6 Pieces of Blogging Software You May Have Not Heard About

alt="6 Pieces of Blogging Software You May Have Not Heard About" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/umbrellas-500x500_c.jpg" />

The blogosphere is cluttered with more or less sophisticated journals, more or less professional and competitive, more than less identical in structure and functionality.

If you wonder why they’re so similar, one answer is that they use the same Content Management Systems — WordPress, for the most, but even Joomla! and Drupal that come second and third according to href="http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all" target="_blank">a recent survey report by W3Techs.

Yes, the Web is made of WordPresses, Joomlas and Drupals. But is that the end of it? What if all you need is a simpler blogging solution, one that won’t take up too many hosting resources but will still guarantee you reliable tools?

There are other (smaller) blogging solutions out there

Many are just not as known as the above-mentioned trio, either because they never got enough promotion in the first place, or because they lack some functionality or or are not as flexible. However, a blogging solution is a choice to make on the basis of your needs, not of the popularity of the CMS.

What about a few names?

There are 6 little known blogging solutions that are free, customizable and open source. There are more out there, but these six lil’ kids are easy enough to get you started hassle-free — and they come with nice clean designs.

Here they are:

1. FanUpdate
2. Chyrp
3. OpenBlog
4. Pixie
5. PivotX
6. CuteNews

Feeling like experimenting with these platform? Keep reading. I’m here to make introductions. ;)

1. FanUpdate

FanUpdate was originally created by Jenny Ferenc for her website Prism-Perfect.net, but when she moved on from the project, the user base for her script continued to demand for support and updates, so a community of developers at Nepwork.com took the rains of the project and continued to develop FanUpdate (now at its third release). Fanupdate is distributed under the GPL license.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-804 border" alt="fanupdate-dash" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/fanupdate-dash.png" width="750" height="356" />

Requirements

• PHP
• MySQL

Demo: N/A

Vendor’s Website: href="http://fanupdate.net/" target="_blank">http://fanupdate.net

The Pros

FanUpdate is lightweight and easy to install and it only requires an HTML web template ready on your website to run on. Visitors can easily comment on your entries and have their own avatars through the Gravatar integration. Spam filters and comment scoring systems help protect your site from abuse. Version 3 also fixed href="http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/2009/sql-injection-flaw-in-fanupdate/" target="_blank">a previous security bug.

For FanUpdate to work with your website, your pages must carry a .PHP file extension, because that’s the language the code interpreter will need to display your blog posts on the homepage.

Below is FanUpdate’s common code snippet to be placed where you want your blog displayed – generally, your index.php file:

<?php

// FanUpdate X.Y.0 blog
// subject: all posts

$main_limit = 5;

require_once(‘/home/username/public_html/fanupdate/show-blog.php’);

?>

The screenshot above was taken from one of my websites that uses FanUpdate as a blogging solution. You can visit it at href="http://tallalah.info/" target="_blank">http://tallalah.info to get a preview.

The Cons

One of the biggest disadvantages of using FanUpdate is its anti-spam system. The script can detect the most common forms of spam comments — even thanks to a list of words and phrases you can blacklist in the Options panel — but the sneakier spam comments will usually get approved without even sending out a moderation request to your email address. If you use FanUpdate, make sure to check your list of Approved, Pending and Spam comments at least once a week, because your blogging system might have approved a spam comment and put a legit comment in Spam instead.

Another downside is the impossibility to make anything else out of FanUpdate but blog posts. You can’t make pages, you can’t install plugins, etc. FanUpdate is truly a very basic blogging tool for small websites that run on a hosting package with limited resources.

2. Chyrp

Chyrp is a minimal CMS that aims to be a less bulky alternative to WordPress. Alex Suraci href="http://chyrp.net/about/" target="_blank">initially developed Chyrp as a hobbyist project in 2004, then it was later acquired by Arian Xhezairi in 2010, who continued the development. Recent versions come with an extensive documentation and a supportive community behind.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7028 border" alt="chyrp" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/chyrp.jpg" width="750" height="459" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/chyrp.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/chyrp-300x183.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

Requirements

• PHP 5.2+
• MySQL 4.1+ or SQLite 3+ (with href="http://php.net/pdo">PDO)

Demo: href="http://chyrp.net/demo/" target="_blank">http://chyrp.net/demo/

Vendor’s Website: href="http://chyrp.net/" target="_blank">http://chyrp.net

The Pros

Easy to install, nicely styled and lightweight, Chyrp is a safer and more functional alternative to FanUpdate. Chyrp can be extended via href="http://chyrp.net/extend/type/module/" target="_blank">Modules and Translations so it’s highly customizable and, if you know a little href="https://github.com/chyrp/chyrp/wiki/Themes" target="_blank">templating and PHP programming, it can turn into a flexible tool. The documentation will provide you with a clear and understandable guide to speed up the process.

One interesting type of extension for Chyrp is href="http://chyrp.net/extend/type/feather/" target="_blank">Feathers. Feathers integrate the basic platform to add up more complex functions. An example is href="http://chyrp.net/extend/view/article/" target="_blank">Article, a feather for articles that lets you add a headline and a byline to your posts.

The Cons

The text editor is— well, just a text editor. There is no native WYSIWYG functionality with Chyrp. However, it can be supplied via Module with href="http://chyrp.net/extend/view/redactor/" target="_blank">Redactor.

3. OpenBlog

OpenBlog is user-friendly blogging platform based on the href="http://ellislab.com/codeigniter" target="_blank">CodeIgniter PHP framework. It’s simple and will not overload your servers, but like WordPress and Chyrp, it’s backed up by a productive community that provides themes, plugins and extensions. OpenBlog supports multi-language and is released under the href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110427032633/http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html" target="_blank">GPL v3 license.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-797 border" alt="openblog-home" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/openblog-home.png" width="750" height="367" />

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-817 border" alt="openblog-dash" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/openblog-dash.png" width="750" height="442" />

Requirements

• PHP
• MySQL

Demo: N/A

Vendor’s Website: href="http://open-blog.org/" target="_blank">http://open-blog.org

The Pros

OpenBlog is as user-friendly as WordPress can be to a beginner, but it’s equally interesting to an intermediate to advanced user. Installation is automated and templates are customizable — and the community provides enough of a choice for templates anyway.

One interesting feature in the Admin Panel is the Database Backup: the button is read on your panel sidebar and when you click it you get an instantaneous .ZIP backup file to download. It’s that easy.

URLs are search engine friendly and the platform supports pages, RSS and a WYSIWYG editor. Plugins enable you to extend your platform and these are pretty much like WordPress, so nothing too complex there.

If you’re just starting out with blogging and you don’t want to try WordPress, OpenBlog makes a valid alternative.

The Cons

Unlike WordPress, OpenBlog doesn’t allow template modifications from inside your Admin Panel. You will have to apply the changes manually and then reupload the files via FTP.

4. Pixie

Initially created by Scott Evans for his band website, Pixie developed into a lightweight but efficient CMS — or like the developers like to call it, a “Small, Simple, Site Maker”. Pixie is portable, supports multiple languages and is released under the GPL v3 license.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-798 border" alt="pixie-home" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pixie-home.png" width="750" height="360" />

Requirements

• PHP
• MySQL

Demo: href="http://demo.getpixie.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://demo.getpixie.co.uk/

Vendor’s Website: href="http://www.getpixie.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.getpixie.co.uk

The Pros

For starters, the software installation weighs only 2.28 MB, thus making Pixie one of the lightest CMS’s currently available.

It’s interesting that Pixie supports href="http://microformats.org/wiki/xfn" target="_blank">XFN’s Microformats. This is useful to keep all links across your blog semantically relevant to search engines and to human beings alike (that is, if someone actually checks the page source code and finds out what kind of attribute you used — ‘spouse’, ‘friend’, etc.).

Pixie supports CSS Themes and database backups. To backup your DB, go to Settings -> Backup -> Backup the database: the system will create a .ZIP file on server that you can download by clicking the link that will appear on page.

