Bring FriendFeed Comments Into Your Blog

FriendFeed has been steadily growing in popularity, and has been given the blessing of the A-List, but in all the support and cheerleading there has always been one problem.

One of the big complaints about FriendFeed is that it pulls conversation away from your site into their venue.

If you want to grow a community then first of all you want the community to exist on your own site, so it can not be held to ransom. Secondly you need to engage that community with conversation. If you can’t see that people have commented then you can’t reply to keep the conversation going, or worse you upset the commenter who then thinks you are ignoring them.

For these reasons many people have avoided fully jumping into the FriendFeed pond, but worry no longer, an excellent FriendFeed Commentgs plugin has arrived.

What it does is pulls any comments or “likes” you gain in FriendFeed and publishes them onto your blog.

There are various options to configure and a tag to place in your theme so it knows where you want to display the comments, but essentially once the plugin knows your FriendFeed nickname the rest is pretty cosmetic.

friendfeed plugin

Get more details at the authors plugin page.

WordPress to Disable XMLRPC by Default?

Three different people have alerted me to a minor storm in a tiny teacup over the news/rumor/allegation that WordPress are to disable XMLRPC publishing by default

In order to protect the majority of blogs which don’t use these protocols against any possible security vulnerabilities we should disable them by default.

Really? Is this what we are supposed to be getting upset about? As westi says:

from WordPress 2.6 onwards you will need to go into the Settings->Write page and enable them individually if you want to use them.

That doesn’t seem much of an ordeal. I imagine half of the readers of this blog are saying “What the heck is XMLRPC?” and the other half are quite aware of what XMLRPC is and do not much care if it is off by default.

XMLRPC is the way that you can control your blog without using the blog user interface. It’s the method that offline blogging tools like Ecto and Scribefire use to add content to your blog. As you can imagine from my description, this is powerful stuff, and it is quite right that if they believe there is a security hole to be filled that they should turn their wary eye towards it. Many hosting companies have been wary of XMLRPC, even down to making it difficult for people to enable it.

I can certainly understand the remote editor community getting upset. For them it is an extra hoop for end users to jump through, their products are meant to make things easier and this will be a hinderance. As Daniel Jalkut (Marsedit) says

For users who would find value in a remote client, this decision will put one more roadblock in their way

My main question is, what exactly is the security concern they have with XMLRPC? Why now? If there is a clear danger, fair enough, but if this is the WordPress developer equivalent of security theater, well, let’s not bother eh?

A Better Blog Contact Form

As more and more blogs grow from being a one-person operation to a multiple blogger situation, and more companies bolt on a blog to their corporate site, the one size fits all contact form is not cutting it.

Consider the scenario where everything goes to one person. So all contact, from “nice article” to “I have a problem with the widgets you sell” all go to one unfortunate individual. Far better to sift and sort to the appropriate people, right?

I have been looking for a more capable contact form for clients and I seem to have found it in WP_ContactMe

contact form

  • Easy to add to post and pages with BBCode.
  • Easy to add to a sidebar with a widget.
  • Easy to add anywhere in a template with a function call.
  • Comes ready configured with a standard Contact form.
  • Has HTML/PHP templates to allow you to customise the form to collect what information you like.
  • Emails the poster of the page/post by default.
  • Allows you to specify the address to receive the message.
  • Allows the setting of subjects to allow dynamic selection of the recipient of the message.
  • SPAM Protection by an optional CAPTCHA question.
  • Optionally allows the sender to receive a copy of the message.
  • Collects standard information about the sender, such as IP , referrer etc.
  • Has its own theme independent stylesheet to allow styling without modifying your theme.
  • Has localisation to allow easy modification of all default messages.

As well as setting subject lines that appear in a drop down, you can also shoot off to different people depending on the different purposes, so you could have “General Feedback” go to Joe, and “Advertising” go to Mary. Or maybe have one contact form that lists all your authors.

contact emails form

Check it out over at the DCoda WordPress plugin page

5 More Ways to Reward Commenters and Attract More Comments

In my last Community Building WordPress plugins roundup post I mentioned you could encourage more comments to your blog by rewarding them with a top commenters list, in this post I will show you more ways you can attract more comments by rewarding commenters.

  1. Show the commenter’s most recent blog post with the CommentLuv Wordpress Plugin. When the visitor adds their comment, the plugin will go to the URL they enter and try to find their feed and extract the title and link of their most recent post. This provides an incentive of a link back to their blog, plus encourages readers to investigate posts they might find interesting too.
  2. Use the Do Follow Plugin For WordPress to remove the “nofollow” attribute from your comments. This means any links in the comments get full search engine recognition. “Nofollow” was intended to stop spam by removing search benefit from links, but it failed to do that and punished honest blog comments at the same time. By removing this attribute you will encourage people to comment in order to get a link back, just be vigilant this doesn’t get abused!

  3. Show off commenter stats with the Comment Info Tip plugin. This plugin shows information about the commenter in a rollover popup box, such as when they commented before, their most recent post, and allows people to become more familiar with each others comments.
  4. Replying to comments is one of the best ways you can encourage more. People like to know you are listening and that they have been heard. If you get many comments, make it easier to reply to them all with the WP Easy Reply plugin. Hitting the link that appears for the blog owner puts each comment since you last commented into your comment box as a quote with the commenter’s name, all you have to do is edit the quotes down to the part you are replying to and add your reply.
  5. If you are handy with your blog database, use this top commenter SQL query and write a post to thank your top commenters of all time!

Can you think of any other ways to thank or reward blog comments? Do you think rewarding commenters leads to more spam? Please add your tips and thoughts in the comments …

Top 5 Community Building WordPress Plugins

When we launch a blog, as well as getting people to read what we have to say, we are most of us looking to build a sense of community. While what we say has a big effect, how the blog works can also make a difference. Thankfully WordPress users have a good set of plugins to help:

  1. Make it easier to subscribe or share your blog with Add to Any
    This provides dropdowns for social bookmarking sites or feed reading services, making it totally easy for the reader to make a note of your location and keep coming back for more.
  2. Top Commenters plugin and widget will reward your top commenters with a link back. Consider the link a bit of public recognition and a small incentive. Plus, you know how competitive people can be, it’s also kind of a high score table!
  3. Make your comment area friendly with smiling faces – Add Gravatars with this easy plugin. Gravatars are “globally recognised avatars”. Basically anyone can set up a Gravatar picture centrally and any website that supports them will show your face whenever they are available, using your email address as a key. Seeing recognisable faces along with comments really helps build community.
  4. Fire off a thank-you email to new commenters using Comment relish. We all like to feel valued, this email can  be a nice touch, and also provides the opportunity to point out your feed or useful introductory content they might have missed.
  5. An essential for creating conversation, bring commenters back with Subscribe to Comments. Just like with popular forum software, this will notify you when someone replies to your message, keeping the conversation flowing.

Have you any suggestions for great community building WordPress plugins? Please share your faves in the comments …

WordPress 2.5 Versus WordPress.com

WordPress With all the buzz around WordPress 2.5 you might think I would have rushed to upgrade. Yes, I am a geek, and yes I also love playing with the latest shiny gadgets and toys, but hold on, there is more to it than simply installing every update that comes along.

The fact is, whenever there is any significant update to blogging software, inevitably something breaks. To get all the gizmos we desire there are often hacks, template tricks and not-so-standard plugins that we like to cruft our blogs up with. Those are always the first to break.

WordPress are doing their best to help. There is a growing list of plugins and their 2.5 compatibility. If you look down you might find there are a good number that still don’t work.

It’s good to know which plugins work and which do not, but it becomes a pain to keep changing, trying, finding alternatives. Many programmers put out one version of a plugin and then find it is too much trouble to support it. Some of my most used features will have to be sacrificed or I will need to fix them up myself, or hire a programmer.

This is where the lure of fully-hosted solutions like WordPress.com become attractive. They keep the software up to date, they manage the hosting. No more worries about Digg front page stories putting your site offline. No more expensive or cheap and unreliable hosting. Security, stability, features and management are all handled on your behalf.

What you sacrifice of course is control and flexibility. You can pay for a domain, and some amount of visual tweakage, but you can’t put any old plugin or widget in there. And there lies the rub. While I do not need the ability to show advertising, and they do allow business blogs, they are a bit funny about pushing the boundaries of commercial use, plus I need my gizmos.

I don’t want to give up my many wonderful WP toys! Please Matt and Co, give us a geeked-up pro version of the hosted WordPress.com service so I can get off this update cycle for good!

QIK Live Streaming Internet Video from Your Phone

There are many streaming video tools out there for watching video. Not that many for recording video, even fewer to record live video from your phone.

That’s what Qik does. It records and broadcasts live video right from your phone.

I must say I am impressed.

Qik on Nokia n95From grabbing the application to sending out video live took all of 20minutes, anyone with a more reliable internet connection would be able to do it in a quarter of the time. Quite a few smart phones are supported:

Nokia S60 phones: N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N91, N92, N93i, N95, E50, E51, E61i, E65, E70m E90 Communicator, 3250, 5500, 5700 Xpress Music, 6110 Navigator, 6120 Classic, 6121 Classic, and 6290.

I can see a lot of bloggers switching their iPhone for a n95 just to get access to this system.

Your streams can be public or private, although I had a bit of an issue with all my streams being set to private and now I don’t know how to make them public – D’oh!

Just like YouTube, you can easily link or embed the created videos, but most importantly viewers can watch in real time and send comments as you stream. Impressive!

You can see videos as I add them to my profile, but you would be much better off watching the fun and games over at the SxSW group from folks such as Scoble and the b5media crew.

33+ Top Software Tools for Bloggers

Blogging SoftwareWhenever I help a new blogger get started I tend to recommend the software tools I use myself. While that does help, I often wonder if I should show more choices. There is no reason why anyone would use exactly the same setup as me, particularly as I am now a Mac user!

With that in mind, here is my round up of all the software and tools I can think of that a blogger needs. Please add any I have missed in the comments …

Blogging Software

  1. WordPress
  2. Drupal
  3. MovableType
  4. CommunityServer
  5. Expression Engine

Feed Reading Software

  1. Google Reader
  2. BlogBridge
  3. Bloglines
  4. FeedDemon
  5. Netvibes

Traffic and Statistics Software

  1. Performancing Metrics
  2. Sitemeter
  3. Google Analytics
  4. Stat Counter
  5. FeedBurner

Editing Software

  1. ScribeFire
  2. LiveWriter
  3. Qumana
  4. Ecto
  5. BlogJet

RSS to Email Distribution Services

  1. FeedBurner
  2. FeedBlitz
  3. Aweber

Social Bookmarking Tools

  1. StumbleUpon
  2. Digg
  3. Reddit
  4. Mixx
  5. Delicious

Audio/Visual Tools

  1. Audacity / GarageBand
  2. Flickr
  3. Skitch / Snagit
  4. IShowU / CamStudio
  5. YouTube

My Essential Daily Tech Feeds


Staying up to date with the technology field is a lot easier than it used to me. Back when I started my career at age 16 it was tough to keep up, the only source of information was expensive telephone directory weight magazines. Not ideal, especially as my weekly salary was only in double figures.

Switch to today and the problem isn’t the cost and lack of good tech information, but the wealth of free information. We are deluged and it is hard to know the truth from the rot.

My routine is to check the following sites and feeds. Depending on how much time I have will depend how far down the list I go, from the top, essential, to #4 onwards, interesting but non-essential.

Here are the top 10 tech sites that I turn to every day:

  1. TechMeme – If I am really in a rush I don’t even check my feeds, I go right to TechMeme and by scanning the front page I can get a good idea if there are any big stories today. TechMeme is a brilliant service and every niche should have an equivalent!
  2. TechCrunch – Feed – With bloggers spanning the globe, TechCrunch either gets the scoop or gets the news soon after. If there is a big story you can be sure it will be on here.
  3. The Register – Feed – Living in the UK it is nice to have a British perspective, plus tech doesn’t have to be serious.
  4. GigaOM – Feed – If I have time I like to read the analysis and insight from the mighty Om
  5. ReadWriteWeb – Feed – I make my living from the web so a lot of my reading is focused on that. RWW is the best of the bunch.
  6. Scobleizer – Feed – There are not as many occasions now where Scoble breaks a story first but it is always interesting to catch up with what he is up to. His Twitter feed is making a daily visit to Scobleizer less essential.
  7. Engadget – Feed – I’m a gadget fan but as most gadget fans will tell you, there are more gadgets arriving than hours in the day to keep up with them
  8. Gizmodo – Feed – Another fine gadget blog, you do need that second point of view
  9. Wired – Feed – I used to buy the Wired print magazine, now when I have time I like to read online. It’s not always to my taste but some of the stuff on there is both brilliant and content you can’t find anywhere else
  10. BBC – Feed – There is rarely anything on BBC tech that I would miss but there is often something new and interesting.

Which sites do you check regularly for your daily dose of Tech?

Google Reader Causes RSS Revolt

My feedreader was alive with chatter about Google Reader recently. What was initially heralded as a cool feature has turned into potential fuel for mutiny. Watching from the sidelines, it is all fun, but does have an impact on bloggers, particularly those wanting to sell advertising.

What is this controversial feature?

If you add a feed in Google Reader but rather than set an explicit URL you do a search, Reader will come back with a list of potential matches along with how many people are subscribed.

Google Reader

Google Reader

Knowing that a good percentage of people are now using Google Reader as their main feed reader, up to 20% at times according to my own blog, means you can extrapolate readership for any blog now without those numbers being made public by the blogger.

Of course we all know bigger is not always better but you try telling that to the kids who are getting upset at the counts.

Unfortunately, it is not all that accurate. While it does broadly work for some blogs, other blogs are getting their subscriber numbers heavily discounted or bloated. There are two main reasons:

  1. Multiple feeds – Many people have various RSS, Atom, and category specific feed options. Some even allow you to subscribe to both full and partial versions of the same feed.
  2. Feed Bundling - Most feed readers “helpfully” recommend feeds you might want to subscribe to. Most users do not delete these default feeds. This makes some subscriber counts look way better than they really are.

The thing many people are forgetting is RSS reader counts are inherently unscientific. With an email subscriber list you know who has subscribed but not much more with any confidence, with RSS it is even worse, you just know a certain IP address has requested your feed at some point. You don’t know if the article has been read, by whom, nor if they liked it.

I wrote about what I called RSS+ a while ago, I think this Google Reader debacle proves we need something new to replace the whole RSS/Atom/Feed thing. Let’s get feeds that work for both readers and publishers.

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