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 continue our conversation with Mitcho, the author of the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) and HookPress plugin.

Mitcho and I talk about jQuery, plugin development and plugin translation in WordPress. Mitcho goes into detail of the problems that come up that you cannot anticipate when creating plugins.

Further into our conversation we talk about providing translation support in plugins and the challenges with it. Mitcho recommended the CodeStyling Localization WordPress plugin to allow translators to translate plugins. Mitcho explains how to add code around your strings in your plugin to support translation. e.g. __(‘your string here’). The translation is performed using GetText, which is a very popular translation method and is very popular for software translation.

Mitcho goes on to suggest that a repository of translations be created and hosted at WordPress.org so translations can be managed and distributed independently of the plugins. I completely agree with Mitcho and think this is a great idea.

Near the end of the interview we talk more about YARPP features and how it can be added to themes.

Thank you so much Mitcho for taking the time to come on the  show and discussing your WordPress plugins and thoughts on translation.

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.

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/.

Today we’re covering the MailPress plugin to quickly add a newsletter mailing list to your blog.

Features include:

• Newsletters for (users can subscribe to)
  • Each post
  • Daily (digest of posts each day)
  • Weekly digest
  • Monthly digest
  • Comments
• Manually send newsletters
• Detailed logging of sent messages
• Themes for Email newsletters
• Add-ons (Sort of like plugins for this plugin)
  • Bulk import tool (comma separated list of addresses)
  • Import data (csv, XML sample, other WordPress plugins from database)
  • Mailing lists manager
  • Newsletter categories
  • Synchronize WordPress accounts with MailPress Users
  • Add roles and capabilities (Special User Roles to apply to WordPress accounts)
  • Custom Fields

The plugin is very powerful which makes it very complicated to setup and configure. It definitely helps to read all of the documentation and have previous knowledge of how to edit source code before attempting to use this plugin.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Advanced

To learn more about MailPress, please go to www.mailpress.org.

Today we’re covering the Search and Replace plugin to find and replace text in your blog.

The plugin allows you to find and replace text found in many of the database fields including:

• Content Body
• Titles
• Excerpts
• Meta Data
• Comments
• Tags
• Categories
• Category Descriptions

The plugin permanently changes text in the database. It is highly recommended that you first backup your database using the WP DB Backup plugin before proceeding with this plugin.

Show Feedback

Gene inquired about using the Google XML Sitemaps plugin (covered in episode 5) for multiple WordPress blogs located in sub folders on one web site domain. By default the Google XML Sitemaps plugin will create the sitemap within the root folder of the WordPress installation. Since Web Crawlers look for the sitemap.xml in the root folder of your web site, Gene was wondering if the plugin was intelligent enough to merge each blog’s sitemap into one in the root folder.

Unfortuantely, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin isn’t designed for managing multipe blog installations. Luckily, there is another solution to this problem. Setup a sitemap index as your root sitemap.xml file that links to other sitemaps on your web server. Here is an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/blog1/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2008-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/blog2/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2009-01-01</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

More details on sitemaps is available at www.sitemaps.org.

The Plugins Podcast is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the new Classic Image Button WordPress plugin.

The Classic Image Button plugin adds the classic image button option to the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress. The plugin adds the image button to the top row of the text formatting options. The plugin can work in tandem with the built-in WordPress image functions. This plugin also includes an option to disable inline styles in case you want your image styling to be compatible with the widest range of feed readers.

Disabling inline styles reverts the image properties vspace, hspace, border and align as image attributes instead of inline styling (e.g. border=”2″ instead of style=”border: 2px;”).

The Classic Image Button is added to both the main post and page visual editors as well as the smaller Press This editor.

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

Today we’re covering the CFormsII plugin to add contact forms, applications and other custom forms to WordPress.

Key features include:

• Complete gamut of field types (radio, checkbox, dropdown, listbox, password, date, etc…)
• Auto confirmation Email message
• Email admin(s) of form submission
• Use forms for blog comments
• Integrates with the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) content editor
• Multi-page forms
• Ability to attach files
• Captcha image to prevent SPAM form submissions
• Data saved in database exportable (XML, CSV, TAB)
• Specify start and/or end dates when forms are available
• Works with WordPress 2.7 (latest version as of this writing)

The plugin is developed by Delicious Days. To learn more about CFormsII plugin as well as other plugins developed by Delicious Days, please visit www.deliciousdays.com.

This is a shortened version of episode 1 covering the Blubrry Powerpress podcasting plugin. We will try to keep all episodes under 15 minutes for now on, sorry all.

Blubrry Powerpress is a lightweight WordPress plugin that adds only the essential features to your WordPress blog to turn it into a podcasting system. Below are some key features.

• Easily add podcast episodes to blog posts and pages
• Integrated audio/video media player
• iTunes RSS tags and album over art
• Podcast only RSS feed
• iTunes Ping
• Media size detection and duration in seconds detection for mp3s
• 3rd party statistics integration

In addition to the core fetureas above, the plugin has the ability to easily import Podpress episodes and settings so users can easily migrate switch plugins.

Tonight’s episode I’m covering the Blubrry Powerpress podcasting plugin.

Blubrry Powerpress is meant to be a very lightweight plugin to add only the essential features to your wordpress blog to turn it into a podcasting system. Below are some key features.

• Easily add podcast episodes to blog posts and pages
• Integrated audio/video media player
• iTunes RSS tags and album over art
• Podcast only RSS feed
• iTunes Ping
• Media size detection and duration in seconds detection for mp3s
• 3rd party statistics integration

In addition to the core fetureas above, the plugin has the ability to easily allow Podpress (an older WordPress podcasting plugin) users to easily migrate to Blubrry Powerpress. In this episode Angelo will explain how this works and what steps to take in case you decide to revert back to Podpress.