It looks like Blogging Pro hasn’t had much activity lately and there have been a bunch of really cool plugins for Wordpress released. Here are some of my favorites.
Auto Links Plugin for WordPress: Automatically turns keywords into links. If you write Google the plugin will linkify it for you. The cool thing is if I write Google again, it will not linkify it. Only the first time the keyword is mentioned.
The only complaint I have with this plugin is the list of keywords is listed in the plugin itself, making adding and deleting words a pain in the butt. What would be nice is having an options page in the admin section of Wordpress where I can edit the words.
Oh, I almost forgot. Did you notice the image next to the first mention of Wordpress and Google? This plugin will automatically add an icon next to all external links. This can be turned on or off, your choice.
iTunesSpy: is another cool plugin which inserts and displays the recently played tracks in iTunes on your blog. You first have to install the ituneswatcher 2 application (version 2.0.0.2 or higher). iTunesSpy took me a little while to figure out but once I got it setup it was simple to use. You can see it in action to the right of this page.
One of the problems I’m having is the link to Amazon does not include my Amazon Associate ID which I entered into the options page. I wrote the author to inquire about this but have not heard back. The other problem I am having is when trying to display the time the song played, I’m not getting the correct gmt_offset. The best I can tell is the plugin should pull my Wordpress settings for time offset but it’s not doing that.
If you want to display your iTunes music, this is still the way to go.
Transpose Email Plugin: This Wordpress plugin encrypts your email address if you decide to add it to your blog. I prefer to use a contact form but it’s easier for the user to just click a mailto: link and communicate through their email program.
Welcome to johnhesch.com, a blog about my life, projects, and interests. I have been blogging for over 10 years in one form or another.
Hey thanks for the post about Auto Links. The plugin is still in hardcore beta testing now. I’m working on an admins page now that should make the whole mess of adding keywords easier.
- Sean
Great! I’ll be looking for the new options. Thanks for you hard work!
It’s nice to know you find the Transpose Email plugin as one of your favorites
Still have a few plans for it’s improvement.
Ajay, what would be handy is a feature to automatically add the JavaScript to any email address listed within a post. For example, if I add an email address in my post the plugin would add the JavaScript to the mailto link automatically. This would protect email addresses that an author might use with a Wordpress post.
Well got the next minor version of Auto Links up. Sorry no admin panel yet, but I’m working on it. But this version fixed the problem of not linking keywords that were followed by punctuation, and it’s no longer case sensitive.
Also moved the keywords array to an external script so that you can update the main script without loosing your keywords.
I think I gave iTunesSpy a try before and couldn’t get it working, so now I’m using wp-itunes. I think I’ll have to take another crack at iTunesSpy though.
- Sean
I totally agree. I’ve been adding the javascript hack to my web pages for a few years now, and the spiders have been happily ignoring it, as hoped. That would be a cool thing to warp all addresses on the page.
Well I was browsing my web host logs and saw this site refering people to my site, so I had to check it out cause I couldn’t remember your site by it’s URL. Glad to see you’re still enjoying Auto Links. It’s up to version 0.93 now, and is far and away a much better plugin than it was a few weeks ago, just in case your interested.
- Sean
I’m running the latest version and am loving all the new features. It’s a breeze to add new words and URL’s, and now I don’t have to hack the plugin to get it to use the CSS class I want.
Very nice. Well done.