Today we’re covering the Configure SMTP WordPress Plugin. This simple plugin allows you to customize the server your blog sends email for notifications, comments, etc… It is very useful if your emails from your blog are getting blocked because of the smtp server they are relayed through is black listed.

Features Include:

• SMTP host and port options
• SMTP authentication user name and password
• SMTP over secure SSL option
• Sender “From:” name and email
• Configure for Gmail option
• Test configuration

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the Configure SMTP WordPress Plugin, please visit the WordPress plugins page, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/configure-smtp/. To see more projects developed by Scott Reilly, please go to www.coffee2code.com.

Today we’re covering the Sociable WordPress Plugin. Similar in function to the Share This WordPress Plugin, Sociable adds link and share icons to the bottom of your blog posts and pages to make it easy for your web visitors to share your content through their favorite social network. List of social sites is extensive and include Digg, Facebook, Delicious, Twitter and MySpace and also provides an share via email option.

Features Include:

• Ability to order the icons with an intuitive drag and drop interface
• Disable/Enable the roll over functionality
• Select which types of pages icons should appear on, such as posts, pages, homepage, etc..
• Switch between icons and text links
• Option to use a pop up (thickbox) to display icons
• Open links in new window option
• Use your own custom icon images

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the Sociable WordPress Plugin, please visit the WordPress plugins sociable page, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/.

In this episode, Angelo goes into detail of the WordPress coverage at this year’s PodCamp Pittsburgh.

Quick Announcement: I will be speaking on Friday, October 16th at the 2009 Blog World and New Media Expo within the WordCamp Las Vegas sessions track. I’ll be speaking on how to setup WordPress for Podcasting at 12:45pm. Friday and Saturday I will be present at the Blubrry/RawVoice booth, so if you’re at Blog World, please stop by and say hello!

PodCamp Pittsburgh 2009

The first session I attended was WordPress Knowledge Exchange hosted by Mike Woycheck (Woy) & John Carman. The session covered an array of recommended plugins and had a lot of insight on WordPress. Here are links to John’s and Woy’s recommended WordPress plugins. Plugins that stood out to me were Bookmarkify, Useful 404s, Time Zone, and Maintenance Mode.

The second session I attended was SEO Plug-ins for Your WordPress Website: Using SEO Tools for your WordPress Website hosted by Jami Broom of Clicks to My Site. Her session slides are available as a downloadable PDF. Jami covered a number of resources for SEO including Google’s Starter Guide, SEOBook.com and SEOMoz.com. Plugins that stood out during this session were Google Analyticator, Robots Meta, Redirection, SEO Friendly Images, Nofollow Case by Case, Platinum SEO Pack, and SEO Smart Links.

PodCamp Pittsburgh was a great unconference! The organizers and volunteers did a great job with the event. I can’t wait for next year!

Next episode I’ll be speaking with Max Sweet (TimeStampStudios.com), a WordPress plugin developer and web designer for WebmasterRadio.FM. Max discusses why his employer moved to WordPress and how the custom plugins he’s developed meet specific needs for the online radio station. We also discuss WordPress MU.

Today we’re covering  TweetMeme Button WordPress plugin.

The TweetMeme Button WordPress plugin adds a Tweet me icon to your blog posts and pages. The plugin displays the number of re-tweets referencing your blog post. It is useful both to encourage readers to re-tweet your blog post as well as display how popular the post they are reading is on twitter. You can configure the plugin to remove the tweet me button from both static pages and from your home page. You can also customize the position and location of the button in your blog posts and pages.

The TweetMeme plugin is easy to configure and setup. One small note, some users may experience issues with the button itself depending on how well the theme is designed.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the TweetMeme Button plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/as well as the TweetMeme service at tweetmeme.com.

Announcements

PodCamp Pittsburgh 4: I will be speaking at PodCamp Pittsburgh this Saturday, October 10th on Plugins for WordPress to assist with Blogging and Podcasting. If you live in the area, please try to make it out, PodCamp Pittsburgh is a free event and covers not only podcasting, but social media, blogging and social sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Blog World and New Media Expo 2009: I will be speaking on Friday, October 16th at Blog World within the WordCamp Las Vegas sessions track. I’ll be covering how to setup WordPress for Podcasting at 12:45pm. Friday and Saturday I will be present at the Blubrry/RawVoice booth, so if you’re at BlogWorld, please stop by and say hello!

Today we’re covering the RSSCloud WordPress Plugin.

The RSSCloud WordPress Plugin is written by Joseph Scott, a heavy WordPress developer who focuses his efforts with the blogging API in WordPress. I’ve been following his blog for years now, his knowledge in these areas of blogging are of the highest caliber.

