The Reader Appreciation Project

A while back, when I released the new commenting section for this blog, one of the requests was the inclusion of smilies.

I installed WP Grins, but the overhead of the Prototype library was immediately noticable on the site.

Since I was already using jQuery here, it was apparent I wanted to port the plugin over.

I worked on a “lite” version on Friday, and talked to Alex King to see if it was okay to give you guys a download. He mentioned that he would be happy to do an update to the existing plugin, but had to do his own internal testing to make sure the lite version wouldn’t break blogs.

Until Alex is able to make an official release, I’m going to post a download link here for you all to check out.

Download Link

Here is the download link for WP Grins Lite.

The only difference between this plugin and the original is the use of the jQuery library.

Installation Instructions

Unzip the “wp-grins-lite.zip” file and copy the “wp-grins-lite” folder into your WordPress plugins directory.

From there, just activate the plugin in your admin plugin options.

WordPress Versions

This plugin has only been tested on WP 2.5, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for 2.2+ installations.

Conclusion

WP Grins Lite is simply a port from the Prototype library to jQuery. The functionality should still be the same, but the footprint lighter.

Andrew Rickmann, friend and fellow RA Project contributor, has released a new plugin called Fun With In-Context Comments for WordPress 2.5.

The plugin allows you to add questions to your comment section, which readers can optionally answer.

Applications

The applications for such a plugin are enormous. If you’re running a political blog, you can ask questions on current issues.

If you’re running a celebrity blog, you can ask questions based on a certain celebrity.

And, most importantly, if you are writing a support-type post, you can ask users for their browser, operating system, and whatever else you can possibly think of.

Brief Overview of Features

When you head into the WordPress 2.5 Comments panel, you’ll see an option for “Global Contexts”. From there, you can specify a number of options. You can also add questions, which you can then optionally add on any post or page with comments enabled.

Global Contexts – Adding a Question

The neat thing about this plugin is you can also add questions from a post, which will only apply for the post in question. This makes the plugin both flexible, and completely post independent.

Post Contexts – Choosing or Adding a Question

From a commenter’s point of view, you are presented an optional question when leaving a comment, which will then show up in the comment.

Leaving a Comment

And the final feature I’ll mention: It’s fully compatible with the latest version of Ajax Edit Comments.

Compatible with AEC 2.1

Future Versions

Andrew mentioned to me that he’s planning on adding a feature to tally how many people have answered a question in a particular manner, which is very similar to a poll.

Conclusion

Fun With In-Context Comments is a nice way to unobtrusively ask readers a question, which will hopefully put a reader’s comment in the context of a post.

The plugin will help with support issues, and will also assist readers when filtering comments based on a particular answer.

As a sidenote, Andrew’s plugin is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, please check out his plugin over there and give him some feedback.

I also have the plugin installed here if you’d like to try it out on this post.

Ajax Edit Comments has a new home now.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 is ready for release. For the download, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page.

Feature Additions

• Option to disable icons.
• Option to disable Gravatars.
• Added auto-scroll to comment.
• Option to customize title text and URL
• Option to remove “clearfix
• Option to specify stylesheets.
• Option to remove “More Options” from editor.
• Added additional languages.
• Added numerous plugin hooks so that AEC can be extended for other plugins and/or modules.

Bug Fixes

• Save/Cancel buttons re-styled for other browsers.
• Fixed issue where Admin couldn’t enter blank e-mail address.
• Fixed NextGen Gallery incompatibility.
• Fixed issue where AEC JavaScript was loading in unrelated admin panels.

Feedback?

If you have any issues, or have additional feature requests, please feel free to leave a comment.

Please note that test comments will periodically be removed.

Ajax Edit Comments has a new home now.

I’ve been busy with some fairly sizable updates to the plugin.

Thanks to feedback from various sources including Viper007 and Sean from Pixelwit, I’ve added in a number of updates/changes.

Since there are a fair amount of changes, I’m holding off on an official release and also giving the translators a chance to catch up with some of the changes.

So in the meantime, here’s the download link to the Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Pre-Release.

Here’s a list of some of the changes.

Added Updated Languages

There were many word additions, so I updated the “po” files for the translators. I also added in the Norwegian language.

Icons Can Be Disabled

Several didn’t like the new icons, so I added an option to remove them. The links will look like AEC 1.x. with this option.

Ability to Disable Gravatars

Gravatars were causing the plugin to not work on some blogs. Also, several users were confused when a silhouette would show up when editing a comment.

Bug fix: Admin Couldn’t Enter a Blank E-mail Address

Admin can now enter an empty e-mail address. If any part of the e-mail field is filled out though, it will be passed through validation.

Save/Cancel Buttons in Editor Interface Re-Styled

Buttons are re-styled for maximum browser compatibility. The icons were also removed.

Can Remove ‘More Options’ From Editor

You can now remove the ‘More Options’ option in the editor interface. Doing this will also give you more textarea room in browsers that support the ‘rows’ attribute.

