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Make the P2 theme even more useful with plugins built for it

Ryan Imel — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:16:55 +0000

The version 1.4 release of the P2 theme brought one intriguing feature: the ability to add to-do items into update messages by starting a line with an “x” (for a checked item) and an “o” for an open item. While crazy useful in and of itself, it got me thinking about plugins made specifically for the P2 theme again.

P2 theme, if you haven’t checked it out before, is a theme from the folks at Automattic made specifically for collaboration and team communication. It’s a bit like a private Twitter, really.

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, really, that I’m a big fan of plugins made just for a certain theme. Plugins are the most natural way to expand upon WordPress itself, and it shouldn’t be any different for WordPress themes too. Below I’ve put together a small (but hopefully growing!) list of plugins made specifically for P2, as well as a few non-P2-specific plugins that I find particularly useful when used along with the theme.

Mention-Me Widget

Mention-Me is a tiny plugin that adds only a widget that you can include in your P2 sidebar. It has a couple of configurable options, but basically it will display (relative to the logged in user) a list of any mentions “@” you or comments on your posts.

Mention-Me Widget by Thorsten Ott is a free plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory.

P2 Likes

P2 Likes is a plugin I only just started using, but it’s a fun one too. Along with the normal set of actions for a post (like reply and edit) it adds a “like” link. Liking a post will add your avatar to the post.

There have been many discussions on the relative value of things like “likes” and “plus ones”. In this case, I’d say it’s helpful to have a quick way to recognize a post on a P2 blog, particularly because it’s so obvious once you’ve done so. Not every post needs a followup comment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t respond.

P2 Likes by Scott Basgaard is available for free on the WordPress.org plugin directory.

P2 Resolved Posts

One problem I’ve run into with P2 blogs is not quite that conversations get lost, but that they get buried. As authors post new updates, and new threaded conversations take place, important conversations can slip off the home page. That’s why I’ve found P2 Resolved Posts so useful.

P2 Resolved Posts lets you mark a post as “resolved” or “unresolved”. By default a post is nothing, not until you mark it as unresolved. At that point the display changes a bit, and the widget that comes with the plugin will update to show a list of unresolved posts. When used correctly, this is a great way to always keep important conversations in sight.

P2 Resolved Posts by Daniel Bachhuber is available for free on the WordPress.org plugin directory.

Handy plugins to use with P2

In addition to the plugins above, which various developers made specifically for use with P2, I’ve also found a few plugins useful in my experience with P2. I use Subscribe2 and Subscribe to Comments to enable simple email notifications of posts. I could use Jetpack for the comment subscriptions, but normally I don’t need anything else it offers so it’s not worth the trouble. ¹

Speaking of privacy: I use the More Privacy Options plugin to make sure private P2s stay that way. I also use Widgets Reloaded because I find myself wanting even more control oer the sidebar widgets in a theme like P2.

At times I’ll also use WPMU Custom CSS, or a plugin like it, to make adding simple CSS tweaks to the theme really easy. Sometimes I want to tweak the theme a bit, and it’s not worth firing off a child theme for such a minor change. A custom CSS plugin keeps those tweaks painless.

How do you use P2?

If you’re a plugin developer who has cooked up something specific for P2, let me know in the comments so I can add it to the list above. And if you have a private P2 customization that could be rolled into a plugin for public use, I’d love to see it and try it out.

If you find yourself using P2 in a specific way, or with customizations or plugins that others might benefit from, leave a note in the comments. Also, if you are a P2 theme user, what other themes do you find as consistently useful as P2?

Notes:

And many of my P2 sites aren’t public, and therefore wouldn’t work with Jetpack anyway. ↩

WP Late Night #10: “I don’t commit to core”

Ryan Imel — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:32:11 +0000

The infamous Otto Wood joined the WP Late Night crew this week to discuss WordPress.org, WordPress plugins, PressNomics, Code Poet, and all sorts of other stuff. If you enjoy WordPress discussion, particularly if you’re a WordPress developer, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

This week the show had no sponsors. If you’d like to support WPCandy podcasts, and get your message out to thousands of interested WordPress users and developers, see the advertising page for more information.

Episode #10 Show Notes

WordPress.org plugins can be favorited, improved forum integration

Ryan Imel — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:49:30 +0000

If you spend any time on the WordPress.org plugin directory (or heard us talking about it on any of WPCandy’s podcasts last week) then you likely noticed a few updates. Matt Mullenweg described the tweaks himself over on the WordPress.org news blog, which is worth reading if you want to know the thinking behind the changes.

Briefly, the updates included:

Support forum threads are now pulled into their own tab, complete with the plugin’s header graphic at the top (assuming your plugin uses one of these).
Logged in users can now favorite plugins, which will display on their WordPress.org profile page.
Plugin authors are back in the right sidebar, and styled a bit nicer than before.
The plugin sidebar also includes the number of forum threads resolved in the last couple of weeks to help and point out active plugins.

If you’d like to take a look at these updates in action, check out the BuddyPress plugin page for an example, complete with header image.

The WordPress.org team completed the updates last week (along with the latest addition to Audrey Capital) during a BBQ week in Memphis. As Matt said in his post:

This is why WordCamps usually have BBQ – it imparts magical coding powers.

Had you noticed the updates to the plugin directory before seeing the announcement, or this post? Let us know what you think of them in the comments.

