One of the problems with using social media to promote our articles is that most of us do not command the kind of authority that the top notch bloggers in our niche claim. A recent case at hand was when Google Wave was launched in public beta. We had several hundreds of blogs writing on the same subject, yet it was only the most popular blogs that garnered all the attention on the social media.

The problem here is a lack of perspective. In this particular case, most bloggers merely parrotted the same news that readers already knew, thus losing out in the social media traffic race. When the same news is presented with a different perspective, it is received much better. So here are two tips that you can make use of while writing on a topic that is likely to be on something written everywhere else and still be seen as unique.

Twitter Search

One of the easiest ways to capture attention is to be counter-intuitive in your posts. Let us take the example of ‘Google wave invites’ again. On that particular day, a Twitter search for Google Wave will show most twitterers saying one of these : “Google wave releases 100,000 invites” or “Need a Google wave invite”. This gives you the general mood of the ‘herd’. An article at this point about ‘Why it is better not to get a Google wave immediately’ or ‘Why a Google wave invite now makes no sense’ will surely catch your audience off-guard and it is likely to be shared more on social media.

TweetMeme

If you have not already known, Tweetmeme is like a Digg for tweets and lists links that are making the maximum wave on Twitter. While the homepage (or the category page) of Tweetmeme can give you the currently popular stories, what you should be interested is the search option. As you might know ‘How-to’ articles are among the most popular articles and tend to get shared pretty quickly. Search for “How to” followed by the topic you wish to cover. In the example mentioned above ‘How to Google wave’ will give you lesser known website links that have been covering an interesting perspective. You may write on a similar subject or you may use the titles to form your own clever how-to titles. While the same is possible with Google Blogsearch as well, in my experience, TweetMeme tends to be less spammy and more relevant to the keywords I look for.

The above two are just among the hundreds of different ways to use Twitter to find interesting topics for you to write on. However, as a means to providing a perspective to what you write, the above two tools can go a long way in helping you write articles that can be social media friendly.

MiniCart will implement a mini-shopping-cart in your blog. You can add items from the admin side and embed the cart into posts. This can also be used as a donation plugin. By design, you can only show one item in a cart.

If you like this plugin, consider making a donation…

The above donate form is created using the MiniCart plugin. To see an actual cart in action, got the MiniCart Demo page.

Download MiniCart

Features

• Supports Paypal
• Easy to use interface
• You can also embed it directly into a post
• One item/cart restriction. This will force the users to focus on just one item.

Installation

1. Download the zipped file.
2. Extract and upload the contents of the folder to /wp-contents/plugins/ folder
3. Enable the plugin from WordPress admin area
4. Go to Settings > Mini-Cart Setting page and set the paypal id(Make sure this is done).
5. Go to Tools > Cart Items and create items
6. Embed the cart in a post by using the code [MINICART item="ID_OF_ITEM"] anywhere in a post/page.
7. Alternatively, you can use the code [MINICART donate] to show a donation form.

If you have any issues with the plugin, post a thread at the MiniCart Plugin Forum.

Plugin Week

This plugin is part of the Plugin Week 2 series. Plugin Week is a week when I publish a new plugin each day for an entire week. I have already one this one time – so this is Plugin Week 2. This is the second plugin released this week. The first is Weather Man.

If you want to get news about the upcoming plugin releases(remember, 1 per day), please subscribe to this site.

Photo Credit

Many blogs highlight the author’s comment in the comments section. You can use many plugins to get this effect(For eg., the Highlight Author Comments Plugin) – but you don’t have to. You can get the get the same effect by adding a small bit of code to your theme.

The Changes

Just open up the style.css file in your active and add this at line at the end…

.bypostauthor { background-color:#aaa !important; }

Change the #aaa to the color you want as the author comment’s background. That’s it – you’re all done.

Note: This will only work on 2.7+ version of WordPress – if you are using an older version, please read the instructions in this post.

A list of the popular posts of the blog is a standard feature in many blogs. There are quite a few plugins that offer this feature…

• Top 10 – A Page Counter and Popular Posts plugin for WordPress
• Popularity Contest Plugin (beta)
• WordPress Popular Posts
• MostWanted – a Popular Posts Plugin for WordPress

Now, lets see how to do it without using a plugin. In case you are new to this blog, I am currently working on the Plugin Killer Series – a series of post in which I explain how to duplicate the functionality provided by some wordpress plugins – without having to install the plugin.

These plugins work by adding a view counter for each post – whenever a user visits a page, it will increment the count for that page by one. Unfortunately, WordPress does not provide this feature. But there is another indicator for the popularity of a post – its comment count.

