Improving The Web

MyBlogLog is a service that dates back quite some time. I’m sure you’re all aware of the “Recent visitors” widget displaying the latest MyBlogLog members to have visited your site.

It’s a great concept, but there are a few things I don’t like about it:

- You only see the last X people.
- There’s not a lot of profile information disclosed.

To remedy this, I have created a new Wordpress plugin: Track MyBlogLog.

It does two things:

Track users

Similar to the widget, it will track all MyBlogLog members that visit your site. However, it will save the results in the database so you can see more results and can go back in time. You’ll also be able to see just how many times these MyBlogLog readers come to your site.

Additionally, the plugin will try and find more information about the user, such as their website URL, twitter URL, location, etc..

Identify users

The second part of the plugin simply makes available the information found before (website, name, etc..) and allows you to create a personalized message for the user.

You can see an example in the screenshot below:

Privacy Issues

I would never release this plugin if I thought there were privacy issues. I don’t believe there are. MyBlogLog users are very clear on the fact that they are being tracked and shown in the “Recent visitors” widget. This is just an extension of that so there shouldn’t be a problem there. MyBlogLog also provides controls to opt out of the tracking service.

Furthermore, most MyBlogLog users are also webmasters, and to me this seems like a win-win situation for both parties. The visitor will get more traffic back to his site, and the site administrator will learn more about his readers.

TwitterRemote

Yesterday a new widget was released allowing you to see which twitter users are visiting your site. Very similar to MyBlogLog in that regard. The only downside is that this is a third party service and you need to log into it, which means this widget can’t ever track the whole twitterverse.

Still, I’m thinking about making a similar plugin for this widget, if there is demand for it.

Download

For download instructions, go to the dedicated plugin page.

BackType, as I’ve already explained in a previous post, is a comment aggregator. If you sign up, the service will track all the comments you make across the web.

BackType is infact a search engine. This means you don’t have to install any browser extensions or anything of the like to track your comments. The entire process is transparent and automated.

Using BackType’s API, I’ve created a wordpress plugin that lets you import your comments into your blog. On set intervals, (hourly, daily or weekly) the plugin will download your newest comments and add them to your database.

This is a great way to show your visitors what you’re doing on the web and find interesting. As an example, you can see my comments here.

In addition to the paginated listing of comments, a widget is also available for your sidebar. Lastly, you can set it up so that a digest of your latest comments is automatically posted either daily or weekly.

For more information and download instructions, go to the dedicated page: My Comments Elsewhere.

Do you read TechCrunch? If so, you’ve probably noticed how they integrate their other internet properties into the site in quite an ingenious way.

Several of the articles listed don’t link to subpages on techcrunch.com, but instead to some of their other sites; CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, etc..

Now, I’m not sure if this already exists on WPMU or not, but I wanted something similar for a normal, standalone wordpress installation.

That’s why I have created yet another plugin; External Permalinks.

You can use it in a variety of ways:

- As detailed above, to cross promote posts across your blog network.
- To link directly to a guest post author’s blog
- Etc, etc..

It’s excellent for doing traffic exchanges with other blogs; each blog simply posts an excerpt for an article on the other blog, and adds the external permalink.

This sends you some excellent quality traffic and no doubt alot of new subscribers.

The permalink is also changed in the RSS feed, so when the reader clicks on it to make a comment, they are automatically redirected to the external URL.

For download instructions, go to the dedicated page: External Permalinks.

Now, couldn’t you just include the external URL in the post text? Yes, but you won’t get the seamless integration this plugin provides.

With this plugin, you’ll get more clicks to the external site, especially in RSS readers as users most often click on the permalink URL or comments URL, both of which are redirected to the external URL. (Comments page is optional though)

If you haven’t yet heard about tweetbacks, it’s a way to display all tweets about a specific post. Think of it like trackbacks for tweets.

The functionality has only been available for a few days and was conceived by Dan Zarrella . The main drawback with this implementation however, is that it uses a javascript file from danzarella’s server.

Now Yoast has developed a wordpress plugin allowing you to run everything on your own server. In addition, the tweetbacks are saved in your database.

However, one thing was missing; widgets. This is where my plugin comes into play. It provides two widgets: “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts”.

An example is posted below:

For download instructions, go to the dedicated page.

I’m releasing my second plugin today, which I only started developing yesterday, after reading WPHacks.

Anyone who’s got an advertising page knows it’s tiresome to have to update that page every so often with the newest pagerank, alexa ranking, technorati ranking and feedburner RSS suscriber count.

This plugin comes to the rescue! It automatically updates all those values once a day, ensuring that you always have the most up to date statistics page.

To read what statistics are available, and for download instructions, go here.

I couldn’t end the year without having at least 1 plugin ready for download, so I’m happy to report I made one just in time.

Improved Plugin Installation is an improvement to the current wordpress 2.7 plugin installation methods.

It allows you to install one or more plugins simply by typing the names of the plugins or the download URLs. This means you can install all your favorite wordpress plugins in one go!

Furthermore, a bookmarklet is included which lets you install plugins directly from an external site.

For more information and download instructions, check out the dedicated page.