Ajax Edit Comments

The first update was for Ajax Edit Comments. Oliver from the cforms-ii plugin approached me and asked if I was interested in making our plugins compatible.

Being a huge fan of cforms, I was thrilled with the opportunity and the willingness of the cforms author to assist in compatibility. After hashing some e-mails back and forth, we finally got our plugins to work with each other.

Another feature added to Ajax Edit Comments was the automatic deletion of security keys for every 100 comments. RT Cunningham expressed his frustration with an ever-growing database filled with security keys. After discussing ideas, we agreed that every 100 comments was a good place to delete the comments. In the future I may make this an option that a user can configure, but I haven’t had much demand for it, so we’ll see.

As a side note, Ajax Edit Comments is approaching the 50,000 download mark. It’s an incredible milestone, and one I’d like to thank you all for. So, thanks for your support of this plugin in the form of translations, links, word-of-mouth, donations, and just plain using it. I’m still impressed when I comment on a random blog and it has the plugin installed.

WP-Grins Lite

WP-Grins, written by Alex King, was ported over by me to the jQuery library. For those not familiar with jQuery, it’s a far less bandwidth-intensive library compared to Prototype. The end result was WP-Grins Lite.

Several commenters chimed in with feedback, and so far the results have been very positive. Alex King informed me that he planned to port all his plugins over to jQuery, and I would be grateful if he released WP-Grins Lite as his official version.

The update I released for this plugin resolved some WP 2.6 (curse you!) issues, and fixed a rather peculiar bug on a blog where it was loading the JavaScript four times (weird).

So What’s Next?

As far as programming goes, I’m starting to take more client work, which is nice, but means I have less time to work on side projects such as the two listed above.

I am looking forward to WordPress 2.7 and the comment API. For the first time, users could have comment management at the desktop or mobile level. I will be following this closely, and who knows, you might see something from me here.

Conclusion

For all who have downloaded, or used either of the above plugins directly or indirectly, thank you. Thank you for putting up with me, and for helping me make better plugins.

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• Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Released

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• The Dangers of Quid Pro Quo
• Three More Types of Advertising Readers Don’t Like to See

For plugin information and features, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page.

For videos and screenshots, please visit the links below:

• Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Screenshots
• Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Videos

If you run into any issues, please read the FAQ or visit the support page.

You may also leave some test comments below, but please be aware that test comments will periodically be removed.

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Here are some things I changed in this RC:

1. I added inline event calls as opposed to unobtrusively adding them in. This may seem like a step backwards, but the plugin crashes browsers if there are several hundred comments on a post. Removing the unobtrusive approach allows for less client-side processing.
2. I added an advanced feature that allows admin to disable the plugin’s stylesheets. If that is done, the admin will have to style the plugin himself.

I’m still having slight issues with Internet Explorer 6. Sometimes the comment will load, sometimes not. Anybody else having the same problem?

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC2.

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If this RC goes well, you’ll see an official release in about a week.

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC1.

Features?

Rather than repeat myself, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page for a full break-out of features.

I Need Feedback

Specific areas I could use some feedback on are:

• Theme issues.
• Character issues.
• Defensio: I still have not confirmed 100% that this feature works.
• Style issues. If so, what browser and OS?
• Behavior issues. Does something not work as expected?
• Usability issues. Can a rock use it?

Any bug reports should be as detailed as possible with steps to reproduce the error. Screenshots help a lot as well.

If you’re not having issues and want to lay down praise, I’ll accept that too. All feedback is appreciated.

Conclusion

Once again, this is an RC, so please use caution if testing it on a live blog. If there are any issues, please de-activate the plugin immediately.

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Part of development is growing. And for the past year, I think I’ve grown quite a bit, at least in the area of WordPress development. This is one of the reasons I felt like I needed to give Ajax Edit Comments another go.