The Code

Getting Comment Count – SQL

So the first step is to get the list of post with the most comments. To get that, we can use the following SQL statement…

SELECT id,post_title FROM wp_posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10

Listing The Data – PHP/SQL

This query will return just 10 posts. If you want more(or less) post, just change the number after LIMIT accordingly. The PHP code for executing the query and getting its result is…

$popular_posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT id,post_title FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10");
foreach($popular_posts as $post) {
	// Do something with the $post variable
}

Final Output as Links in a List – HTML/PHP/SQL

Next step is to get the URL of each post. The recommended way of doing this is by using the ‘get_permalink‘ function. Another thing we have to do is to map the result as an HTML list…

<li><h3>Popular Posts</h3>
<ul class="bullets">
<?php
$popular_posts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT id,post_title FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0,10");
foreach($popular_posts as $post) {
	print "<li><a href='". get_permalink($post->id) ."'>".$post->post_title."</a></li>\n";
}
?>
</ul>
</li>

Note: The HTML part of the code may need to be changed – depending on your theme.

Add this code to the sidebar.php file in your theme – and you are done!

My last post about using a bit of custom PHP code in the wordpress template instead of installing a plugin inspired a new way of thinking for me. How many of the wordpress plugins currently in use are actually necessary? Couldn’t we avoid a few plugins by using a bit of custom code?

So I decided to do a series on how to duplicate the functionality of some plugins using PHP code within the WordPress theme/template itself. That way, you can eliminate the plugin – and still get the features offered by the plugin.

The Advantages

The advantages of avoiding unnecessary plugins…

Less overhead/More Optimized Method

If you have installed a plugin, the plugin files must be read and loaded into the memory on every page load. This overhead can be avoided by using putting the code into the template file which is already in the include list.

Don’t have to worry about plugin updates

Granted, current WordPress version make it very easy to update plugins. But still, if you embed the code, then there is no need to update the code every month or so.

Much more customizable than the plugin

You can write the code to get the exact functionality you want. You cannot get that with a plugin.

You learn more about WordPress

This is perhaps the most important effect – you learn more about wordpress template tags, about PHP, about wordpress internals and lot more.

The Disadvantages

Not as easy as using a plugin

For those who work with WordPress and PHP code all the time, like myself, editing the code may be easier than finding, installing and configuring a new plugin. But for most normal people, using the plugin is a much easier option.

Have to be familiar with coding, PHP, FTP, etc.

To do custom coding, you have to be familiar with technologies like PHP, HTML, FTP uploading etc. If you are not familiar with these, you will have to put in a bit of time to learn it.

Changing the theme involves a lot of work.

You will have to port all the changes you made in your old theme to the new theme whenever you decide to move to the a theme. The more you customize a theme, the more time you have to spent when moving to a new theme.

Plugin Killer Series

With this in mind, I have decided to create a series that shows how to ‘kill’ some unnecessary wordpress plugins. You will be able to get the same functionality by using the custom code in your template files.

The first post in this series is already done – it is the ‘Avoid Duplicate Content – Use Canonical URL in WordPress‘ where I showed how to create the same functionality as the Canonical plugin.

More to follow. If you are interested in these posts, make sure you have subscribed to Bin-Blog Feed – if you have not done so already.

The new talk of the SEO world is ‘Canonical URL‘. What is canonical URL? This is the definition given in Google’s Webmaster Central Blog…

a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.

Emphasis mine

It is very easy to specify the canonical URL of a page – all you have to do is add this line in the head section…

<link rel="canonical" href="http://binnyva.com/" />

The purpose of this tag is to prevent the problem of duplicate content.

The best thing about this tag is that all three major search engines(Google, Yahoo and MS Live) support this initiative.

WordPress

If you are on wordpress, this tag can be integrated into your theme easily. There is a plugin to do the job for you – but you don’t need a plugin to do something as simple as this.

header.php

Go to the theme folder in wordpress(wp-content/themes/<theme_name>) and open the file header.php in your favorite editor. Now find the line…

</head>

and add the following code before that line…

<?php if ( is_singular() ) { ?>
<link rel="canonical" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" />
<?php } ?>

Now, it should look something like this…

<?php if ( is_singular() ) { ?>
<link rel="canonical" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" />
<?php } ?>
</head>

That’s it – you are done! Save the file and upload it to your server.

This fix will add the canonical URL tag to all the posts and pages of your blog. If you want to see a blog that have implemented this fix, take a look at the source of this page.

Related Links

• Canonical URL
• What Is A Canonical URL?
• Canonical URLs To Avoid Duplicate Content
• Learn about the Canonical Link Element in 5 minutes

Quizzin WordPress Plugin lets you add quizzes to your blog. This plugin is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Quizzes, questions and answers can be added from the admin side. This will appear in your post if you add a small HTML comment in your post.

