Plugin Day: Gravatars, Subscriptions, Related Posts, Previews?

Posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006

Today I spent a little time improving my comment area just for you. At least I tried, here’s what I did:

Gravatars
Pictures are wonderful, so if you have a gravatar and make a comment, your gravatar will now appear thanks to Skippy’s Gravatar Plugun. This had to be the easiest addition to the site today, just a few touches added to the style sheet and voila!
Comment Subscriptions
Yvonne keeps telling me to implement comment subscriptions. So I did. If you want to keep up with the comments on any post after you comment, just make sure you have the subscribe box ticked. I even styled the subscription manager to look like the rest of the site (a must in my opinion). Thanks to Mark Jaquith for the comment subscription plugin.
Related Posts
I have wanted to display a list of related posts for each post for ages. It seems like such a good idea. I am getting most of my traffic from search engines at the moment and the ability to show people, who just come across the site from a specific search, what else they can find here is brilliant. Thanks to Alex for the related posts plugin, another easy one to implement.
Live Preview
I think I have implemented the live preview plugin but I can’t see it working. If it works for anyone else please let me know!
Chunk URLs
Finally, just in case any of you thought you’d post a really long link and break my template, you can’t anymore, not with wp-chunk. Why would you do this anyway, since I have the nice and easy Markdown plugin too?

Are these plugins working for everyone else (especially the live comments)? What else am I missing that would make life easier around here? Do you have a favourite plugin that every Wordpress blog should have? Let me know!

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Comments

  1. 1September 16th, 2006 at 3:51 am

    Yvonne Says:

    The live preview plugin isn’t working for me, Phil :( I think you should just make your comment text area larger, that’d probably do the trick ;)


  2. 2September 16th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    Phil Says:

    Yeah, I can’t get that silly live preview to work either… I think I’ll have to remove it or try again another time. Strange thing is that it does actually create a div for the live preview to go in (check the source) but nothing else happens.

    As for the text size, are you using some crazy huge resolution that makes everything tiny? I’ll consider upping the size (or I might just add a button specially for you to change the size… it’s all good javascript practice)!


  3. 3September 16th, 2006 at 3:31 pm

    Hans Says:

    Instead of using the related posts plugin, I’m using the latest version of UTW. It gets you the tag and the tagcloud, to finish group related posts you have(those that got the same tag). Only a line call required and they are displayed.

    1 plugin = so many things ;)

    Yeah the Live preview isn’t working. I think that’s because of your theme. Many themes get messy using this plugins. That’s why I haven’t implemented it on mine, even if I find it a very interesting one.


  4. 4September 16th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

    TechZ Says:

    I use UTW as well, though the tagyu.com site/service is now over, atleast the yahoo.com works.

    Don’t you just love those simple to install plugins? :D

    Congrats on the great additions to the site, all worthy ones.


  5. 5October 30th, 2006 at 9:18 am

    Kyler Says:

    Hello,
    Just wondering if anyone could help. I did something stupid and started my blog using a numerical archive system, and now I'd like to change it so that the post title is part of the URL for SEO reasons. Is there any Wordpress plugins that anyone knows of that could switch it without sending Googlers to invalid pages? Maybe some sort of redirector to the correct page?

    Thanks.


  6. 6October 30th, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    Yvonne Says:

    Kyler, I don’t think a plugin exists like that. But you should just go ahead and change your permalinks - it’ll do less damage now than it will later.


  7. 7November 15th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Danny Says:

    Can anyone give me ideas , i might get free time in the future and want to give it for wordpress …
    any idea ?
    i want idea from simple thing to mid … 1-2 hours –> 8-10 hours .
    post your ideas…


  8. 8November 17th, 2006 at 5:59 pm

    Marc Says:

    Does anyone know the name of the wordpress plugin that creates a list of your posts in a category instead of just displaying them one after the other? I want it so that when someone clicks on a category they just get a list of posts from that category.

    I'm sure Ive seen one…and sifting through the WP site is a nightmare


  9. 9December 12th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

    Dean Says:

    What I want to do on my blog, is every few hours take the oldest post and move it to the
    front of the queue, all automatically. Anyone know if there is a plugin that can do this or
    a simple way to set up another plugin to do this (use my own feed perhaps)?
    Thanks.


  10. 10December 13th, 2006 at 5:42 am

    Hans Says:

    @ Dean

    you could put those posts in a particular category and call them using this plugin.

    Nice site about the dj….I love Techno..


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