I have much love for some of the WordPress plugins that save me precious time. This list is as much for my own reference, as it is to share these great resources with all of you! I’ve been updating this list on my Facebook “Notes” page as I find superior plugins. Make sure to click that little button up top that says “Become a Fan” to receive updates directly to your Facebook wall. Hey, leave a comment too, it’ll make my day!

Search and Replace
A simple search for find strings in your database and replace the string. This one saved me literally hours of work when an affiliate plugin changed my affiliate ID to the plugin author’s ID! With one click of a button, my links were MINE again. (I had absolutely zero issues with this one, but recommend that you back up your database before use anyway.)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/

Pretty Link
Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. You can now shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host. Pretty Link is a killer plugin for people who want to mask their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, their links on Twitter to come from their own domain, or generally increase the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pretty-link/

GD Star Rating
I’ve run a game review blog and forum for almost four years now… and I just this week took the time to research, and install a ratings plugin for the WordPress blog. Actually, I installed two, the first one didn’t work at ALL. When I found GD Star Rating, I had my doubts due to the way none of the other ratings plugins were being maintained by the developers… but I was pleasantly surprised when I took the time to really read their documentation (of which there’s tons, another nice suprise).

I’m not going to pretend that it was as easy as “one click install” sounds… far from it. This plug in offers so much in terms of ratings and reviews for practically every aspect of a blog (comments, posts, pages…) you just have to take your time setting it up. Here’s how I’m using it for my game reviews. Trust me, if you have ANY need for a ratings or review system on your WordPress site, you are going to want to bookmark this one.

GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings. Plugin supports use of cache plugins and dynamic loading of data using ajax.

Official WP page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-star-rating/
Support Site: http://www.gdstarrating.com/

Premium Plugins

Gravity Forms
Not only does this plugin allow me to integrate complex forms into my sites (like my site evaluation form), but it enables me to have the form data post to the blog. On one site, I have game reviewers submit their reviews with a form, and their input hits my moderation panel as a post waiting to be approved. Also useful for job posting sites, tutorial sites, guest article submissions… the possibilities are endless. Data collected is downloadable in cvs format, which is great for surveys… I simply can’t say enough about this plugin. My design clients get this included with their sites that I design for them as a “perk”.
http://www.gingerwench.com/GravityForms

The past week has been rather busy for WP plugin developers. I’ve seen updates to several of the plugins I use to manage sites using WP as a CMS, including NextGen Gallery, All in One SEO, IntenseDebate, and SexyBookmarks.

Update Details

• NextGen Gallery:  V1.4.1 bug fixes [details]
• All in One SEO: 1.6.8 – Fix empty delimiter bug, improved memory resources used. (Don’t forget to reactivate!)
• IntenseDebate: v2.5 improvements and bug fixes [details]
• SexyBookmarks: v2.6.0.1 (rollback due to v2.6.0 issues)  I found DesignBump to available sites to include (Yay!)

CommentLuv available for IntenseDebate

I was lucky enough to beta test the CommentLuv plugin for IntenseDebate, and I’ve got to say that it worked without issue. After helping Andy test it, and get the placement tweaked, I’ve got to say that I’m very happy with the integration! IntenseDebate added the CommentLuv plugin to their offerings this week, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, here are some reasons that you may want to do so:

• IntenseDebate offers your commentators the ability to gain exposure to their Twitter ID, FaceBook ID, OpenID, or their IntenseDebate ID. They get to choose which profile to comment under, or they can simply choose to comment as a guest. Those of us interested in branding ourselves appreciate the option.
• Unlike other popular comment plugins, IntenseDebate removes the “rel=nofollow” attribute from the links included in comments. This means that the links to your commentators latest blog posts through CommentLuv will offer the linkback to their sites that just may entice more people to comment on your blogs! Add this to the branding opportunity of the ID login system, and you’ve got a great combo to offer your visitors.
• When you install the IntenseDebate comment plugin, you should deactivate the regular CommentLuv WP plugin, and instead activate CommentLuv directly through your IntenseDebate account. This means that you have one less plugin running off your WP install. With the improvements made to IntenseDebate this week, the load time is not an issue at all, so you save on load time all the way around. Andy explains it here.
• IntenseDebate and WordPress have common developers. They were meant to work together

Security Reminder

Remember what we learned this past September… keeping your WordPress install updated to the latest version is the best way to keep it secure! The same goes for your plugins. After all, if the plugin developers are willing to update the code for us in order to help us keep secure, why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? I appreciate all the time and effort it takes to keep a plugin compatible with all the core WordPress updates, as well as the security fixes when a vulnerability is discovered… so I update my sites (and my client sites) ASAP. In doing so, I also try to provide the plugin devs with feedback and bug reports… a very small “something” I can do to give back to the community that has provided us with such a great platform to work with!

