Most of you have heard by now of the departure of Lester Chan from WordPress plugin development. While he will continue to update his plugins as needed, all support will be terminated. As a plugin author myself, I’m not surprised by this news. With the world economy still in the pits, more plugin authors are feeling the crunch. While they would like to release free plugins for all, at the end of the day, there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. Within this article (rant?), I will go over the types of plugins I would pay for, an argument for paying for plugins, and go over several business models I see popping up. Plugins I Would Pay For Here are several categories that make a plugin something I would pay for (yours will undoubtedly be different). The plugin is a timesaver – Plugins such as Akismet and WP […]
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‘WordPress Plugins’ Category
Craig Buckler of SitePoint.com published a neat guide today on how to split WordPres content into 2 or more columns. The explanation dives into various functions and parameters with use of the Read More tag but within the comments of the post, someone mentioned a plugin called WP Post Columns by Sam Burdge. I downloaded the plugin and to my surprise, it works very well and does not require any code editing. The magic lies within the shortcodes that need to be inserted into the content. For example, if you wanted two columns within your content, you would use the following shortcodes. [column width=”47%” padding=”6%”] Column 1 content goes here. [/column] [column width=”47%” padding=”0″] Column 2 content goes here. [/column] [end_columns] There are shortcodes for up to four columns within the content. I’ve rarely come across a theme or a WordPress powered site displaying content in this fashion but I […]
[Continue Reading...]How many plugins do you run on your website that were created by Lester ‘GaMerZ‘ Chan? I’m guessing at least one or more. On WPTavern.com, I use three of them. I’ve been a huge fan of Lester ever since I discovered his assortment of plugins that provided functionality I didn’t think any WordPress site would want to be without. Features such as polls, easy page navigation, and nifty stats. I learned today that Lester is unable to provide support for his plugins due to a full time job he recently accepted. However, he states that he will try to keep the plugins working with newer versions of WordPress as time allows while also keeping the forum open to enable the community to help each other. As you all know, I have been doing WordPress plugins and supporting it for the past 6 years. These 6 years of my life, I […]
[Continue Reading...]The name of the linked post is actually 24 Noble WordPress Plugins To Determine The Performance of your Blog, but it is safe to say that you would artificially kill the performance of your blog if you were to install of them (read: don’t install them all). However, if you are a stats junky like me, you might be interested in some of the plugins mentioned in the App Sheriff post such as Feed Statistics, Live, Post and Comments Time and Social Traffic Monitor. Now most of the information provided by these plugins can be derived from regular statistics sources but the filters can be interesting for some folks. Head over to the App Sheriff and see what you *might* have been missing! We use WordPress.com stats, Statcounter and Google Analytics on this blog. I know that is two too many, but what can I say, I am a stats […]
[Continue Reading...]New Plugins NdB Currency This plugin is used to exchange currency values online. Main use is for American weblogs to convert their Dollar amounts into Euro currency values. It’s an easy to install, activate and forget wordpress plugin. WordPress Loop The WordPress Loop widget was written to allow users that don’t know their way around PHP to easily show their content in any way they’d like. The widget has over 35 options to choose from. Customize your WordPress loop by one or more post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, authors, dates, custom fields, and a whole lot more! Q2W3 Screen Options Hack Demo This is a demo for WordPress plugin developers. It shows how to create your own form for Screen Options panel. CMS A collection of plugins to make WordPress feel more like a CMS. It has some small adjustments and some bigger ones. Also includes some other plugins […]
[Continue Reading...]Back in October, we told you about the new compatibility box that was added to the plugin pages within the repository. However, we’ve learned that this feature has one major drawback which is the crux behind this idea proposed by shinephp. I propose to add the field e.g. ‘Problem description’ required for input if visitor click ‘Broken’ button in the Compatibility widget. I’ve talked with a number of plugin developers and they have all said the same thing. The compatibility box is useless if feedback can not be tied to the rating. Sure, a support topic can be opened for the plugin but there is nothing tying that forum post to the broken rating. Mark Jaquith weighed in with an even better idea. They should get a chance (or a mandate) to provide feedback, and that feedback should open a new support thread. However, first, plugin authors need to be […]
[Continue Reading...]New Plugins PlaceWidget PlaceWidget for WordPress simplifies the process of adding a PlaceWidget to your WordPress blog. You can create and configure your PlaceWidget right in the WordPress Dashboard, then embed it in your sidebar with a standard WordPress widget. Category Ancestor Category Ancestor is a plugin that adds a function you can use anywhere in your theme : get_category_ancestor($thecat) to retrieve the highest level parent of any category. FAQ You It is a simple FAQ plugin where you can create Categories and put Questions in them. You can easily insert them in a page with the WYSIWYG editor. Able to turn JavaScript on or off. Free Stock Images Plugin Spice up your blog with high quality free stock images & photos created by professional photographers and illustrators: Easy to use search interface with advanced filtering and Drag & Drop functionality. Favicons Choose a favicon to make your site eye-catching […]
[Continue Reading...]Last week I wrote up a post to review the Real-Time Find and Replace Plugin and the comments on that story about other methods to make site wide changes permanent sent me in search of another way to search and replace information in my SQL database. 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 […]
[Continue Reading...]New Plugins Page Manager This plugin allow users to order pages easily in the page overview and also add some clarity to the overview. Show more pages With this plugin you or your clients can select how many pages they want to show per page in the overview. I Make Plugins A plugin for WordPress plugin authors to let them easily showcase their plugins on their own site, solely by updating the plugin’s readme.txt file. Easy Theme and Plugin updates This plugin allows for installed themes to be upgraded by using the Appearance > Add New Themes > Upload feature of WordPress. Without this plugin, themes can only be installed using this method, requiring you to first delete the theme before installing the newer version. Now features the same easy upgrading for plugins via the Plugins > Add New > Upload page. Events Calendar The Events Calendar plugin enables you […]
[Continue Reading...]About the Author
- Ronald Huereca
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