Ajax Edit Comments - Initial Development

Ajax Edit Comments was the third WordPress plugin I had developed. I didn’t really know proper WordPress coding, and vaguely knew how to write a WordPress plugin. I definitely didn’t know how to properly use WordPress and Ajax together.

So I hacked, hacked, and hacked a bit more. And the end result was a decent plugin that allowed a halfway-elegant solution to editing comments.

Soon people wanted more and more features, and this time last year I released a fairly substantial upgrade. For the first time ever, WordPress admin could edit, delete, and spam comments from a post.

Ajax Edit Comments - Growing Pains

Ajax Edit Comments was not without its problems, however. I’ve received hundreds of e-mails, which I’ve tried to address them all. Some were bugs, some were support requests, and some requested new features.

Many of the problems were with theme issues, but with the current plugin setup, there really wasn’t much I could do. I’ve also been battling with various character sets.

Also, several people wrote me about the clunky admin panels, and adding support for logged-in users.

I was reluctant to add in features, simply because the plugin worked and was quite easy to use.

However, it pained me to stare at my old code and know that Ajax Edit Comments could be something so much more.

WordPress 2.5 is Released

With WordPress 2.5, a whole slew of ideas came to me. I envisioned the next Ajax Edit Comments interface, entirely independent of themes. I envisioned some nice eyecandy in the form of icons. And I envisioned adding in the features that users have requested over the past year.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Codebase

The result is what I would like to call almost an entirely new plugin. Everything, and I mean everything, was written from the ground-up.

The new plugin takes advantage of WordPress built-in Ajax scripts, and also takes advantage of its brand new modal window, which you can see when you open up the Media Manager when you write a post.

The code isn’t perfect, but it’s something I’m proud of. Code is indeed poetry.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Interface

AEC 2.0 Editing Options

I think the hardest part of Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 was the editing interface. It needed to be something as easy to use, but so much more powerful.

In order to keep things theme-independent, I use a modal pop-up window, which uses an iFrame. The combination results in an interface that is completely theme-independent.

AEC 2.0 Interface

I also didn’t want to clutter up the interface, so I have included an option to hide certain options. Will more be added later? Perhaps.

Why Only for 2.5?

One question I think I’ll be asked a lot is why only for WordPress 2.5?

And my response would be, “It’s time to move on.”

WordPress 2.5 is a big jump over previous versions, and it’s something the community needs to move to. It also has many features that I use extensively in the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 codebase.

In other words, even if I wanted to develop for versions less than 2.5, I couldn’t.

So When’s the Release?

Soon

Feedback has been awesome from testers. I plan a release candidate this week, with the official release within one or two weeks depending on feedback.

I look forward to seeing what you all think of the new version.

Thanks for reading.

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Some reader appreciation plugins offering direct benefits: Top Commentors or Last comments, or WP Ajax Edit Comments fall into this directly rewarding category.

Some other plugins offer indirect benefits, which are rather meant to help readers as bloggers, by offering them a small SEO help. This category includes the Do Follow and Comment Luv plugins, which are some of the “most hunted” and “most searched for” and which (especially the Do Follow) sometimes make people sign their comments with “purple lamp post” or “white beans soup with noodles”, or other thoroughly researched keywords.

Thanks to Stephen Cronin, the conversation between lamp posts, noodle soups and camping flashlights is coming to an end: The Keyword Luv plugin allows commenters to input both their name and their desired keywords, the backlink to their blog being anchored on the keywords, and not on the name, as it was before.

If you want to read a more detailed review of the Keyword Luv Wordpress plugin, you can visit InspiritBlog, or you can download KeywordLuv Plugin and offer your readers a nice treat.

Due to the fact that this plugin is valuable only if it is used on Do Follow blogs, you will need to install a Do Follow plugin in order to be sure it works smoothly.

If you have a Do Follow blog, I’m sure you won’t miss all the “items” which used to leave comments on your blog. You can now offer them a name.

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This weekend I finalized the interface and worked out several of the kinks.