The Cons

Pixie is not as user-friendly as it might appear. If you’re used to create blog posts and pages where you publish them too, you’ll be disappointed — to create new pages on Pixie, you have to hit Settings on the main tabs and create them from there. The Publish tab will only enable you to edit them. For posts, there is no tab — you have to go back to the Dashboard, scroll down to ‘Quick Links’ and click ‘Add new My Blog entry’ (where ‘My Blog’ is your blog’s name).

5. PivotX

PivotX is an open source blogging solution developed by a team of volunteers and released under the GPL License. It supports multiple authors, Extensions and Widgets for additional functions.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-795 border" alt="pivotx-home" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pivotx-home.png" width="750" height="363" />

Requirements

• PHP
• MySQL or flat files

Demo: N/A

Vendor’s Website: href="http://pivotx.net/" target="_blank">http://pivotx.net

The Pros

It’s a 7 MB installation — not a feather but that’s still fairly lightweight for the canon. It comes with a dashboard similar to that of WordPress but it’s quite more stylish.

You can write your posts and your site pages within Entries and Pages, that is quite detailed at a first sight: under Entries and Pages you have every tool to create and maintain your posts and pages and even to moderate comments, trackbacks and to manage categories.

Manage Media is similar to WordPress’ Media and it enables you to upload your images, files and templates. You can edit your current template files in text view.

One thing I love about PivotX is that you can run multiple weblogs and subweblogs and you can differentiate them by assigning different categories and templates to each.

In addition, you can choose to store data either on flat files or a MySQL database. Flat files are not as safe, though.

The Cons

The learning curve is slightly steeper than for WordPress, as its interface is less user-friendly, but this is no deterrent as the software is pretty good. The best way to get started is to read the documentation and to get acquainted with the terminology and admin dashboard sections, that differ from WordPress or other CMS’s.

6. Cutenews

Cutenews is a small blogging script developed by the CuteNews Team. It’s a simple backend-only blogging platform like FanUpdate, but it makes use of flat files instead of MySQL databases to store data.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-814 border" alt="cutephp-home" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/cutephp-home.png" width="750" height="361" />

Requirements

• PHP
• flat files for storage

Demo: N/A

Vendor’s Website: href="http://cutephp.com/" target="_blank">http://cutephp.com

The Pros

The latest versions of Cutenews are more similar to WordPress in appearance and in functionality. Cutenews is extendable via plugins and modules and small businesses can purchase a license for commercial use. It comes with a search function, file uploads and the possibility to backup (and restore) saved versions. Cutenews also supports UTF-8 and IP banning.

The Cons

As a platform that uses flat files instead of DBs for storage, Cutenews can get quite resource consuming as your website grows in posts and comments.

Why you haven’t heard about them before

When you’re just href=" http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/how-to-start-a-blog/">starting out with blogging, you’re more keen to follow the masses in the fear of getting lost. Even when you’ve never touched a CMS before, you can easily install WordPress (or just register a WordPress.com account) and get started with a premade theme. Or you can install Joomla! or Drupal, select a basic skin and start posting the most basic way, while you follow one of the thousand tutorials available on the Web to improve your blog’s appearance.

On the other hand, getting to know other solutions — and give yourself more options — requires research, time and dedication. So while it’s definitely a good idea to get your feet wet with the most popular CMS’s, consider dedicating some time to research and experiment with the alternatives.

I can assure you, it’s fun. ;)

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Page 17 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Blogger Interview: 5 Questions with Devesh Sharma

alt="Blogger Interview: 5 Questions with Devesh Sharma" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/devesh-e1399450681693-500x525_c.jpg" />

Introduction: Devesh Sharma

class="alignright size-full wp-image-6896" alt="Devesh" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/devesh.jpg" width="180" height="190" />

What were you doing at your 19? At age of 19, Devesh Sharma is already a blogger, author, serial entrepreneur, an affiliate marketer, and role model to many WordPress users. His blog, href="http://www.wpkube.com/" target="_blank">WP Kube, is followed by thousands of fans; and his other venture, title="Blokube" href="http://www.blokube.com/" target="_blank">Blokube, is helping a large group of bloggers to interact and grow.

In case you wish to dig into Devesh’s mind and learn from his success – today is your lucky day! Our guest today, Devesh Sharma, has shared tons of great tips in blog marketing and web hosting  in the following interview. I am 100% sure that you will learn a lot from this Q&A session.

So, are you ready? Let’s rock’n’roll!

Q1: Hello Devesh, thanks for being with us today. WP Kube is a very popular WordPress resources blog – you have more than 5,500 followers from Facebook, Twitter and RSS Reader. How did you achieve this?

Thanks for having me, Jerry.

At the start, I did nothing execpt writing content but after a few months I started promoting through various methods.

1. Guest Posting on larger websites.
2. Cross Promotion
3. Social Blogmarking sites
4. Social Media
5. Connecting with other bloggers

Those are the strategies I used to build the social following across various networks. And most recently I hired a few paid content writers for WP Kube, but I am not going to talk about any paid marketing strategy here.

Guest Posting

I bet most of you have already heard about guest posting, may be in Lori’s recent title="10 Killer Strategies to Win more Traffic for Your Blog" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/10-killer-strategies-to-win-more-traffic-for-your-blog/" target="_blank">traffic generation post or through one of the many title="The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging" href="http://www.writersincharge.com/guest-blogging-guide/" target="_blank">guest posting guides available on the internet.

Guest posting is a great way to generate traffic, subscribers, and build new connections, with little efforts. It takes 2-3 hours to write a quality guest post but the traffic & links, it drives helps in long term.

I would be the first one to admit that I didn’t wrote as many guest posts as title="Kevin Muldoon" href="http://www.kevinmuldoon.com" target="_blank">Kevin Muldoon or title="Leaving work Behind" href="http://www.leavingworkbehind.com" target="_blank">Tom Ewer did. But what I did was took action and got good results. The best way to truly get results is by taking action. So stop reading, and start taking action today.

Some Examples:

• Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger: href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/01/04/how-to-make-your-blog-load-faster-than-problogger/" target="_blank">Part 1 and href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/02/08/make-your-blog-load-faster-than-problogger-part-2/" target="_blank">2
• title="The top 10 tools for freelance designers" href="http://www.creativebloq.com/career/tools-freelance-designers-7133493" target="_blank">The top 10 tools for freelance designers
• title="5 Simple Tips to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing" href="http://www.famousbloggers.net/make-money-affiliate-marketing.html" target="_blank">5 Simple Tips to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
• href="http://basicblogtips.com/plugins-grow-your-email-list.html" target="_blank">5 WordPress Plugins to Grow your Email List

Cross Promotion

At the time of launch, I used to run a multi-author blogging tips blog called Technshare. So I used it to promote my WordPress blog and it helped WP Kube to gain rankings in Google.

Social Blogmarking sites

The term Social blogmarking was coined my good friend href="https://twitter.com/alexwhalley23" target="_blank">Alex Whalley in 2010. It is basically refers to social bookmarking sites aimed for Bloggers. There are only a handful of blogging communities available for bloggers

• title="Blokube" href="http://www.blokube.com" target="_blank">Blokube – Most active social site for bloggers & internet marketers
• title="Inbound" href="http://www.inbound.org" target="_blank">Inbound – Mostly for SEO related stuff
• href="http://www.blogengage.com" target="_blank">BlogEngage – One of the oldest and paid social blogmarking sites.

Social Media

Believe it or not, but social media plays an important role in marketing. Initially, I did not do much except for replying and sharing other people’s content. I basically followed the 80/20 role, 80% quality content and 20% self promotion. I also used a social service called – Twiends, which helped me to gain a few hundred followers.

And most recently, I started using title="Bufferapp" href="http://www.bufferapp.com" target="_blank">Bufferapp, a web based scheduling service that allows me to post across several networks. It’s a great app and saves a lot of time.

Connecting with other bloggers

If you want to really make some useful connections in your niche, start building them with your peers rather then running around big blogs or gurus. Share their stuff on social media, comment on their posts or write a guest post for them.

