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 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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

The WordPress Plugins Podcast feedback hotline is now available to take your suggestions, feedback and comments.

Call:

(614) 859-9007

Or use the widget below to have our hotline call you:

Please indicate at the end of the message if the comments/feedback left may be used in the show.

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/.

If you’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 2.8 and you’ve noticed that your friendly post editor (WYSIWYG by TinyMCE) no longer appears, you must likely have Google Gears enabled for your site. The Javascript error console includes a line number error and when viewing the script source, unreadable binary characters are present.

To fix, remove your site from the list of sites Google Gears is enabled. To do this from Firefox, click the “Tools” pull down menu and select “Gears Settings”. Click ‘remove’ for the sites listed that are having the problem.

From my research, I’ve discovered that Google Gears Caches files locally without regard to javascript errors, cleared browser cache or taking into account the query strings in the URLs.  It may be too complicated for Google Gears to detect javascript errors, but it should detect when the cache has been cleared in a browser in my opinion. More importantly, when the URL changes, e.g. from /wp-includes/js/tinymce/wp-tinymce.php?c=0&ver=3241-1141 to /wp-includes/js/tinymce/wp-tinymce.php?c=0&ver=3241-1141&change=1), Google Gears should treat this new URL link differently, as the query string may tell the server to send back a completely different code.Google Gears Developers: Please treat the URL including the query string as separate files to be cached in Google Gears.

The only way I could see WordPress developers from preventing this from happening in the future is to rename the wp-tinymce.php file for every release. There may be some documentation for Google Gears as well to tell it to upgrade all of the locally cached files.

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/.

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/.

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.

Today we’re covering the Contact Form 7 plugin to add custom contact forms to WordPress.

Key features include:

• Solid set of field types (radio, checkbox, dropdown, listbox, email,  etc…)
• Email admin(s) of form submission
• Ability to attach files
• Captcha image to prevent SPAM form submissions
• Easily customizable (as long as you know html/css)
• Translated to over 30 languages
• Works with WordPress 2.7 (latest version as of this writing)

The plugin is developed by Takayuki Miyoshi. To learn more about Contact Form 7 plugin, please visit http://ideasilo.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/contact-form-7/.

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.

Today we’re covering the ShareThis WordPress plugin. The ShareThis plugin adds the famous ShareThis widget to your blog posts and pages. The ShareThis widget makes it easy for your viewers to link your posts and pages on their preferred social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Facebook, Delicious and MySpace and also provides an share via email option.

Features Include:

• Simple ShareThis link with icon
• Extensive list of social bookmarking and sharing sites
• Share via Email option
• Options to add to pages and posts
• Code snippet to add to your theme
• Widget you can add to other parts of your web site

The plugin gives you the ability to customize the placement of the ShareThis widget in your theme. All you have to do is add the following line where you want the ShareThis link to appear.

<?php if (function_exists('sharethis_button')) { sharethis_button(); } ?>

To learn more about the ShareThis plugin, please visit the ShareThis WordPress plugin page, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/. To learn more about ShareThis, please visit the official ShareThis web site, www.sharethis.com.

Today we’re covering the WP-DB-Backup plugin and touching on a few other backup tips. With just a few simple steps, you can keep backups of your blog so you can feel confident you’ll never loose data.

Key features in the WP-DB-Backup Pack include:

• Complete database backups
• Exclude post revisions
• Exclude comment spam
• Backup to folder on server (not recommended)
• Email backup as attachment
• Save backup on your computer
• Schedule backups

To learn more about the WP-DB-Backup plugin, please visit the WordPress plugins WP-DB-Backup page, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/.

Some other backup tips include:

• Keep a backup copy of your wp-config.php and .htaccess file on your local computer
• Occasionally backup the entire wp-content/uploads folder and all of its contents
• Keep a list of your important plugins handy in case you need to re-install them
• If you modified your theme, backup the entire theme folder and its contents, typically found in the wp-content/themes/your_theme/

PodCamp Toronto This Weekend

I will be attending PodCamp Toronto this weekend. On Saturday between 2-2:30pm I will be speaking in room 357 on “Setting up WordPress for Podcasting”. If you can make it out to PodCamp Toronto, please feel free to say hello.