RSSCloud (rsscloud.org) is a specification and protocol written by Dave Winer to provide instant notifications of new blog content to subscribers. It allows for a service or web application to add itself to a list on your blog that you later notify when you publish new content. It is similar to the Update Services / Ping feature in WordPress except that the blog author does not need to manage the list of services he/she needs to notify. The following sketch explains the process quite well.

One myth is that this replaces feeds. In reality, RSSCloud only enforces the standardization of using RSS 2.0 specification for feeds as it is the only feed specification that allows for the RSSCloud protocol (namespace) to be added. The use of RSSCloud also eliminates unnecessary network traffic, as the subscription service would no longer need to pull your feed on a regular basis, Only pulling your feed when there is new content.

The RSSCloud WordPress Plugin enables WordPress to become RSSCloud aware, adding the cloud tag to your blogs RSS 2.0 feed, accepting requests from feed subscription services, and sending notifications to such feed subscription services when you publish new blog posts.

You can learn more about the RSSCloud specification at rsscloud.org and download the new RSSCloud WordPress plugin at WordPress.org/extend/plugins/rsscloud/

Please feel free to leave comments or feedback for the show either by using our contact form or calling  (614) 859-9007.

The Plugins Podcast is pleased to announce the availability of the new HTML Page Sitemap WordPress plugin.

This simple plugin adds an HTML (Not XML) sitemap of your blog pages (not posts) by entering the shortcode [html-sitemap] in the page content. This simple plugin is configured from the shortcode. Settings include the sort_column, sort_order, exclude, include, depth, child_of, meta_key, meta_value, authors, number, and offset. You can set essentially everything you can set in the wp_list_pages function.

This plugins is perfect for those who use WordPress as a CMS.

Please see the Template Documentation for the wp_list_pages function for detailed documentation of the available attributes and their values.

The plugin may be downloaded from the WordPress Plugins Directory or by the following link: Download version 1.0.

In this episode we speak with Mitcho, the author of the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) and HookPress plugin.

Mitcho goes into detail why he created YARPP and HookPress, where the plugins originated and and why he made them.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. YARPP includes many features and can be used by novice and advanced users. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently recommended YARPP as on of his favorite plugins.

HookPress plugin demonstrates how actions that occur in WordPress can be tied to external web sites via passing on information, similar to how pings work. It allows for push notifications to other web pages for custom development. HookPress uses WebHooks as its inspiration, so if you’re interested in learning more about WebHooks, check out WebHooks.org. It is important to note that HookPress is intended for developers, average users may be confused by the plugin and how to use it.

Part two will be available next week, stay tuned.

Today we’re covering the WPtouch mobile smart phone WordPress plugin.

The WPtouch Mobile Theme plugin adds a mobile friendly interface to your blog’s web site. The plugin allows you to quickly add support to your blog web site for mobile phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android G1/myTouch and the new Palm Pre. Installation is simple and configuration options are easy to configure.

Features include:

• Clean navigation interface in an iPhone friendly format.
• Supports Blackberry, iPhone and iPod Touch
• Supports Google Android, Opera mini and Palm Pre with some hacking
• Settings for displaying categories, tags and author name in post listings
• Settings for adding Google AdWords and Analytics
• Customize the styling and colors and your logo (as an icon)
• Support for other plugins

Here are some screen shots from an iPhone and from a Palm Pre:

If you’re familiar with editing PHP code and would like to enable WPtouch for Android, Palm Pre and Opera mini, please edit the wptouch.php, replace the array on line 250 with the following:

$useragents = array( “iPhone”,  “iPod”,  “aspen”,  “android”,  “dream”, “webos”, “incognito”,  “opera mini”, “webmate”,  “BlackBerry”);

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the WPtouch plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/.

The design of the Plugins Podcast logo and site theme are by LogoBot2000.com. LogoBot2000 has very low prices on logo designs and images for your blog and podcast needs. If you visit the site, please let Brian know Angelo from the Plugins Podcast sent you.

This episode we continue our interview with Lorelle, the host of Lorelle on WordPress. Lorelle on WordPress is a popular WordPress blog that covers WordPress, reporting on new and exciting happenings in the WordPress community including development, new features, plugins plus help, tips, advice, and blogging techniques.

In this segment we go into detail with a plugin I’ve developed but yet to release that creates static files for your blog feeds. Lorelle goes on to suggest the WP Super Cache plugin as well.

Lorelle goes into detail about how plugin developers can support their plugins. We both agree that the forum system currently in place at WordPress.org is lacking. I also mention that there are advantages when a business or company develops plugins vs. an individual. Lorelle hit a nail on the head with plugin support. It is important that plugin users first read the documentation before asking questions that have already been answered in the docs.

