Flametoad

Even though last week was a rough week for me, I really was working on things behind the scenes. In particular, I’ve been working on a redesign of my local professional organization (IABC) chapter’s website. It has been a great experience in part because it gave me a reason to stretch my own knowledge of WordPress beyond its boundaries, including the discovery of a number of neat plug-ins. I’ll probably take the next couple of days to talk about webdesign, and in this installment I thought I’d start with plug-ins and widgets.

First, I’ll run through with the usual suspects. No WordPress installation would be complete without the mighty spam-fighting duo of Askimet and Bad Behavior. Some people prefer Spam Karma over Askimet, but I haven’t had a significant problem with spam since installing those two so I haven’t really had reason to try SK.

In the category of analytics, we have Feedburner Feedsmith and Ultimate Google Analytics. These plugins help you use 3rd party systems to be better analyze site traffic. On Flametoad I’m using a different Google Analytics plugin, yet I plan on upgrading to UGA because of its advanced features. One of the cool things UGA can do is “(optionally) not add the tracker code to the pages when a logged on user of a configurable userlevel requests a page. This can be used to ignore your own page views and not skew your statistics.” While we’re talking Google, I still need to install Google Sitemap Generator on the IABC website. That’s one of those things you readers never see, but it helps search engines catalog my site.

Another plugin on my favorites list is Image Manager. This replaces the built in image manager that comes with the WordPress wysiwyg interface (called TinyMCE). I like Image Manager because it lets me upload images to the site from the same interface. Also related to images is a Lightbox 2 plugin. If you’re not familiar with Lightbox 2, it’s a script that does some fancy footwork to explode a thumbnail into a full-size version in your web browser. You can see examples by clicking the plugin link above. Depending on your design sensibilities, you may consider this one a bit of unnecessary bling. I’m not sure whether it’s something you’ll see carried over to Flametoad, but I will say that of the Lightbox 2 plugins that I evaluated this was the easiest to implement.

Speaking of TinyMCE, I also use a plugin called TinyMCE Advanced, which gives me more control over the wysiwyg interface with an expanded, customizable set of buttons. I still hate TinyMCE, but I guess I’m stuck with it until I buy a copy of Adobe Contribute. TinyMCE Advanced at least makes writing these posts a bit easier.

Rounding out the usual suspects is a plugin called Subscribe to Comments . This does just what it sounds like–it allows commenters such as yourselves (hint, hint) to be notified via e-mail when I or someone else responds to the thread. As far as I’m concerned, that really should be co-opted right into WordPress much as they did with Widgets. And speaking of subscribing, the site I just finished (well, mostly finished) features a new (to me) RSS subscription widget called Subscribe Me. This is one that I’ll definitely be adding to Flametoad in the (hopefully) near future.

Now, there are a few other plug-ins I use at Flametoad that I probably still need to bring over to the chapter website. Brian’s Threaded Comments appeals to my sense of order and is something else that should be brought into the core WordPress installation. It allows you to comment on a comment, displaying the conversation in a heirarchical fashion instead of all comments on a single level. I’ll also have to find a new (read: still supported) version of Comment Quicktags, which gives commenters more control over formatting (such as bold and italics) in your comments. Flametoad also uses Ultimate Tag Warrior 3, which adds tagging to my posts. For instance, if you look at the bottom of this post you’ll see that it’s tagged “miscellaneous, plugins, webdesign, and wordpress. Clicking on any of those tags will take you to my other posts with those tags.

Now, all of the above plugins are ones I’d install on any WordPress site I was working on. The next few may have a more narrow use or audience, but I still think they’re pretty cool.

First, Event Manager is just what it sounds like. It lets you post an event (such as a monthly professional chapter meeting), collect registration information (no payments), and run a report on the same. It is date smart, meaning that it closes registration on the appointed day and time. It’s a really cool addition to WordPress, but unfortunately the designer has been off the grid for a while and his website is down (thus, no link). Dig around WordPress and you’re likely to find a copy, but be warned that it doesn’t work so great in WP 2.2. It took some tweaks by a colleague to get it working. I have no idea what he did, but I’m grateful.

Next up are the one-two combination of Role Manager and Post Levels. Role Manager helps me manage the function permissions for users on the chapter site. This is important since we have in excess of 50 members, all of whom will have some measure of access to the backend of WordPress. Most members will have access to the Author level, while a select number of board members will have access to the Editor level. I, of course, am an Administrator. Granted, I don’t need Role Manager to assign those roles, but it does let me get granular when I define what it means to be an Author versus an Editor. Hand in hand comes Post Levels. This plugin helps me manage site security. While the public can see 90% of the site, for the other 10% I can assign a post level of “5″ (for instance) and unless a user has been assigned a value of 5 or greater then he won’t see the post. These two tools allow us to have member-only content, AND enables all members (and only members) to post news to the site.

Incidentally, I should mention that if you’ve been to Flametoad in the last couple of days you might have noticed the Blogrush widget in the sidebar. I’m trying it out for a while, but so far I’m not very keen on the links it has been displaying. Please let me know what you think. The concept is kind of neat, (in a ponzi scheme sort of way), so by all means if you’d like a similar widget on your site please follow the link so I get credit.

Last but not least, we have WP Navigation Tool (NAVT). I really want to gush about this plugin, and it probably deserves a post of its own. Calling it a plugin is almost an insult. It’s a widget within a widget. It enhances navigation the way widgets enhanced the WP sidebar. I’d like to call it the crown prince of widgets…but unfortunately it still has a little bit of growing up yet to do. The WP Navigation Tool is a widget that gives you granular control over the presentation of your WordPress navigation. Use the drag and drop widget functionality to re-order your navigation in any manner you see fit. Create heading aliases, insert spaces between links, mix pages and categories–the sky is the limit.

Yet, it was only last week that the author released a version that displayed hierarchical navigation. Prior to this release, all pages were treated as the same level. Also, while it seems to pick up some styling from your existing CSS, it doesn’t do so without error. When I tried it on the IABC chapter site, the text was styled correctly with the exception that all items were right-aligned. Now, NAVT has its own set of CSS classes that I could include in my style sheet, but who wants to go through that much trouble? The good news is that I talked to the developer, who said he’s open to enabling users to assign classes we may already have in our style sheets. In the meantime, if I want to use this (and I do!) I’ll have to perform some trouble-shooting to figure out where the right-aligned text is coming from. Still, I think once I bend this widget to my will, you’ll see a marked improvement in navigation on the chapter site.

Tune in tomorrow, when I’ll talk about themes and the future of the Flametoad blog.

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