This is how I build relationship with href="http://bloggingwizard.com/blogger-outreach-tips/" target="_blank">Adam Connell; I first dropped him an email and asked if he could link to one of my blog posts in his next weekly roundup. He not only linked to my post but also did a href="http://www.wpkube.com/author/adam/" target="_blank">few guest posts.

On a side note, Adam is working an content outreach course, you should href="http://bloggeroutreachmastery.com/" target="_blank">check it out.

I used same approach to connect with href="http://thewpchick.com/about-kim-doyal/" target="_blank">Kim Doyal, she ended up writing a href="http://thewpchick.com/wp-kube-another-awesome-wordpress-resource/" target="_blank">review about WP Kube.

Q2: From a recent article by Sourav, I understand that WP Kube has moved to WP Engine not long ago. Can we know what triggers the switch?

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6899" alt="WP Kube" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/WP-Kube.jpg" width="750" height="361" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/WP-Kube.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/WP-Kube-300x144.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

Yes, we recently href="http://www.wpkube.com/moving-to-wpengine/" target="_blank">moved to WPEngine. I have been a fan of the Managed Hosting provider but never got the time to move my site. But with the recent Hostgator outrage and slow loading times, I decided to change the hosting provider to WPEngine.

It has only been a few months and I am already happy with the transition. WP Engine is an excellent hosting provider for bloggers, who don’t have time (like me) or technical knowledge to manage the hosting.

The one big difference, whey I prefer WPEngine is because of their fast loading times. My site now loads in under 2.5 seconds, compared to hostgator where a single page took 6 seconds to load.

Q3: Do you have any particular bad or good experience with other hosting company? Tell us about it.

Believe it or not, but most people love their hosting provider, until something goes wrong.

I don’t have any bad experience particularly; I am currently using Hostgator, BlueHost and WPEngine, and all of them have a fantastic infrastructure and support.

Q4: If you could only recommend one web hosting provider to those who are just starting out, who would it be? And, why?

If you are just starting a one page website or a new blog, then I would recommend BlueHost or Hostgator, both are somewhat same and owned by Endurance International.

There are three main reasons:

• Bluehost isn’t expensive compared to other managed hosting providers, and will only cost you .95 per month.
• The specs are more than enough for a new website.
• They provide fantastic support.

On the other hand, if you have small business or are looking for business class hosting, then go with WPEngine.

Q5: Beside Akismet (everyone is using it, right?), what are the three WordPress plugins that you can’t live without?

I am currently using a combination of Conditional Captcha and Akismet, for most of my sites and it works quite well. To find a complete list of plugins & tools that I’m using, you can see title="WPKube Blueprint" href="http://www.wpkube.com/toolbox/" target="_blank">WPKube Blueprint.

• WordPress SEO by Yoast – The most complete SEO plugin.
• nRelate Related content – The best related Posts plugin for WP.
• Backup Buddy – The best backup solution for WordPress.

Thanks again for your time. Do you have anything to add before we end this interview?

Two things –

• Always invest in the right hosting company and do your research before making the final choice.
• Backup your site weekly or at least monthly. You cannot rely on your hosting provider all the time.

Follow Devesh href="http://www.twitter.com/wpkube" target="_blank">@WP Kube on Twitter and href="https://plus.google.com/100270244961423693287" target="_blank">+WP Kube on Google Plus.

Page 17 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

WordPress Tutorial: How to Create a Testimonials Plugin

alt="WordPress Tutorial: How to Create a Testimonials Plugin" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wordpress-500x133_c.jpg" />

So, here we are for our second weekly tutorial on WordPress. We have learned how to create an href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/wordpress-blog/how-to-create-an-infinite-scrolling-wp-site/">infinite scrolling WP site and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/wordpress-development-creating-an-awesome-page-flip-plugin/">page-flip plugin in the past. Today we’ll learn a little bit more about custom post types, and how to load their data.

This feature is really important in your site, since it allows you to show people recommending you. Testimonials are a great social proof of your awesomeness. And you don’t need complex plugins or a lot of code to achieve this, as you’ll see with a couple of files you can create a sexy presentation for your testimonials.

Let’s get started then!

Zip & Install

If you are in a hurry to check this, you can href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/testimonials.zip">download and install it.

You’ll need to add some data then, by adding a few testimonials using the brand new testimonials are you can see in your dashboard:

style="text-align: center;">class=" wp-image-1857 aligncenter border" title="Print Screen of Testimonial plugin" alt="list-testimonials" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/list-testimonials.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/list-testimonials.jpg 1133w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/list-testimonials-300x169.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/list-testimonials-750x424.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 1133px) 100vw, 1133px" />

Then you can use the basic shortcode to load that:

[ testimonials rand=0 max=5 ]

When you’ve added that code you’ll see something like this in your page:

href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/main-testimonials.jpg">class="alignnone wp-image-1858 border" alt="main-testimonials" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/main-testimonials.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/main-testimonials.jpg 644w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/main-testimonials-300x142.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 644px) 100vw, 644px" />

Now we’ll see how to create and explore this (by adding more functions and changing the look).

The Basics

As we’ve said before, you’ll need to add the title="WordPress Tutorial: How To Create An Awesome Page Flip Plugin" href="http://www.webrevenue.co/inbound-marketing/wordpress-development-creating-an-awesome-page-flip-plugin/">header metadata, create the plugin file and call your scripts. Long story short, you’ll create a new folder under your wp-content/plugins with your plugin’s name, then create a file with the same name as the folder to be your main plugin file.

Once you’ve done that copy and paste as follows:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Testimonials
Description: Display customer testimonials.
Version: 1.0
Author: Web Revenue Blog
License: GPL2
*/

//enqueueing scripts and styles
function plugin_scripts(){
    wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
    wp_enqueue_script('flexslider', plugins_url( 'js/jquery.flexslider-min.js' , __FILE__ ), array('jquery'), '2.2', false);
    wp_enqueue_script('testimonials', plugins_url( 'js/testimonials.js' , __FILE__ ), array('jquery'), '1.0', false);
    wp_enqueue_style('flexsliderCSS', plugins_url( 'css/flexslider.css' , __FILE__ ), false, '2.2', 'all' );
    wp_enqueue_style('testimonialsCSS', plugins_url( 'css/testimonials.css' , __FILE__ ), false, '1.0', 'all' );
}
add_action("wp_enqueue_scripts","plugin_scripts");

Here is what we’re doing:

• Telling to the WP what’s our plugin’s name, author, what it does
• Creating a function, where we insert regular scripts (like jQuery) and custom scripts (like flexslider), and Stylesheets
• Telling to the WP to load the scripts function in its default scripts call, so they’ll be actually loaded in the pages

It’s all pretty cool, but don’t forget to actually create the files under /js and /css. You can just download them in our demo content so you don’t need to dig a lot to find the flexslider files.

Now we have all basic things in place we can start the funny part.

The Custom Post Type

By default, WordPress have 2 common post types, pages and posts. But it also has a lot of internal post types (like attachments), so the “post type” definition is: Every type of data you need to store.

As our plugin will create a new functionality WP doesn’t have a built-in place to store that, so we need to create that. Don’t be afraid little grasshopper, it’s quite simple, you can use this code:

//the black magic to create the post type
function create_post_type() {
    register_post_type(
        'testimonials',//new post type
        array(
            'labels' => array(
                'name' => __( 'Testimonials' ),
                'singular_name' => __( 'Testimonial' )
            ),
            'public' => true,/*Post type is intended for public use. This includes on the front end and in wp-admin. */
            'supports' => array('title','editor','thumbnail','custom_fields'),
            'hierarchical' => false
        )
    );    
}

Here we’re just using the register_post_type() function to tell to WP “Hey Buddy, we need to store this kind of data, please be ready to receive it”.

We also tell him that this kind of data is called “testimonials”, it should be available for public access (so it actually create a new menu item in your dashboard for it), the fields that we need on it, and if it’s hierarchical or not (like pages that we have parent and child pages).

Then we need to call it every time we load WordPress. This hook will do it:

add_action( 'init', 'create_post_type' );

The Custom Fields

Now our custom post type have the title (person’s name), the content (person’s testimonial), a picture (featured image) but it’s missing a link, since if the person is nice enough to talk about you, you should at least link to their site, right?

We could do this with usual custom fields, but it’s much better to have a “closed” field, where the user doesn’t need to type field’s name, and also where you can add some validation rules.

First of all we need to create a new metabox, which is those nice panels you have in your post edit area, each little panel is a metabox. This function will create and call it:

//adding the URL meta box field
function add_custom_metabox() {
    add_meta_box( 'custom-metabox', __( 'Link' ), 'url_custom_metabox', 'testimonials', 'side', 'low' );
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'add_custom_metabox' );

The add_meta_box() function requires these parameters:

1. ID – The unique identifier for it. You could use anything unique here like “unicorn-eating-rainbow” or “testimonial-link”. Anything that can be used internally
2. Title – What will be shown for the user? Here it’s important to use the __() function, it’s the function that allow users from foreign languages to translate your plugin with .po files (without editing plugin files)
3. Callback – The function where you have the actual contents of the metabox
4. Post Type – In our case we want it to be visible only for testimonials
5. Context – Where in the page you want to show it
6. Priority – If it should be before other items of the same position or after them

Now we need to create the url_custom_metabox() function, since we’ve called it.

// HTML for the admin area
function url_custom_metabox() {
    global $post;
    $urllink = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'urllink', true );

    //validating!
    if ( ! preg_match( "/http(s?):///", $urllink ) && $urllink != "") {
        $errors = "This URL isn't valid";
        $urllink = "http://";
    } 

    // output invlid url message and add the http:// to the input field
    if( isset($errors) ) { echo $errors; }
?>    
<p>
    <label for="siteurl">URL:<br />
        <input id="siteurl" size="37" name="siteurl" value="<?php if( isset($urllink) ) { echo $urllink; } ?>" />
    </label>
</p>
<?php
}

Ok, now translating this to plain English:

• The global variable $post is called, so we can know which is the POSTID of the current item
• We load the current value for the URL
• We validate If the value that user inserted is valid. If there is at least one “http” or “https” occurrence the value is OK, otherwise it’s in valid and we need to use the default value
• Then we show the errors, if there’s any
• Now we start the actual HTML, adding the default value in the input field as we’ve got in the PHP

After this point we need to actually save what’s being sent by the user. We’ll use the “save_post” hook, so every time WordPress saves a post it’ll call this function:

//saves custom field data
function save_custom_url( $post_id ) {
    global $post;    

    if( isset($_POST['siteurl']) ) {
        update_post_meta( $post->ID, 'urllink', $_POST['siteurl'] );
    }
}
add_action( 'save_post', 'save_custom_url' );

Here we just check if there’s any post data called “sitelink” which is our field name. If there is a sitelink, let’s save it.

After everything is in place, here is how your new testimonial  page will look like:

class="alignnone wp-image-1859 border" alt="new-testimonial" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/new-testimonial.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/new-testimonial.jpg 1133w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/new-testimonial-300x169.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/new-testimonial-750x424.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 1133px) 100vw, 1133px" />

Loading our Custom Data

Now we need to actually load our items, and we’ll use the get_posts() function, mostly because we have only simple data so we don’t need a proper WP loop (that would add a lot of DB calls and we really don’t need it).

So, first let’s create a function to get our site’s link, if there’s any.

//return URL for a post
function get_url($post) {
    $urllink = get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'urllink', true );

    return $urllink;
}

Now, we can start the shortcode function.  A simple way to default and validate the shortcode data is creating the attributes for the loop as an array, so we can add new items as we need them, like this:

//registering the shortcode to show testimonials
function load_testimonials($a){

    $args = array(
        "post_type" => "testimonials"
    );

    if( isset( $a['rand'] ) && $a['rand'] == true ) {
        $args['orderby'] = 'rand';
    }
    if( isset( $a['max'] ) ) {
        $args['posts_per_page'] = (int) $a['max'];
    }
    //getting all testimonials
    $posts = get_posts($args);

    //HTML OUTPUT
}
add_shortcode("testimonials","load_testimonials");

As you can see we have the shortcode attributes loaded and passed to the $args array when they validate, in the format that WordPress needs it, so we can load posts using them.

Now we need to add some HTML code there, following flexslider’s default structure. Here is how it’ll look like:

echo '<div>';
    echo '<ul>';

    foreach($posts as $post){
        //getting thumb image
        $url_thumb = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url(get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID));
        $link = get_url($post);
        echo '<li>';
            if ( ! empty( $url_thumb ) ) { echo '<img src="'.$url_thumb.'" />'; }
            echo '<h2>'.$post->post_title.'</h2>';
            if ( ! empty( $post->post_content ) ) { echo '<p>'.$post->post_content.'<br />'; }
            if ( ! empty( $link ) ) { echo '<a href="'.$link.'">Visit Site</a></p>'; }
        echo '</li>';
    }

    echo '</ul>';
echo '</div>';

Wait, but why would we create the HTML code inside of the PHP function? That’s because we can conditionally load content only if the user have added content, so you won’t have empty HTML tags, just waiting to mess up your layout.

What about the sidebar?

Most people just want to show testimonials in the sidebar, and this plugin won’t work really well since text widgets don’t process shortcodes. There’s a simple solution for this, just add this in your code:

add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

What’s next?

So, did you enjoy this tutorial? What would you add as an option for your testimonial shortcode? Do you have any ideas for future posts? Let us know using the comments section!

Page 18 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

5 Ways to Get More Retweets

alt="5 Ways to Get More Retweets" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats-500x352_c.jpg" />

The World Wide Web is all atwitter over “tweeting”, and your business can gain free exposure by getting in on the action. You’ve probably heard Twitter referenced over and over in magazines, on television shows and online. Celebrities often gain attention for inappropriate or controversial tweets. While it wouldn’t be a good idea for your business to become too controversial, as you’ll alienate some of your clientele, you can use Twitter in a way that will drive customers to your site and cause others to retweet your posts on their own Twitter feeds.

In title="Science Of Retweet" href="http://danzarrella.com/the-science-of-retweets-report.html" target="_blank">The Science of Retweets by Dan Zarrella, he took a random sample of tweets and tracked them to figure out why people retweet. He got some interesting results.

I found that in a random sample of normal (non-ReTweet) Tweets, 18.96% contained a link, whereas 3 times that many ReTweets (56.69%) included a link.

This means that not only are ReTweets an accepted way to spread off-Twitter content, the presence of a link may increase a Tweet’s chances of being shared.

Twitter Statistics

style="text-align: center;">href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats.jpg">class=" wp-image-1022 aligncenter" alt="Twitter Statistics" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats.jpg 975w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats-300x211.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/twitter-stats-750x529.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 975px) 100vw, 975px" />

According to title="Twitter Stats" href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics" target="_blank">Statistic Brain, there are 554,750,000 active registered users on Twitter as of April 19, 2013. This means that your potential reach is in the 100s of millions. Of course, not all of those people will retweet your post, but if you craft it the right way, you are certain to get at least a few retweets. Other statistics listed by Statistic Brain include:

• 135,000 new users sign up each day
• 58 million new tweets per day
• 9,100 tweets per second (on average)

In addition to these statistics, get in on a hot topic, like the election campaign, awards ceremonies or other big event and the number of overall tweets (and thus retweets) rises drastically. For example, href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/25/tech/social-media/oscar-tweets-2013" target="_blank">CNN Tech indicated that during the 2013 Oscars, there were 6.8 million tweets that went out. During the big moment when the Best Picture (Argo) was announced, as many as 85,300 tweets per minute were being shared. During the 2013 Super Bowl, a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/live-action-twitter-grabs-super-bowl-spotlight" target="_blank">record number of tweets was recorded with a total of 24.1 million during the game.

This information is good to have, because if you can work a tweet into a big event that also helps promote your business via a link, then you have the opportunity for retweets. Let’s start by looking at what others have already successfully created that has been retweeted. Some of the most popular retweets of the last three years were:

• Rihanna tweeted that Justin Bieber flashed his abs at her and it was retweeted over and over by teen fans everywhere. Take note if you have a product or service targeted at the younger crowd. Boy singers are hot, including One Direction, and if you have a valid tweet you can get retweets.
• Someone with the username “al-Qaida” posted that they weren’t about to share their location and weren’t going to fall for that trick. Because it was funny, the post was retweeted multiple times and went viral. If you can approach your tweet with some tongue-in-cheek humor that is also timely, you will likely get retweets.
• Anything from the hottest celebrities of the day. Justin Bieber often takes over the top 10 most retweeted posts, but other celebrities get their share of the attention, too.
• The highest grossing retweet of 2012 was posts about the results of the election and an announcement from Barack Obama that stated simply “four more years”. As a business, you probably shouldn’t take political sides, but you can certainly figure out a way to get in on the most popular topics and get a possible retweet.

Twitter does offer one tool that may help you out as you figure out what is currently trending on Twitter. They now list the top tweeted hashtags on their home page. So, if you see that #springcleaning is trending, then you could create a post related to spring cleaning products at your store and how to use them.

Creating a Tweet

Sure, anyone with a Twitter account can type out a few words and post them up on Twitter, but not all tweets are created equal. As you put together your first tweet with the intent of going viral with twitters, you’ll need to know a few specifics about Twitter posting when you want that post to go at least a little bit viral.

Keep It Short

Twitter’s dynamic is different than Facebook or Pinterest. Tweeters are looking for quick, fast reads. According to a href="https://blog.twitter.com/2010/evolving-ecosystem" target="_blank">Twitter blog post in 2010, about 62% of Twitter users at that time were accessing the site via mobile devices. That number is likely to rise and more and more people acquire smart phones and tablet devices. These people are looking for a fast read, so keep it short and to the point. Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters per tweet anyway, but within those characters, you’ll also want to add a request to retweet.

Ask for the Retweet

One of the easiest ways to get people to retweet your post is simply to ask your followers to retweet. You can do this in shorthand, so you don’t use up all your characters asking for the retweet. At the end of your tweet, simply type something like “please rt”.

Make It Interesting

The tweets that get retweeted are either profound, funny or interesting. Take the time to brainstorm what you want to tweet. Run the idea past some of your employees or other managers. Refine it, perfect it, and then put it out there and see what happens. Remember that every interesting tweet doesn’t get retweeted, but you’ll have a better chance of it being retweeted if it is unique.

Get More Retweets

1. Automate Things

If you make regular tweets, then the chances of gaining followers and them retweeting rises sequentially. Luckily, you can automate this process and schedule tweets through href="http://hootsuite.com/features/social-networks" target="_blank">HootSuite.

2. Measure Your Success

Measuring retweets, or at least the success of a tweet in gaining retweets, can help you repeat successful posts that go viral. There are a couple of ways you can track tweets and how many times they are retweeted.

First, go to your home timeline. From here, you can see under the tweet how many of your followers have retweeted the post. You can also view retweets from “Connect” in the top navigation bar. Then, click on “Interactions”. This will show you what interactions you’ve had with other Twitter users, including retweets.

3. Shorten URLs

If you include a URL in your tweet, be sure to shorten that URL. There are several popular services that are effective at shortening URLs, including:

• Bit.ly
• T.co
• TinyURL

4. Use Popular Words

In addition to studying why people retweet, Dan Zarella took a look at some of the most popular words in the most retweeted posts. He found that some of the more popular words included short words and phrases, such as:

• Please retweet
• Blog
• Free
• Help
• 10

There were also some words that he found were extremely unpopular, such as:

• Game
• LOL
• Bed
• Bored
• Work

5. Get Engaged in the Twitter Community

Whether you spend time engaging on your own or you hire a social media manager to do so for you, get involved in “discussions” about topics that might draw people in the field you are in. If you are a web designer, then you might get involved in a chat about the possibility of the government taxing Internet sales. Use the hashtag others are using. For example, they might use #internet tax.

The final tip that Zarrella offers that can help your posts get retweeted is that Friday is a high volume day on Twitter. This is the day that overall the most posts and retweets occur. If you only have time to post once a week, make sure it is on Friday. Keep your posts interesting, offer unique content, ask for retweets, use popular words and trending topics and get involved. If you do these things, your posts will be retweeted and you’ll reach new followers you otherwise wouldn’t have.

Additional: If you want more retweets, also read Jerry’s href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/49-data-proven-tips-on-how-to-get-more-retweets/">49 data-proven ways to win more retweets.

Infographic source: href="http://www.globalwebindex.net/twitter-now-the-fastest-growing-social-platform-in-the-world/" target="_blank">Global Web Index, image credit: href="http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/169967" target="_blank">Octaviolopez

Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

How to Write 3,000 Words Per Day Whilst Travelling Around the World

alt="How to Write 3,000 Words Per Day Whilst Travelling Around the World" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

I first set off from my native Scotland in 2003 for a trip to Asia and Australia. I had been working online for three years by this point, however around this time I started making enough to become self-employed through the internet. Since then, I have travelled all around the world whilst working online.

It is much easier to do this in 2013. When I first started travelling I had to constantly deal with slow internet connections. It was not uncommon for there to be 20 people sharing a 56kb connection in internet cafes in Asia, with everyone sitting there bored looking at Hotmail take an age to load a page. Things got infinitely better for travellers over the next ten years due to the availability of WiFi and fast mobile connections.

Working whilst travelling still presents many challenges. I have been living in South America since the Summer of 2011 though in September 2012 me and my girlfriend set off to travel all around South America. During this time I updated my blog regularly and finished a book that is 580 pages in print form. Just goes to show that you can still be productive whilst seeing the world.

Let’s look at how you can keep up your writing schedule whilst on the road :)

1. Plan Your Schedule

One of the greatest things about travelling is that you do not know how things will plan out. What you imagined would be a quiet night indoors can quickly turn into a night out with 15 other people. I usually try and plan out how long I will be in the one place but it rarely works out that way. If I am not enjoying a place, I will leave early. Likewise, if I am having a great time somewhere, I usually stay a little longer.

Despite plans being broken frequently, I always try and plan ahead as best as I can. One way I do this is by staying one extra day to ensure I have time to get a lot of work done. For example, if I plan on staying somewhere for three days, I would plan a schedule such as this:

• Day 1: Work for 2 hours in the morning, out all day sightseeing and then 1 or 2 hours work at night.
• Day 2: Out all day on a day trip and then a couple of hours work at night (if not too tired from the day trip).
• Day 3: Work all day long and perhaps out for dinner and a few beers at night.

Where possible, I try and do a full day of work on the last day somewhere as that night, or the following day, will probably be spent sitting on a bus. This was common for me throughout South America. Most places we visited were between 12 and 24 hours apart by bus (though I stay productive on buses too – see point 2!). We did a lot of journeys overnight but I rarely got a great sleep on overnight buses, therefore I usually did not get a lot of work completed the following day. So I got into the habit of working hard the day before so that I was not behind, ensuring that my blog was updated in advance.

id="attachment_1825" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class=" wp-image-1825 border" alt="Hard at Work in Bolivia" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/hard-at-work.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/hard-at-work.jpg 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/hard-at-work-300x225.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />class="wp-caption-text">Hard at work in Bolivia. Good wifi connections makes it easy to sit back and relax with a tablet and do research.

How To Create A Custom Administration Pages in WordPress Dashboard

alt="How To Create A Custom Administration Pages in WordPress Dashboard" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/1-500x200_c.jpg" />

When WordPress unveiled what used to be its standard theme, Kubrick, several years ago, it also took the wraps of an exciting new feature. That feature was the custom theme administration panel, enabled by defining functions and preferences in the theme-specific “functions.php” file. In the years that have ensued, the theme options page has been sadly underused by many theme designers, but it’s actually a great way to give users control over their site’s appearance without forcing them to install a new theme. THings like the theme background image, number of columns, and even font colors can all be changed using this custom administration panel.

The administration panel itself is changed by filling the theme’s functions file with a series of PHP arrays that define custom values. Those values are then included in the template and they are defined in an administration panel that allows users to define their appearance preferences visually. The whole process is actually relatively simple once the theme designer learns how a PHP works and how they can leverage that piece of code to allow custom presentation within their template files.

The several-step process all begins by setting a few site wide variables and defining what should be customized in this new administration page.

Step 1: Creating and Editing the Theme-Specific Functions.php Page

class="border" alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2010/1104-1.jpg" width="600px" />

If you’ve developed your own theme, chances are pretty slim that you’ve made a functions.php file to be paired with the existing template files. This is a relatively advanced options and most designers simply skip it altogether. In this case, it’s essential to open your FTP client of choice and point it to the following server URL where the theme’s files reside:

/public_html/wp-content/themes/YOUR-THEME-FOLDER/

Once inside this folder, double check to make sure there’s no “functions.php” file present and then use your text editing program to create a new file named “functions.php.” This file can then be saved and uploaded to the server via FTP. It can be edited directly on the server, eliminating the need for the text editing program.

The first step to having a valid theme options panel defined in the “functions.php” file is to define two variables at the top of the document. These variables will be used to display the theme’s name using the Dashboard, as well as identify form and selection elements within that administration page. Observe the code below, place it into the top of your “functions.php” document, and customize it to your site’s needs.

$longname = “Administration Panel Development Theme”;
$shortcode = “apdt”;

These variables serve different purposes. The $longname variable will be used to print the theme’s name in the actual administration options panel. For this reason, it is recommended that developers assign the theme’s exact name to this variable in order to eliminate confusion among their theme’s users. The $shortcode variable should be all lowercase letters without any punctuation, as this will be used to identify form elements within the code itself. In the example, a simple acronym was used based on the theme’s full name; this can be customized to a user’s tastes.

Step 2: Defining Customizable Preferences Using PHP Arrays

First, it’s important to tell the theme what the administration panel’s name is. This will be printed above all of the potential settings and helps foster clarity of purpose to novice users. This is done by adding the following array to the $settings tag within the “functions.php” file:

$settings = array (
array( “name” => $longname.” Appearance Settings”,
“type” => “title”),

Next, we must indicate that the array full of options is “open,” or able to be modified by user input. This is done using another simple array that appears right below the definition of the page’s title. It looks like this:

array( “type” => “open”),

Now we are free to begin defining theme appearance options, with each one of them being created as a new array. In this example, we’re going to define the text which is placed in the theme’s footer. By default, the example theme contains a link to the theme developer’s website as well as teem versioning information. This is not desirable by a large number of WordPress users who would prefer to place their own information in the footer, however, so enabling this custom control saves them the manual editing of the “footer.php” file. Here’s how it’s done.

array(
“name” => “Custom Theme Footer Text”,
“desc” => “This is the text displayed at the very end of every page contained within this theme.”,
“id” => $shortcode.”_custom_footer”,
“type” => “text”,
“std” => “Experimental Theme v1.0. Developed by John Doe. More themes here.”),

The array above allows the user to determine the theme’s standard footer text, but the array tags need to be explained to better describe just how this process works and what each part of the array defines.

Name: This refers to the name of the actual text box itself, and is not presented to users when they enter the administration options page for the theme.

Desc: This is a short description that accompanies the custom setting, and this is displayed to users.

ID: This uses the short code along with a custom-made identification of the form name in order to both present and style the text box.

Type: This defines whether the form element is a text line, a text box, a drop down menu, a radio button, or a checkbox.

STD: This determines the default value of the selected element. For a text box, this determines the default text entered into it. For checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop down boxes, this determines which option is selected by default.

Step 3: Telling WordPress to Enable Access to the New Options Page

Even though the options page has been given a purpose using the “functions.php” file within a theme’s home folder, it has yet to be recognized by WordPress or included among the many other settings page within the WordPress Dashboard. This is because the theme’s option page must be identified in the functions page and told where to go (either as an independent sidebar element or within the “Settings” grouping). This is done using a relatively simple function which is added to the “functions.php” file below the arrays of potential customizations:

function experimental_theme_save_values() {
global $longname, $shortcode, $settings;
if ( $_GET[‘page’] == basename(__FILE__) ) {
if ( ‘save’ == $_REQUEST[‘action’] ) {
foreach ($settings as $value) {
update_option( $value[‘id’], $_REQUEST[ $value[‘id’] ] ); }
foreach ($settings as $value) {
if( isset( $_REQUEST[ $value[‘id’] ] ) ) { update_option( $value[‘id’], $_REQUEST[ $value[‘id’] ] ); } else { delete_option( $value[‘id’] ); } }
header(“Location: themes.php?page=functions.php&saved=true”);
die;
} else if( ‘reset’ == $_REQUEST[‘action’] ) {
foreach ($settings as $value) {
delete_option( $value[‘id’] ); }
header(“Location: themes.php?page=functions.php&reset=true”);
die;
}
}
add_menu_page($longname.” Appearance Settings”, “”.$longname.” Appearance Settings”, ‘edit_themes’, basename(__FILE__), ‘experimental_theme_save_values’);

This piece of code does two things. First, it allows the theme’s settings to be saved via the administration options panel. Secondly, it places an independent button in the WordPress Dashboard’s sidebar that allows a user to click it and go directly to theme options panel. It is labeled “Appearance Settings” just like the actual page itself. Consistency is the key to eliminating confusion and directing users to the page without specifically telling them to make their way to the options panel to customize the theme’s appearance.

Step 4: Adding Error Messages and Closing the PHP File

The final step to filling in all the elements of the theme options panel is to define error messages that a user may encounter and then make sure that the form elements can be presented in the default WordPress style within the options page. Adding the error messages is done by pasting this code into the PHP functions file:

function experimental_theme_save_values() {
global $longname, $shortcode, $settings;
if ( $_REQUEST[‘saved’] ) echo ‘
‘.$themename.’ appearance customizations have been saved successfully.
‘;
if ( $_REQUEST[‘reset’] ) echo ‘
‘.$themename.’ appearance customizations have been successfully reset.
‘;

Beneath these two lines of code, the PHP section of the functions.php file can be closed using the ?> ending tag. Below this, XHTML code will be placed to style the elements using the standard WordPress Dashboard stylesheet.

Step 5: Giving the Options Page Some Style

Currently, WordPress Dashboard users can see the new error page but they can’t do much with it. That’s because the form elements and the stylesheet have not yet been placed into the functions.php file for use within the administration interface. That’s all about to change, as we include the stylesheet and default form elements for use by the new panel:

< div class=”wrap” >
< h2>< ?php echo $longname; ? > Settings< /h2 >

< form method=”post” action=”options.php” >

< ?php break; case ‘text’: ? >

< tr>
< td width=”20%” rowspan=”2″ valign=”middle” >< strong >< ?php echo $value[‘name’]; ? >< /strong >< /td >
< td width=”80%” >< input style=”width:100%;” name=”< ?php echo $value[‘id’]; ? >” id=”< ?php echo $value[‘id’]; ? >” type=”< ?php echo $value[‘type’]; ? >” value=”< ?php if ( get_settings( $value[‘id’] ) != “”) { echo get_settings( $value[‘id’] ); } else { echo $value[‘std’]; } ? >” / >< /td >
< /tr >

< tr >
< td >< small >< ?php echo $value[‘desc’]; ? >< /small >< /td >
< /tr >< tr >< td colspan=”2″ > < /td >
< /tr >

< ?php break;} ? >

< input type=”submit” value=”< ?php _e(‘Save Theme Settings’) ? >” / >

This code is pasted below the closing tag of the PHP functions file, and can be customized for each type of form that a theme options panel might include. The “case” variable can be changed from “text” to things like text box, checkbox, select, and title. These forms only need to be included, defined, and styled, if they are being used by the theme. Otherwise, their inclusion is not necessary and leaving then out of the theme’s functions file will promote efficiency and clean code.