It is my hope that I will have a beta sometime this week. If you are interested in testing out the beta, please leave a comment below.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 will be for WP 2.5 only.

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My goal with Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 is to provide a comment-editing interface independent of themes, and allow blog administrators extreme flexibility when editing comments on a post or in the admin panel.

I have yet to complete the main editing interface, but I have created the foundational code and editing options. The icons are courtesy of Pro Theme Design.

Here’s a brief preview of what I’ve accomplished so far:

Administrators will be able to delete, mark as spam, edit, and unapprove (moderate) comments from a post.

Administrators can edit, mark for moderation, or recover from spam in the Akismet panel.

There is only one admin panel in the new version, which has been a heavily requested feature. This will give you an idea of what new features are coming.

As the plugin nears completion, I’ll start releasing private betas and release candidates. If you’re interested in helping test this out, please leave a comment below. More than likely the new version will be WordPress 2.5x only.

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What it does is translates a comment like this:

Sue@TameBay

Into this:

Sue from TameBay

I pick on Sue simply because she leaves comments like that (nothing wrong with it in my opinion).

Theoretically, the plugin applies the correct weight to the keywords after the “@” symbol.

When the plugin is deactivated, everything is converted back to its “name@site” format.

There is a issue with Ajax Edit Comments, but only when editing the name portion, which hardly anybody does anyway.

Feel free to leave a comment below to try it. I’ll leave it installed for a week and see how it works out for you all.

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“What?” I asked. “You can only see the last 10?”

“Yes, only 10.” he replied.

“How many posts would you use?”

Alex responded, “Do thirty to fifty. If it’s a new subscriber, he wants to read some. I know some bloggers who show the last 2 years.”

Wow, Fifty Posts?

Alex as a new reader wanted to read our content, but when he subscribed he could only see the last ten of our posts. I immediately went into my WordPress settings and increased the count to fifty posts per his recommendation.

In WordPress you can access this setting under Settings (or Options) and in the Reading panel.

WordPress Feed Settings

I’m sure Alex is not alone, so do your readers (and new subscribers) a favor and increase that feed post count to whatever you feel comfortable with.

PS: While you’re at it, make sure you have “Full text” turned on also.

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One of the cool things about going to things like WordCamp is being able to meet your readers face-to-face. Also, you might actually find new ones, or discover that someone is a huge fan of you (always a good thing).

Posted below are a few photos of my experience at WordCamp. To view the rest of what I have, please visit my WordCamp Flickr set.

Me and Matt Mullenweg

I had the awesome opportunity to talk to Matt face-to-face, chatting about cameras (he loves cameras) and also the future of WordPress. Matt is extremely approachable. I don’t think I’ve ever met a friendlier guy.

The Crew

After one of the WordCamp days, a few attendees got together to talk a little more WordPress. I was able to chat with Ptah Dunbar, and Jeff Chandler quite frequently. In the picture is another blogger named Chris GJean.

The person taking the picture is Alex Frison, who is another awesome blogger who went extremely out of his way to make sure the other bloggers around him felt welcome and appreciated.

More Photos

To view the rest of the photos, please view my WordCamp Flickr set.

I really enjoyed WordCamp and meeting other bloggers face-to-face. I hope to do much more of these as I find meeting others from various backgrounds invaluable.

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Within this article I will share a step-by-step tutorial on integrating your del.icio.us links with your WordPress (2.2 and up) installation.

Step 1: Get an Account

While it should be obvious, you can’t share your del.icio.us links without an account.

If you don’t have an account, registering is easy enough.

Step 2: Post Some Links With Appropriate Tags

You’re going to want to start posting some links so that they’ll show up on your blog.

One important thing to note here is your use of tags. Use a unique tag for every link you want to show up on your blog. For our blog I choose “raproject”. So basically anything tagged “raproject” will show up on this blog.

