Good day. I am Ajay D’Souza. I blog at http://ajaydsouza.com/ and http://techtites.com/. Those of you who have been following this blog for more than a year may remember my daily release posts as well as the A-Plugin-A-Day series. MBA life has kept me busy since then, but that’s another story.

As part of my new assignment out here, I’ll be looking after the Plugin Competition. I’ll be maintaining the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog as well as making weekly posts both here and at the Competition Blog.

With the WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 beginning today, I thought I’d just write in with a few tips on making your entry.

Firstly, read the rules to be followed are listed in the post. Please make sure that your entry does not break any of them.

Getting Inspired

One of the important rules that we have is that the plugins should be new, i.e. no updates to already existing plugins. One great place to get inspired is WordPress Ideas. WordPress Ideas is a place where the people from the WordPress Community, both users and developers vote for what they would like included in WordPress. Some have been implemented, while some may actually appear in future versions and still others that may not be. So, why not make a plugin to accommodate for the latter two?

You can also hunt for ideas in these posts or this posting in our News Forum.

Offering the plugin for download

Something that many authors forget in their zeal to develop a plugin (or a theme) is its documentation.

Firstly, make sure your plugin zip file contains a readme.txt. If needed, include a full fledged help section as well. You can also put this on the plugin release page on your site.

Next, create a separate page on your blog / site dedicated for the plugin. Posts are a no-no! They get lost in the crowd.

Make sure the page has the following:

• Overview
• Requirements
• Features
• Installation Instructions
• Download Link
• License
• Method to get support

When linking to the download file, one method I follow is to link to a file without any version etc. e.g. it reads simply pluginname.zip. The purpose of this is that I can always update the zip file with the latest version of the plugin without bothering to change the link.

Old versions of the plugin can be archived as pluginname_v1.0.zip, pluginname_v1.1.zip and so on.

Sending it to us

You’ll need to send your plugin to us via email. We will reveal the email address that you need to send the plugins to in the second month of the competition.

The competition is on for another two months, which gives you plenty of time to release a feature rich plugin.

Before that, release a well tested version to the public. Fix any bugs that come up, try to provide more features as requested.

The WordPress community is demanding and extremely helpful at guiding you down your path.

All the best for now.

To the WordPress Community

I’m sure you’ll love the competition and many of the plugins that stem from it. Authors are always hunting for ideas and who better to tell them than you. Please feel free to post your ideas in the comments section below.

Or, you can also post them in any of these two posts or this posting in our News Forum.

If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact us. Lots of eyes see these competitions and your encouragement goes a long way in helping provide incentives.

Stay tuned and please help spread the word.

While reading Lorelle’s awesome post over at the blog herald entitled WordPress Wednesday I noticed a blip she mentioned about Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe To Comments plugin. Apparently, Mark has changed the way in which subscriptions are dealt with by default. In earlier versions, Subscribe To Comments would leave the Subscribe Box check marked by default, causing anyone who commented to automatically be subscribed to that blog post. This in turn created an opt-out way of thinking which has been and continues to be a bad practice.

Mark has changed this around and now leaves the subscribe box blank by default, leaving it up to the end users to decide on whether they would like to subscribe to the post or not. A much needed and welcomed change. Mark even set the plugin up so that even those who want to be subscribed to every post they comment on can do so via cookies:

I appear to have misread into Marks’ post as has been pointed out by both Mark and Lloyd Budd in the comments. What really changed with the plugin is the fact that the site admin now no longer has the configurable option of making the plugin opt-in or opt-out by default. According to Mark,

Before: option of opt-in or opt-out with default of opt-in for new installs. After: opt-in only, but with per-user checkbox stickiness. And yes, the change is old — I just have been getting a lot of e-mail about it and realized I never explained the change publicly.

I realize the change is old and the post I linked to was written in April, but because of the way I read into the post, I thought this was something that needed to be brought up due to the ethical nature of the changes that were made.

Google Maps

The Google Maps plugin allows you to easily insert Google maps into your blog, making use of the new shortCode system in WordPress 2.5. The maps can be configured to offer directions to or from the location, show or hide the zoom/pan controls, show/hide map type, activate zoom using mouse wheel. This plugin requires a API key from Google Maps.

TW-Asides

Tw-asides is an asides widget for WordPress. It lets you publish short posts that appear in your sidebar rather than in the main content column. Asides posts won’t appear in your main content stream, whether it’s on the front page of your blog or when navigating via the next/previous post links.

WP-Crontrol

WP-Crontrol is a plugin that lets you manage the WP-Cron system and see what’s going on there. This includes adding/editing/deleting cron entries, as well as cron schedules.

Random Featured Post

The Random Featured Post plugin allows you to display a random post from one or more designated categories. The featured post will display the title “Featured Post” which is customizable along with the post’s title and content or an excerpt with link to full post.

WP-Offload

WP-Offload will boost the performance of your blog by seamlessly offloading static content like images, documents and movies. This will greatly reduce bandwidth consumption and the number of HTTP requests issued to your web server. Additional features such as remote image manipulation and thumbnail generation are provided.