Welcome to Plugin week – in Plugin week, I release a new WordPress Plugin each day, every day for one week. This is the sixth (and final) plugin in that series. The plugins released so far are…

• Eventr WordPress Plugin
• Autofields WordPress Plugin
• Pollin WordPress Plugin
• Surveys WordPress Plugin
• Quartz WordPress Plugin

Note 1: Quzzin is a beta plugin(as are most of the plugins released in the Plugin Week) – so watch out for bugs. And trust me, there will be quite a few.

Installation

• Download the zipped file.
• Extract and upload the folder to /wp-contents/plugins/ folder
• Go to the Plugin management page of WordPress admin section and enable the Quizzin plugin
• Go to the Quizzin Management page(Tools > Manage Quiz) to create or edit Quizzes
• After creating the quiz, create a new post and add the HTML comment [QUIZZIN 1] in it. Here the ’1′ should be the ID of the quiz to be inserted.

Usin’ Quizzin Plugin

This plugin is pretty straight forward – after enabling the plugin, go to the Manage Quiz page(Manage > Manage Quiz). All the existing quizzes will be show here. You also have the option of creating a new quiz – or editing an existing one.

Click on the ‘Create new Quiz’ link to create a new quiz – you have to fill in three fields – the quiz name, the description and the Final Screen.

The ‘Final screen’ field is very important – you can customize the result of the quiz using this. Basically, what you fill in here will be shown when a user completes the quiz. You can use several variables here. For example, if you put in the text ‘%%SCORE%%’, it will be replaced by the score the user got in the quiz.

The other possible variables are…

Once you have filled out this form, you will be taken to the next page where you can manage your questions. Click on the ‘Create new Question’ to add your questions and answers. You have to select one of the answers as the correct one.

After you have added all the question, create a new post and add the HTML comment [QUIZZIN 1] – here the 1 should be the ID of the quiz to be inserted. That’s it – you should have a working quiz on your blog now.

See it in Action

I have created a WordPress Quiz using the Quizzin plugin. Lets see how well you know wordpress. If you take the quiz, post your results in the comments field.

Credits

Thanks to ‘The’ Anand for suggesting the idea of a Quiz plugin. Also, Mani Karthik provided a lot of encouragement to create the plugin.

As a matter of fact, Quizzin is the first plugin in the plugin week series. When those two suggested the Quiz plugin, my lazy brain immediately saw the benefits – I get 3 plugins for the price of one. Once the quiz plugin is created, just remove the correct answer option, limit the question to just one and record the answers – and you have a Poll plugin. To create a survey plugin, just remove the correct answer option and record the user’s input. You also need to create a interface to show the results. Voila – you have a survey plugin. That’s right – the Pollin Plugin and Surveys plugin are based on the Quizzin Plugin.

The eventr plugin was created for the Barcamp Kerala. Again, the credit for its suggestion goes to Anand. After that plugin was ready, I am sitting on four unreleased plugins(that is, two plugins and an idea for two more) – that’s when the thought of doing a plugin week hit me. The rest, as they say, is history.

Feedback

If you have any suggestions or notice any problems with the Quizzin WordPress plugin, post it in the Quizzin forum.

That’s it! Plugin week is over. 6 days, 6 plugins. Now, I have to go catch up on some much needed sleep. Happy Blogging!

Quartz Plugin lets you show random quotes/tips/links/pictures/something else to visitors. These quotes can be added from the admin side. You can add these one by one – or you can bulk import the stuff from a text file.

For those of you who are not in the know, this is the Plugin Week. Actually, this is the final day of the plugin week. In Plugin week, I release a new WordPress Plugin each day, every day for one week. This is the fifth plugin in that series. The plugins released so far are…

• Eventr WordPress Plugin
• Autofields WordPress Plugin
• Pollin WordPress Plugin
• Surveys WordPress Plugin

Note 1: Quartz is a beta plugin(as are most of the plugins released in the Plugin Week) – so watch out for bugs. And trust me, there will be a lot of them.

Note 2: I would recommend that you don’t install Quartz right now. It has not yet been accepted into the WordPress Plugin Repository. You can install it using the zip file I provide below – but then there will be some problems with auto updating of the plugin. Its better to wait until WordPress accepts the plugin before installing it. I’ll update this section when that happens. UPDATE: WordPress have accepted Quartz – feel free to install it now.

Installation

• Download the zipped file.
• Extract and upload the contents of the folder to /wp-contents/plugins/ folder
• Go to the Plugin management page of WordPress admin section and enable the Quartz plugin
• Go to the Quotes Management page(Tools > Manage Quote) to create or edit Quotes
• You can add the Quartz widget by going to the widget area and drag-dropping it into your sidebar. Add the code <?php if(function_exists(‘quartz_show’)) quartz_show() ?> in your template – this will display the quote at that location.

Usage

The most apparent use of the plugin is to show random quotes to your visitors. Something like the famous Hello Dolly plugin – but for the client side. It also useful for showing small tips – say you are running a linux blog. You can insert useful linux commands with a small description into the quotes database – and the visitors will see random linux commands when they visit a new page. You can even upload image and add that to the database – users will see the a random image on each visit.

