What are these links?

Over the course of each week, I discover many new valuable things on the web that are relevant to being a blogger/webmaster in the web 2.0 age. I am an RSS feed whore, so if you subscribe to my friendfeed or any of my other social networks (from my about page), you will notice a blizzard of links that I find interesting. The purpose of these “Weekend Links” posts will be to report only the best links that I’ve discovered in my weekly reading. I also do-follow each link so the original writer gets some link juice for writing such a great post. Hope you enjoyed them!

Related posts:

• Weekend Links #2
• Weekend Links #3
• Weekend Links #1
• List Poisoning Email Harvesters
• Adding More Sites Social Homes Widget Plugin

Don’t you wish your work place was as cool as ours?

Related posts:

• This is what you get for going on vacation for 2 weeks!
• Employees Versus Office Filled With Random Things

Related posts:

• Project Honey Pot Http:BL WordPress Plugin
• Comments Were Broken Recently. It’s Fixed Now.
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6
• 1500VA of Battery Backup for Omninoggin.com
• Lower Your Cell Phone Bill by Changing Your Billing Address

What’s new in this release?

1. Greeting message now fades out when the close button is clicked.
2. Frontend greeting message display now uses AJAX to display the proper greeting message.
3. There is no longer a need to pre-generate a static wp-greet-box.js file for these greeting

messages. This also fixes the “Fatal error: Cannot redeclare wp_greet_box()” error that many people are getting from incorrect permissions.

4. Greeting message administration UI became a lot easier and quicker after AJAXification.

I encourage everybody to upgrade. Also don’t forget to write about the plugin if you like it!

Where do I download, file bugs, make feature requests, comments, and suggestions?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Comments

• November 14, 2008, Study Babes writes: Hey, the thing I didn't like about Referrer Detector is you have to show the greeting in EVERY post, whereas I wanted it to only show one time, between the header and the actual content (so between my header banner and the title of the first post). Can WP Greet Box do that?
• November 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Study Babes, You can definitely do that with WP Greet Box. You just have to place the <php? wp_greet_box(); ?> where ever you want it to show up in your theme.
• November 14, 2008, James writes: Thaya - thanks for a great plug-in! Now, if I could just get it to work. I read and re-read your documentation. I inserted where I wanted my message to appear, then Google'd my website: nothing happened. Into which Theme file should this expression be inserted and where? I've tried Header and Page Template with no luck.
• November 14, 2008, Andrew writes: Hi Thaya, I just downloaded your plugin in 2.7 to give it a test and I like it. I'm thinking now about how I can use it to do other things. :-) I have a couple of points for you. Firstly, it would be a good idea to include transparent PNG versions of the icons. My site is white so no probs there but the green active list in admin shows the white border and the 2.7 style is so slick that it looks out of place. One thing I think it would be really interesting to do is to include a link to an automatically generated post, possibly the most commented on post of the day / month, the most visited, or perhaps just a chosen favourite. I think that might be a nice touch. I don't think it needs any more default choices. You have the main ones, but perhaps some of the other google domains instead of just google.com? Finally, I think there is a lot of scope to do things with the search criteria if they came from a search engine. A link to the search page would be the most basic but perhaps an option to expand the box to view all the search results for that blog. There might also be some interesting possibilities if any of the search terms match tags or categories. You may also be able to think of other ways to link in with the APIs of various services, or any referrer information they send beyond the base URL. I also think it would be good, if you haven't already done it (I didn't look at the code) to include a filter for the message so that a plugin can filter what shows up in the box based on the referrer. Lots of ideas for you to consider, but I do like the plugin as is.
• November 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Andrew That was an incredibly fast response. Thank you so much for your review, tips, and pointers! I haven't checked out how my plugin fairs in WP 2.7 myself, but I will now. You just gave me a really nice/interesting feature list to help me polish the plugin. I will work hard to implement them.
  Question:

  I also think it would be good to include a filter for the message so that a plugin can filter what shows up in the box based on the referrer.