Google XML Sitemaps with Multiple Domains

This plugin is a solution for those running both the Domain Mirror and the Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator plugins together in WordPress.  The plugin extends Google (XML) Sitemaps so that it creates one sitemap for each mirror set up in Domain Mirror.  Sitemaps are created with the mirror URL prepended to the custom filename.

BT Active Discussions

This is a recent comments plugin that displays customizable number of blog posts with recently updated comment. The output is very similar to phpBB’s View Active Topics and vBulletin’s Today’s Posts functions.

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WordPress 2.5, the much anticipated latest release from the team at Automattic officially hit the streets on March 29^th complete with a radical overhaul of the WordPress “corporate” site as well.

Here are some of the cool features on the “inside” that make life a little easier, or at least more convenient. 

1.              The dashboard has been “widgetized” enabling you to customize what you see.  Of course there is the invaluable WordPress News, a feature displaying information about your posts, links, popular plugins and integrates with WordPress stats so you can easily see your traffic, latest visitors, etc.  This upgrade takes a little getting used to if you’re a hardcore WP user, but even after a few hours you’ll fall in love with the Web 3.0 design and functionality.

2.              Enhanced Search – WordPress 2.5 used to search only posts, it now searches pages as well which enhances search engine optimization and user friendliness by providing information to your visitors on your “static” content, not just your posts.

3.              Concurrent Editing – if you’re running a multi-author blog – for example a company site with several “administrators” who add/edit content, WordPress 2.5 “locks” the post or page so that the “2^nd person” can’t save edits until the “1^st person” is done – and let’s you know that someone else is working on it.  This is a handy addition, and reduces the “dude, I just changed that” factor!

4.              Tag Management ­ - no more widgets, it’s built into WordPress 2.5.

5.              WordPress Plug-in Upgrades – instead of the old, delete, replace method WordPress 2.5 features what they term “a few clicks upgrade” – depending upon the plugin developer, this is a very cool feature.  However, it depends upon your host as to whether it will work – should be good for most.  It might be a good idea to write down how you did any custom configuration on your plugin before upgrading.

Here’s a list of WordPress Plug-Ins that have been updated for WordPress 2.5.

Now here’s the two main WordPress Theme and design features.  Here’s a list of WordPress 2.5 Compatible Themes.

1.              TinyMCE 3.0 – for anyone who has used previous versions of TinyMCE as their visual editor for WordPress you might have had the occasion when stuff just didn’t come out the way you put it in.  TinyMCE 3.0 is supposed to have that fixed.  This is a boon for those WordPress users that don’t really want to do creepy coding to make double spaces work and the like.  And great for WordPress Theme Designers who go nuts “fixing” little problems for clients/end users who “want it to look like Microsoft Word”!

2.              Built-in Galleries – this is wicked cool.  If you use the multi-image upload to load up a whole series of photos, WordPress 2.5 has a new shortcut that allows you to add a WordPress Gallery by just putting in [ gallery] without the space in your post.  The shortcut code in WordPress 2.5 will display all of your thumbnails and captions with a link to a page where visitors and readers can comment on the image.  You can easily set up multiple galleries for use with different topics, categories, posts, etc.

There are some other cool options like how many columns and the size of the thumbnail for example that you can simply use.  The Codex has all the info you need.

So far we’ve had a good experience with WordPress 2.5 and this release is a real testament to the development team, the leadership and the community as a whole.  It just keeps getting better!

If you haven’t tried it out yet, it’s most certainly worth every second you spend, and since it’s open source, the price is right, the experience is invaluable, and the hits just keep on coming!

 Christopher Conlan is Managing Director of Kaboodle Ventures and has been working with WordPress for two and a half years.  Visit his blog at www.web30technology.com for more information, if you need help with a WordPress blog, search engine optimization, e-marketing strategy, or want to subscribe to his newsletter. 

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Here at WeblogToolsCollection.com, we have already discussed how you can change the color scheme in the WordPress 2.5 administration panel from Classic to Fresh. We have also highlighted an awesome plugin that was written by Kaspars which gives users up to 8 different color schemes to choose from. However, what if you want to create your own color scheme? Thanks to a plugin written by James Dimick called Easy Admin Color Schemes, users can now create their own flavor of the WordPress 2.5 back end.

After downloading and installing the plugin, you can access it by browsing to SETTINGS-COLOR SCHEMES. There are three color schemes to start you off, Classic, Fresh and Washedout. The plugin does not allow you to delete nor edit the Classic and Fresh color schemes. This makes sense as you wouldn’t want to screw up a default skin only to have to reinstall WordPress to fix the issue. However, you can edit the Washedout color scheme which introduces you to the plugins functionality.

The plugin starts off by giving you the chance to name your color scheme. Next, give your color scheme four primary colors. If you don’t know of a six digit color code, there is a small arrow to the right of the text field that will open up a color picker. Opening the color picker and then selecting a color will automatically place the corresponding color code into the text field.