IntenseDebate is a blog plugin created by Automattic, and is available for WordPress, Blogger, tumblr, and TypePad. Simply stated in the plugin description, IntenseDebate includes: Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!

As I participate in commenting in other blogs, I’ve grown to appreciate the ability to post using my Twitter ID, and the only way I’d known of to offer that was to use the Disqus commenting system. The reason I decided to try the IntenseDebate system instead was the fact that Andy over at ComLuv is working on integrating the CommentLuv plugin wiht IntenseDebate. Ultimately, I would like to offer the features of IntenseDebate, as well as the CommentLuv feature of including a commentator’s latest blog post. Since the integration isn’t yet finished, I’ve opted to run IntenseDebate minus CommentLuv, for now.

Update: Andy’s right on top of things as usual, and has allowed me to beta test the CommentLuv functionality for IntenseDebate. It’s installed and working, so make sure to leave a comment and get your latest blog post seen! Thanks, Andy!

It’s all about the options

Using IntenseDebate enables me to offer my readers the kind of options I enjoy when commenting on other blogs. Most importantly, it gives them the option to comment under their Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or InteseDebate member names. If a reader doesn’t have one of those, or simply prefers not to use them, they can also choose to comment as a guest.

This works well in my opinion because readers get to choose how they’re referenced. Do I want to send others that may read my comments to my Twitter account, or my FaceBook page? Blogger users can sign into their OpenID and have an automatic link to their blog, and IntenseDebate users can connect through their account there to increase their participation with the thousands of other avid commentators on that social site.

IntenseDebate also enables users signed in through Twitter to send their comment directly to their Twitter account, something that encourages discussion on that site as well. As an avid Twitter user myself, I like that option.

One of the most important aspects about offering my readers the ability to comment within their Twitter account IDs was the (oauth_token)… When you sign into your Twitter account to comment through the Intense Debate plugin, you are presented with a secure page to login to your Twitter account (https://). Knowing that I’m not giving away my Twitter account information when I comment on other blogs is important to me, so I wanted to make sure my readers are able to use this function safely, and with confidence.

My plugin has plugins!

Another feature I love about IntenseDebate is the list of Plugins that we can add to it. This is done through the IntenseDebate.com site, and plugins include a spell checker (which I installed right away), smileys, social bookmarking buttons through AddThis and AddToAny (for post and comments), FaceBook share buttons, TweetMeMe buttons, and even video embedding plugins. These plugins couldn’t be easier to “install”, simply click them while in your InteseDebate account, and they’re added to your blog’s comment area upon your next reload of your site!

This is handy because by using these functions within IntenseDebate enables you to get rid of other plugins within your WordPress install, or for other platforms, it may give you functionality that you can’t get otherwise. Valuable load time saver for WP users, and freedom for Blogger and TypePad users.

Features, Features, Features

Rather than listing all the features available through the IntenseDebate plugin, I’ll just direct you to their Features page. I love that it offers ‘Reply by email’, comment threading, and email notifications. Again, this saves WP users from needing additional plugins, saving load time. The FriendFeed Comment Retrieval is another great feature that increases interactivity on that social site, and I look forward to IntenseDebate doing something similar for Twitter Re-Tweets and/or mentions… that would help me get rid of another plugin!

Being an advocate of branding and brand marketing, I appreciate the integration of the Gravatars in IntenseDebate. The more places people see my GingerWench heart, the more people are aware of my brand.

I’m also looking forward to becoming more involved in the IntenseDebate community. Through the profile pages, we’re able to share information about our sites and social network with other commenting addicts… I love how I can see all my comments accross the entire IntenseDebate platform right there in one list… this makes it easier to follow discussions no matter how I set my ‘email notifications’.

If you have an IntenseDebate profile, feel free to link to it in the comments here, I need to build my list of blogs to follow there, and invite you to follow mine as well.

Do you use the IntenseDebate plugin on your blog? Let me know how it’s working out for you, and how it’s increased your blog’s comment participation! I’m looking forward to seeing increased comments to this blog, and welcome all forms of “intense debate”.