Step 3: Modify Your Theme

Open up one of your WordPress theme files (I decided to place the links in my “footer.php” file) and insert the following code:

<div id="linkblog">
    <a href='http://del.icio.us/ronalfy/raproject'>del.icio.us Links</a>
</div>

The above code is a place-holder for the real del.icio.us links to show and is a nice fall-back for users who don’t have JavaScript enabled. Just be sure to modify the above link to point to your own del.icio.us links.

Step 4: Add the LinkBlog JavaScript File to Your Theme Directory

Please download the LinkBlog JavaScript file and place it in your themes directory after unzipping it.

If you’d like to customize the output, please modify line 12 in the file. There’s three outputs that del.icio.us provides:

• post.u - The link URL
• post.d - The link Title (Description)
• post.n - The link notes (Long Description)

Feel free to customize to your heart’s content if you’re comfortable with JavaScript.

Step 5: Modify Your “functions.php” File

You’ll need to tell WordPress to load the JavaScript files. The best way is to add the appropriate code to your “functions.php” file. Every WordPress theme should come with one, and if not, it’s pretty easy to create an empty one using a text editor. I’ll also provide a downloadable sample “functions.php” file if you need one.

To load the appropriate JavaScript (I’m assuming you placed the JavaScript file in your theme directory), please add this code to your “functions.php” file:

add_action('wp_print_scripts', 'addScript');
function addScript() {
		wp_enqueue_script('delicious', 'http://del.icio.us/feeds/json/ronalfy/raproject?count=5');
		wp_enqueue_script('delicious_footer', get_bloginfo('template_url') . '/link-blog.js', array('jquery','delicious'), '1.0');
}

The above code adds the appropriate JavaScript files to your WordPress theme so the links can show up.

You’ll want to modify the path to the first file, which in this example is: http://del.icio.us/feeds/json/ronalfy/raproject?count=5

Say for example your username is “rachel” and you want to only show links with a tag of “blog“. Your link would be: http://del.icio.us/feeds/json/rachel/blog?count=5

For more pointers on modifying your link, please check out the JSON Post Feeds over at del.icio.us.

Step 6: You’re Done!

After you’ve followed the above steps, you should now be able to see your del.icio.us links in your blog footer (or wherever you chose to put them).

I personally find del.icio.us links a lot more flexible when showing a link blog because I can specify which tags to display. Using the custom JavaScript I provided can also lead to some nice customization possibilities.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my short tutorial on adding del.icio.us links to your WordPress blog.

All the code mentioned in this post can be downloaded here.

Here is a link summary of the places I mentioned in this post:

• Register for del.icio.us
• Post to del.icio.us
• JSON Post Feeds

This article is a part of the del.icio.us social media mega group project.

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• Share Blog Income With Your Readers
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Ronald recently left a comment on one of my posts about graphic design, saying that he was uncertain about how to arrange the site without making it too crowded or overdone, so I thought that it might be fun to provide some ideas on how to arrange the different sections of this website. I’m aware that Ronald is planning to revamp this site with the sleek Mimbo Pro premium theme so I’ve created a very rough preview of how the site could look with that theme’s functionality.

I’ve used a blue colour scheme as the original design uses some blue elements, and because blue is a pleasant, calming colour which most readers will appreciate. When designing your site you’ll need to keep in mind the two kinds of visitors who will be using it: regulars and new visitors. The regulars will know how to navigate to the content they require and won’t want you to change the site navigation too much, whereas your new visitors will want to be able to read your best and/or most recent articles without having to hunt for them.One of the problems with the recent proliferation of magazine themes is that while they can provide a very attractive way of organising your content, they can also make it more difficult to have a chronological reading experience without lots of clicking between pages.I’ve numbered the main areas of this mocked-up home page design and will take them all in turn.

