Funny how things can get connected quite quickly on the web. Check this out.
I wrote a blog entry for WLTC just two days ago about Five Nifty Sidebar Widgets for your WordPress Site. Babs then commented on that post and said:
Out of curiosity, does anyone know how many plugins it takes to break a WordPress site? *laughs*
This comment then prompted Mark from here at WLTC to write a blog entry asking visitors to Guess how many Plugins we have active on the website and comment on how many active and inactive plugins they have on their own websites. This is a small contest that will earn the correct guesser a one year Flickr Pro membership. It is a very active thread right now (78 replies as of this posting).
So as I am watching the guesses stream in over the last 24 hours or so it reminded me of an awesome plugin I use on my site and it fits in with this series of blog posts. So I guess you can say that this has come full circle in that my original post started the chain reaction to this post! Don’t you just love the way the web works! Nice job everyone.
So here is a look at Lester Chan’s terrific WP PluginsUsed plugin (current version 1.40).
After grabbing the download and installing the plugin all you need to do is create a new page on your site – I am calling mine Plugins Used (yeah I know very creative). Then in the edit box for this new page I am going to paste the following text in:
[stats_pluginsused]
<P>
<H2>Active Plugins</H2>
[active_pluginsused]<P>
<H2>Inactive Plugins</H2>
[inactive_pluginsused]
Once you have that done save and publish the page to your website. There is also a simple change you can make to the wp-pluginsused.php file to prevent the plugin from showing what version of these plugins your using. Just open up the wp-pluginsused.php and make this change:
Find – define(‘PLUGINSUSED_SHOW_VERSION’, true);
Change it to – define(‘PLUGINSUSED_SHOW_VERSION’, false);
Save your file and load up your new Plugins Used page (this is mine) and it will look like this:
The page also shows details about the plugin including the plugins name, author and a description of the plugin. The plugin name and author are linked to their respective sites as well. This will allow you to head directly to that plugin’s website when you see this page on someone else’s blog and want to try it out.
So there you go – a great plugin from Lester Chan – one among many he has. If you have never checked out Lester’s work head over to his site now and take a look at his portfolio – some very impressive stuff. His WordPress plugins are under the PHP Programming header.
Post a link to your plugins used page in the comments to share with everyone and we can see just what your running on your site as well.
Until next time – stay safe out there!
Just scroll down past my photo to the list:
http://jessibird.net/about-jessibird
Thank you for featuring my PluginsUsed =D
Lester – your very welcome. Terrific work!
Thanks you for the compliments =D
Lester, I have used your plugin for long time. In the past I used to use a different one, but development on it stopped pre WP 2. I like your plugin. I use it here http://thetitan.titanfusion.net/about/plugins/. I like it because it presents the active plugins in a nice way.
I have had so many problems with WP plugins over the years… we see a lot of posts promoting plugins but very few advising moderation in this regard. Future post idea?
Hi WindowsObserver,
a decent post today. I would like to mention that someone could always go to your plugins folder directly and view the folder and files there. That is if you have not set the permissions correctly, I have created a php file that displays a message.
This is a great plugin and helps others out to see what you are using.
Thanks for sharing this info.
*headdesk*
For the longest I’ve been wanting to create a list of all the plugins I use to share with visitors. I just never had time to do it until recently.
I have just two more plugins to list and write about and NOW I find out there’s another plugin that’ll do it for me?
Hi,
I know this is off the topic, but I like the details you put after the commenter’s name. It shows the total number of comments he/she has made. I would like to know if there is a plugin for this as I found ‘Comment Counter’ and not sure if this is what you used.
Your assistance would be appreciated.
I believe that the wordpress community should openly share the plugins they are using. I wrote about it here: http://thetitan.titanfusion.ne.....hare-them/ I believe that if bloggers openly listed the plugins they use, it will help promote them and encourage further development. If I see something happening on a site, I would like to see if that is done by a plugin, if it is I would like to know what plugin does that. If I am easily able to see what plugin it is and decide to use it on my site, I could easily write about it and promote it.
My point is, to help and encourage the development of our favorite plugin or one we find useful we should let others know about it. Lester’s WP PluginsUsed plugin makes this easy and automated.
Agreed!
I truly hate sifting through code to see what is making the cool things I see on other WP-based sites happen, which is why I wanted to make (and now have) a list of the plugins I use to share.
I used this use this plugin. I think it’s really great for what it does (automatically gives plugin author credit & links). The only reason why I stopped using it is because there are bad people out there on the net. If they see that you are using a plugin with a certain version that has a known exploit, they will exploit it. I love the plugin for what it does, but I just don’t trust people out on the internet(s) :).
That is when it comes in very handy to be able to hide the version numbers.
This seems like a very interesting and great tool. I will soon add it to my site and share it with other bloggers in my niche.