  
  Are you talking about providing a filter for a 3rd party plugin? I'm not sure what you mean by filter here.
• November 14, 2008, Andrew writes: Thaya, I mean just wrapping a standard apply_filters call around it so that another plugin author (or even just a writer) could use it to make more dynamic messages. ie return apply_filters('wp-greet-box-message' , $message , $referrer);
• November 14, 2008, Study Babes writes: I uploaded the files and activated it, went to the settings but when I try to delete or deactivate certain greetings it says: Error:[object SMLHttpRequest] and it doesn't do it.
• November 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Great idea. Thanks Andrew.
• November 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Study Babes Can you please try version 4.1? This should fix your issue along with a security loop-hole in version 4.0.x.
• November 14, 2008, Study Babes writes: Works now. But when I try to add new referrers it just bugs up and doesn't do anything.
• November 15, 2008, Lee Robertson writes: Nice updates! I like new admin interface. Makes it quick to see what is activated and what is not. Keep up the great work!
• November 15, 2008, MrsDealFinder writes: Love your plugin, but when use WP upgrade automatically to upgrade to a new version it deletes my custom images. It's not that big of a deal since I keep a copy of them but I thought it might be something to note. Not sure if it is easily fixed or not. Thanks!
• November 16, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @James It should work if you place <?php wp_greet_box(); ?> into any of your theme files (I like to place it in header.php). It's quite odd. I visited your site, did "View Source" and did not find anything that says "wp-greet-box". Did you remove it from your site?
• November 16, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @MrsDealFinder I think this is a feature/flaw in the WordPress plugins upgrade system (I can't do much about that). You can try placing your images outside of the plugins/wp-greet-box directory and use the new images URLs when you specify your custom greeting messages.
• November 17, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Study Babes I've released version 4.1.1 that should resolve the adding new custom messages issue. I've also written a test plan to run through for each release so I shouldn't have these many bugs in the future. Thanks for trying it out!
• November 17, 2008, Study Babes writes: Thanks, works perfectly now. Check it out :D By the way, would having "too many" custom referrers slow it down at all?
• November 17, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: I'm glad to hear that! Please remember to write about it or spread the word if you can!
  Too many is a loosely used term :). I would say that if you have thousands of referrers then the greet box display will definitely show up slower. But 30, 40 or so shouldn't give you any performance issues.

Related posts:

• Released WP Greet Box version 3.0
• Released WP Greet Box Version 3.1
• WP-Super-Cache Released!
• WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6

What’s new in this release?

First, this release has support for a “noscript” message, which shows up to users who do not have Javascript enabled.

Second, I have also reorganized the admin screen to be more usable (paginated).

Last (but definitely not least), this release lets you specify rules to exclude certain referrer URLs to trigger the greet box. This is done with regular expression, so this is the best time to learn this powerful tool if you don’t know it already!

Where do I download, file bugs, make feature requests, comments, and suggestions?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Comments

• October 31, 2008, Farrhad writes: Will upgrade today :)
• November 7, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: You should upgrade to version 3.1.1, as I've fixed an upgrade bug I introduced in version 3.1.

Related posts:

• Released WP Greet Box version 3.0
• Released WP Greet Box Version 4.0
• WP-Super-Cache Released!
• WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6

Prank #1: Balloons-filled Office

First let me share the video of our lead engineer, Aleksey, returning from a one week vacation. He is welcomed back with an office filled with extra-extra-large balloons.

Prank #2: Employees Versus Office Filled With Peanuts

Next, just recently my manager, Tatyana, also left for a one week vacation. Working on the ‘let’s fill thing up things’ theme, a few people at work decided to welcome her back by filling her office with packaging peanuts.

Being environmentally conscious we used heat-shrinking weather stripping film to create a wall of packaging peanuts at the window an the door frame. So [unfortunately] no, we did not fill up the entire office. Luckily the previous balloons incident really had her believing that the office was completely filled with packaging peanuts.

Here is a video of the ‘opening’ ceremony. Watch what happens when somebody (Xander) tries to run through the film.


It’s times like these that I really appreciate working with such great/entertaining people. I’ll being posting more prank recordings as soon as more people go on vacation so stay tuned to the RSS feed.

Related posts:

• Foiling a Coworker’s Vacation
• My Impressions of Clearlake
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
• Articles
• Setting up a FreeBSD 6.2 Web Server: Migrating Wordpress from WinXP to FreeBSD (Part 3)

One of my friends down in LA likes to put on a “light show” every Halloween… of course light and sound synchronized. He’s a bit of an Oingo Boingo fan (so sound’s required, sorry).

Sound is played quietly for pedestrians (until 9pm), and he broadcasts the music on 99.1 … not sure the FCC likes that, but… oh well.

