ilovecode

I’m finally going to devote some time to upgrade this plugin. There are several things I would like to add to it. My first objective will be to get it work in 2.1.x. I just upgraded one of my blogs to the latest version of WP and installed it and didn’t have any issues. So, I don’t know if the release of 2.1.3 fixed the issues people were having in 2.1.0 and 2.1.1. I’ll have to test it out a little bit more.

I’ve had over 1800 downloads of the plugin so it seems that people are enjoying it which is great. Now, I’d like to get your feedback on anything you would like to see added, or just made better.

Anyone who is a website owner or who has a blog has to admit they like to watch their stats. We like to see how many people come and read what we have to say. It’s fun to watch those trends over a period of time. We LOVE it when people comment. It’s nice to have that conversation started.

This week I installed a cool little plugin that lets you watch the activity on your site. It’s a pretty neat idea and it can be addictive if your site is active enough.

This site basically watches to see who is reading your blog and what they are reading…LIVE. Sean Hickey released the latest version of this plugin a few days ago and I think it is a pretty solid effort.

Here is a screenshot:

At the top of the picture you see a legend of sorts that explains the symbols shown in the grid. The large gray box underneath shows activity. This graph resets itself everytime you load the plugin so unfortunately I don’t have a very good picture to show you here.

The grid is where all of he fun takes place. The first column lets you know if someone is looking at your page through their browser, a feed reader, or if they left a comment. If they left a comment you can click on the image and it will take you to that comment. The next column tells you what page they were looking at followed by the referrer. The last column tells you who is looking at your page.. well it tells you their IP address. if you want to see who, just click the IP and it takes you to a whois report on that IP.

Download the Live wordpress plugin for yourself!

UPDATE - People extracting with Winzip have been running into errors. Try winrar if you do.

What a long process this has been but the day is finally here. Let’s back up a bit and start from the beginning, shall we?

Many many many months ago I decided I didn’t want the typical “About me” page. Sure that way I could dictate what people knew about me and frame their perception of me, but what fun is that . I came across a script by a very nice guy, Dean who offered to give me his script! This was awesome. Dean’s script had the functionality I needed, but I wanted more functionality and wanted to put a database behind it rather than rely on files. I spent about 20 hours and wound up with a pretty neat script and launched it about 16 months ago.

It is pretty neat and i think it gives readers an interesting perspective into my personality that they wouldn’t see in my posts. Over the months though, I continuously had people asking me for a copy of it. I decided I should make it a plugin because i didn’t know of any like it out there. I finally did. My good friend Jelena wanted to start her blog last month and she wanted a copy too. All according to my evil plan, i talked her into helping me finish it. I remember when I told her the functionality I had left to do on it and she said.. oh 2-3 hours tops. We’ve spent well over 80 hours since then and finally have something that is hopefully worth to put out. That probably seems likes an astronomical amount of time but it really is a PITA to make it work just by dragging and dropping a file into your plugin directory. I have a new found respect for plugin authors. My last plugin was a breeze to make but the functionality was also very limited and didn’t require any interaction with the admin panel.

There is one big issue with it and hopefully you can help me figure it out. Upon activation, the plugin creates a page called “Ask Me”. Everything works as it should if you already have a page created. If you don’t however and you try to view your page at: http://www.yourblog.com/ask-me/ or http://www.yoursite.com/blog/ask-me/, you can’t find it. So what you have to do is create a test page and then delete the page and all is well.

I’m pretty sure the reason for this is when wordpress creates a page, it inserts the page into a specific table, but it also turns on a flag saying, “hey, we have pages!” I can’t figure out where that flag is, so if anyone knows, please let me know!

If you have Wordpress, and want a page like my Ask me page, you can download the plugin. For those of you who don’t read the ‘read me’… please do so. Report any bugs here!

I am now writing for 4 blogs and occasionally work on a 5th. There is a plugin for Firefox that I recently discovered that I just love. It’s called Performancing.

This is such a great plugin. I can load all of my accounts into it and when i want to make a post I simply run it from my browser and make my post. I get to stay on the same webpage I was on. I would recommend this for anyone who has multiple blogs!

I’m extraordinarily busy lately and it’s kicking my butt. So, what’s going on? Full time job, the business (got about 10 projects going on simultaneously), I’m moving to Belgium in a couple of months, trying to sell my house, trying to spend as much time with friends and family (Drew and my oldest are moving ahead of abe and I at the end of June), etc. It is extremely hectic around here.

I had such high hopes for the long weekend (Memorial Day here in the states). Friday, I went to my son’s pre-k graduation and then as any irresponsible parents do, we took our 5-year old to see X3 . Saturday I did yard work, worked on the computer a bit, then went to the beach in the late afternoon/early evening. Sunday, we went to a friends pool party which would have been a blast but my damn puppy chewed through my bathing suit strap the night before. So I roasted while everyone had a blast. Then Monday, I ran errands and had friends over in the evening.

I did manage to work on the Wordpress plugin for the Ask me page and am almost done. The only part left to program is the configuration data. I need to figure out the best way to store and update that. DB is probably the best option and what I will go with. If there is anyone out there that has wordpress and would like to test it for me, let me know please. I should get it done by the end of this week..or at least ready to test.

In order to do everything I want to do, I need to either clone myself or figure out how to get more hours into the day. Perhaps getting more efficient would help too .