LinkedIn just sent around a letter to all their users announcing their new share button, and encouraging everyone to add it to their websites. So of course we immediately get an email from a client saying “I want one of those. Gimme gimme!” This client’s site was set up with the ShareDaddy sharing plugin, so at first I thought “uh oh,” since I knew that LinkedIn was not one of the included sharing buttons. But then I saw the light.

What is ShareDaddy?

ShareDaddy is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add neat, simple and elegant share buttons to your WordPress site. It’s created by Automattic, and embodies the elegance and simplicity found in most other Automattic creations (like, you know, WordPress).

Here are some of the features:

• Drag and drop preset share buttons in. These include Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Email and Print.
• Icons or text: Make the buttons just icons, icons and text, or just text.
• Display number of shares in the button.
• Choose pages to display the buttons: Choose to have the plugin display on posts, pages and index pages; or posts and pages only; or index pages only.
• Exclude the sharing buttons on a per-page basis. This is huge. When I first installed the plugin, it was appearing on some pages that didn’t need it. But you can go into every page or post and and unselect the “Show sharing buttons on this post” option:
  

Adding custom share buttons

Getting back to our topic at hand, it turns out that ShareDaddy is even more awesome and elegant than I had realized. Users are not limited to the buttons included out of the box: we can add pretty much whatever other share buttons we like. We just need a few parameters:

1. Name of sharing service (i.e. LinkedIn, or Google Buzz)
2. Sharing URL – this is a long parameter-filled URL that allows users to share content on other sites.
3. Icon URL – you need to have an icon online that you can use to represent the sharing service in the plugin.

This was a bit tricky to set up, but after some searching and tweaking I figured it out. Here’s how:

1. Install ShareDaddy.
2. Go to the ShareDaddy settings at Settings > Sharing in the Admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add a new service under Available Services
   
4. Fill in the info in the settings pop-up box as follows:
   1. Enter the Service name. In our case it’s LinkedIn.
   2. Add the Sharing URL: http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=%post_url%&title=%post_title%&summary=%post_excerpt%
   3. Enter the URL of a 16x16px icon. Here’s one for you to use: http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1197/linkedin16.png.
      
5. Click Create Share.
6. Set the other settings for the plugin as you see fit.
7. Done!

Here’s how it looks once set up with the LinkedIn button:

A few bugs/issues

I encountered a few bugs/issues while implementing this that I think it’s important to be aware of:

1. Can’t delete/edit services: Once you’ve created a new sharing service, you can’t delete or edit it. At least I can’t find a way to do it. While I was trying to get this to work, I created a LinkedIn share button that was broken because of a faulty URL. But I couldn’t edit it, and I also couldn’t delete it. Until I figured out why the button wasn’t working, I created a few more LinkedIn buttons. So the plugin settings page looks like this now:
   
   Update: You can remove services by enabling them (drag and drop them into the Enabled Services area, and click on drop-down that appears next to service and select Remove Service. More here from the plugin’s forum.)
2. Icon in backend doesn’t show up: As you can see above, the LinkedIn icon doesn’t appear in the button in the backend, just this weird triangular icon. It took me a while to realize that the problem wasn’t the link to the icon, and it does show up on the front end.
   Update: John, the plugin developer, says that the reason for this is “A default image is shown to prevent bad image URLs from breaking the admin page.”

Related sources:

Adding Specific Sharing Services to Sharedaddy by Ryan Markel. The comment on this post by Pieter Hartsook with the LinkedIn sharing URL was especially helpful, though the URL had some extra letters that broke it.

And now you can share this post with the real, live ShareDaddy plugin below

This post was originally published at How to add a LinkedIn share button to ShareDaddy on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

This post was originally published at Automatic Plugin Upgrade broken after WordPress 2.9.2 and some fixes on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Generally, the only thing a new Gregorian year (there are other calendars out there too, you know) means to me is that I must remember to write 2010 on checks. But since I’ve been reading so many New Year’s posts on other blogs, it got me thinking about what I have to say as we welcome writing 2010 on checks. And here it is:

Thank you Automattic and the WordPress community.