Once you have your four primary colors in order, the next step which is the longest of them all is to go through all of the CSS specific code and change the color code values to something else you prefer. There at least 10 different CSS files which make up the styling of the administration panel. There are more if you want to include support for RIGHT TO LEFT text. This plugin takes all of those CSS files and puts them in one place for you to edit, which makes things so much easier. Also, for those who have javascript enabled in their browser, you can view a live preview of what the changes will look like on an active WordPress administration page. Very handy as it cuts down on the browser refreshes.

One thing that I think this plugin is missing is an easy way for users to share their creations. If a download or save link could be added to the color schemes which would automatically package the necessary files together which could then be saved to my desktop for distribution, this would make the plugin a home run.

If you are looking at adding some spice to your WordPress back end, give this plugin a try. I don’t think it could be any easier than this plugin. The only problem with creating a color scheme is figuring out where each CSS class or DIV is defined. That’s where FireBug comes in.

Good luck and if you happen to create a color scheme using this plugin, be sure to say so in the comments.

Not too long ago, a new plugin was released called WP-Crontrol. WP-Crontrol allows you to take control over what is happening in the WP-Cron system.

WP-Cron is a tangle of black magic that allows a plugin developer or a user to schedule commands to be executed. WP-Crontrol is a plugin that lets a blog owner see through that magic and figure out what’s actually going on

If you want a detailed introduction to this plugin as well as an explanation as to how to use this plugin in conjunction with WP Database Backup to create backups when you want them, be sure to check out this article: Add a new WordPress backup schedule with WP-Crontrol

Also on the radar today is a quick fix for the WordPress 2.5.x image uploader. Awsom.org is reporting that there is a no-flash plugin that is available which returns the previous image upload function from earlier versions of WordPress.

It is time for another WordPress Plugin Competition. Plugin competitions of the past have seen fantastic code, extremely useful and fun plugins and have generated a lot of interest in WordPress and plugin development. Prizes have been very generously donated by readers and well wishers and we already have some donations towards this year’s competition and are looking for more. The final list of prizes will be determined very soon. If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact me. Lots of eyes see these competitions and your encouragement goes a long way in helping provide incentives. The plugin competition will begin on the 10th of May and will last till the 10th of July.

There will be prizes for first, second and third places and a consolation prize. The plugins should be officially submitted through email and the Plugin Competition Blog (which will be cleaned for the new competition) should be used as a launching ground for plugin ideas, updates, development news etc. The plugins will be judged by a panel of at least three judges and reader feedback will be an essential part of the judging process. At the end of the contest, we will put up posts for each submission and will open them up to our readers for two weeks. The contest results should be declared by the beginning of August.

All code must be GPL (or compatible) and should be available for download through the Competition Blog and preferably through WordPress Extend. The plugins can be modified and tweaked till the last day of the competition or until the author sends us an email with the final version of the code. In essence, the Plugin Competition Blog is the preferred vehicle of communication for all contestants.

Some relevant details:

• Running time for competition = 2 months starting the 10th of May till the 10th of July.
• True Wordpress plugins only. No manual modifications can be required of users.
• You cannot submit plugins that have been released already. New code only please.
• Plugins can only be submitted via email. We will make that email address public later on in the competition.
• Plugins cannot have opt-out links back to the authors’ pages (from the main blog pages, admin pages are fine). If you have links or donation forms, please make them opt-in.
• All plugins require documentation as in the Wordpress Extend pages. Documentation will be one of the judging criteria.
• Preliminary support for the plugin has to be provided to the public.
• We are looking for innovation, documentation and elegant code.
• Any and all prizes/controversies/issues will be judged and decided at our sole discretion.

More details to be added with time.

Stay tuned and please help spread the word.

Clean WordPress Gallery Plugin

This plugin replaces the default gallery feature in WordPress 2.5 with a valid XHTML solution and offers Lightbox, Slimbox, and Thickbox support.

Theme Tester

The Theme Tester plugin allows you to change themes and view the results without the visitors to your blog seeing any changes. The visitors may notice some changes if your current theme uses blog options that a new theme overwrites.

Fresh Plus Visited

Fresh Plus Visited is a very simple plugin for WordPress 2.5 that adds a user color scheme to the admin interface.

Lameda

Lameda stands for List Attachment MEtaDAta. The plugin enables you to display any information from your attachments like photos, music files, pdf, etc within your posts or pages.

Movie2Blog

The plugin inserts short movie info in your posts (poster, title, directors, actors, runtime, short review, trailer). Uses Cinema Rx for serving data.

Fun with Random Comment Forms

The plugin replaces the form field names in the comment form with random names then uses sessions to name them correctly after submission before passing the values back for comment processing.

Easy Admin Color Schemes

The plugin allows you to manage the color schemes in your WordPress admin area. You can add new colors as well as edit current ones.

Facebook Dashboard Widget

Using the dashboard widgets available in WordPress 2.5, this plugin will process your Friends status updates RSS feed and/or your Facebook notifications feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard.