In this episode we’re 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.

Max explains why they’re using WordPress and a briefly explains the plugin he developed that manages the images that scroll across the top of the WebmasterRadio.FM web site.

We talk about Yoast and his Sociable plugin. Yoast is a plugin developer who has created a lot of very powerful WordPress plugins. Yoast also hosts the Press This podcast.

Further into the discussion Max explains WordPress MU and how to can be used for hosting multiple WordPress blogs.

We go into detail about some plugins that Max has developed that he may be releasing in the future. One that sounds very useful is a Module Switch plugin which would allow you to switch content on a page from say an advertisement to a live stream embed.

Max impresses me greatly because he is not only a plugin developer but also a graphic designer. Max explains the advantage of being both a designer and a web developer, which is useful when planning the development and coordinating CSS with the design.

If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback, please email angelo [at] pluginspodcast,com, use our contact form, or call (614) 859-9007 to leave a voice message.

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!

In this episode, we speak with Beth Lynn Eicher, one of the organizers of the Ohio Linux Fest coming this September 25-27, 2009 in Columbus, OH.

Talking with Beth Lynn, we discuss Linux User Groups (LUGs) in the region as well as other Linux Fests that are taking place in other parts of the country. We also learn about what bug 1 (bug number one) is.

Later on in our conversation with Beth Lynn, we discuss her WordPress blog What Will We Use and some of the plugins she is using.  Beth Lynn highly recommends the W3Counter WordPress plugin and service to track web visitors. It can be used together or as an alternative to Google Analytics. From the looks of W3Counter, this would provide ideal web statistics if your interested in knowing the platforms your visitors are using.

Beth Lynn also goes into detail with her experience with poorly written themes and outdated plugins. This is a common problem with WordPress that many of us have dealt with at one time or another using WordPress.

I spoke with Beth Lynn for over an hour on a variety of Linux topics. The complete interview is available at the TechPodcasts.com Weekly Podcast avaialble at blog.techpodcasts.com.

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  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/.

Today we’re covering the  NextGEN Gallery WordPress plugin.

The NextGEN Gallery plugin adds image gallery functionality to your WordPress blog. Click here for a demonstration.

Features include:

• Flash Slideshow
• Flash Viewer (as an additional addon)
• Templates
• CSS styling
• Watermarks
• JavaScript Effect (Web 2.0 feel)
• Custom Media Gallery RSS feed
• Sidebar Widget
• Tag images
• Detailed descriptions
• Multi-language support
• Administration
  • Copy/Move images
  • Upload zip file of multiple pictures
  • Integrates to Post/Page editor (TinyMCE)

The NextGEN Gallery plugin makes it easy to add a modern gallery to your blog. Users knowledgeable in CSS and HTML can take further advantage of this plugin, though knowledge of CSS and HTML is not necessary to use this plugin.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the NextGEN Gallery plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/.

Today we’re covering the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin.

Google Analytics is a free web site statistics service provided by Google. This plugin allows you to easily add the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress blog.

Features include:

• Easily set your Analytic Account ID
• Disable tracking of outbound clicks and downloads
• Set the extensions of files to track as downloads
• Sub-domain tracking
• Track AdSense

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin makes it easy to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog and to configure custom features in Google Analytics. If you do not need any of these custom features and you’re comfortable with editing your theme, you can simply add your Google Analytics to the footer of your theme rather than use this plugin.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about Google Analytics for WordPress plugin, please go to yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/.

Have you ever added an image to your blog post to find that the width of the image exceeds the width of the column of the page? Here’s a simple fix you can add to your theme’s style sheet to solve this problem. The fix below assumes that you have a class for your blog post entries called “.entry”. This class may be called something different depending on the preference of the theme developer.

.entry img {
max-width: 500px;
height: auto;
}

The max-width: is the maximum width the image can be within the .entry class. In this example the maximum width for an image is 500 pixels. We set the height: auto so the height of the image is auto adjusted to maintain the aspect ratio. Images that are smaller than the max-width will not be resized.

Note that this will not work for Internet Explorer 6 or older.