details to be added with time.

Stay tuned and please help spread the word.

[EDIT] For those interested in getting an idea of plugins submitted for the previous competition, the incomplete list can be found here.