And yeah… as a day job, he’s a Disney Imagineer — and one of the loony folks that went to Japan with us a few years back (yes, primarily just to ride roller coasters).

I wish I had the technical expertise to do something this grand at my house. Oh well, at least there is Halloween 2009. Lots of time for me to study up until then. Happy programming!

P.S. If you are interested. I was The Joker for Halloween of 2008. Check it out!

Comments

• October 25, 2008, Pierre-Philippe Martin writes: Very impressive, Thaya, and thank you for sharing. I took the liberty to add this video link to my blog (with due credits, of course!).
• October 25, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: You're very welcome! I love the music.

Related posts:

• Employees Versus Office Filled With Random Things
• My Cacheable WP-PostViews Mods Became Official!
• Nowthen Photo Display WordPress Plugin
• Foiling a Coworker’s Vacation
• AJAX Force Comment Preview WordPress Plugin

1. Make it easy (and obvious) to interact.
2. Ask them to interact.
3. Do not nag.

So without further ado, here are some strategies on increasing visitor activity on your blog.

Advertisement Placement

Make sure you place these advertisements in “hot” areas of your page before the fold (area that the visitor first sees without scrolling).  I am sure you have seen this ad placement heat map from Google before.  Follow it!

Donations

Ask for it when it makes sense.  For example, you should ask for donations after each one of your blog posts.  The reader will not even think about donating before they know what they are donating for.  Another good place to put donation links are next to your freeware download links.

Give the visitor a concrete example of what their donation goes to so they are more likely to donate.  For example, my donate link says, “If you like this post, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.”

Also to not keep nagging your readers,  I recommend using Ozh’s Who Sees Ads plugin to only display this section to semi-new visitors only.

Subscriptions

Getting subscribers is one of the most important things to a blogger.  Make sure you place an eye-catching “Subscribe to this blog” section before the fold.  I have implemented this strategy on my sidebar above the fold.

Also you should have a little section visible above the fold that explains what your blog is all about.  Since you do not want to display this to people who come to your site regularly, I also recommend using Ozh’s Who Sees Ads plugin here again to only display this section to new visitors only.

Last but definitely not least.  I recommend using my own WP Greet Box plugin to greet visitors (and ask them to subscribe, share, or vote) based on the referring URL.

Sharing and Voting

At the end of your post, you should give the reader the option to rate, comment, and share your post.  This is a no brainer way of getting free marketing that takes zero effort on your behalf.  Use it!

For sharing/voting on posts on different social network sites, I recommend using the ShareThis widget because it takes up very little room for what it does.  It’s also good to supply a way to share to Twitter (or another major microblog network) since microblogging is the new hot thing nowadays.  As you can see, I use TwitThis for this purpose.

Comments

You want the comments section to be a fun and beneficial place to hang out.  Here are some ways to do that.

1. Enable Gravatars so people can easily identify commenters by their avatar.
2. Support a universal comment profile service such as SezWho or DISQUS.
3. Dofollow your comments
4. Install CommentLuv plugin
5. Install KeywordLuv plugin
6. Install Subscribe to Comments plugin to get visitors to return whenever there is a new comment on the thread.

Deeper Navigation

When readers finish reading your post, nudge them to explore and read more of your other posts by supplying a “related posts” section after your post.  I use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to do this.

It is also useful to add a “popular posts” section in your sidebar where readers can easily find more interesting posts to read.  I use Popularity Contest to do this.

In Conclusion

These tips might seem like they are obvious, but you would be surprised how many people are not implementing even one of these tips.  Please feel free to share any other tips you have in the comments section.  Happy tweaking!

Comments

• September 5, 2008, Susan writes: Having a deeper navigation surely helps quite a bit.
• October 23, 2008, Niccolo Svengali writes: If you make a controversial post about a famous blogger, you'll get attention all right. The snake will devour itself ....

Related posts:

• WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin
• Weekend Links for Nov 16, 2008 through Nov 21, 2008
• Setting up a FreeBSD 6.2 Web Server: Optimizing Apache (Part 4)
• Weekend Links #2
• To Follow or Not To Follow, That is the Question

In this post I will discuss some of the web design mistakes that I have done on this blog, and what I did to fix them.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to get free advice from a friend of mine, Emily Luong, who happens to be a professional graphics designer.  Aside from being a graphics design geek, she’s put in good work on nice sites like Edelbio Skin Care Blog so I do not take her advice lightly.  I asked her to review my blog and what do you know?  It needs improving!