Lorelle asks me what tip I have for WordPress plugin developers. I recommend learning how to use the Subversion system to allow WordPress.org to host your plugin.

Lorelle will be touring other WordCamps scheduled throughout the world. If you’re hosting a WordPress event, please check out Lorelle’s WordPress event page.

Thank you so much Lorelle for coming onto the show and discussing WordPress and WordPress plugins!

This episode we continue our interview with Lorelle, the host of Lorelle on WordPress. Lorelle on WordPress is a popular WordPress blog that covers WordPress, reporting on new and exciting happenings in the WordPress community including development, new features, plugins plus help, tips, advice, and blogging techniques.

Lorelle continues our conversation listing some plugins she recommends. Archivist WordPress Plugin showcase older blog posts on the front page of your WordPress blog.

Lorelle and I agree that plugin developers need to write and maintain better readme.txt files to their plugins so the plugins can be easily found on searches.

We also talk about niche plugins for playing chess, tarot card reading, plugin to display playing cards, genealogy plugins (TNG) and more!

Part three will be available next week, stay tuned.

This episode we interview Lorelle, host of Lorelle on WordPress blog. Lorelle on WordPress is a popular WordPress blog that covers WordPress, reporting on new and exciting happenings in the WordPress community including development, new features, plugins plus help, tips, advice, and blogging techniques.

Lorelle has a lot of plugins to recommend. The Customizable Post Listings is one of her favorites. Created by Scott Reilly, the plugin allows you to display headings with links to related blog posts in many different formats to help promote other blog posts on your site. We also talk about plugins that can add a contact form and creative commons badge to your blog.

Lorelle mentioned the WordPress Plugin Competition 2009. The competition encourages WordPress plugin developers to create and submit exciting and useful plugins and possibly win $3,000 too!

We talk a little bit about plugin development, I go into detail about how I resolved a problem I was having printing a error message from my plugin in the edit post page of WordPress.

Part two will be available next week, stay tuned.

Today we’re covering the WP Greet Box WordPress plugin.

The WP Greet Box plugin adds a welcome box to the top of your blog post and/or pages based on where the visitor came from. The box can be extensively customized and special greetings can be added. The plugin is useful if you wish to help new users find additional content on your blog as well as encourage visitors to subscribe to your feed or tweet the blog post they are currently viewing.

Features include:

• Extensive list of greetings for sites such as Google, Yahoo search, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…
• Ability to add custom greetings and greeting icons
• Open links in greeting box in new browser windows option
• Display related posts within your welcome boxes to help visitor find additional relevant content
• Import/Export options
• Extensive documentation to add greetings to your WordPress theme

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the WP Greet Box plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/.

This episode we continue our interview with Paul Kehrer. Paul has written 4 plugins, 2 of which are publicly available called CDN Tools and Fidgetr plugins, both available at wordpress.org.

Please click for part 1 of this 2 part interview.

In part 2 of this 2 part interview we continue talking about tips for WordPress developers. Paul recommends WordPress plugin developers check out Adam Brown‘s web site for his extensive documentation of the actions and hooks  (Adam Brown’s wp_hooks) in WordPress. We go on to discuss the subversion repository provided by WordPress.org. We reflect on the old and new WordPress plugin search web site as well as discuss the problem when plugins haven’t been updated for the latest builds of WordPress.

To learn more about Paul Kehrer and his plugins, please visit swearingscience.com.

This episode we interview Paul Kehrer, a WordPress user and plugin developer. Paul has written 4 plugins, 2 of which are publicly available called CDN Tools and Fidgetr plugins, both available at wordpress.org.

In part 1 of this 2 part interview we talk about developing plugins, web development, HTML5, as well as discussing open source software. Paul is an open source veteran and co-developed the popular MySQLTuner application written in Perl.

We discuss other plugins such as WP Super Cache, WP-Syntax,

Near the end of part 1, Paul discusses tips for other WordPress plugin developers.

Part two will be available next week, stay tuned

Today we’re covering the  Subscribe to Comments WordPress plugin.

The Subscribe to Comments WP plugin allows comment contributors to receive email notifications when additional comments are left for the specified blog post. This is a great way to encourage both comment contribution and increase your returning visits to your web site.

Features include:

• Customize From email address and name
• Users who do not leave comments can subscribe to comments
• Customize the messages shown to comment author, subscribers and unsubscribed users
• Customize styling for subscription manager pages
• Add your own custom header, footer and sidebar (for advanced users)

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any (Creating customized header, footer and sidebar Plugins Skill Level: Advanced)

To learn more about the Subscribe to Comments plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/.