Category Archives: Plugins

Create Colorful Surveys and Polls on WordPress with Colored Vote Polls Plugin

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WordPress has won so many awards for being the most favorite Content Management System (CMS). Now a days, people are using WordPress platform as an e-commerce site, online journalism platform, as a Wiki, to showcase real estate portfolio and many more purposes. And of course it is the most recommended platform for blogging. Now if you want to take feedback from your site’s visitors or limited people in your organization, you need a survey or poll platform. There are so many independent survey platforms on web or even are few WordPress plugins available to use, but I am going to talk about the most colorful, beautiful and easy to use online survey plugin for WordPress.

Colored Vote Polls is an amazing WordPress plugin to create questionnaire for surveys and polls in no time. If you are already having the set questions and set of answers, you can create and put the survey live in less than 5 minutes. Features of this plugin is well suited for people who wants to create a simple survey to collect the feedback and to analyze the data.

Colored-Vote-Polls-Screenshot

Features of Colored Vote Polls

  • Very easy to install and use
  • All options available on WordPress Dashboard (Admin Panel)
  • No need to register yourself anywhere
  • Have mandatory or optional questions in one questionnaire
  • Share the vote results even without voting
  • Visitors may add more questions from survey page
  • One can differentiate between answers by looking at their colors
  • Stats in percentage to give better visual results
  • Analyze the most answered or preferred question out of the questionnaire
  • You can use this plugin to prioritize the tasks in an organization
  • Paste shortcode inside posts or pages to embed the newly created surveys

Demo

Limitations

Colored Vote Polls is a fully capable plugin to create questionnaires and online surveys and it gives proper stat as well (including total votes). It is a nice plugin for creating and analyzing a simple survey but professional users may find few options missing here. For example, in Colored Vote Polls, one can provide the same set of answers to all questions under one survey. If you want to have different answers for different questions, then it is not possible with the current version of this plugin. In result analysis, you get stat like total vote per survey but you don’t get the location of the voter.

Verdict

I think this WordPress plugin is a handy tool to create beautiful survey / questionnaire page to get feedback on certain queries. It is also very useful for creating a set of tasks to get feedback from users to prioritize them. But still there are some ‘good to have’ features which may come in next version of the plugin to make this one a professional tool for PRO users. I would advice you to try this plugin and see if it covers your requirements.

Rating – 7/10

7 WordPress Plugins To Add Falling Snow on Blog Pages, Posts and Images

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Christmas is coming and the holiday season has already started. It’s time to play in the falling snow and celebrate the occasion with family and friends. If you own a WordPress blog, then why not to give a snow fall effect over there to celebrate this occasion with your visitors and readers. WordPress.com, the free blogging platform has already started playing the snow fall effect on their sites. If you are using self hosted WordPress installed on your server, then here are the plugins that may help you in adding the snow fall effect in no time.

I am starting this list with a simple plugin which will add snow fall effect just like WordPress.com sites.

1. Let It Snow

Very simple and easy to customize plugin to add snow fall effect. There is no flash work involved in this plugin and even you can see the melting ice at the bottom of the page by enabling that effect.

Download

2. WordPress Falling Snow Plugin

It can help you in adding snow fall effect on specific image or banners. The problem is that once you will add the effect on certain image, that will become flash and you will have to provide the target URL in the settings panel. It can add 2D and 3D effect of snow fall as well.

Download

3. Snow, Balloons and more

Apart from the Snow fall effect, you can also get falling leaves, rain drops, balloons using this plugin. Go ahead and download the plugin from WordPress plugin directory. Install the same and customize options to start showing the snow fall or other effects.

Download

4. Snow Storm

Another WordPress plugin to add snow fall effect to celebrate the Christmas occasion with your visitors.

Download

5. iCaughtSanta

This plugin can add snow fall effect and can also add a peel effect with iCoughtSnata Affiliate Link. I am not sure whether you want that affiliate link or not, you can disable the same from settings panel of the plugin.

Download

6. Season Greetings

Another WordPress plugin to celebrate different occasions. For example, it is also having Indian Festival icons like Diwali diyas floating around the webpage. You can get snow fall effect on pages and posts of your WordPress blog.

Download

7. WP Flake

This one is a very old plugin but still works on WordPress 3.2.1. It can add snow fall or snowflakes effect on your WordPress site.

