Increase The Social Impact Of Your Blog Easily
I was pinged a few days ago by my friend Thaya Kareeson about a plugin he has released a while back and he was wondering if I would be interested to check it out. And I did – quite impressive as it allows you to increase The Social Impact of your blog. See below
It allows you to Greet Visitors to Your Blog based on what url they come from. I do have a small issue with the plugin but you’ll just have to read the post to learn about it…
First of all – what exactly does this plugin do. I’m not going to be original here but simply copy the list of features from Thaya’s blog:
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.
* 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 java script enabled.
* AJAX greeting message in the front end makes it compatible with caching plugins 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 setup regular expression rules to exclude some referrer URLs from seeing greeting messages.
* Ultra customizable greeting message box (with CSS) allowing you to pre-pend/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!
1. del.icio.us
2. delicious.com
3. digg.com
4. google.com
5. yahoo.com
6. stumbleupon.com
7. technorati.com
8. twitter.com
Plugin seem to work as advertised and once working properly – it could be a perfect replacement for the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin that I love and use on my blogs. BUT…
As I have mentioned above – I have couple issues with the plugin and hopefully Thaya will not be too upset about me sharing them.
- To install the plugin you have to place piece of code into your blog theme. While I understand that this allows greater customization for the users – I think it should be done via WordPress loop and simply provided with choices to end user. Much like we have with WWSGD – it gives us choice to place the message Above the Post or Bellow the Post. That is all we need, plus the options on how often to show the messages.
- Plugin comes by default with several services configured but either my install got messed up or I misunderstood the statement – my options do not show those service pre-configured. Quite possible I have to go in and manually add each and everyone of them but it is just TOO TIME consuming for me and time is one commodity I don’t have right now. IMPORTANT UPDATE: If you get messed up install as I have described right here – reload Default Settings as Thaya advises in his comment below and all the settings appear.
While I love the idea of the plugin and how it what it provides I had to deactivate it on my blog, perhaps until the time I will get to mess with the configuration options.
If you have a bit of extra time and willing to work on increasing the Social Impact of your blog and get more personal with your visitors – I highly recommend you check out the WP Greet Box plugin.
Update 11.26.08: Latest release of the plugin addresses all the issues I expressed concerns with above and works like a charm!
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Alex,
Plug in sound like a good idea, i’ll give it a try and see how it reacts on one of my blogs. see what I come up with.
I agree with wordpress loop, hand coding theme your theme really bothers some.
Regards,
George
Georges last blog post..Increasing Website Traffic in 6 Simple Steps
Hi Alex. Thank you for taking the time to review my plugin! I appreciate your honest opinion and constructive criticism.
I’m sorry your installation was messed up somehow. There is a “Reset ALL Options” button in the General Configurations page that might solve your issue (and install all default messages). If not, I would really love to try to reproduce the bug so that I can fix it for the public.
I am planning on releasing version 4.2 (working on the code right now actually) that will allow you to automatically insert this greet box at the top (and bottom) of your post (in the WP loop, as you said). Hopefully that will help make this plugin easier to use.
Again, thanks a lot for your time and input.
Thaya Kareesons last blog post..Project Honey Pot Http:BL is going back home
Thanks Thaya,
Reloading Default worked like a charm
I’ll play with it some more later. I should have thought about it. I’ll make corrections to post once tested. The “loop” thingy still stands
I’m looking forward to version 4.2 when you don’t have to tinker with the site code, but this sounds like an interesting plugin and I will give it a try on one of my sites…Mike
Mikes last blog post..Stich USB Humidifier
I will instal this plugin and give some opinion tomorrow, thanks for this plugin release. Anyway if you need language translation i can help you to translate in Indonesian language, it can help indonesian blogger who dont understand english to use your plugin.
Rendy Wongs last blog post..Contest for Charity, Fun and friends
Rendy,
You should try contacting the author of the plugin. I’m simply a messenger
Seing as how I’m a plugin junkie, I’ll download (12 steps not going so well) but how does it differ from “sociable”?
Dennis Edells last blog post..A Monkey Can Do Your Job!
Hey Dennis,
this plugin does not allow you to submit your site to social bookmarks;
it is rather when you arrive from a social bookmark site or any other
service that you can welcome your visitor with a welcome message
just for users from this or that site!
Imagine a user coming from Google getting displayed “i know you
found me on Google. Well you’ve come to the right place for your
search query” and if someone arrives from twitter… just look at the
image in the blogpost. Get it?
Alex!
I hope you will write in your ezine as soon as a version of this upgrade
is available that meets all your expectations? I would really like a
plugin like this if it is easy to use and customize. And thanks to THAYA
for the idea and for future upgrades of this. I’m sure it will be quite a
useful plugin.
Oops, then I had the name wrong. There is another (with sociable in the name) that does the same thing.
Dennis Edells last blog post..A Monkey Can Do Your Job!
@ Thaya – that sounds like a great plugin to have on all clients and my blogs, what is the cost to purchase the plugin? – Thanks
@Texas Ben
The plugin is FREE, but you can feel free to buy me a cup of coffee (by donating) if you’d like. If not, please spread the word about my plugin by tipping off your friends or writing a blog post about it.
Thank you!
Hi guys, I’ve just released WP Greet Box version 4.2 that addresses the theme editing issue and many other issues. Please check it out!
Thanks Thaya – I already upgraded it on this blog and posted the note at the end of article! Great job! now, if only we could choose if the message appears before or after the post
hint!
Version 4.2.2 should take care of this. Check it out!
Indeed it did! Great job Thaya!
I had a similar plugin installed on my blog, which was not as smart as this, but was forced to remove it since many people thought it kind of intrudes the reading area, by floating on the top. People will anyway bookmark or tweet the post if its really helpful. right?
Rajus last blog post..Screedbot – Get Animated Typewriter Effect for Your Text
@Raju
Do you mean floating on the top as an overlay or just a banner?