What did the blog look like before?

If you haven’t noticed the changes, here are some snapshots of what my blog looked like before (plus some comments in RED).  Please compare the snapshots to what my design is now.

Web Design Mistakes 1

Web Design Mistakes 2

3 major design mistakes

1. 

   Mistake: Clutter everywhere
   Solution: Unclutter things by adding padding.

   In the first image, you will notice that there are way too many things going on at the top of my sidebar.  When a reader glances over to the sidebar, all they see is a blur of colors.  Adding padding between things helps readers identify different objects whether it be sections, advertisements, images, or text.  Adding proper padding could result in readers diving deeper into your blog and higher advertisement click-through rates.

2. 

   Mistake: Complicated design
   Solution: If padding fails then simplify.

   You can only use padding so much until it hinders your design.  If your site is still visually confusing after adding a good amount of padding, you should look into simplifying your design.
   
   

   In the first image, you will see that I have all of my social network homes listed on the sidebar.  Do I really need to show this to everybody on every page?  Of course not.  Things of this nature should be move to the about page where your readers can find more information about you (the blogger).
   
   

   Also in the first image, you will see that I had a date badge.  Why do I need this date badge if I already display the full date in the post footer?  I know date badges have become popular lately (I’ve seen it on many blogs), but if it doesn’t serve a purpose then out the window it goes.
   
   

   Lastly, in the second image you will see that I had a few widgets from social networks and other internet tools.  I do not believe that anybody would need 10+ social network widgets in the sidebar.  I find that it’s best to only display 1 or 2 widgets that help get the most (and most relevant) traffic.  I can then focus on building my blog exposure on those social networks (that work) instead of spreading myself thin across too many social networks.  Aside from the obvious quality traffic & time saving benefits, I now have a less complicated sidebar.

3. 

   Mistake: Unorganized information
   Solution: Guide your reader by establishing an information hierarchy.

   If readers come to your blog for the content, your better make sure that they can easily find yours posts at a glance.  You can control the way a reader reads your site by organizing your information in a hierarchy using font size and font color.
   
   

   If you haven’t noticed, the hierarchy I chose for my blog is the following (more important > … > … > less important): post title > sidebar section title > post text > comment text > nagivation links > everything else.  I also made my RSS subscription images extra big to draw readers to subscribe.
   
   

   More important things should have larger fonts with higher color contrast.  Less important things should have smaller fonts with lower color contrast.

In Conclusion

Comparing my current blog design to the snapshots taken a few months ago, you can see how such simple changes has tremendously improved my blog design.  These tips are quite basic, but definitely powerful.  They are easy enough to implement without having to majorly redesign your blog.  I would like to encourage every body to take a quick 5 minutes to evaluate your blog to see if these tips can help you out.

On another note, do you see other things wrong with my site design that I did not address in this post?  Are my suggestions just bogus?  Please feel free to share in comments!  I promise that there won’t be any harsh feelings.

Comments

• August 13, 2008, Will writes: Nice post; I too should take another look at my padding situation. I did so somewhat recently, but didn't fix it to large enough degree.
• August 13, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Will Thank you for visiting. Please let me know how it works out for you.
• August 14, 2008, Artem Russakovskii writes: Love the new subscribe icons. Also, I think Emily's suggestions are great, but you've overdone it a bit on the titles - I think they're too big now, or maybe too bold. Just my opinion.
• August 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Artem Thank you for the compliments. The titles may be a little too big as your said because some of my titles are now taking up 2 lines. Another suggestion Emily had was to make the text all caps and decrease the font size. That way you can get away with smaller font (and fit more), but achieve the same attention grabbing effect.
  On a side note, to make any text uppercase, you can add this to your CSS property:

  text-transform:uppercase;

  I will experiment with this for my post titles.
• August 14, 2008, Sid Savara - Personal Development writes: I really love the new RSS Feed icon as well, it's awesome. Is that creative commons'ed as well? Would totally understand if it's not. Did you create that?
• August 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Sid Thank you but I did not create the icon! I found it in a set of freeware icons at FastIcon. I can't remember where I grabbed the email icon from, but I'm pretty sure it had a freeware license (I'll update later once I find it).
• August 14, 2008, Sid Savara - Personal Development writes: Cool! That site is great. I am going to go use some of their other freeware icons =). You did a great job matching the icon with your main logo design - it all looks really good with similar styles.
• August 16, 2008, self defense Rob writes: *sigh* My blog needs so much work...
• August 20, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: It doesn't look to me like your blog needs so much work at all. Regardless, take baby steps :).
• September 2, 2008, TigerTom writes: 4. Make what you want the visitor to do _VeRy_ obvious. The 'Buy' button or ad link should be right in the visitor's face.