Download

Bonus – Snowstorm Script for Non-WordPress Sites

So above plugins can add snow fall effect on WordPress blog on a single click and even can provide options to change the color, number or flakes etc. In case you are running a non-Wordpress site, for example a normal static site, then you can also add a Snow Fall effect on that by placing the below mentioned script and code as per the instruction.

Download the Snowstorm JavaScript from this page and add the below code in <HEAD> section of the HTML.

<!-- required snowstorm JS, default behaviour -->
<script src="snowstorm.js"></script>

<!-- now, we'll customize the snowStorm object -->
<script>
snowStorm.snowColor = '#99ccff'; // blue-ish snow!?
snowStorm.flakesMaxActive = 96;  // show more snow on screen at once
snowStorm.useTwinkleEffect = true; // let the snow flicker in and out of view
</script>

Note – You need to move the downloaded script to the hosting server and provide the exact location of the .js file in above code. More instructions and customization help are available from the script page from where you downloaded the script.That’s it, now a WordPress user can install snow flakes and show falling snow on WordPress blog using above 7 plugins and a non-WordPress user can get that by adding the above Script in the HTML code.

3 Ways to Add Google+ Profile Widget on WordPress Blog

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New social networking platform Google+ is getting popularity day by day. Many of us are already using this awesome platform and increasing the circle. Features like Hangout, Notification on search engine homepage, Spark and much more are really good in Google+. Even Facebook and Twitter are facing the heat and they are planning to come up with new features to compete with this new kid from search engine giant. Recently Facebook launched the video chat feature in collaboration with Skype to compete with Google+ hangout but early reviews are showing Google+ hangout quality much better than Facebook video chat application.

Anyway, if you are using Google+ and own a WordPress blog and want to increase the followers, then you should try embedding the Google+ profile widget in sidebar of the blog. This way you status updates and shared links will reach to more and more users and will help you in spreading the content of the blog to maximum people. There is no official update from Google about releasing a widget for blogs but there are few WordPress plugins and online service to add the profile widget in blog for free. Here are few of them that I tested on few test blogs.

1. GoogleCard WordPress Plugin

google_card

It add a simple box in sidebar or any other widget enabled area of the WordPress template. Once you will activate the plugin from dashboard, you can see a new widget option in widget area of the blog. Drag and drop that option named “GoogleCard” to the widget area and provide the Google+ profile ID of your account. You can find the profile ID (21 digit number) in your Google+ profile URL. For example my profile ID is 101186485812857061482 where my Google+ Profile URL is “https://plus.google.com/101186485812857061482”.

2. Scriptrr Google+ Profile Widget Plugin

scriptrr_google_profile

This is more advanced and option rich plugin for the same purpose. Apart from “Add to Circle” option, it also shows the social networking links available on your Google+ profile. It also shows the details about you that you have entered on about page of Google+ account. You can hide the social media links from the Widget area. Here also you just need to drag and drop the widget of this plugin to widget area on WordPress dashboard.

3. Google Plus Widget

This is a web service and not a plugin. It can be used on WordPress or any other HTML/PHP Websites. You just need to go to this page and provide your Google+ Profile ID. You can also provide other details to customize the look and feel of the widget. Now click on “Get Code” to get the JavaScript code that you need to paste on theme template or Widget Text Box of your blog. Here is how it looks with minimum customization.

google_plus_widget

If you are aware of any other plugin or web service to add widget in blog or website, share that through comment section of this post.

Install Jetpack to get WordPress.com features on self hosted WordPress

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WordPress.com is the blog hosting platform by Automattic where self hosted WordPress is open source fully customizable platform available for free. Some of the added features which where available in WordPress.com sites were available on self hosted WordPress through Plugins. Now Matt Mullenweg of Automattic has launched a single plugin to get all those added features on self hosted WordPress. This way one will get rid of at least 5 – 6 plugins.

Jetpack is that single plugin which will bring all the WordPress.com features like Stats, Gravatar Hovercard, Twitter Widget, WP.me shortlinks, Sharedaddy, LaTex, After the Deadline, Shortcode Embeds etc. By using this single plugin, you will get all these features on your self hosted WordPress blog. Blackbird Pie is the feature which doesn’t come under Jetpack yet. There are few slots open for upcoming features as well. So with the update of Jetpack, you will get added feature sin future as well.

jetpack

WordPress hosting partners like Blue Host, Dreamhost etc. are already providing Jetpack installed on script based installation of WordPress. If you are already hosting your WordPress on a hosting server, you can download the Jetpack plugin from WordPress directory and install the same.

