Archive for May, 2009

TypePad Connect for WordPress: Not feeling it

May 16, 2009 at 11:43 pm · Filed under web applications

ReadWriteWeb report today that Six Apart have announced the release of some Six Apart plugins for Wordpress at Wordcamp Mid-Atlantic. RWW think this is “shocking”. If they think that counts as shocking they need to get out more….

I was intrigued enough to zip on over the their page for Wordpress users, and yes, sure enough, there are some shocking plugins available.

On initial examination, I kind of felt there wasn’t much new to it: wow a comment spam plugin, an advertising plugin… The only one that caught my eye was the TypePad connect plugin, and even that one I kind of knew wasn’t going to be a runner.

Yes it does lots of fantastic stuff, see the above page for a feature list, but it struck me that:

  • users had to go off to TypePad.com to register for your blog
  • comments were no longer stored on your own blog
  • the gains offered for the above are really not worth it

So I gave it the benefit of the doubt and installed the code on a test blog site. Installation itself is pretty easy, so no complaints there.

As expected, the newly activated plugin does make users go off to TypePad.com and create a TypePad account in order to become a member of your site. This doesn’t sit nicely with me: users click a link on your site and all of a sudden they are on TypePad.com being asked for their email address, set a password and their date of birth (TypePad: you don’t need my DOB, you might think you do, but you just don’t).

Ok so if you do all that and post a comment on my site it shows up and there are all the extra goodies they mention on their page.

Some points against:

  • You no longer have comments stored within your own site
  • Comments are harder to manage: two different sites to manage your blog, your blog site and your comment site
  • Not offering much: threaded comments are available in WP 2.7.x, Comment Spam is not an issue with plugins
  • The community thing: wow, you can create profiles. Not a big seller for me.
  • I can’t find any option to export your comments back to WordPress if you choose to leave TypePad connect???

The very fact that comments are no longer stored within my own Wordpress database, not even duplicated there, is a deal breaker for me. Comment counts are often used in my work for listing most popular posts, etc. I see no need to have data stored elsewhere.

In short, there are some nice features here and I think it is great that Six Apart are opening up their work to other platforms, but so far, there is nothing here that makes me want to use one of their plugins.

TIP: If you think TypePad connect might be something you find useful, check out IntenseDebate also.

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Wordpress Plugins I love

May 6, 2009 at 4:32 pm · Filed under web applications

I was recently asked if I could recommend some Wordpress plugins for a new site. Well, yes, I guess I have dozens installed across many sites for various reasons, but there are a few I would recommend for all sites. I had a look through some of the Wordpress powered websites I manage to see which ones I rate as worth looking at:

Akismet

If you allow comments on your blog, you should have Akismet. I have it running on a couple of blogs that generate hundreds of comments a month and rarely does any comment spam get through Akismet. On occassion there can be some genuine comments caught in the Pending queue, but this plugin saves me so much time, I cannot recommend it enough.

Subscribe to Comments

For those who are serious about getting some debate going in your blog comments, this is a must have. I only just noticed as I was looking at the plugins for this site that I didn’t have it installed yet! Allowing users to be notified when someone posts a new comment on a particular blog post is just so handy.

All in One SEO Pack

This is another one that I have installed in pretty much all my blog sites. I generally just use it for fixing up page titles, but as this is the first thing seen in search results, this alone makes it worth while.

FeedBurner Feedsmith Plugin

Feedburner is a fantastic service and this plugin makes integrating your Feedburner feed with Wordpress very simple.

Google XML Sitemaps

Really handy plugin that automatically creates and updates a Google sitemaps compliant xml sitemap. Of course the sitemap can be used by other search engines too. Particularly useful with google webmaster tools.

Register Plus

The registration form on a Wordpress site is one area that still lacks any customisation. This plugin goes some of the way, allowing you to add a logo and some css changes to the form. More importantly, it allows you provide additional fields and prevents automated signups with captcha and email confirmation options. I use the email confirmation option on a couple of sites and it works a treat.

Similar Posts

Displays a list of related posts. The thing I like about this one is how configurable the options are. It always seems to display similar posts quite accurately. 

Search Meter

Search meter provides some insight into what visitors are typing into the search box on your blog and whether or not your current content is matching it. The report of searches resulting in 0 results is especially handy.

Sociable

In fact I only have sociable running on one blog. What I have found is that, unless your blog audience is fairly tech-literate, the use of these social bookmarking widgets can be hit and miss. I have had more success by custom coding various links and icons into templates based on the demographics of the site etc. In many of these I have used Addthis and Sharethis to track usage. I recommend Sociable as a good starting point though.

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