A security update for WordPress was released earlier today. Version 2.8.5 offers some code cleanup, as well as a fix for the  trackback DOS attacks that had been discovered recently.  If you think you’ve been effected by one of the exploits attacking WordPress sites, the WordPress Exploit Scanner is being recommended by WordPress. The Exploit Scanner has been updated as of today, and is available for download here.

The update to version 2.8.5 includes the following:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

I’ve already updated this blog, and used the Automatic update option available through the WordPress Dashboard. I receive daily database updates thanks to the WordPress Database Backup, so my updates are fast and easy. This one didn’t present any compatibility issues with my plugins, and went very smoothly.

I will be updating all my client sites and then all of my own sites within the next few hours. I highly recommend all WordPress users update to the latest version ASAP. Remember what we learned last month about WordPress Security… keeping your WordPress install up to date is the absolute best security defense.

Earlier this week, I read on Twitter that the All in One SEO WordPress plugin v.1.6.7 was having issues within WordPress 2.8.4. and NOT to update the plugin. Links included in the Tweet led to the official plugin forum, and the WordPress.org support forum, where more than one individual were experiencing the same issue about the options page disappearing, and one person even mentioned that their blog had slowed down dramatically due to the load time imposed by the new version of this search engine optimization plugin.

Before I retweeted the information, I went into my WordPress admin to take a look at the All in One options page for this blog. It was enabled, and looked to be working fine, all options listed and yes… I was in fact updated to the latest version. (I’ve been rather OCD about updating since September’s scare.)

Prior to hearing about this plugin issue, I had been noticing a bit of load-lag, so I deactivated the SEO plugin to see if that made a difference. To give it a fair test, I left the plugin deactivated for about 18 hours. In that time, I visited this blog from 2 different computers, using 4 different browsers. Overall, the loading time seamed to have improved.

When I turned the plugin back on this morning, I found the load time unchanged, so I’m thinking that the change was probably due to a server improvement. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the All in One plugin’s latest version. It’s working as it should on this site.

One of the complaints has been that the plugin is “inactive” after updating it. I believe this was done on purpose by plugin author Michael Torbert to make sure that the options that were changed in the update were manually set by users who would then be required to activate the plugin.

SEO made easy for WP blogs

I like this plugin. I like the fact that the excerpts I write then become the meta descriptions on my post pages due to this SEO plugin. I like the “set it and forget it” way in which I’ve designated how I want my page/post titles to look. I like not having to worry about duplicate content flagging by Google because I’ve told the All in One SEO plugin to use “noindex” on Categories, archives and tags.

Why does it seem broken for some?

Oftentimes, the plugins you use on your self hosted WordPress blogs will conflict with each other. Rather than broadcasting that a plugin you’re using isn’t working, perhaps you should do a little research into whether or not it’s just conflicting with some of the other plugins you’ve got activated on your blog. I’m sorry that I helped spread the news that the All in One SEO plugin was “broken”… it isn’t, as far as this blog is concerned.

Bottom line? Please Tweet Responsibly. I will be!

I was making some great progress updating my sites last night. When I got around to updating my Casual Games site, I realized that the affiliate RSS plugin that generated automatic blog posts was no longer working. The BigFishGames plugin hadn’t worked since September 27th.

A quick look around proved that the plugin wasn’t working for anyone else that uses it either, so I went in search of an RSS plugin that could possible replace it. I understand that unethical bloggers would use such a plugin to scrape content for their splogs, but there are legitimate uses for such things.

When I opened the dashboard of my self hosted WordPress, I noticed that it was running really slow. Then I saw the same error in all the dashboard panels that pull information from the WordPress.Com site:

Fatal error: Class ‘SimplePie_Cache’ not found in …/wp-includes/class-feed.php on line 6

I had run across references to a SimplePie plugin that would serve my purpose, but it wasn’t being supported by it’s developer. I was surprised to see a reference to “SimplePie_Cache”, being used to pull info from WordPress.com RSS feeds into the panels in our dashboards.

I learned a couple of things at this point… Even WordPress itself uses the functions available in the SimplePie coding, AND there had to be a functioning copy of the WP plugin somewhere.

After a little Googling, I did find a record of the SimplePie Plugin that was being maintained. With all the problems I had with the Internet last night, I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but today is looking more promising.

I may just have to post new games manually. *The Horror!*

Last week I sent out a question on Twitter…

Anyone know if there is a #wordpress plugin that posts Twitter RTs and mentions to blog comments (like Discus does)?

Since I have so many WordPress focused Twitter followers (following me because I followed them), I thought it was worth a shot. I didn’t receive any replies, so figured there simply wasn’t a plugin available with the ability to post RT’s as comments yet.

Out of sheer frustration, I searched the WordPress plugins again today, and found Twitoaster – Twitter Posts, Comments & Conversations.

The Twitoaster WordPress Plugin automatically retrieves Twitter replies to your Blog’s posts. These “Twitter comments” are displayed like comments, on the posts pages they are related to.

Would you like to help me test it out? Simply retweet this post by using the Twitter icon below, or any other method of retweeting that you may use such as browser functions. I’ve installed, (thank you, WordPress, for making plugin installation “one click easy”!) and set up the Twitoaster plugin. I already had a Twitoaster account, so retrieving my Twitoaster API key was very easy.

I’m interested to see how this works, so thanks in advance for the help in testing it out!

Over a year ago, a new comment plugin for WordPress called CommentLuv spread throughout the WordPress community like wildfire. Why? For the first time, we were able to encourage visitors to comment by offering them a link back to their latest blog post, neatly placed under their comment. All automatically embedded into the comment area through the plugin.

Well, that was a year ago. Fast forward to ComLuv.com, and you have a plugin that’s morphed into a powerful tool for bloggers using WordPress, and Blogger. It works fine on your self hosted WordPress blog, as long as you don’t have link tracking activated on your FeedBurner Feeds (if you use those). I haven’t seen any mention of CommentLuv being made available on WordPress.com blogs yet, and from what I can tell of the Blogger blogs that use it, they’re still working the bugs out of that one.

I’ve liked the idea of CommentLuv ever since it was originally developed, and I hope to keep it activated on this site. You are supposed to be able to continue to use your FeedBurner feeds, you just have to deactivate the link tracking. The one stumbling block I found on the way to making CommentLuv work for me, was that the effects of the changes made to my FeedBurner link tracking don’t effect comments made prior to the change, so you have to post a new comment to test it out.

That’s easy enough to do… but here on my own blog, CommentLuv was *still* not recognizing me as a registered member of the ComLuv.com site (even though I had registered, and commented on that site with a successful CommentLuv link). Turns out, because I was signed into my blog as the Administrator, the plugin was looking at my profile to check what site to pull links from. In my profile, I had listed my site as “http://gingerwench.com” instead of “http://www.gingerwench.com”. The missing “www” was preventing the CommentLuv plugin from matching me to my registered information on their site. Lesson learned!

So, if you decide to encourage your visitors to comment on your posts with return links through CommentLuv, make sure that you register the same information showing on your blog’s profile.

One thing I still have to research is the “no follow” tag that WordPress automatically places on links in comments. We used to have to use yet another plugin to strip those tags out of the CommentLuv links. As soon as I find out, I will post the information on the “no follow” tag in regards to the use of the CommentLuv plugin.

For the past couple of weeks, webmasters all over the globe have been scrambling to update and protect their WordPress self hosted blogs. It all started when a couple of rather large, well known blogs were having issues with their permalinks displaying odd characters, rendering the links useless. Further investigation revealed “hidden” admin accounts (meaning that they existed, but were not visible in the WP dashboard).

I was originally made aware of this issue on Twitter, as people started spreading the word about a vicious worm that was working it’s way through older, non updated installs of WordPress. So, as usual, I went surfing for some trustworthy information. The best description of what happened can be found in Lorelle’s blog.

In my opinion, the most important thing to know about this worm, is described this way by Lorelle:

Once the worm has infected your site, surface fixes do not remove the “back door” the worm injects into your database and system, as happened with Robert Scoble. Once infected, upgrading does not fix the issue, so those reporting they were now infected after upgrading, were infected before upgrading. Versions after WordPress 2.8.3 are safe, but upgrade to 2.8.4 anyway as it included other fixes.

Since this worm works it’s way so deep into your database, you have to approach the clean up in a very specific way to avoid updating with the worm’s ‘backdoor’ in tact.

“How To Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation” by Smackdown is a good article on how to reinstall WordPress after being hacked, but take care to keep your export limited to the post content and comments (and Pages), not the entire database as the hack goes into the database.

Once I was armed with the information I needed in order to understand what was going on, (Thank you to my Twitter friends, and especially you Lorelle!) and what to do about it… it was time to go through each and every site I run and/or manage for my clients. A daunting task, to say the least.

Most of the sites I manage were only a version behind, being that 2.8.3 wasn’t that old. There was one that I had to update from 2.7.1, and even one that I had to update from 2.5! That last one was in the most danger of falling victim to the worm, so I took special care with it, as updates from the 2.5 series had given me trouble in the past. (The introduction of “Tags” sometimes made upgrades from 2.5 rather difficult and laborious.)

Below are the steps I take when updating WordPress self hosted blogs. There are a couple of tricks I’ve learned along the way that I hope help some of you in the rare occasion that you too come across a difficult upgrade. First and foremost, find the WP Codex upgrade instructions here, bookmark them, and visit them every single time you upgrade.

Upgrading your self hosted WP blog

1. Back up the database. One of the first plugins I install with a new WP is the WP Database Backup plugin. Not only does it make backup of your database “one click easy”, but I can schedule it to send me daily backups of my databases! (You can choose whatever interval works best for you.)

2. Save a copy of the WP files currently in use. Why? If I’ve made manual edits to the core files, I can just pull them from the old files.

3. If you are doing a manual update, you must remember to deactivate all your plugins. This is especially important if you’re updating a version prior to 2.7! I forgot to deactivate mine on the oldest blog, so before I ran the database update, I simply removed my plugin folder and replaced it with the bare bones plugin folder from the new version. After I had run the update, I uploaded my plugins again, and activated them one at a time. Worked out fine.

4. With WP versions 2.7 and up, you can then simply press the “Update Now” button, and allow the blog to update itself (it will automatically deactivate your plugins, so no need to worry about step 3 above). This works, most of the time. If your server or browser times out, then you have to do it manually. See these instructions for a manual upgrade.

Trouble shooting issues after an update

1. I use WP-Affiliate on the older site, and after the update, the links produced by the plugin were returning a 404 error. If this happens, simply go to your “Settings > Permalinks” and save your options again. This cleared up the issue of the WP-Affiliate links not working. (Anytime an update results in a problem with your links, this is a good step to take, as it oftentimes fixes the problem… just needs a lil reminder.)

That was really the only issue I ran across, with over 20 WP updates, two of which were old enough to be in danger of being effected by the worm. All in all, WP really does make it pretty easy to maintain a healthy blog by keeping it updated. If you’ve run into issues updating a WP blog, comment here and perhaps we can figure it out together. I will add to the troubleshooting section of this article with any issues brought to my attention.

Grooveshark is a cool new site that I heard about on Twitter (thanks, @TimothyFitz). While I was playing with it’s massive resources of music to listen to while I work, I found a WordPress plugin for it that allows you to add music to your posts, and a playlist to your sidebar.

I’m a strong advocate of keeping music OFF of web sites in general, but especially on business blogs. I (and most surfers who are shopping on the Internet) find music on retail sites obtrusive, and off-putting. Depending on your field, it could even damage your credibility. I’ve learned over time, though, that there are some businesses that would actually benefit from offering their visitors music on their sites. Musicians are one painfully obvious example. *smile*

Offering music as an option on your site when it provides an obvious advantage to your visitor is different, however, than the deafening forced attack of sound when one loads your site. If I can’t find a mute button that allows me to turn off the auditory terrorist, I immediately (if not sooner) close such pages.

This plugin is recommended for WP 2.5.x and higher due to DIV tag issues in the widgets with older versions. Installation was as easy as upload and activate. When you’re typing your post, you simply scroll below the new post area to find your “Add Music” options.

All in all, it’s a great plugin, and I would imagine that it’s going to be very popular with music blogs. Who knows, I may work for a musician some day, and I’ll be glad to have this lil treasure in my stash! I’ve included the song list I was listening to as I blogged, below. I’ll be using Grooveshark a lot while working in my graphics programs… it’s the best application that I never knew I needed!

Edit to add: I did notice one thing… adding the music widget (which DID work)  to my post made my “share” links disappear. So, FeedSmith Feedburner links won’t appear on the posts you use the Grooveshark music widgets on… I’m so glad they offer the link to the music as an alternative!

Songs I blog to: A collection of Alice in Chains: Song of the day

Hmm… seems that removing the widget didn’t bring my links back… Guess I’m off to debug yet MORE code tonight!