TGIF friends! We’ve made it through another week of widgets, fields, posts and plugins. It’s time to unwind with another installment of The Daily Plugin. We’ve got some really shiny new plugins to look at today in addition to some recent updates. The plugins listed represent a mere sampling of the most recently updated and newly released plugins from the WordPress Plugin Repository. Keep in mind that these plugins, like any plugin, should be tested on a staging site first to make sure that it works with your particular project parameters. Some plugins don’t work well with certain themes or other plugins. It’s always smart to test first to make sure all the plugins are working well together and performing as you expect them all to in harmony. OK, let’s get plugged in!
Suggest Review encourages users of the site to raise awareness of suspect or inaccurate content that may already be published to the site. It provides the viewer the opportunity to “flag” content and write a note to the administrator explaining the nature of their alert. I like the nature of the “suggestion” as it is done as a privately submitted form rather than out in public full view. The simple fact that this is a constructive mechanism for content revision, as opposed to the “comment trolls” is a welcome relief. There are safeguards in place that can restrict who sees or can submit to the “suggest review” button and functions. You can limit it to registered users so that the public or spammers are not pounding the system with false posts.
Microblog Poster promises the ability to cross-post your newest content to multiple social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Plurk, Diigo and Delicious. While I am still testing this on my staging sites, I can report that so far I’ve run into nothing but success. There are very few plugins out there that integrate with LinkedIn properly. Microblog Poster handled all my posts with relative ease. While I use other plugins to handle my Twitter and Facebook notifications, this one will make a favorable addition to many of the WordPress sites that I frequently update content in. I anticipate that the developer will add more social sites as they become available as well.
Insert Estimated Reading Time helps to list an approximate reading time to your posts. The time calculation is based on a variable that you enter in the plugin’s settings screen. You have the option of displaying minutes or minutes/seconds in the display, as well as the template used, i.e. “This article will around XX minutes to read. Make sure you have a full beer before beginning.”. Quite a handy gadget to have at the start of your posts, especially if you tend to post a lot of lengthy content.
CommentCaVa sets a virtual timer on your posts before a reader is allowed to make a comment. The concept is unique in that it forces the viewer to actually read the content first before they can comment. I’m not sure of the anti-spam implications of this plugin, but it may stop the flow on that end as well. It works within the native WordPress commenting system by installing a small JavaScript containing the timer elements. This is a new plugin with a developer that’s hungry to grow the functionality of the plugin, so please join WortWart in making this plugin something that we can all use to extend on-page time of our readership.
Well another week of The Daily Plugin is in the books. This weekend I’ll be taking it easy and hitting some outdoor events with my lovely wife. I’ll be back on Monday with a bit of a surprise for all of you Daily Plugin fans out there that have a commute. You can follow me on Twitter @marcuscouch or leave your feedback right here on WPTavern.com. Until then, keep plugging along! Enjoy your weekend everyone.