While eating breakfast this morning, I started thinking about how much of our business’ activities revolve around WordPress – developing sites and blogs on WordPress, hosting WordPress sites, providing WordPress support and consultation, and more. And then I started thinking about how many people there are out there who also make a living from WordPress services. There must be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of WordPress service providers around the world.

In addition, there are thousands of others who, thanks to the relative simplicity of WordPress and the freemium hosted service at WordPress.com, have managed to set up their own dynamic web presence to help them grow their businesses or organizations.

In Judaism, our tradition teaches us that the most ideal way of giving charity is to give someone else the ability to generate their own income (similar to the saying about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him fish). Automattic has not only created their own business, but has helped others create their own streams of income. I think this is particularly significant for those in the developing world: with WordPress they can provide their services to clients all over the world, without the need for expensive software and supplies, thus increasing their ability to generate income for themselves and their families.

Automattic obviously plays a big role in the success of WordPress, but without the community I don’t think WordPress would be where it is today. Automattic’s approach to the community is of course what made it so robust, thanks to the fact that the software is Open Source, and thanks to the implementation of an API system that allows others to add on features through the development of plugins. It’s also due to the environment that Automattic created, whereby the community is encouraged to support and be active in the development of WordPress.

The WordPress community certainly took up the torch, and has helped WordPress spread like wildfire. Three years ago, when I was researching the available Open Source platforms for creating dynamic websites, one of the reasons I settled on WP was because of the amazingly useful community generated information I found. And that’s why I started this very blog: to give back to the community in my own small way.

So thank you WordPress community.

Thank you Automattic.

Thank you for WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, WordCamp, the Codex, and BuddyPress.

Thank you for creating such an awesome piece of software, and for continuing to innovate and listen to the community.

Happy New Year!

This post was originally published at My 2010 New Year resolution: to say thank you to WordPress on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

About a week ago I wrote a post about a new WordPress plugin released by Semantinet called Headup. When Semantinet first asked me to install the plugin, it actually didn’t work. They looked into it and realized that the reason for this is that WordPress Garage doesn’t have the wp_footer hook in the footer. I didn’t get too excited about that, and told them there are probably a lot of blogs out there that don’t have this hook, and that they should make sure their plugin is compatible with blogs that don’t have the hook so that it will work in most cases.

They took my advice and modified the plugin, and it worked.

Today, one of our clients contacted us saying that they are trying to install a certain  WordPress analytics plugin, and the code that the plugin produces appears in the footer when they switch to the default theme, but it doesn’t work with the theme we created for them.

I realized that it must be the same missing hook problem, and we looked into it and identified the following hook which indeed was missing from their theme:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

We added it to their footer.php file, and the plugin started to work!

So take note theme developers for the WordPress community and for private clients (I am including myself in this): it is important to run through a checklist of code snippets that your WordPress themes should contain so that users and clients can enjoy smooth running WordPress sites.

<?php wp_footer(); ?> is just one of them. The WordPress Codex has a very handy page called Theme Development that goes through functionality and code that WordPress themes should have. Here are some important sections:

Theme Template Files List – list of all the possible theme template files.

Plugin API Hooks – list of all the pieces of code needed for plugins that use those hooks to work. Weblog Tools Collection reported that another API hook that’s regularly forgotten in themes is wp_head();.

The best place for wp_footer();

WP Designer (when he was still writing his amazing blog) wrote about this hook and discusses the ideal placement for it within your theme files. He says that often plugins will break your theme if they use this hook, so it’s best to put it in a style-less div container “that your layout doesn’t depend on. Otherwise, you might end up with an incomplete layout while waiting for a slow loading plugin.”

I’m a bit embarrassed that I wasn’t aware of this apparently basic yet important WordPress theme issue. But I hope that by admitting my lack of knowledge I can help some of you solve plugin problems or theme problems.

This post was originally published at The importance of the wp_footer(); plugin API hook on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

A new WordPress plugin called Headup was released about a week ago by SemantiNet, a startup dedicated to developing Semantic Web technologies and platforms. The plugin works on top of the company’s existing technology, and automatically adds rich content to terms that appear in your blog posts.