Added Option to Remove “clearfix”

This style can make or break themes. For those that it breaks, it can now be easily disabled.

Added Auto-Scroll to Comment

If an admin clicked on a comment anchor (yourblog.com/#comment-39302), the page would load, and then the edit links would show up. This produces an offset. The plugin now tries to correct this offset.

You can also disable this in the admin panels, since I imagine a few might find it annoying.

Added Option to Change the Title Text and URL

The Title Text and URL in the editor interface can now be customized. If you’re nice though, you’ll leave it as is

Feedback?

Feel free to try out the pre-release. I’ve tested it out as best as I could. I imagine you’ll find bugs in some of the work I did as there were lots of changes.

Any feedback is appreciated.

To follow, or not to follow. That is the question.

This past week I gained about sixty or so followers thanks to Jeff’s Twitter post over at WeblogToolsCollection.

After scanning through each of my new followers, I was faced with a decision. Do I follow just because they’ve followed me? Or, do I follow because there is a genuine, and hopefully, mutual interest?

It’s really the same dilemma I find myself facing when it comes to feeds. I would love to subscribe to each one of my readers’ blogs, but I typically only subscribe if I can relate to the subject matter in the areas of interests, language, and material.

If you are on Twitter, what is your criteria for finding people to follow? Also, what would cause you to unfollow (is that a word?) someone?

For those interested, here’s some of the RAP contributors’ Twitter profiles.

• Andrew Rickmann
• Isabella Mori
• Ronald
• Simonne
• Vivien

The newest WordPress plugin to help with commenting and reader appreciation is that of WP Comment Remix.

Comment Remix enhances your admin comment section, and introduces several post features.

Post Features

Reply, Quote, and Tags

Comment Remix takes your existing comment section and adds the following options:

• A ‘Reply’ link
• A ‘Quote’ link
• Tags

Here’s a quick screen of those in action:

If you click on the reply link, you’ll see something like this in the comment box:

The benefits of the ‘Reply’ option is that the original comment is linked to if others want to read the original comment.

The only issue I’ve found with the ‘Reply’ and ‘Quote’ options is that they are still available if comments are disabled on a post.

On the tags feature, if you click a tag on a comment, only comments with that associated tag are displayed. I’ve been debating with myself how useful this is, since it appears that tags only show up for the particular post I’m on. Also, there is no easy way to edit tags. You’ll have to edit the comment in order to edit the tags for that comment.

Trackback Options

One nice option that Comment Remix has (in the admin panels) is removal of Trackbacks. You’ll find similar functionality in the Comment Sorter plugin I wrote.

In addition to the removal of Trackbacks, the admin has the ability to automatically move Trackbacks to the end of the comment section.

Sort Options

Admin can also specify how the comments are displayed. Comments can be sorted (ascending or descending) by the comment date, or by the commenter’s name.

Other Post Options

Additional post options are the admin’s ability to:

• Disable the ‘Reply/Quote’ links
• Add/Disable tags
• Customize all text displayed.
• Change the number of tags displayed.

Admin Options

The meat of the Comment Remix features come in the admin panel.

Comments Panel Actions

With an interface very similar to Absolute Comments, the plugin gives you the ability to edit, ignore (explained in a minute), reply, quote, and view all comments for a post.

One thing I’d like to see here is better styling of the links.

Reply/Quote Pop-Ups

When clicking on the Reply/Quote actions, you see a pop-up window, which allows you to add your comment and submit.

I’m not quite sure why the author didn’t go with the ‘Thickbox.js’ file, but the pop-up he uses works pretty well.

Once you hit ‘Save Reply’, the new comment will show up at the top of the Comments panel.

In Need of Reply

One absolutely fantastic feature is called the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel.

What this panel shows you is all of the comments that haven’t been replied to.

Once you reply to a comment in this panel, the comment disappears since it is no longer in need of reply.

One feature that is desperately missing here is a ‘Mark All as Replied’, although you can “ignore” comments on an individual basis.

Conclusion

Comment Remix is a very nice plugin that combines a lot of features I’ve seen in other plugins. It’s always nice to have it all in one place, and the admin options (not shown in this review) are quite extensive.

The star feature is the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel, which will help busy blog authors figure out which comments haven’t been replied to.

Comment Remix is still in its early stages, but it’s off to a great start.

As a side note, Comment Remix is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, head over to the Comment Remix post, cast a vote, and give your say.

This is just a bit of a personal off-topic rant about my travels today.

It was just a little over a month ago that I was in Dallas for WordCamp Dallas. It was my first real trip to Dallas (besides going to the Ft. Worth zoo), and I had a blast.

The trip today, however, was more for business.

Knowing that Dallas is a maze, I went to BestBuy late yesterday and bought myself a Garmin 200W. I had hopes it would come in handy in Dallas, and boy did it ever!

