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Archive for Wordpress Plugin
Search Engine Crawl Rates: Useful Wordpress Plugin
This week I have started using a Wordpress plugin called “Crawl rate Tracker”.
The plugin a graph of how often your website has been visited by the indexing spiders from Google, Live Search (Microsoft), Yahoo and Technorati. This is important since it is an indicator of how much trust particular pages attract from a search engine.
The graph below is from the Wardman Wire Blog (i.e., not the “Magazine style” front page, which is a separate Wordpress installation) for the few days since I installed the plugin. As you can see, the blog has had up to 1000+ search engine spider visits each day - which makes clear why it is important to filter “robots” out of your traffic statistics. Also, the front page is being indexed up to 13 times a day by Google.
You can click through to the report for each page.
Polevaulting the Great Firewall of China: Human Rights Olympic Knockout
There are many ways to keep your website visible in China despite the censorship of external websites by the authorities; here is one that is quick to setup and also nimble.
Domain Mirror Plugin
There is a full mirror of The Wardman Wire at www.mattwardman.co.uk.
That is done using a plugin called Domain Mirror, which allows the copy of Wordpress installed on mattwardman.com to provide service to people viewing mattwardman.co.uk.
The Wordpress plugin
The approach is quite nimble, as I can set up a mirror viewable from China anywhere where:
- I can get a domain that can be configured to mirror this one.
- That domain is not blocked by the Great Firewall.
The advantages are:
- I only need to maintain one copy of Wordpress (my previous “UK Edition” of the blog
- I can move the whole thing to any domain that can be configured appropriately in about 24 hours for very small cost (e.g., a .uk domain would cost me around £5.00 for 2 years).
That is one way; there are several others mentioned on Wikipedia (for example) - and even more elsewhere.
Video and Audio Wordpress Plugins for Use with Wordpress
I regularly post video in Windows Media (.wmv) and Quicktime (.mov) formats, and Audio MP3 files (.mp3) here, and also embedded Flash Video (e.g., Youtube).
I have done a posting over on Poliblog Perspective about the Wordpress Plugins I use to post video and audio.
The other special things about these plugins, is that they all have tag formats that are capable of being posted from the Blogdesk offline blog editor into Wordpress without their tags becoming mangled in the process.
The embedded video plugin is capable of parsing the web address from Youtube, Google Video etc and generating the appropriate code to save you having to post reams of HTML code.
Read it all here.
Tags: embedded video, embedded audio, video, audio, podcast, vodcast
[tags]embedded video, embedded audio, video, audio, podcast, vodcast[/tags]
Suicide by Wordpress
You have heard of Death by Chocolate - try Suicide by Wordpress over at Poliblog Perspective.
This is the Bangalore Torpedo of Wordpress Plugins.
[tags]wordpress plugin, suicide by wordpress[/tags]
Wordpress: Category Images Plugin
On the Wardman Wire I’ve just introduced a Wordpress Plugin called “Category Images”. It gives you the ability to “brand” each category (or some of the categories) on your blog automatically with a small image file.
I’m using small images to distinguish the different people writing on the blog, and as a “badge” for their columns. Each article displayed singly carries a double version.
The reason I looked at it is quite amusing.
Mike Rouse wrote a column about “Starting your own TV Show“, and linked to Obama Girl, who came back and left a comment, but thought the article was from me.
Now, I sure that I could bring myself to enjoy the attentions of Obama Girl when I am in the US - but really I need to make it clear who is the author of the article.
Hence this plugin. It took a bit of tweaking, but is now working reasonably well.
And hopefully next time Mike will get the admiration (and perhaps the date) he deserves.
Tags: obama girl, mike rouse, garbo, category images, wordpress plugin[tags]obama girl, mike rouse, garbo, category images, wordpress plugin[/tags]
As an aside: that shows it is worth linking to well-known blogs as well as lesser-known ones.Another way to catch a blogger’s attention is to apply a Technorati Tag of their name to your post if it should be of interest (e.g., matt+wardman). Many bloggers monitor their tag or have a Google alert set up to catch these references.
One caveat: if you use a blogger’s tag inappropriately, they are very unlikely to come back. Do it, but get it right.
Banning Domains from Registering Accounts part 2
Welshcakes has asked me to clarify my previous posting about “Banning Domains from Registering Accounts” for non-techies. OK, here we go.
This is what I said:
I am using a Wordpress plugin “Registration Blacklist” on the mattwardman.com to prevent users from certain domains registering accounts.
I have had a stream of repeated bogus registrations from mail.ru, which has prompted me to take this action.
I’m sure that you are familiar with the idea of creating an account (”registering”) on a site.
I use Wordpress as a blogging platform. That allows users to “register” with my site. See the screenshot of “meta” menu.
One of the benefits of a user registering is that it becomes easier to make comments.
My concern is that I have had a number of dodgy looking registrations from throwaway email addresses at a domain called mail.ru.
I have therefore prevented this one domain from registering.
However, they can still comment on articles by adding their details each time.
OK, Welshcakes?
Tags: sicily scene, registraion of accounts, wordpress plugin, banning domain registrations
[tags]sicily scene, registraion of accounts, wordpress plugin, banning domain registrations[/tags]
Comments off
Banning Domains from Registering Accounts
I am using a Wordpress plugin “Registration Blacklist” on the mattwardman.com to prevent users from certain domains registering accounts.
I have had a stream of repeated bogus registrations from mail.ru, which has prompted me to take this action.
If this causes you any problems, please let me know via the contact form.
The plugin looks useful, and was easy to install, but I cannot comment any further for a couple of weeks.
Tags: ban user registration, wordpress plugin, registration blacklist[tags]ban user registration, wordpress plugin, registration blacklist[/tags]
Statistical Milestone and Slimstat for Wordpress
The Wardman Wire just generated its 150,000th page impression since starting properly on on March 16th.
This is a figure from the Slimstat Wordpress Plugin, which I recommend - but is a bit hard to find now. I have posted a copy of the Zip file for WP-Slimstat version 0.9.4 (600kb) for you to download.
So - thank-you very much to all the readers, lurkers, linkers and commentators.
Before anyone asks - Slimstat used “hits” for page impressions on its results page.
Now - back to politics.
Tags: traffic statistics, webstats, 150000 views, page impression, wp-slimstat, slimstat v 0.9.4, thankyou[tags]traffic statistics, webstats, 150000 views, page impression, wp-slimstat, slimstat v 0.9.4, thankyou[/tags]