I installed it here on WordPress Garage so you can see it in action, but basically the way it works is key terms get a dotted orange underline (which helps differentiate them from your regular links), and when you mouse-over those terms a pop-up window appears with information tabs. These tabs display the following content:

1. A short summary about the key-term (Wikipedia style information)
2. Related News, Articles & Posts
3. Related images from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa, etc.
4. Related Tweets
5. Related Videos from Youtube
6. Related Products from Amazon
7. How your readers Facebook friends relate to the key term (requires readers to approve Facebook connection)

For geographic locations the pop-up will display a Map tab, and for films a Trailer tab will be displayed.

The field of semantic technologies is so new that Headup is only one of 9 WordPress plugins that have “semantic web” as a tag in the plugin directory.

How to install the Headup plugin

1. Go to “Add New” in the WordPress plugin menu.
2. Enter “headup” as the search term to find the plugin in the directory. There will only be one result for this term.
3. Click the “Install” button on the far right, and then activate the plugin.
4. You can configure some settings for the plugin under Settings > Headup for WordPress. There you can choose a maximum number of annotations to display on a page, how many times the same term should be annotated, and whether hyperlinks should be annotated as well.

It will take about an hour before the key terms on your site start displaying the dotted orange highlights. Here’s a short video explaining how to install the plugin:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G20whW3yOs[/youtube]

Here’s another video overview of the Headup Blog Widget and WordPress plugin.

Why would you use this plugin?

The creators of the plugin say that by offering this type of content, you can “reduce bounce rates and increase your readers’ engagement.” Since I tend to judge the world by my own preferences, I was a bit skeptical as to whether such a feature could really achieve those goals since I prefer to find my own info rather than have it dictated to me. Luckily, my pal Mike works at SemantiNet so I decided to ask him a few questions about this plugin, their technology, the semantic web in general, and whether he agrees that Cookies and Cream is Ben & Jerry’s best ice cream flavor.

WPG: Mike, tell me a bit about SemantiNet and what you do there.

Mike: Whereas much of the activity related to semantic web is still very much academic and theoretical, SemantiNet’s products are among the few examples of practical applications of next generation web technology anyone can enjoy today.

What our technology does is identify key-terms in publications & blogs and then provide relevant and personalized related content in real-time. For example, say you’ve written a post about Barack Obama recently being elected in Oslo to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. What we’ll do is automatically identify the term “Barack Obama” as being president of the US, and suggest content related to him, and identify the term “Oslo” as being a city, and suggest content related to it too.

The big deal here is that the technology realizes that Oslo, the city, has different attributes from Obama, the person, so it will offer different types of information for each. For example, Oslo’s Headup results would include a city map, while Obama’s would not.

As for me, I’m a Project Manager in the company and am responsible for managing the company’s site and blog widget.

WPG: Call me an ignoramus Mike (don’t look so happy about the opportunity), but I still don’t quite get what the semantic web is about. Please explain and make me feel more intelligent.

Mike: What makes companies like SemantiNet exciting is that their understanding of online content goes beyond the basic key-word matching we’re familiar with from current search technologies, and enters the realm of true object identification. This is a fancy way of saying that whereas today, if you search for “Apple” you’ll get results related to the company and the fruit indiscriminately, the vision for Semantic Web is that the same search will deliver results that relate not only to “Apple” but also to “Steve Jobs,” “iPhones,” ”iPods,” etc. even if the word “Apple” isn’t explicitly mentioned in the text results.

For more information about the Semantic Web I recommend seeing Sir Tim Berners Lee’s excellent TED talk on the subject.

WPG: How can bloggers and publishers offer this type of rich information on their own sites?

Mike: To date we have three products people can use to get a better feeling for what this does: the Headup Firefox addon, the Headup publisher and blogger widget, and most recently, the Headup WordPress plugin.

WPG: Why should bloggers install the Headup plugin?