The first order of business was visiting a home establishment in Grand Prairie, Texas. After we were done with that, the work for the day was done.

I mentioned to my co-worker that there’s a great Tex-Mex place called La Hacienda Ranch that you can only find in Dallas.

After traveling through torturous rush-hour traffic, we finally located it (using the trusty GPS) on Preston Rd. The name sounded really familiar, but I let it slip by me.

After La Hacienda (which was great, by the way), my co-worker wanted to find a sports store. The trusty GPS took us to a place called Dick’s Sporting Goods, which was still on Preston Rd.

Déjà vu swept over me. The sporting goods store was located in a giant mall, which looked very familiar. It finally dawned on me that I was in the very location where the WordCamp Dallas attendees had their first meet-up (at Dave and Busters).

I looked over at my co-worker and said, “Wow, I never thought in a million years I’d be back in Frisco, Texas.”

It was WordCamp Dallas all over again for me.

As a sidenote (I think everything in this post is a sidenote), the La Hacienda had a nice feature that I think should be done more often.

In their restroom is a switch above the sink. The note more-or-less states, “La Hacienda Ranch is committed to a clean restroom. If this restroom needs attention, please flick the switch to the right.”

When I read this, I thought, “Wow, what a great and non-embarassing way to bring attention to a problem.” If only every restroom had such a feature! I was looking for one in my hotel room, but I sadly couldn’t find one.

Anyways, I head back from Dallas tomorrow and back home to humid Alabama. I just wanted to share a quick note with the readers. I hope all is well out there in the blogosphere.

Via Shawn, I came across a neat plugin called Title Case for WordPress.

Basically the plugin converts all headings and titles into appropriate title case.

Before: This is a cool plugin.
After: This is a Cool Plugin.

This plugin is a necessity for multi-author blogs, where various authors have different capitalization schemes.

I applied the plugin here and immediately noticed the difference.

Title Case – Before

I highlighted the areas in red that weren’t in title case.

Title Case – After

After applying the plugin, you can see the difference.

Custom Function

Currently the plugin uses a WordPress filter called ‘the_title’. However, it is my experience that not everybody uses this for all areas of their site.

Here is a function you could put into your theme’s functions.php, which you can call if you need to put something into title case that doesn’t involve invoking the template tag the_title.

function title_case($string = '') {
	if (function_exists('nv_title_case')) {
		return nv_title_case($string);
	}
	return $string;
}

The function assumes you have the WP Title Case plugin installed.

Conclusion

WP Title Case is a fantastic and simple plugin that converts normal text into title case. It is ideal for multi-author blogs where authors have various capitalization schemes.

Niclas Darville writes in:

I recall you handing out awards for bloggers who made a heroic effort out of helping their readers and being good sports overall.

In that regard, I’d like to recommend the Disqus team and Daniel Ha in particular, who makes an insane effort out of answering and helping everyone on the site.

They/he may not be a blogger as such, as their real blog is a development blog for a comments system; they do, however have a support forum of sorts where Daniel Ha constantly rushes to answer and solve questions posed by the readers. They do, of course, also get comments on their development blog, but merely watching the responses there doesn’t reflect the lightning fast responses from Daniel and the amount he invests of himself in helping out his peers.

Niclas continues and provides an example of the Disqus team hard at work.

Thanks Niclas for pointing this out to me and for taking the time to nominate a site.

Readers First Summary

This, folks, is what the Readers First award is all about: readers like yourself spotlighting individuals or sites that you feel place readers first.

If you visit a site (blog, forum, whatever) that you feel places readers first, please nominate the site and have it featured here.

…Annoying!

I visit Slashdot every other day, and one of the things that irks Slashdotters the most is a linked article with multiple pages. Inevitably, someone will find the link to a printer-friendly version and be praised and worshipped by all.

You’ll mostly see multi-page posts on “newsy” sites like Slate, or tech-heavy sites such as Wired. But every now and then, you’ll find a blog that does it too.

Now when I’m talking about multi-page posts, I’m not talking about its related, but twice-removed, cousin called a series. I am actually a big fan of a decent blog series and have written quite a few myself.

Here’s why I find multi-page posts annoying:

• I’m a big fan of instant gratification. Forcing me to click through pages for content is just working against me.
• I don’t like swarms of ads and pop-ups (I’m looking at you Sitepoint).
• Page loading still takes a lot of time. Even in high-speed bliss, some pages still take a looong time to load.
• It’s an inconvenience to readers. Multi-page posts are not a convenience. They’re a nuisance. I can hear it now, “Look mom, clicking through all these pages is so much fun!”
• It’s disrespectful to readers. Do page views and advertisers really matter that much? I suppose so.

Lorelle VanFossen has also expressed her feelings towards multi-page posts.

Blogs are about communicating and interaction. They are about creating and maintaining relationships with your audience. If you are doing anything that interferes with their ability to read your blog posts and access your blog, you are just putting barriers up between your content and your readers.

Amen, Lorelle!