Related posts:

• Adding More Sites Social Homes Widget Plugin
• Become a WordPress Expert
• Weekend Links #3
• Advertise
• Weekend Links #1

What happened to version 2.0?

I silently released version 2.0 after adding the ability to add your own custom greeting messages per referrer URL.

What’s new in this release?

This release has cookies support so now we do not keep showing the same message to returning visitors.  I also added a configurable default message to show when no referrer match is found.

Where do I download, file bugs, make feature requests, comments, and suggestions?

Please visit the original plugin post.

Comments

• August 8, 2008, orangeguru writes: Hmmm, all I get is: Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error. Fatal error: Cannot redeclare wp_greet_box() (previously declared in /www/htdocs/w008ee35/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/wp-greet-box.php:558) in /www/htdocs/w008ee35/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/wp-greet-box.php on line 559 Any ideas?
• August 8, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @orangeguru Is this your first time installing WP Greet Box? I've ran into this problem before, but my problem was me already having WP Greet Box activated and trying to activate another instance of it (having 2 copies of the same plugin in separate folders).
• August 8, 2008, orangeguru writes: Thanks for the quick reponse: Found only one version of the plug on my FTP server and only one version shows up on the plugin page.
• August 8, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @orangeguru I have a feeling that it has something to do with write permissions. Can you make sure that your apache user (www, httpd, apache, or whatever it is) has the ability to write to the /wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box folder?
• August 8, 2008, orangeguru writes: I am using several plugs with no problems at all. wp-content / 755 plugins / 755 wp-greet-box / 755 Also check this screenshot: http://www.orangeguru.biz/download/greetboxerror.jpg
• August 8, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Not sure if you got the email, but since I don't know how your host is setup, can you try doing chmod 777 on wp-greet-box/ and try reactivating? If it works then it's indeed a permissions issue.
• August 8, 2008, orangeguru writes: Oke, 777 did the trick - although this doesn't make me feel very 'secure'. ;-) Thanks for your support.
• August 8, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @orangeguru No problem. I believe that you can probably get away with 775 because in most cases the apache user is setup to act on group permissions. It might be worth it for you to try 775 to see if it works.

Related posts:

• Released WP Greet Box Version 4.0
• Released WP Greet Box Version 3.1
• WP-Super-Cache Released!
• WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6

What is this product?

The product includes a pre-packaged blog optimized for serious bloggers who do not want to worry about the technical details and access to priceless video tutorials (personally I believe this is the meat of the product) to help you succeed in blogging. If you are a new-found serious blogger, you would find that the pre-packaged blog contains all the necessary tools you will need to help you blog, promote, and monetize effectively right out of the box. Here is what Alex has to say about the platinum membership.

What I love about it?

The videos. Want to learn about seach engine optimization (SEO), effective monetizing, driving quality traffic, or blog tweaks/maintenance? Alex walks you through all these time-tested techniques and more in a series of easy to understand tutorial videos that is included with the product. These tutorials will help you get started the right way so you do not waste any time making mistakes and fixing them as I did. I honestly regret not having seen these videos in my earlier blogging days because I would’ve built a better blog in less amount of time.

What I don’t like about it

Of course no product is perfect. Personally, I would like to see a cleaner Web 2.0 theme get pre-packaged into the blog installation. One important aspect of converting a new visitor is to have a clean theme that is less cluttered to make a good first impression. That being said, I do believe that the most valuable part of the product is the tutorials itself. I would have purchased the product just for the videos that cover strategies on seo, blogging, promoting, and monetizing. This is also why I believe that the gold membership is redundant. I think most people should ditch the gold membership and go for the platinum. This is because once you’ve setup your blog, you will need to learn how to effectively use it anyway.

The bottom line

I highly recommend the platinum membership for serious bloggers who are looking to quickly and efficiently deploy a blog to promote their business. This product is a prime example of the motto, “Work smarter, not harder.” Thank you for putting this product together Alex. I will implement these techniques to empower my blog in the coming months and I am confident that my blog will gain the much deserved authority.