Mike: Bloggers who install our widget will gain longer engagement times and reduced bounce rates. Besides these advantages the widget has the ability, via the “Friends” tab, to enable readers to personalize their reading experience and see how the key terms you blogged about relate to their circle of friends. To the best of my knowledge no other widget out there has this capability.

A significant benefit is the fact that everything I’ve described so far is entirely automated. All you as a blogger need to do is a single one time installation of the plugin and within about an hour your entire archive will be covered. This level of automation is again, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented.

WPG: How does the widget promote engagement time and reduce bounce rate?

Mike: The widget reduces your reader’s incentive to browse away by letting them access all the related content they need right on top of your pages. Why go somewhere else when you have everything you need right where you are?

In your interview with Lior Haner from Yedda you asked, quite rightly, how Yedda was solving bloggers’ need to have conversations take place in their blog. We don’t deal in conversations, however as far as complementary and related content is concerned, we’ve pretty much guaranteed bloggers that their audience won’t have to open another tab or browse away to get the little extra that was missing.

WPG: Can bloggers contact you with questions?

Mike: For sure! I’m personally available for any support needed both on twitter @headup and via email – miked[at]semantinet[dot]com. Don’t be Shy!

WPG: Anything else you’d care to add?

Mike: I agree that Cookies and Cream is Ben & Jerry’s best flavor.

WPG: Of course you do! That’s why we’re pals.

So there you have it. I’d love it if you, our readers, would check out this new feature here and tell me what you think: is it useful, annoying, or somewhere in between?

This post was originally published at Headup Semantic WordPress plugin automatically adds rich content to your blog on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

I just received an email from Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, letting me know that the “Plugin search no longer sucks”.  I was so excited that I didn’t even notice the typo he later reported on Twitter.

According to the official WordPress site, WordPress Plugins directory search is no longer a big mess, and can actually help you find the plugin you’re looking for. Last week I think I did a search for “video” and got results like contact form, social bookmarking, etc. and had to resort to a Google search. But now the search brings up much better results and is a great resource.

WordPress improved the search using Sphinx (a “free open-source SQL full-text search engine”) to power the search from the plugins directory and from your blog’s admin area (Plugins>add new)

All I can say, is, give it another chance and you may just find a great plugin from the 4,245 available.

This post was originally published at WordPress Plugins Directory Search no longer “sucks” on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Here’s a review of 4 of the most comprehensive calendar plugins that WordPress has to offer. I tried out each one and tracked the features, pros, and cons.  Which calendar are you using? Send a link so we can see some more examples.  For a full list WordPress calendar plugins, click here.

Still in search of a perfect calendar…

I still have hopes and dreams that the perfect calendar is out there somewhere, but I can’t seem to find The One. I’m looking for a WordPress compatible calendar that can do the following:

• recurring events – monthly, weekly, bi-weekly
• month view
• list view with option to see 15 results for upcoming events and then to click “Next” to see next results
• import a csv file of ongoing events
• Advanced search functionality to do the following. For example, search for Events in New York City on December 1. Or to search by venue, city, topic, and other categories.
• RSS events feed
• user level management – a way for different organizations to submit and manage their own events
• Email notifications when someone has added or edited an event

Event Calendar 3 by Alex Tingle

Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar.

Features

• iCal feed subscription
• sidebar widget – monthly & list view
• easy admin to add events from Write>Post
• links to a post for more details

Cons

• no recurring events
• no RSS event feed
• no large view calendar
• no categories
• no fields within events such as location, contact person
• no user level management

Calendar by Kieran O’Shea

A simple calendar plugin for WordPress that allows you to manage your events and display them in list or month format.

