Archive for the 'Plugins' Category

Performancing

Published
by
C.G.
on August 11, 2006
in Computers, Plugins, Reviews and Site
. 0 Comments

I’ve just installed Performancing, a Firefox extension and blogging tool, and I have to say I am not impressed. I’m writing and publishing this post with it now and it looks like a good WYSIWYG editor but it is no different than the editor that is bundled with WordPress. Maybe for those who user Movable Type will find it useful but I am 99.99% positive that MT does have a WYSIWYG editor too. Hell, Blogger has one and its free and in serious neglect by Google.

Go to Performancing’s site to see a list of features which you may or may not find interesting. Nothing really stands out for me except one flaw: No spell check.

Supposedly, there is support for the spell check that comes with Firefox 2.0 but since I don’t run it, I don’t get to use that feature. And its not a feature of Performancing, really. Its a Firefox feature.

I suppose the thing I could say about the extension is this: It combines a few features into one platform but doesn’t do them well enough to convince me to not use all the apps it intents to replace.

For example, it has built in del.icio.us support which I can do on my own or with a different Firefox extension. I don’t tag my own posts in del.icio.us because I’m not into to that kind of shameless promotion - I shamelessly promote myself in other ways.

I mentioned the technorati tags earlier but, again, that can all be controlled with a plugin for WordPress. If MT, Blogger, and the other systems it supports doesn’t have that, then this might be useful but for me and my WP blog, its not all that helpful.

There is built in FTP support and image uploading but what system doesn’t have at least image uploading?

You can manage multiple blogs (using different CMS types) all in one place - that is helpful. But Flock can do that and it comes with a spell checker!!

Sorry I keep mentioning that. I can’t get over that missing feature. If Performancing had one, I’d using it all the time in a heartbeat.

Anyway, I’m giving it this shot… and if you think it could be helpful, then you should too. But I still believe that you can do more with either the standard interfaces the blogging systems offer you or with extra tools you can download and incorporate yourself.

New Features

Published
by
C.G.
on July 9, 2006
in Plugins and Site
. 0 Comments

Fresh on the heels of the Blog To-Do List comes the list of things I added to the blog.

The first is the print this post link on every entry. Click on the link and it will strip the fancy formatting and make the article “printer friendly” for those who just want to read the text (but posted images are included).

The next thing is a view counter. This tells me (and you) how many times a particular post was viewed by people out on the net. I can only trust the accuracy of the counter as I can’t tell if anyone is actually reading this thing or not.

I also added a mobile version of this blog for those on Sidekicks, Blackberries, cell phones, or any really crappy internet service like slow Wi-Fi or AOL. Like the Print This Post plug-in, the formatting is stripped out for fast, easy loading/reading. But unlike the print function, the Mobile Edition shows the full text of the latest post - with the forms to comment on it - and displays the last 10 posts below as links in case you missed a few or want to reread some.

I added polls to the sidebar. I’ll create new polls every now and then and will ask you, my trusty readers, to answer them. Once I have a few polls under the belt, I’ll randomly rotate them to get a good statistical sampling.

Related to post views, I also added post ratings. This gives you guys the ability to rate my posts. I know, I know… they are all 5 stars but not everyone thinks in ways of genius like you and I. So… I’ve given them a way to rate what they just read. Hopefully, they will also comment on why it is they liked or disliked the post so I can get better. It will make me a better writer/poster and the blog more enjoyable to the masses.

I also added a Contact Me page so people can send me messages from the blog. It’s sent to a capture inbox that filters out spam and forwards all real messages to my real email address. Please be gentle and don’t flame/spam/flood me with unnecessary or hurtful messages.

Last (I think), but not least… I added a statistics page that lists some simple information about the blog.  It lists how many articles there are, the number of comments, the most viewed posts, and information about the rated posts.  Right now, no one has rated anything so it shows nothing for that section but once the readers start pouring in, I’m sure it will change.

Remote Post Test

Published
by
C.G.
on June 20, 2006
in Plugins and Site
. 0 Comments

I’m trying to get back all my “lost” functionality that I had at
Blogger. Post by email is one of them (actually, I think its the last
one too). WordPress 2.0 has the feature but setting up is more
challenging so I guess I can’t call it “lost”.

Blogger has it setup automatically. all you have to do is create the
email address @ blogspot.com and whatever is emailed there, gets
posted.

WordPress is a little different (at least with the hosted services I
have, anyway). You have to generate create an email address with your
host provider, then configure the post by email in the setup of the
blog. When that’s done, you have to setup a cron job to invoke the
command that publishes.

This email is a test of that cron job.

I hope this works.

C.G.