zoopmedia » Plugins

How to Setup Google Analytics in WordPress

Justin Wright — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:48:34 +0000

When it comes to running a WordPress blog or website, one of the first things you will want to do is setup a way to track your web traffic. Without this, you will have no idea how many visitors you are getting or where they are coming from.

Google Analytics is a great option and happens to be free of charge. Once installed, you can access your dashboard where you can see all sorts of data such as unique visitors, top content, and the top search queries that brought traffic to your site. You can even see your visitors on a map overlay and get a feel of where your visitors are in the world.

To set it up, here’s a great tutorial that walks you through the process of setting up Google Analytics on a self-hosted WordPress blog:

How To Update WordPress Plugins

Justin Wright — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:32:30 +0000

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to update your WordPress plugins. This is extremely important and can save you from blog problems and security issues.

The All In One SEO Pack

Justin Wright — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:07:50 +0000

If you’ve done any research on search engine optimization for WordPress, you’ve probably seen someone mention the All in One SEO Pack. It’s the only tool you need to start getting better results with your blog. Not only does it help optimize your home page, but it also lets you specify certain keywords and titles for any of your blog posts or pages.

Here’s an in-depth overview of how to use the All in One SEO Pack:

How To Install A WordPress Plugin

Justin Wright — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:31:19 +0000

One of our favorite features of WordPress is the ability to add plugins. Why? Because plugins allow you to add unlimited functionality to your blog or website. However, if you’re just getting started with WordPress you might be confused about how to install a plugin.

So we’ve created this easy to follow tutorial just for you:

Easily Add Forms To WordPress With Contact Form 7

Justin Wright — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:34:08 +0000

One of the things many people ask me is what WordPress plugin I use on my blogs and websites to create contact forms. The answer is Contact Form 7. I’ve been using it for a long time now and really like the simplicity of it. I also like the fact that it allows you to manage multiple forms from with the same dashboard.

However, configuring the plugin can be a tad bit confusing if you’ve never used it before. So I put together a quick tutorial to show you how to get it up and running on your blog or website.

How To Configure Contact Form 7

Once you play around with it, you’ll master the controls and be able to build forms in a matter of minutes.

Use A Different Plugin?

If you use a different contact form plugin, feel free to share it below. I’m always on the lookout for new plugins to try out.

After The Deadline: Proofreading For WordPress

Justin Wright — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:42:40 +0000

If you’re familiar with WordPress, you’ve probably used the built-in spell check tool at some point. It can be a lifesaver, especially if you misspell words often while typing up blog posts. However, the tool doesn’t catch everything.

If you’re like me, you often use the wrong words in the wrong places. There, their, and they’re can be pretty darn tricky to get right, especially if you write on the fly. Even the bold words in the last sentence are easy to mix up.

Reading over your entire post can leave you forgetting one or two of the words. Funny thing is, those two words will be the first thing your readers notice.

Introducing After The Deadline

That’s where After the Deadline comes in. It’s an awesome spellchecker that was just acquired by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress. User’s of the popular WordPress.com platform will notice that the tool is already available in your blogs, which can be launched by clicking on the proofread button with a green checkmark (see photo above).

For a detailed overview of After the Deadline, check out this video:

It’s pretty impressive If I must say so myself.

How It Works

The way After the Deadline works is fairly simple. Once you’re done writing a post, you simply click the button and it will automatically go through and analyze your post. When it’s finished, it will highlight problematic words like so:

As you can see, the tool does more than just highlighting the words. It also differentiates between misspelled words and misused words. In the above example, the word “new” should actually be “knew.” If you click on the word that’s underline, it will open a drop down box with options. Here’s an example:

It’s very good at knowing the correct way to do things, which makes me feel happy knowing I have a proofreader I can count on. True, it won’t replace an actual human being proofreader, but it’s a good alternative to those who can’t afford a full-time proofreader.

If you want to use the tool on a self-hosted WordPress blog, all you need to do is install the After the Deadline plugin.

Using WordPress As A CMS

Justin Wright — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:34:24 +0000

Of all the presentations at WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth, our favorite was about using WordPress as a CMS. The presentation was done by Scott Clark, who did a fantastic job.

The reason we enjoyed it so much is because it really focused on what WordPress is capable of. It’s true that WordPress is very powerful right out of the box, but with an add-on plugin it can become so much more.

5 Plugins That Extend WordPress

Just take a look at the plugins below and see a glimpse of the featues that can currently be added to WordPress:

BuddyPress – Adds a social networking layer to WordPress MU that allows members to have more interaction.
NextGEN Gallery – Adds a fully integrated photo gallery to WordPress.
Advertising Manager – Allows you to control which ads display on your blog.
WP e-Commerce – Takes WordPress to a whole new level by integrating a shopping cart system.
WP-Polls – Allows you to display polls where visitors can answer questions and view results.

Each one of the plugins above added new features to WordPress that are not included by default. This goes to show how powerful WordPress can become if you have the right tools to work with.

Take It A Step Further

While all the plugins above add unique features, it still might not give you all the options you need to use WordPress as a full-blown CMS. That’s where Pods comes in. Pods gives you a whole new range of features that involve custom content types. With this plugin, you are no longer limited to posts and pages.