Features

• Monthly view of events
• Mouse-over details for each event
• Events can have a timestamp (optional)
• Events can display their author (optional)
• Events can span more than one day
• Multiple events per day possible
• Events can repeat on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis
• Repeats can occur indefinitely or a limited number of times
• Easy to use events manager in admin dashboard
• Sidebar function/Widget to show todays events
• Sidebar function/Widget to show upcoming events
• Comprehensive options panel for admin
• Modifiable CSS using the options panel
• Optional drop down boxes to quickly change month and year
• User groups other than admin can be permitted to manage events
• Events can be placed into categories
• Categories system can be switched on or off
• Pop up javascript calendars help the choosing of dates
• Events can be links pointing to a location of your choice

Cons

• no events feed
• no fields within events such as location, contact person
• no search feature
• no bi-weekly recurring events
• no way to import a csv of recurring events

Gigs Calendar by Dan Coulter

This plugin is designed for bands touring but can be used for any events.

Features

• list view
• amazing options in the admin panel – arrange table view of events, link to Google maps, etc.
• events feed
• fields for city, venue, start time, contact details
• once you select a venue, the contact details appear automatically! Big time saver.
• each event links to the details
• user level management

Cons

• no month calendar view
• no recurring events
• no way to search/sort by month, venue, city, date

Gigpress by Derek Hogue

Another plugin designed for bands touring but can be used for any events.

Features

• list view
• user level management
• events feed
• fields for venue, venue website, address, country, etc.
• connects to posts with a link that says “related post” [I think it should say "More details"]

Cons

• no month calendar view
• no recurring events
• doesn’t connect to a post – all the info needs to be written in the table which isn’t good if you have a lot of text
  
• no way to search/sort by month, venue, city, date

Easy PHP Calendar Plugin

EasyPHPCalendar is a script you can buy for $20. To integrate it into the WordPress admin, you can use the WordPress plugin. This is by far the most comprehensive calendar you can use in conjunction with WordPress. It has tons of features, template options, and display options. Just beware of the clunky setup which may take a few hours to do properly. Also, there are certain features which can’t  be modified because they’re encrypted by the Calendar developers. Luckily, the support forum on the site is pretty active.

Features

• mySQL database support
• Flat-file database support – No mySQL server required!
• Single events, recurring events and floating events plus multiple categories
• Complete and easy event and setup administration
• Mouse-over and pop-up event details
• Customizable categories and multiple event administrators
• Rich event descriptions including font sizes/colors and images
• different templates for list view and month view
• active support forum and RSS feed for latest entries in forum
• See more details

Cons

• complex setup
• weak search and filtering
• no easy way to import a CSV of recurring events
• no events feed
• some encrypted code which may leave you helpless if you want to modify certain functionality

[Update ]

WP-Events by Arnan de Gans

The plugin features a straightforward user interface in the WordPress dashboard to add/edit and delete events and set some options. Events allows you to list Events on a seperate page or in the sidebar, or both. Here you can list Old (archived) events future events and if you want, events happening today. When you create or edit an event you can set it to be archived. So that it remains listed. Optionally non-archived events are automatically deleted one day (24 hours) after they expire. Many more options are available and Events is completely customizable to your theme in an easy and flexible manner.

Features:

• Widget for themes that support it
• non-widget option: Code to put into templates
• Separate page for events
• Completely customizable layout
• Multi language
• Link events to pages/posts
• Set a start and end time (duration) for events
• Set locations for events
• Show events in your sidebar
• Archive events
• Edit existing events
• Auto remove old, non-archived events
• Unlimited dateformats to show events dates
• Options page
• Set a date and time to the minute
• Set a message to show before and another one to show after the event occurs
• User level restriction
• Management page
• Set amount of events to show in the sidebar

Cons:

Since the events in this plugin are separate from posts,  the integration with linking and feeds is not so great. Other than that, I really like all the options and customization available. Definitely worth trying out.

• No events feed – I wanted to offer my readers a way to get the events feed but because the events are entries rather than posts, I couldn’t figure out an easy way to do it.
• Page/post relationship links – You can add a post and then create a link from the event to the post, but this seems like double the work and not so intuitive.. I guess I could link events to the main events page for more info, but then there is no direct event link to send your friends or refer back to it.
• Date format – the date shows up as March 04, 2009 at 04:00pm and I couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of those initial 0′s. who needs ‘em?

This post was originally published at Best 4 WordPress Calendar plugins on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.