So Jetpack is just an accumulation of lot many other plugins by Automattic and will provide the added features in upgrades.

How to Hide Broken Shortcodes in WordPress Post Content

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Now-a-days almost all WordPress plugins and some of the advanced themes are offering ready to use and handy Shortcodes, that can be used in the post content to insert some formatted content. The content is either dynamically generated using the Shortcode attributes or  is provided by us when we use enclosing Shortcodes.

An example of simple shortcode could be

[ gallery id="5" ]

(Note: There is a space after the opening square bracket and before closing square bracket. The actual shortcode will not have this space)

The Need

[ad id='9' style='float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0']Often we use such plugin for a certain time period, use the Shortcode provided by the plugin in the post content and after some days we get some better alternative rather than using this plugin and now we wish we could deactivate the plugin and stop using it. But then what will happen to all of the shortcode insertions in the post content specific to this plugin? If we deactivate this plugin, these shortcodes will become naked and visible to normal visitors of the site, which is not acceptable and would leave a bad impression on the readers. So before stopping to use the plugin, you will have to individually visit all the affected posts, remove the not to be used shortcode, implement the newly discovered alternative there and then deactivate the plugin. This could be an exhaustive procedure if you have a lot of such posts or if you have to search such posts from hundreds of the blog posts. So it would be a very good option to hide all the broken shortcodes in the post content rather than searching for them and deleting them.

For example, you have inserted YouTube videos in the posts using the [ youtube ] shortcode provided by a certain plugin. There are many such posts on your blog with such videos. Now if the plugin has broken for the latest version of WordPress or if there is a better plugin that you have found out or if the plugin is not upto standards, you might want stop using it. Once you deactivate it, all the [ youtube ] shortcodes will now appear as text in the post content, making the visitors to think what you wanted to put there.

The Solution

So, in order to hide the broken or naked shortcodes you can use a very lightweight plugin named ‘Hide Broken Shortcodes‘ by coffee2code which will not show all the broken shortcodes that rather than inserting formatted content, just appear as the text inside the post content. To use this plugin, just download the plugin zip file, unzip it, upload the plugin folder to the wp-content –> plugins folder of your WordPress installation and activate the plugin. The procedure being similar to regular plugin installation. There are no changes needed to any of the files or permissions and there is no settings page for the plugin.

[ad id='15' style='margin:10px 50px']

It is a very light and simple to use plugin. You just have to activate it and it starts working.

The algorithm for this plugin is really simple:-

  • After the working shortcodes in the content are replaced, the returned content is again scanned to find any strings resembling to a WordPress shortcode
  • If broken self enclosing shortcodes are found, they are replaced by a space.
  • If broken enclosing shortcodes are found, the content enclosed within the shortcode is shown, just the actual shortcode text is not shown.

Missing features

  • You cannot selectively hide broken Shortcodes. This plugin will not show any of the string that resembles to a WordPress Shortcode format
  • If the broken shortcode is within another broken shortcode, it will not hide the inside broken shortcode. The inside broken shortcode will be served as a naked shortcode text to the reader.

HTML Tags to Change the Location of Minified JS and CSS by WP-Minify WordPress Plugin

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If your WordPress blog is loading lot many JavaScript and CSS files in the header area of the blog, it is recommended to use WP-Minify WordPress plugin. It will reduce the DNS lookup, JS and CSS sizes and will load your website much faster.

But the problem with WP-Minify is that it loads the minified JS and CSS at the top. That means, when you will see the HTML source of your blog page, you will find minified JS and CSS loading even before the title and description meta. It is totally fine with the users but in case you are serious about throwing title, description, keyword meta data at the top of the page for SEO purpose, then I would suggest you to use HTML tags.

minified-js-css

The developer of WP-Minify plugin named Thaya has added html tags from the version 0.8.0. Here is the template tag of the plugin.

<!-- WP-Minify JS -->
<!-- WP-Minify CSS –>

Paste the above code in the HTML template file i.e. header.php to place the minified JS and CSS at a location as per your need. I would recommend to add them just below the normal CSS and JS call in the header section of the template file.

This way you can place minified JS and CSS on your blog to let them load as per your choice. This will give you more control on the object loading for your blog as well as will let you serve SEO related meta data at first to the search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Did you find this post helpful? Do you think minified JS and CSS placement is important?