Check out the product here!

What’s up the affiliate links?
At times, I get offers to review a new product in my niche. I do my best to give it an honest review and report it to my readers. I also make an effort to add affiliate links any time I honestly recommend a product or service. They do not harm you in any way, but they do help offset the costs of running this website. Just assume that I get paid for everything I say.

Comments

• August 10, 2008, Freelance Web Design writes: Wordpress has grown tremendously. It is a very valuable application that can be used from Website Creation, Blogging, or a very clean CMS. Great stuff!

Related posts:

• Weekend Links #2
• Released WP Greet Box Version 3.1
• Project Honey Pot Http:BL is Going Back Home
• Upgraded to WordPress 2.6
• Released WP Greet Box version 3.0

• Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content: Visitors tend to ignore the sidebar because most of sidebar content do not change. I’ve been experimenting with this myself and I was planning to write a similar post but Vandelay Design says it better (for now at least).
• WordPress Tips + Things You Can Do After Installing Wordpress: It is more like “Things You *Should* Do After Installing WordPress” both for security purposes and usability.
• How to write a solid and stable WordPress plugin: Mark Jaquith tells us [WordPress plugin developers] how to develop solid and stable WordPress plugins.
• The Deceptively Simple Steps to Persuasive Writing That Works: This technique requires no actual writing ability, but it does work! It’s so simple I can’t believe I never did it until recently.
• The Secret to Captivating Content? More Cowbell!: Another one by copyblogger. Here he shares his secret in writing captivating content. I love the video he refers to by the way. Pure genius.
• New Toolbar PageRanks coming: Even though I do not care too much about SEO and pagerank (I tend to focus more on content quality), I would still like to know how much more visible I am since last pagerank update.
• List of the Most Effective SEO Tools: Raden has put together a nice list of the most effective SEO tools that he uses. I also use a few of those myself.

What are these links?

Over the course of each week, I discover many new valuable things on the web that are relevant to being a blogger/webmaster in the web 2.0 age. I am an RSS feed whore, so if you subscribe to my friendfeed or any of my other social networks (from my about page), you will notice a blizzard of links that I find interesting. The purpose of these “Weekend Links” posts will be to report and review only the best links that I’ve discovered in my weekly activities. Hope you enjoyed them!

Related posts:

• Weekend Links #2
• Weekend Links #1
• Weekend Links for Nov 16, 2008 through Nov 21, 2008
• List Poisoning Email Harvesters
• Adding More Sites Social Homes Widget Plugin

Description

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they
will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Professional bloggers know that having these targeted suggestions on their blog increases their blog exposure and loyal readership. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins so you do not have to sacrifice speed.

Features

• Show a different greeting message to your visitor depending on the referrer URL. You can add/edit/delete/disable these greeting messages as you choose.
• Show a default greeting message even if the vistor does not match any of your configured referrer URL.
• Show a default greeting message even if the visitor does not have javascript enabled.
• AJAX greeting message in the frontend makes it compatible with caching plugins and WPMU.
• AJAX administrative interface that uses nonce verification to discourage hackers.
• Ability to set a timeout to forget a visitor so we do not keep nagging them with greeting messages.
• Ablity to setup regular expression rules to exlcude some referrer URLs from seeing greeting messages.
• Ultra customizeable greeting message box (with CSS) allowing you to prepend/append HTML around the greeting message box.
• Currently the following referrers are installed by default, but you can easily create your own if your favorite referrer is not on the list!
  1. del.icio.us
  2. delicious.com
  3. digg.com
  4. google.com
  5. yahoo.com
  6. stumbleupon.com
  7. technorati.com
  8. twitter.com

Screenshots

See screenshots

Documentation

readme.txt

Download

Download via Official WordPress Plugin Directory

Upcoming Features

• Track visitor count
• Different levels of visitor tracking (site wide, per referral URL, per page)
• ??? Please submit ideas!

As always, please feel free to post any bugs, comments, questions, and suggestions in the comments section!

Like the plugin?

I do code late at night a lot so I would really appreciate it if you thank me by buying me a cup of coffee or two. If not, I would equally love it if you can spread the word about my plugin by writing about it on your blog. Thank you!