Some of the key features of Pods include:

Custom fields with relationships
Custom content types (independent of WordPress)
Versatile Templating
Pod Pages
Forms

As you can see, Pods is a very powerful plugin. It gives you a whole new section of features inside the WordPress dashboard. For more information and some useful videos on the many features it offers, check out the Pods website.

WordPress Is Fully Capable

Scott said it best when he closed his presentation with this saying: “Use WordPress as a CMS, it’s more than capable.” Give these plugins a try on your website and see the many benefits of using WordPress as more than just a blogging platform.

And check out this awesome song Scott performed about using WordPress as a CMS:

5 WordPress Video Solutions

Justin Wright — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:31:34 +0000

With the advent of flash video and quickly loading streaming video, videos are becoming a very popular way to blog. Video blogs are the new hot thing and add an extra level of engagement with your readers. So, if you’re running a WordPress site, what are some video solutions to help you manage lots of videos?

Check out our list of video tools and flash video players for WordPress and take your blog to the next level with advanced WordPress video integration:

Embedded Video

The plugin is made to easily allow the embedding of videos into a blog post. You can embed videos from popular video sharing sites or you upload videos to a server and embed them that way. The plugin does all the hard work of generating embed codes and making sure they display correctly. You can embed video from YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, Vimeo and many more. It’s a powerful little tool.

Download Embedded Video Here

WordPress Video Plugin

This plugin is similar to the plugin mentioned above, however it’s a much simpler and slicker implementation. It’s basically a filter for WordPress that allows easy video embedding of supported sites. This means that you can embed the video codes and not have any issues with them displaying correctly in posts.

Download Video Plugin

Flash Video Player

The flash video plugin for WordPress allows you to host your own videos and embed them in your own videoplayer. The implementation is surprisingly simple and it’s a great way to host your own videos. This can be especially useful if you don’t want your videos on popular video sharing sites like YouTube. The plugin has a light footprint, it’s small and doesn’t create and more tables in your precious WordPress Database. A very powerful and useful little tool.

Flash Video Player

Flowplayer for WordPress

Flowplayer is an open source video hosting solution. You can do the same thing that you can with Flash Video Player – that is host your own videos and embed them in your blog posts. You have complete control over how your videos are displayed. You have many options to customize it and display videos the way you want – but you’ll have to pay for a software license to do that. The player itself is slick and works in most browsers. It’s light on it’s toes and does the job well. I’ve had a lot of success with it.

Download Flowplayer

Interactive Video Plugin

The Interactive Video Plugin is more than another video embed tool – it also includes the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly into blog posts. You can easily edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content. There are many great ways to customize the video player, include content from other sources and create a rich video experience on your blog. This is a very powerful package and will help give your videoblog that extra slickness to make it stand out.

Download Interactive Video Plugin

Do you have a different plugin you use? If so, tell us what your favorite WordPress video tool Is?

Flickr Photo Album Plugin

Justin Wright — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:15:59 +0000

When it comes to using WordPress for blogging, many people struggle when trying to find the best way to incorporate photo galleries. By default, WordPress does not have a gallery function to show off all of your pictures. Therefore I would like to share a useful plugin I have been using on my personal blog.

Flick Photo Album For WordPress

The name says it all. The plugin, which can be found here, allows you to create a photo gallery using your Flickr account. The best part of all, is that it uses the photos directly from Flickr. This makes it easy to integrate and also saves us some money on bandwidth.

Installing The Plugin

Installation is rather straight forward with this plugin. Simply upload it to the plugins folder found under WP-Content in your WordPress directory. Then activate the plugin and go to the settings tab within your WordPress admin panel. Click on the Photo Gallery button will take you to the settings page for the plugin.

Before you can use the plugin, you have to make sure to link your plugin to your Flickr account. Then, you simply have to decide what page you would like the photo gallery to appear on. As you can see on my personal blog, I decided to use the photos page.

Managing Photos

Once your account is configured and the plugin is setup, all of your collections and sets from Flickr will automatically show up under the settings page. The plugin allows you to hide albums if you wish to do so. This comes in real handy if you have a lot of albums and do not want to show them all in your gallery. You can also order the albums in which you want them to appear.

The Look

By default, the gallery looks pretty cool. The main page will show some of your recent albums along with thumbnails from older albums. Once a user clicks on a album, they are then taken to that albums page which has the thumbnails of all of the photos.

If you are looking to change the look and layout, it can be done. However, it does take some basic knowledge of HTML. The templates that are used for the plugin are all found in the templates folder included within the plugin. There are a lot of files so it does become a little confusing when first working with them

The Drawbacks

When it comes to this plugin, there are only a few small drawbacks that I do not like. The main one being the size of the pictures. By default, it uses the medium size picture found on Flickr. I wish there was a way to make the photo bigger but unfortunetly Flickr only allows medium, large, and original. My pictures are way to big to use the large size so I have to settle with medium.

The only other problem I have had with this plugin is getting the sidebar to show. I originally wanted to include the sidebar in my photo gallery but I could not get it to work. I did the sidebar to display, but the formatting was all messed up.

Give It A Shot

If your looking to incorporate Flickr, I highly encourage you to give this plugin a shot. If you missed the link above, you can download the plugin here: Flick Photo Album For WordPress.