In this episode, we have a special guest Peter Keung, author of Peter’s Custom Anti-SPAM plugin. During the interview, Peter tells us a little about what he does, gives us the 411 on his plugin and explains why he was inspired to create the plugin. Peter also recommends another plugin for us to check out called SimplePress forum plugin and has some tips for other plugin developers.

To learn more about Peter and his plugins, please visit www.theblog.ca.

Today we’re covering Search Engine Optimization and the All In One SEO Pack plugin. Remember, a well optimized web site for SEO will help your ranking in search engine results.

Key features in the All In One SEO Pack include:

• Reorders page titles to optimize search engine coverage
• Detailed HTML Meta descriptions and keywords
• No follow options to prevent search engines from indexing pages that contain redundant content such as category and tag result pages

The plugin is developed by Semper Fi Web Design. To learn more about the All In One SEO Pack plugin as well as other plugins developed by Semper Fi Web Design, please visit www.semperfiwebdesign.com.

Instructions how to setup Permalinks are included in this episode. Permalinks, or permanent links, give your blog site friendly URLs for your pages and blog posts that search engines love to see.

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 Google XML Sitemaps plugin to generate valid site maps for popular search engines such as Google, MSN Search, Yahoo and Ask.com to process.

Key features include:

• Automated regeneration (New and edited posts and pages automatically regenerate sitemaps)
• Auto Notify Google, MSN Search, Yahoo and Ask.com when sitemaps are updated
• Optional compressed version of sitemap file
• Detailed selection of content to be included in Sitemaps (e.g. only posts and static pages)
• Customize priority weights based on page type (homepage, archives, static pages, etc..)
• Works with WordPress 2.7 (latest version as of this writing)

The plugin is developed by Arne Brachhold. To learn more about the Google XML Sitemaps plugin as well as other plugins developed by Arne, please visit www.arnebrachhold.de.

The CFormsII WordPress plugin is currently not available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. The plugin is still available for download from the Delicious Days web site, http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin.

The plugin was removed due to the current license packaged with the plugin. The future versions will be released with the correct license. We are hopeful that the new version will return to the WordPress Plugins directory.

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.

Today we’re covering the Peter’s Custom Anti-SPAM plugin to combat comment SPAM in WordPress. The plugin adds a Captcha image to confirm that the actual user leaving the comment is a human and not a scripted SPAM bot or comment spamming crawler.

Key features include:

• Easy to read customizable Captcha words
• Random font styles
• Audio option for visually impaired users
• Does not require Javascript or web browser cookies
• Works with WordPress 2.7 (latest version as of this writing)

The plugin is developed by Peter Keung. To learn more about Peter’s Custom Anti SPAM plugin as well as other plugins developed by Peter on his web site, www.theblog.ca.

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.

Today I gave a friend my list of web logs I like to ping. If you’re not familiar with pinging as far as blogging is concerned, it is a method for your blog to let other web blog directories know that you’ve published a new post. If you don’t ping sites to let them know you have new content, then your post will not get picked up until a web crawling app crawls your site. I personally like things to be instant, which is why I love weblog pings.

In WordPress, these ping sites are saved in a field titled Updating Services. Each Service (or weblog, as I like to call it) URL is entered on a new line. Here’s my list of weblogs I currently ping when I publish a new post.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rssrpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://odeo.com/api/xmlrpc/1.0/ping

Pingomatic.com one is the default value. Technorati.com, weblogs.com and blogsearch.google.com I believe are the most important sites to ping. I still include some others as you see above to get the most bang for my ping.

You can learn more about this topic on the Update Services page on wordpress.org.

What sites do you ping and why?

Welcome to Plugins, The WordPress Plugins Podcast.

The Plugins Podcast aims to cover one WordPress plugin each week with occasional interviews of plugin developers as well as with heavy plugin users. Normal episodes will aim to be between 10-15 minutes in mp3 format.

This podcast is hosted by Angelo Mandato, a seasoned software programmer, web developer and network administrator. Angelo’s currently the CIO of RawVoice, the company behind the Blubrry Podcasting Community. He’s been working with PHP since the Winter of 2000 and started using WordPress for his personal blog since April of 2005. Angelo’s developed 4 WordPress plugins, 2 of which are publicly available: Subscribe Sidebar and Blubrry Powerpress.

If you have plugin suggestions, comments or would like to be interviewed on the show, please E-mail pluginspodcast [at] gmail (dot) com.