Customization Guide for W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin

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w3-total-cache-plugin

To load your WordPress site pages faster, one should install caching plugin. There are lot many caching plugins available for self hosted WordPress, but the popular ones are W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and Hyper Cache. Here I will talk about the most downloaded and widely used W3 Total Cache plugin and will detail out the customization and features available in this plugin. By the end of this post, you would be able to understand the purpose and functioning of W3 Total Cache plugin. I am pretty sure that you will see change in your WordPress site’s load time after installing this kind of caching plugin and proper customization.

Install and Activate W3 Total Cache

Download the plugin from plugin repository and install on your WordPress site hosting server. Installation is as simple as other plugin installation. You just need to copy the unzipped folder into wp-content/plugins folder in your site’s root. Now go to the dashboard ==> plugins menu, and activate “W3 Total Cache”.

If plugin gets activated without any problem, its fine. In case you are getting error saying that some changes required in the wp-config.php file, then you need to find the wp-config.php file in the root folder of the site and make required changes over there. Or you can make the wp-config.php writable to let the plugin make changes automatically.

Plugin Activated, now Customization

Alright folks, W3 Total Cache is successfully activated. Here is the first screen of W3 Total Cache which can be accessible from the new menu section named “Performance” which you can find below the “Settings” menu on Dashboard. Go ahead and click on “General Settings” to take a look at the common settings (default” done for your WordPress site.

By default, you will see following caching enabled.

  • Page Cache
  • Minify
  • Database Cache
  • Object Cache
  • Browser Cache

They are enabled but not customized. You need to customize them as per your need. Other than above options, CDN (Content Delivery Network) option is also available in W3 Total Cache which can be customized to serve static contents like images, JavaScript etc. much faster from different network or sub-domain on your site.

Page Cache Customization

You can manage your site’s pages caching from this particular option available under “Performance” tab. You can exclude any specific page from caching or even exclude cookies from caching as well. Set the cache expire time on this page. Default values are fine for normal sites with up to 10,000 visits per day. If you are seeing huge traffic on your site, then you may choose to reduce the value from 3600 seconds to lower.

Prime cache is also available in W3 Total Cache on Page Cache page. You can select to create more than one set of cache files by changing the interval of prime cache. Provide the sitemap URL of your site to let W3 Total Cache create cache files as per sitemap.

Combine and Compress HTML, JS with Minify

It is an awesome and effective feature available in W3 Total Cache. You can remove the blank lines from your site’s HTML and combine many JS into one to load the page much much faster. This change will not affect the PHP code into your site’s template files. You may choose to check all the options available on Minify page under HTML, JS and CSS customization.

Note: Test your site in “Preview” mode before deploying the changes.

Database Cache and Object Cache

W3 Total Cache can serve the database from caching system as well. For objects and database cache, the default value is totally fine. If you want to exclude any page or directory, you can use these pages to add them.

Browser Cache to Gain good YSlow Score

Browser cache is very important in loading the site for more than one time. That means, if a visitor will come again to your site, he will find the pages loading much faster if your site’s browser cache is customized properly. Default options in browser cache section are good but you may choose to select each of them to have more faster site for users.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

To serve the static pages much faster and to utilize the power of browser at max, you should use CDN. A browser can have more than 5 connections at a time and if you are using CDN, you can allow browser to load static files from other domains or sub-domain. This will make your site much faster. There are third party service available for CDN, for example MaxCDN or you can use Amazon S3 as CDN. You can also choose to serve from your hosting server by creating a sub-domain on your own domain. Create a sub-domain and point that to your site’s root folder. Now using that sub-domain as CDN, you can serve static content from there. Provide the URL of CDN in “Replace site’s hostname with” box. You can use more than one CDN to load from multiple sources.

User Agent Grouping

As W3 Total Cache can help your site caching files for mobile devices as well. If you are using any other plugin like MobilePress to serve mobile friendly pages, then W3 Total Cache can see the device user agent and find the type of device and does as per your instructions. You can group the devices or user agent in low end and high end devices and them either let the plugin redirect to some other pages or use caching for services like MobilePress.

W3 Total Cache is a nice plugin but it requires lot of CPU utilization. I would recommend to use W3 Total Cache on busy sites hosted on VPS or dedicated servers. If your site is hosted on shared hosting, use WP Super Cache.

Alright folks, this time I provided some details on the customization of W3 Total Cache plugin, wait for my take on WP Super Cache customization and benefits in few days.