1. I think that it may be the right time to review the logo image, as I feel that its meaning is unclear. I think that a more stylised logo, yet one which could look good even as a 16×16 favicon would be a good improvement.
2. After looking at the RAP sitemap, I’ve provided headings to link to the subject areas on which this site focuses most: Blogging issues, Case Studies, Tips, Misconceptions and Site News. This is a good exercise to do if you’re ever feeling like you need to pin down your site’s main focus. I’ve also added the usual RSS logo next to the search bar as most readers expect to see this logo at the top of the site.
3. The recent articles section is a good way of alerting readers to these articles.
4. The top featured article is a great place to highlight promotional content like contests or features which may be active for some time. It’s also a good location for any articles which you wish to highlight as examples of flagship content.
5. The article carousel offered by Mimbo Pro could be used as another way of linking to recent or popular articles in one or more categories, but it’s not essential and could be omitted to minimise clutter.
6. I’ve chosen to list the site pages, downloads and contributors within the main sidebar, but other items could also be listed here. I feel that it’s important not to clutter up the sidebar with unnecessary widgets and buttons, as it’s an area which is meant to benefit the reader, not the blogger. As the RAP archives are filled with so much great content which might be overwhelming for a new reader, I would recommend using the SRG Clean Archives plugin to provide a sexy way to view this content by month. A list of categories could also be provided in the sidebar to allow readers to navigate similar content more easily if the main headings at the top of the page are insufficient.
7. A recent post could be provided here to give new visitors the opportunity to read a full post without having to move to another page. Or else one or more post snippets could be provided here to provide a full magazine-style layout. If post snippets are used, perhaps the From the Vault and Reader Spotlight features currently used by RAP could be located here.
8. Sidebar 2: 125×125 ads, Adsense blocks and/or a blogroll could be placed in this area.
9. In the last year it’s become quite fashionable to have a functional footer, which may act like an extended sidebar. It’s important to acknowledge that some of your visitors may not reach this far down the page, so any information placed here should be useful, but not essential to navigating your site.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the redesigned Reader Appreciation Project website, and I hope that you’ll find my tips helpful when considering your own blog or website layout.

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• My Goals for RA Project ‘08
• RA Project Re-Design Screenshots
• Keeping the Stakeholders Informed and Giving Credit

The plugin was the idea of one of our RA Project readers, Vivien from Inspiration Bit. It all started after I had edited an obvious typo in her comment and she stated that it would be nice if readers could edit their own comments.

I searched for a solution, but nothing was elegant or user-friendly. So I decided to write my own version. And what a journey it has been.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the numerous people that have made 20,000 downloads possible.

Translators

Ajax Edit Comments has so far been translated in eleven languages. Here are the translators that have made it possible:

1. Chinese Simplified, Nicky
2. Chinese Traditional, Harry Ng
3. French, Lise
4. German, David May and iKArus
5. Greek, Alexander Kanakaris
6. Italian, Piplos
7. Japanese, Lahal Halt
8. Polish, Maclej
9. Romanian, Tache Ionut Madalin
10. Russian, Sergey Ryvkin
11. Spanish, Adrian

The Plugin Users

Users of the plugin have provided valuable feedback to the plugin in the form of bug reports, feature requests, and support requests. All have helped raise awareness to issues that have helped the plugin improve over time.

A special thank you to all those who have mentioned the usage on your site or who have taken the trouble to find me if one of your readers experienced an issue.

Donators

Ajax Edit Comments opened up donations a few months ago, and I’d like to thank the people so far who have donated.

1. Elona Hartjes

Thank you Elona for so far being the lone donator

RA Project Staff - Past and Present

Thank you to the RA Project staff who have put up with all the comments and support request streaming in regarding the plugin. It’s been a nice learning experience.

• Thank you Bes. You’ve always been a big supporter of the plugin.
• Thank you Simonne. Like Bes, you have always stood behind having the plugin hosted here.

The Next Version

I have many ideas for a future version of Ajax Edit Comments that will hopefully vastly improve the usability and compatibility of the plugin.