Step 9: Enabling the Custom Option to be Seen on the Actual Theme

There are two steps to execute when making sure that any changes can be seen on a theme’s public templates. The first is to place a variable into the theme’s footer which will display the user-defined copyright and versioning text that we enabled in the earlier steps of this tutorial. That is done by placing the following code in the footer copyright area:

< ?php echo $apdt_custom_footer; ? >

This text calls the custom array for the footer text that was defined earlier and, per the “Echo” statement, prints that text in the footer. This tag can be contained within any XHTML tags a user sees fit, but it will not show up without a piece of code added to the site’s header.

In the header, the theme must be instructed to look for the user-defined options that are set within in the WordPress Dashboard, and it must know the variables that are defined in the custom “functions.php” file so it can print their content onto the website. This is done by placing the following PHP variable in the header of the website (typically the “header.php” file):

< ?php global $settings;
foreach ($settings as $value) {
if (get_settings( $value[‘id’] ) === FALSE) { $$value[‘id’] = $value[‘std’]; } else { $$value[‘id’] = get_settings( $value[‘id’] ); }
}
? >

That’s all there is to it. Now, every option defined in the custom functions.php file can be reflected in the page’s appearance simply by including a custom-defined PHP variable where the designated customizations and content are supposed to take effect.

Step 10: Test the New Settings and the Options Page

No WordPress development effort is fully complete until it has been thoroughly tested for bugs, errors, and accidental errors in the PHP code placed into the “functions.php” file. That said, it’s time to get testing! Log in to the WordPress Dashboard and, if the theme you’ve been working on is not currently selected, make sure to navigate to the “Appearance” category in the sidebar and activate the relevant theme.

From there, check a few things:

1. Make sure the theme’s settings link appears as its own entity in the sidebar underneath the “Settings” sidebar category heading.
2. Ensure that the designated footer text customization option can be accessed in the custom options control panel; modify the default content of the footer and save the preference. Make sure that it saves without an error.
3. Visit your actual, public website, and ensure that the changes made within the Dashboard concerning the content of the footer are displayed.
4. If everything functions properly, breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy your first WordPress theme options control panel page.

Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

30 Free Social Media Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

alt="30 Free Social Media Plugins for Your WordPress Blog" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/social-media-500x270_c.jpg" />

Social media is a vital part of every single website. Even if you do not use social media services frequently yourself, you need to ensure that your website accommodates those who do.

WordPress does not come with any social media functionality built in, however there are hundreds of social media plugins available. There are many great premium social media plugins available in marketplaces such as title="CodeCanyon" href="http://codecanyon.net/">CodeCanyon but today I would like to showcase some of the best free plugins that are available to you.

I have included login plugins, follow widgets, sharing plugins and metric plugins that show the performance of your posts on social media websites. Enjoy :)

1. Jetpack by WordPress.com

Jetpack now offers 25 different modules to WordPress users. There are many great social media modules included in this list. Jetpack comments will enhance your comment area by allowing users to login using WordPress.com, Twitter or Facebook. The publicize module allows you to automatically share posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. Last but not least is the sharing module, which lets you add sharing buttons to your posts, pages and front page.

style="text-align: center;">href="Jetpack by WordPress.com">class="aligncenter wp-image-1678 border" alt="Jetpack" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jetpack.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jetpack.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jetpack-300x111.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

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Visit online: title="JetPack by WordPress" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/

2. Social Plugin for WordPress

Developed by title="MailChimp" href="http://mailchimp.com/">MailChimp, Social is a great plugin that offers many Twitter and Facebook integration features. It allows posts to be automatically uploaded to Facebook and Twitter. Twitter replies and Facebook comments can be pulled into the discussion on your website and visitors can login using Twitter and Facebook and leave a comment. It’s a fantastic plugin though there is no support for other social media services such as Google+.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1679 border" alt="Social Plugin for WordPress" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-300x180.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Plugin for WordPress" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social/

3. LoginRadius

LoginRadius is a social media service that over 50,000 websites are using to add social media integration to their websites. Once the plugin has been installed and you have signed up to LoginRadius to get your API key, visitors will be able to login to your website and leave comments using services such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn. The plugin also allows you to add social media sharing buttons to your above and below posts and floated to the side of your content.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/loginradius-for-wordpress/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1680 border" alt="LoginRadius" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/login-radius.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/login-radius.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/login-radius-300x267.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="LoginRadius" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/loginradius-for-wordpress/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/loginradius-for-wordpress/

4. Social Login

Powered by title="OneAll" href="http://www.oneall.com/">OneAll, Social Login allows visitors to connect to your website using over 20 different social media services. The OneAll website also provides an insight into how people are sharing content on your website.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/oa-social-login/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1681 border" alt="Social Login" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-login.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-login.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-login-300x267.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
  Visit online: title="Social Login" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/oa-social-login/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/oa-social-login/

5. Social Login & Social Sharing by Janrain

Powered by the title="Janrain" href="http://janrain.com/products/engage/social-login/">Janrain service, this social login plugin allows visitors to login using one of over 20 supported social media services. It looks great and it is optimised for mobile devices. It also provides stats on how many people have logged in using their service.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Login & Social Sharing by Janrain" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/rpx/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/rpx/

6. Social Media Widget

A great social media widget that supports most major social media services. There are four different icon styles to choose from, three different sizes and four animations. Additional options include the opacity level of icons, whether links are opened in a new tab and whether links are dofollow.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Media Widget" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-widget/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-widget/

7. My Pinterest Badge

My Pinterest Badge is a Pinterest widget that shows your number of followers and likes. It contains a large follow button and lists your recent pins.

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
  Visit online: title="My Pinterest Badge" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/my-pinterest-badge/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/my-pinterest-badge/

8. Social Media Tabs

Social Media Tabs is a cool WordPress widget that can display profiles for Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS and Pinterest. It works differently to most other social media follow plugins. Icons are displayed discretely at the side of your website design and when a user clicks on an icon, the corresponding social media profile slides out. It sounds quite gimmicky but it works well in practice.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Media Tabs" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-tabs/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-tabs/

9. Social Stickers

Social Stickers is a follow plugin that offers a range of different sizes and styles.

It supports shortcodes and it can be used to display the number of Twitter and Facebook followers you have.

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Stickers" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-stickers/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-stickers/

10. Floating Social Media Icon

This plugin is quite unique in that social media icons can be displayed within your widget area or be floated outside your main design. There are lots of different sizes and styles to choose from and you can choose the alignment of icons too.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-social-media-icon/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1687 border" alt="Floating Social Media Icon" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/floating-social-media-icon.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/floating-social-media-icon.png 529w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/floating-social-media-icon-300x230.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Floating Social Media Icon" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-social-media-icon/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-social-media-icon/

11. Simple Social Icons

Released by StudioPress, Simple Social Icons is a stylish social media follow plugin that supports all major social media services. It offers a lot of control over how the buttons are styled. You can icon size, alignment and the font and background colours.

href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-social-icons/">class="size-full wp-image-1688 alignright border" alt="Simple Social Icons" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/simple-social-icons.png" width="340" height="98" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/simple-social-icons.png 340w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/simple-social-icons-300x86.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Simple Social Icons" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-social-icons/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-social-icons/

12. Brankic Social Media Widget

The Brankic social media widget supports a whopping 49 social media services. When you hover over the dark icon, it transitions to a bright coloured version of the same icon.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Brankic Social Media Widget" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/brankic-social-media-widget/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/brankic-social-media-widget/

13. Social Media Feather

A clean looking social media plugin that offers follow and sharing buttons. There are lots of different styles and sizes to choose from and buttons load quickly as it does not use Javascript.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-feather/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1694 border" alt="Social Media Feather" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-media-feather.png" width="750" height="431" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-media-feather.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-media-feather-300x172.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Media Feather" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-feather/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-feather/