Comments

• July 24, 2008, Brian writes: Is there any way you can customize the url's e.g. specify other url's to the ones you have already done
• July 24, 2008, Artem Russakovskii writes: Finally! I think this is a great idea for a plugin and is especially awesome because it's compatible with wp-supercache. Javascript-powered plugins are the way to go in a cached environment. Thanks, man, I'll definitely add this into my blog, together with the Force Preview plugin.
• July 25, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Artem Thank you for your kind words! Please let me know when you have these plugins integrated to your site so that I can check it out.
• July 25, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Brian From the F.A.Q. in readme.txt :)

  How do I add additional greeting messages? Right now you will have to hack wp-greet-box.php by adding another element in the arrays in get_default_options() and get_messages() array. That said, I do not recommend doing it beacuse because I will soon enhance the plugin to let you add as many greeting messages per referral domain as you want without hacking the code. Please stay tuned!

• July 27, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Released version 2.0 with the following new features:
  

  Added ability for users to add/delete/disable greeting messages. Added confirmation dialogs for delete and reset function.

  Told you it was coming ;).
• July 27, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Version 2.0 allows you to do this through the WP Greet Box options menu. No more hacking!
• July 28, 2008, caschy writes: Nice Plugin and manual trackback from Germany: http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/2008/07/28/begre-deine-besucher/ Greets Carsten
• July 28, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @cashy Thank you for writing about my plugin!
• July 28, 2008, caschy writes: @Thaya I've added Google-Support for my blog - but the message is also shown in GoogleReader. Any chances to disable this - because i don't wanna show this message to users who have subscribed my feed.
• July 28, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @caschy I haven't had the chance to add exception rules to this plugin. I'll add that to the feature list for the next release (which will probably be soon since this would be an easy fix).
• July 29, 2008, Stefan writes: Hi there, I'm trying to use your plugin after Caschy's recommendation but I'm not able (no knowledge in PHP and so on) to integrate it into my theme. If I want to add it below my header, how do I have to integrate this code "php wp_greetbox()" (sorry, I cannot add it totally correct here, then it wont be shown) into my theme? I placed it into several positions into my header.php, but no chance to see it... (yes, the plugin is set to active within my backend ;-) ). thanks in advance, Stefan
• July 29, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Stefan Did you place <?php wp_greet_box(); ?> in your code? Make sure you use wp_greet_box() and not wp_greetbox().
• July 29, 2008, Stefan writes: Hi Thaya, yes, I placed <!-- TEST GreetBox --> <?php wp_greet_box() ?> <!-- Ende GreetBox --> in it. It should be correct, isn't it? Thanks in advance, Stefan
• July 30, 2008, Frank Koehntopp writes: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '&', expecting T_VARIABLE or '$' in /www/htdocs/w0076451/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/wp-greet-box.php on line 98 Any idea how to get rid of that? Thanks, Frank.
• July 30, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Frank Koehntopp Sounds like you are on PHP4 (right?). PHP4 doesn't support &$message syntax, but I think you don't really need the '&$' in this case. Try just removing '&' in '&$' and see if it works for you. I remove this on the next release.
• July 30, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Stefan, Looks like it should work. Maybe you need a semicolon at the end of wp_greet_box():

  <!–- TEST GreetBox -–> <?php wp_greet_box(); ?> <!–- Ende GreetBox -–>

• July 31, 2008, Stefan writes: No, that doesn't help - maybe I'm to stupid for it. ;-) Can you give me an example file with this code (it is equal which theme you're usung). With kind regards, Stefan
• July 31, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Stefan I've sent you an email. Let's discuss it there so we can resolve this issue quickly.
• August 1, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Released version 2.1 with the following change:

  Fixed PHP4 incompatibility.

• August 1, 2008, Barry Flanagan writes: This plugin is a great idea. It takes the idea of the "What would Seth Godin Do?" plugin to the next logical step, custom greeting by referrer. Is there any way to have a default greeting for new visitors (referred or not) and a default greeting for non referred visitors? Or, is there a way to make this plugin work with the "What would Sth Godin Do?" plugin? I have that one installed already,and GreetBox doesnt do anything if that was i enabled. Thanks for the great work!
• August 1, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Barry Flanagan Let me look into this. I'm planning to enable cookies support too so it can do what "What would Seth Godin Do?" does plus showing customized greeting messages per referrer. This doesn't seem hard to do at all, but I'm suffering from a stomach flu right now so development might be delayed till next week.
• August 3, 2008, Barry Flanagan writes: Thanks. I appreciate your hard work.
• August 6, 2008, danielcreus writes: Hi Thaya, I tried installing the plugin but encountered the same problem as Stefan (PHP4 incompatibility) Where can I download version 2.1? Thanks Dan
• August 6, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @danielcreus Sorry you are had this problem. It turns out that I kind of goofed on the last SVN commit so the WordPress plugins directory did not get updated properly. I have resolved the issue and you can now download the plugin at the official plugins directory.
• August 6, 2008, Frank writes: Seems like version 2.1 is missing the .js in the archive.
• August 6, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Frank Thank you for noticing. This is intended as wp-greet-box.js is supposed to be automatically generated upon plugin activation and every time you visit WP Greet Box options. Please let me know if you have any issues with it.
• August 7, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: Released version 3.0 with the following new features:
  

  Added cookies support so we do not keep showing the same message to returning visitors. Added default message when no referrer match is found.

• August 11, 2008, Sid Savara - Personal Development writes: Thaya - First thanks for releasing the plugin, it's awesome! Unfortunately, I have discovered some incompatibility with the DISQUS javascript plugin, but only in IE7. It works fine in Firefox. SInce I am using DISQUS to power my comments, unfortunately I had to turn off WP-Greetbox,even though it's one of my favorite plugins. Just wanted to let you know, it's quite possible it's not the fault of your plugin but rather DISQUS. I have informed them of the issue as well.
• August 11, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Sid Thank you for your kind words. That is interesting. I will have to try this plugin with DISQUS. It's my responsibility to try to make it as cross-platform as possible :). I'll let you know what I find.
• August 14, 2008, Sid Savara - Personal Development writes: Hi Thaya, BTW, the day after I made the comment, DISQUS released 2.0 of their plugin. So I installed it, and am first making sure that's solid. It appears to be. I am going to try out WP-Greetbox with it again when I get home today, in case they have fixed the issue. Also, here is the thread where I told them of the issue: http://disqus.disqus.com/ie_issues_with_wordpress_disqus_and_other_plugins_52/ Interesting, other people also have had issues It appears DISQUS and various other plugins also had issues, so I don't think the issue is isolated to WP-Greetbox - it's probably just one of those things where they are doing JS one way, and you (and other plugins) are trying to load another way. Or something - I am not as skilled at JS as you are =) A feature request also - this may make the plugin more complex, but since we are tracking cookies, would it be possible to show the visitor different things depending on whether they are returning from the same referring domain? For example, a delicious user visiting who has visited multiple times or something - they may just have it bookmarked.
• August 14, 2008, Thaya Kareeson writes: @Sid Thank you for opening a thread with DISQUS. Hopefully you get this issue resolved. Can you please let me know later if it works out for you or not?
  As a side question, how do you like DISQUS? Have you tried SezWho? If so, why do you like DISQUS better?
  About the feature request, looks like the feature you are requesting is different levels of tracking visitors (i.e. site level, referrer URL level, page level).
  So for sites like del.icio.us you would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the "page level", which means that if they are visiting from del.icio.us to a page that they have not seen before, then the message will show. But if they are visiting from del.icio.us to a page that they have seen before, then the message will not show.
  For sites like google.com, you probably would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the "referrer URL level" (which is what we have right now).
  For other visitors, you probably would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the "site level" (which is what the default greeting message display is doing right now).
  Is this correct? If so, it sounds good and do-able for me to include this in the next release.
• August 14, 2008, Sid Savara - Personal Development writes: @Thaya Sure I will try it out tonight and report back by this weekend on the DISQUS issue! I have been using "What Would Seth Godin Do" as a replacement, but I think your plugin is superior - more granularity, and Javascript checking versus server side comparison. I have not tried SezWho, is that what you are using? I basically use DISQUS because a few blogs I read were using it, and it allows you to reply via email to any new comment or replies, and that becomes a blog comment (which I thought would be great, since I always have my blackberry). That said, SezWho may have the same functionality. I think that what you and I are talking about are two slightly different features. I think your way would be MUCH more powerful (and might be a little scary for users ;) "I know you like my blog, and you've read these 5 pages, but not this 6th one, Welcome! MWAHAHAHA". What I was suggesting was just a simple counter like "what would seth godin do" where it shows the message the first 5 times, and then stops harassing them =). I'm sure whatever you put into the pl