Yes, definitely a good week. I’ve installed for your pleasure two new plugins which you can now turn on or off at your leisure. These are the ‘static front page‘ plugin (which allows you to create a page called ‘Home’ and for that to become the front page with blog posts appearing as a category… very useful for some projects) and a fully working Google Analytics plugin (the last one wasn’t doing the job).
So just go to your ‘Plugins’ menu and turn em on if you fancy.
And now a ‘call for plugins’… could you use the comments below to tell me what plugins you’d like to see installed at edublogs.org.
Unfortunately there are quite a few which don’t / won’t work using this architecture but with any luck there may well be some that do. Please provide a link to the plugin as well as the name :)
16 responses so far ↓
Google analytics is still not accepting any new accounts, although one can sign up to be notified when they resume.
An alternative is to sign up for the free sitemeter at http://www.sitemeter.com/ You can’t use their nice little logo in the sidebar but the link they gove you still seems to record the same site info.
OK, I should have looked at my page first–yes there is a small enough sitemeter logo that will go in the sidebar. And, the new Homepage page plugin is nifty. Thanks.
I’m having trouble with the Google Analytics plugin. In order to get Google Analytics into my blog, it seems as though I need to edit a template. Is the plugin meant to do this for me? If so, when and how does the pluging find out what my Google Analytics account code is?
Thanks, Andrew
Thanks for the new plugins, James.
Google Analytics is working fine (Andrew, you need to set up a Google Analytics account first. Then, back in Wordpress–>Plugins–>Google Analytics, type in your Google user account string, which looks like UA-#####-#, and click update user string. That appropriately edits the Wordpress template.).
But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get the Static Page plugin to work (this despite assurances from the author that “Using the static front page plugin is very simple.” So I can’t get it to work AND I feel somewhat inadequate….). Any advice offered is most appreciated
My plugin in request is for the Ultimate Tag Warrior,/a> plugin by Christine Davis. For those of us using the Fauna template by Joen Assmussen, our sites are plugin-ready. I’m not sure about other templates though.
For Home Page–
1) activate the plugin.
2) create a new page (not post) entitled Home
3) That’s it. Once the page has the slug of “home”, the plugin will always load that first. The title can be changed to something else, just make sure the slug (the URL) remains “home”
I have a request for two plug-ins, if that’s possible:
1. Is there a plug-in that will allow the “page order” feature to work? That would be very helpful.
2. Also, is there (or do I need) a plug-in to get the link feature of “open in new window” to work. I’ve tried selecting this in the appropriate box AND even hard coding target=”_blank into the hyperlink tag to no avail. I would like to be able to send somesone to a new site without having to make them leave my site.
Thanks!!
Hi James,
I would like the subscription plugin from this site installed please.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/subscribe-me/
Unless of course there is already something on edublogs that I haven’t noticed yet?
Thanks for all your work.
Thanks, Shanta, I just didn’t see how to navigate to the place for entering my GA id.
Hiya,
Not sure exactly what you mean by ‘page order’… that could be a bug, can you be more specific please.
No such thing as the target_blank plugin I’m afraid. Tabbed browsing with IE is just around th corner so I wouldn’t worry about it.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/subscribe-me/ does work but the images don’t (just yet) it’s osmething I’m going to work on down the line.
Morning all.
I’d really like to see these three plug-ins made available on Edublogs:
(1) More paragraphs (http://www.lacaraoscura.com/2005/07/26/more-paragraphs-a-more-plugin-for-wordpress/), which allows you to collapse long posts.
(2) WP-Print (http://www.lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php), which creates a link to make a printable (text-only?) version of the page.
(3) This is a MUST! WordPress XHTML validator (http://rudd-o.com/projects/wp-validator/) is a tool that helps the webmaster keep their webpages XHTML accessible for visually-impaired users. Many colleges in the states require it as a condition of receiving public funding too.
I don’t know if this is working, as my opinion never got posted. Anyhow, please put in the XHTML Validator plugin. It’s supposed to work with xmllint on the server, and detect if content is not XHTML-compliant. (It’s not perfect yet, but it does help those of us in publicly-funded education who are required to make our content as accessible as possible (per section 508 rules). The validator plugin is located at http://rudd-o.com/projects/wp-validator/.
Also, I’d suggest a plugin like the “More paragraphs” plugin at http://www.lacaraoscura.com/2005/07/26/more-paragraphs-a-more-plugin-for-wordpress/. It prints the 1st paragraph or two on the front page (depending on the settings), and then produces a link to the full article. This helps keep your front page from getting cluttered. (The only downside to this actual plugin is that it seems to insert paragraph tags into the webpages, which is a no-no for XHTML accessibility rules. Anyone know of something like this, but better?)
James, I know I emailed you with these before, but thought the other members would like to know my suggestions:
Tiger Admin for WordPress 2.0
WP-Print 2.00
WP-OnlineCounter
WP-Stats 2.00
iG:Syntax Hiliter [not yet wp 2.0 compatible]
Better Feed
Cheers
Ady
The more tag does work but with limitations–it doesn’t yet work on the first page of posts (if your blog is set up to show daily posts). However, it does work on archives and categories (if the viewer selects a month or a category to view posts). So, if one uses the “homepage” plug-in, the viewer will see the more tag in use. Other Word Press sites can use more on the initial webpage, so maybe it is just a setup issue? Also, be sure you don’t use the rich text version of the post editor. The more tag shows up in the plain editor.
The XHTML Validator seems to appear on some templates, but not in others. It would be nice to have an index of what features go with which template.
The Steam theme has the validator.
Another great plug-in is Flash QuickTag…for adding SWF files to your page.
Quite a few themes have validators actually. It’s worth taking the time to look through them all once you have a better idea of what you want – you’d be surprised what’s in there.
BTW I have already let James know that Steam has problems with the links in posts on the Archives and Categories display pages. But graciously – after all, this is all free, innit.