14. Facebook

The official plugin from Facebook offers everything you need. With regards to widgets, it adds a follow button, like box, like button, recent activity, recommendations and a send button. It also allows you to integrate Facebook comments into your website and has support for the open graph protocol.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1690 border" alt="Facebook" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/facebook.png" width="750" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Facebook" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/

15. Simply Instagram

Simply Instagram lets you display your latest Instagram photos using a widget or shortcode. It gives you a lot of flexibility over what is displayed. You can simply display your latest photos or you can add additional information such as a follow button and your number of followers. The size of thumbnails can also be adjusted.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Simply Instagram" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-instagram/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-instagram/

16. WP to Twitter

WP to Twitter allows you to automatically update your Twitter account with your latest tweets. It supports hashtags and you can shorten URL’s using your favourite URL shortener. It also offers support for Google Analytics.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-to-twitter/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1692 border" alt="WP to Twitter" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-to-twitter.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-to-twitter.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-to-twitter-300x106.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="WP to Twitter" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-to-twitter/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-to-twitter/

17. Sociable

Sociable is one of the most popular sharing plugins available for WordPress. It is also one of the oldest. Most popular social media services are supported and the plugin offers a lot of different icon styles too. Sharing buttons can be displayed above and below posts. You can also use a floating share bar to display your content outside your main content area.

href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sociable/">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1683" alt="Sociable" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sociable.png" width="600" height="313" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sociable.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sociable-300x156.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Sociable" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sociable/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/sociable/

18. Shareaholic

Formerly known as Sexy Bookmarks, Shareaholic offers sharing buttons, analytics and the ability to display related content. There are different styles, sizes and layouts of sharing buttons. You can also add a counter to buttons to highlight how many shares an article has.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sexybookmarks/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1695 border" alt="Shareaholic" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/shareaholic.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/shareaholic.png 523w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/shareaholic-300x180.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 523px) 100vw, 523px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Shareaholic" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sexybookmarks/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/sexybookmarks/

19. Sharebar

A versatile floating share bar that lets you define the exact position on your page. Small or large buttons can be displayed though you can add your own button code if you wish. A horizontal share bar is displayed if the width of the page is less than 1,000 pixels.

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Sharebar" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sharebar/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/sharebar/

20. Slick Social Share Buttons

Slick Social Share Buttons offers a vertical or a horizontal sharing bar. The bar can be floated or can be slid out. You can control how the bar is displayed such as its offset position and the speed the bar slides out. Different button sizes can be displayed and the admin area displays the number of shares for each article.

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 Visit online: title="Slick Social Share Buttons" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/slick-social-share-buttons/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/slick-social-share-buttons/

21. Flare

Flare is a plugin that is growing in popularity. It allows you to show the total number of shares above posts, below posts and on a floating share bar. When a visitor hovers over the count of a particular social media service, the standard sharing button is displayed that allows them to share the article. It also offers a follow widget. If you want to see Flare in action, look no further, as it is currently being used on href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net">Web Hosting Secret Revealed.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/flare/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1698" alt="Flare" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/flare.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/flare.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/flare-300x105.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Flare" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/flare/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/flare/

22. Floating Social Media Links

A flexible social media floating share bar that has five predefined styles. You can also add your own custom style and define your own sharing buttons.

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Floating Social Media Links" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-social-media-links/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/floating-social-media-links/

23. WP Socializer

WP Socializer is a self-declared “All in One” sharing solution for WordPress that lets you add a sharing bar above posts, below posts and in a floating share bar. It also allows you to use Facebook and Google+ like widgets on your website.

There are a few features that set WP Socializer apart such as the sheer volume of social media services that are supported. It currently supports a whopping 107 social media services. This is probably more than anyone ever needs though I am sure this appeals to those of you need support for less popular social media services. It also allows you to define exactly where sharing buttons are displayed. You can choose to show buttons in areas such as category pages, tag pages, author pages, data archives, search results, excerpts and RSS feeds.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-socializer/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1701 border" alt="WP Socializer" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-socializer.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-socializer.png 552w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/wp-socializer-300x160.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 552px) 100vw, 552px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
  Visit online: title="WP Socializer" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-socializer/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-socializer/

24. Sharexy

Sharexy is another plugin that allows you to place sharing buttons above posts, below posts and within a floating share bar. It supports over 20 social media services and there are six different styles to choose from. The icons are very stylish so it should appeal to those of you who are looking for something different.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sharexy/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1702" alt="Sharexy" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharexy.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharexy.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharexy-300x167.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Sharexy" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/sharexy/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/sharexy/

25. AddThis

AddThis is one of the most popular sharing services on the internet, apparently being used by over 14 million websites. The WordPress plugin allows you to add sharing buttons above or below your posts. Signing up to their service is not necessary though doing so allows you to see additional stats such as the number of shares and clicks an article has.

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class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="AddThis" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/addthis/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/addthis/

26. Digg Digg

Digg Digg is another all-in-one sharing plugin you might want to consider. It offers a floating share bar or a standard sharing bar that can be placed above or below posts. Small and large official sharing buttons are supported.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/digg-digg/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1704 border" alt="Digg Digg" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/diggdigg.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/diggdigg.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/diggdigg-300x110.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Digg Digg" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/digg-digg/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/digg-digg/

27. ShareThis

style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/share-this/">class=" wp-image-1705 alignright border" alt="ShareThis" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharethis.png" width="346" height="66" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharethis.png 432w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sharethis-300x57.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px" />

In addition to AddThis, ShareThis is one of the most common sharing services you will see online. The WordPress plugin allows you to integrate sharing buttons onto your website easily. Vertical floating bars and regular horizontal sharing bars can be selected. There are lots of different styles to choose from and a ridiculous 120 social media services to choose from. There is also a feature called CopyNShare that allows you to track the number of times visitors have copied and shared your URL or content.

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 Visit online: title="ShareThis" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/share-this/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/share-this/

28. Word Count and Social Shares

One of the most interesting social media stat plugins available for WordPress. The plugin highlights the number of words your articles have and the corresponding number of shares on social media services.

This will help you analyse what types of articles do well on particular websites. For example, you may find that shorter articles get a lot of tweets but very few comments on Facebook in comparison to longer articles.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/word-count-and-social-shares/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1706 border" alt="Word Count and Social Shares" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/word-count-and-social-shares.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/word-count-and-social-shares.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/word-count-and-social-shares-300x148.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Word Count and Social Shares" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/word-count-and-social-shares/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/word-count-and-social-shares/

29. Social Sharing Analytics

A social analysis plugin that supports supports Twitter, Facebook and Google+. One of the great things about Social Sharing Analytics is that it adds sharing counts for your posts directly within your post listing screen. The downside to this is that your post area will take slightly longer to load, however this is the price you pay for having everything displayed on the one page.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-sharing-stats/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1707 border" alt="Social Sharing Analytics" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-sharing-stats.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-sharing-stats.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-sharing-stats-300x211.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Sharing Analytics" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-sharing-stats/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-sharing-stats/

30. Social Metrics

Social Metrics offers similar functionality to Social Sharing Analytics. The key difference is that metrics are displayed on a dedicated page on your site. This is a much more practical way to display this information as it does not slow down your main post listings page. Social Metrics also offers additional social media services. In addition to Twitter, Facebook and Google+, it also supports StumbleUpon, Digg and LinkedIn. Results can be filtered easily by category or date. The pro version of the plugin has some great features such as displaying your most popular posts in your sidebar.

style="text-align: center;">href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-metrics/">class="aligncenter wp-image-1708 border" alt="Social Metrics" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-metrics.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-metrics.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/social-metrics-300x143.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

class="meteor-icon" style="font-size:15px !important;">
class="icon-file-text-alt" style="color:inherit !important;">
 Visit online: title="Social Metrics" href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-metrics/" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/plugins/social-metrics/

I hope you have enjoyed this list of social media plugins for WordPress. If I have missed out your favourite plugin from this list, please feel free to share it in the comment area.

Good luck,
Kevin

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