I’m looking for a co-author to assist in the next version. This author would help clean up the code, help with brainstorming new features, and help with bugs and support. If you are interested and have a decent amount of PHP and JavaScript experience, please contact me.

Conclusion

I never thought a plugin I wrote would be one of the more popular WordPress plugins at over 20,000 downloads. It is an honor and a privilege to have helped so many blog authors and readers. Thank you all for the privilege.

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And what am I going to do with it? Not quite sure yet. Perhaps use it as an office decoration. Or, “gasp” drink out of it.

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One of the greatest enablers of community is having comments enabled and allowing the reader to give feedback and add to the conversation.

However, since spam is a constant problem with comments, bloggers take measures to limit the amount of spam being received on blogs. Some bloggers use CAPTCHAs, and some use plugins such as Akismet or Bad Behavior.

The ongoing struggle with spam is why I stated that spam is a reader’s problem too. Their comment may be accidentally marked as spam, or the comment may be lost due to some ill-advised spam-blocking attempt.

So when I saw yet another anti-spam plugin for WordPress, I was extremely skeptical. Especially since this plugin works right out of the box with absolutely no configuration.

To illustrate the ease of installation, here are the install directions for WP-SpamFree:

Installation Instructions

1. After downloading, unzip file and upload the enclosed ‘wp-spamfree’ directory to your WordPress plugins directory: ‘/wp-content/plugins/’.
2. As always, activate the plugin on your WordPress plugins page.

You’re done! Sit back and see what it feels like to blog without comment spam!

And how have we managed here at the Reader Appreciation Project? The only spam we have received has been that annoying Trackback spam (only a few spam messages a day compared to hundreds). And readers don’t have to fill out a CAPTCHA and I don’t have to worry about them being blocked as with some other WordPress anti-spam tools.

I highly recommend downloading and installing WP-SpamFree. It’s a great and unobtrusive plugin to weed out almost all of your spam without imposing spam’s evil effects on your readers.

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For those who are wondering, I used a (great) program called Screenflick (Mac) to make the screencasts. I tried to get the quality of the video higher, but this is one of my first attempts at Google Video. If you have any issues with the videos, please let me know in the comments.

Users Editing Comments on a Post

Admin Editing Comments on a Post

De-Spamming Comments with Akismet

Editing Comments in the Admin Panel

Ajax Edit Comments Admin Panel

Ajax Edit Comments User’s Panel

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It feels good to see that people remember you, doesn’t it? But what if you knew this is part of an automatic recognition process? Would it still be enjoyable to you?

Let me tell you this story: a couple of months ago, I’ve discovered an interesting blog, Revellian.com, a mixture of poetry, philosophy, spooky stories and practical blogging advice which can easily get you addicted to it. After a while, I remembered about my discovery, and visited Revellian for the second time. And guess what? In the sidebar, there was a personal message for me: “Welcome back, Simonne…” and my MyBlogLog avatar.

Although I was sure that must be a plugin, I couldn’t stop myself from noticing the positive emotion triggered by that warm welcome. Suddenly, Bobby Revell’s blog became familiar, and made me subscribe and comment, because I felt like somehow I already belonged to that community.

For those of you who want to know the secret of making your blogs more familiar to your readers, find out that it is called The Welcome Plugin, and it can welcome your visitors by name, in these cases:

* If they’ve already left a comment they should keep a little cookie on their computer with their name/email/website. These information help determining the name and avatar (first MBL, if not found, gravatar, or the default image)
* If the visitor is a registered user: in the 99% of the cases this will happen for the admin only, if a WP installation has got only one user. Be sure to set the “email” and “website” fields of your profile, to ensure avatars are shown correctly.
* If they’re MBL users, and you too: only if you display the MyBlogLog graphical widget on your blog, the plugin with a script (you have to activate it below) can recognize MBL users and welcome them.

What do you think? Will your readers love you more, if you welcome them back to your blog?

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There’s already some good tutorials out there, but I thought I’d share how I created the printer-friendly stylesheet for this site, which uses WordPress.