After installing the plugin, go to the Quartz Management page(Manage > Manage Quote). Now you can create new quotes.

A better and easier way to do this is to use the bulk import method. You can use that to import a text file full of quotes into the database. Each line in the text file must have a quote in it. An example is the Celebrity Quotes File. You can import that file by entering the value ‘http://binnyva.com/pro/dos/boot_booster/quotes/celebrity.txt’ in the ‘Remote Text File’ field.

After the quotes are ready, you have to modify the template code a bit. Go to the location in the template where you want to show the quote and add the code…

<?php quartz_show() ?>

This function can take two arguments…

$quotes_count

The first argument decides how many quotes must be shown. It is an optional argument and it defaults to 1.

$quotes_joiner

If you are showing more than 1 quote, use this string to join the quotes. The value defaults to ‘<br />’.

Examples

<?php quartz_show(3, '<br />') ?>

If you are trying to insert the quotes into the sidebar, this might be the way(might be different depending on your themes code)…

<li><h2>Random Quip</h2>
	<ul>
	<li><?php if(function_exists('quartz_show')) quartz_show(2, '</li><li>') ?></li>
	</ul>
</li>

See it in Action

You will see it running in my WordPress Demo Blog – look at the sidebar under the heading ‘Random Quips’. It don’t look all that refined – but that’s the themes fault. And I was too lazy to fix the theme

Feedback

If you have any suggestions or notice any problems with the plugin, post it in the Quartz forum.

Last Words?

This should be the last plugin of my Plugin Week – but since you have been such a wonderful audience, I’ll throw in one more – as a bonus. It will be released tomorrow. Until then!

The Surveys WordPress plugin lets you add surveys to your blog. You can let the visitors take surveys and see the result from the admin side. The user who take the survey can enter their details at the end of the survey – or leave it as an anonymous result.

If you are new to this blog, this is the Plugin Week. I am going to release one wordpress plugin each day, every day for one week(ie. Monday to Friday). Each day you will get a new plugin by me. This is the fourth plugin in this series. The earlier ones were…

• Eventr Plugin
• Autofields WordPress Plugin
• Pollin Plugin

Note: Surveys is a beta plugin(as are most of the plugins released in the Plugin Week) – so watch out for bugs. And trust me, there will be a lot of them.

Usage/Screenshots

First, Download, install and activate the Surveys plugin. Then go to Manage > Surveys section to create new surveys – or edit existing ones. After creating a survey insert the HTML comment [SURVEYS 1] into a post. Here, the 1 should be the ID of the survey you want to insert into that post.

The client side of the plugin will look something like this – your visitors will see this part…

You can see the result of the survey from the admin side – there are two ways to see the data…

Aggregate

This will show the results each question by aggregating all the data so far. This will look like a poll result. This mode is useful to make decisions – you can immediately see the most favored answers for each question.

Individual Responses

You can also view all the answers provided by each visitor one by one. This mode has its uses as well.

See it in action

I have set up a demo for Surveys over at BinnyVA WordPress demo blog. Take a look.

Feedback

If you have any suggestions or notice any problems with the plugin, post it in the Surveys forum. I’ll take a look at it – as soon as the Plugin Week is over – I am way too busy right now

Next plugin – will be released tomorrow.

Pollin wordpress plugin will let you add polls to your blog. It can be shown to your visitors who will be able to vote in the poll. You can add the poll in a post by including the html comment [POLLIN 1] in the post. Here 1 is the ID of the poll to be shown.

If you are new to this blog, this is the Plugin Week. I am going to release one wordpress plugin each day, every day for one week(ie. Monday to Friday). Each day you will get a new plugin by me. This is the third plugin in this series. The earlier ones were…

• Eventr Plugin
• Autofields WordPress Plugin

Note 1: Pollin is a beta plugin(as are most of the plugins released in the Plugin Week) – so watch out for bugs. And trust me, there will be a lot of them.

Note 2: I would recommend that you don’t install Pollin right now. It has not yet been accepted into the WordPress Plugin Repository. You can install it using the zip file I provide below – but then there will be some problems with auto updating of the plugin. Its better to wait until WordPress accepts the plugin before installing it. [UPDATE: WordPress have accepted it - feel free to install this plugin now.]

Installation

• Download the zipped file from the Pollin page in WordPress Plugin Repository.
• Extract and upload the contents of the folder to /wp-contents/plugins/ folder
• Go to the Plugin management page of WordPress admin section and enable the Pollin plugin
• Go to the Polls Management page(Tools > Manage Poll) to create or edit Polls.

Screenshots

See it in Action

Pollin Plugin Demo Page

Feedback

If you have any suggestions or notice any problems with the plugin, post it in the Pollin forum.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next plugin – to be released tomorrow.