A printer-friendly stylesheet will enable your readers to print out your blog with ease with you dictating how the document is to look printed out.

First Step - Create a “print.css” File

The first thing I did was create a file called “print.css” and I placed it in my WordPress Themes directory. I’ll explain the code I used in the stylesheet file in a minute.

Second Step - Add the Style Reference to Your “header.php” File

After you have created the “print.css” file and placed it in your WordPress Themes directory, you will need to open up “header.php” and add in some code.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

What I did here was add in a link tag before the end of the “head” tag.

The following attributes are explained below:

• rel="stylesheet" - The relationship of the file referenced to the document calling it is stylesheet.
• href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/print.css" - The web path to the stylesheet. In this case I have it pointing to the theme directory.
• type="text/css" - The MIME type of the document referenced.
• media="print" - Which media the stylesheet should be applied to. In this case it is “print” since we only want the stylesheet to show up when printing the document.

One thing to note here is that the other references to styles need to have media="screen" (or something similar) in order for this to work.

Third Step - Edit the StyleSheet

The technique I use when editing the “print.css” is to decide what I did not want to show. I didn’t want to show the sidebar, footer, social media icons, and other “fluff” used solely for presentation.

I looked at my theme in my Firefox browser and used FireBug to inspect which elements I wanted to hide.

After selecting my elements, here is the CSS I used to hide the appropriate elements:

#header p a, #menu, #search, .navigation, #sidebar, #footer, .copyright, .comment-author, #navigation, #social, #comments-block2{ display: none; }

As you can see from the above code, I used display: none to hide the elements I didn’t want to show on a printed page.

Fourth Step - Admire the Results

The results of a printer-friendly stylesheet is to control what the reader sees when the document is printed out. Here is how RA Project turned out:

RAProject Printed Out

If you are interested, here is a PDF of the full results.

Conclusion

A printer-friendly stylesheet enables your readers to print out a site with ease without all of the necessary design fluff included. It’s not very difficult to do, so I recommend creating one if you haven’t already.

If you have any questions about this technique, please let me know and I’ll be happy to answer them. Thanks for reading.

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I’ve reviewed a similar plugin in the past called Better Comments Manager, but Absolute Comments doesn’t add an extra panel. You can access everything through the familiar Comments admin panel.

The Plugin In Use

From within the Comments sub-panel, I look at my recent comments. I see someone has responded to a recent post I wrote.

A sample comment

Seeing that the comment needs a reply, I hit the spiffy “Reply” button, which displays a reply box instantaneously. I type in my reply and hit “Reply to Comment.” If I had some threaded comments type plugin, I could have hit “Thread Reply” instead.

Me replying to a comment

Once I hit “Reply to Comment”, the new comment is moved to the top. It’s as easy as that.

My reply

Other Features Worth Mentioning

1. The plugin is highly customizable. If you are comfortable editing PHP code, you can change the width of the text editor, the reply prefill, and numerous other options.
2. Support for threaded comments
3. Ajax Edit Comments is compatible. Okay, so this isn’t an advertised feature, but you can reply to and edit comments all in one place.
4. Impressive localization. Numerous languages are already supported.
5. Reply-to in e-mail notifications. If you receive e-mail notifications on e-mails, a reply-to link is included.

Conclusion

I highly recommend Absolute Comments for every WordPress blog (versions 2.2 or higher) to make replying to comments in the admin panel a snap. And replying to comments is an excellent way to show reader appreciation.

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I absolutely love the layout of your comments section, with the pictures off to the side. I have never seen anything quite like it.
Would you be willing to share your code along with the css stuff so i could implement it on my blog?

Well Slim, I will absolutely share the code as nothing on this site is propriety. The code may be messy, but it’ll get you what you want.

Let’s start with the end result first:

The Final Solution

The reader wants the desired look of the person being shown to the left with the comment on the right. Furthermore, I have