WordPress theme SEO marketing gimmick

Ryan Imel — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:53:19 +0000

Developer Jason Bobich:

Why should you be limited to whatever features the theme author has stuffed in that may or may not be relevant to you? You should be able to choose your own SEO plugin to accomplish what you want.

A couple of months old, but still worth linking up. It’s great to see theme sellers on ThemeForest speaking out against others there following bad practices.

WordPress in place of Sharepoint

Ryan Imel — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:37:26 +0000

Joe Flood pitches the advantages of using WordPress and assorted plugins as your Intranet, in place of more bloated systems:

By using WordPress, you turn “add this information to the Intranet” from a frustrating task into something as simple as blogging. And just think how good your Intranet could be if people actually wanted to contribute to it.

Giveaway: Win a copy of Typecase Pro and a year’s dev club at UpThemes

Ryan Imel — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:28:58 +0000

Chris Wallace at UpThemes has generously offered up 10 copies of his Typecase Pro plugin (usually $19) for giveaway, in addition to one grand prize of a year’s developer club membership at UpThemes (usually $99) and an UpThemes t-shirt.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post or tweet at @wpcandy and @upthemes on Twitter and tell us your favorite font — bonus points for linking to an example of the font in use in a cool way. We’ll randomly select the winners from those who comment and tweet.

We’ll be collecting entries for the next week, and announcing the winner next Wednesday on the blog.

It’s been a while since we did a giveaway here, so this should be fun! Have at it in the comments.

WP App Store launches with 17 theme and plugin partners

Ryan Imel — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:41:42 +0000

WP App Store, the project aiming to make plugin and theme purchases easy within the WordPress dashboard — and which we previewed a couple of months ago — quietly launched yesterday (complete with slick intro video). Their plugin is downloadable on their website, which once installed will give you a new top-level menu item for browsing commercial themes and plugins recently added to their system.

Seventeen theme and plugin partners are in place at launch, a few more than announced when the original teaser page went up. Brad Touesnard, the developer behind WP App Store, said that a couple of the vendors that originally showed interest haven’t been responsive, while others just aren’t in the store yet. Developers interested in bringing their own theme or plugin products to WP App Store can request an invite.

Touesnard’s certainly not on his own with this project. In addition to the vendors partnering with WP App Store, his advisors include prominent WordPress business owners Adii Pienaar, Carl Hancock, and Jason Cohen.

Above: The WP App Store plugin, active in the dashboard and displaying newly available themes and plugins.

Vendors (still) on board

The following vendors were present at WP App Store’s launch:

AppThemes
Crowd Favorite
Digital Telepathy
Dev7studios
Gabfire Themes
MintThemes
Modern Tribe
Obox Themes
Organic Themes
Press75
SeedProd
ThemeFuse
UpThemes
WooThemes
WPZoom
Wysija Newsletter
Zen Themes

Right now, as you might expect, the WP App Store lists many more WordPress themes than plugins — sixteen or so pages of the former and only a few pages of the latter. That likely has more to do with the higher ratio of theme businesses to plugin businesses than anything else.

Touesnard said that WordPress.org’s clause restricting storefront plugins will likely keep it from inclusion there, though teased that they “have some pretty clever strategies to distribute the plugin.” We’ll have to wait to hear more about these ideas, but for now you can download their plugin from WPAppStore.com and upload it to your WordPress install.

In answer to a few questions on Hacker News, Touesnard said that the ability to search and review items in the store are high up on the feature list for future versions of the plugin.

What do you think?

Will WP App Store bring a proper theme and plugin shopping experience to the WordPress dashboard? It will be interesting to find out, in time, what kind of penetration WP App Store can achieve. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

How Mark Jaquith built “Have Baby. Need Stuff!”

Ryan Imel — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:57:30 +0000

Mark Jaquith wrote an awesome blog post describing how he went about building a website called Have Baby. Need Stuff! He used _s from Automattic, Bootstrap, Posts 2 Posts, and a handful of other goodies to pull the site together.

The WPCandy Podcast #32: “Uncle Ben’s plugin list”

Ryan Imel — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:17:12 +0000

Episode #32 of the WPCandy Podcast sees Brian Krogsgard and I (yeah, seriously!) running down the most important WordPress news of the week in just about 30 minutes. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it here again: if the other podcasts we produce here overwhelm you, the WPCandy Podcast proper is likely the show for you. Very little discussion, but quite a bit news and links.

If you only listen to one WordPress podcast this week, make it this one.

This episode is sponsored by the Typecase plugin by UpThemes and the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io.

Episode 32 Show Notes

New in WPCandy Labs: WordPress plugin and theme header creators

Ryan Imel — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:22:37 +0000

You might have noticed a new addition to the primary blog navigation above: Labs. WPCandy Labs is just a section of the site where I can tuck away fun little ideas and projects and test them out. Initially the WPCandy Labs page was empty, but I added it up in the navigation regardless as a reminder that I need to spend time on new ideas and fill that section of the site up.

I’m happy to point you to two new, simple additions to the Labs today. First is the WordPress Theme CSS Header Creator, and second is the WordPress Plugin Header Creator.

Those names just roll right off the tongue, don’t they?

So wait, what are they?

Basically the “Header Creators” are just forms that accept information about your theme or your plugin (particularly those you intend to submit to WordPress.org/extend) and gives you back a properly formatted comment section for the top of your plugin file or style.css file.

In case you weren’t aware, a properly formatted commented header in your theme’s style.css file is what helps WordPress understand what your theme is and display it in the dashboard. Plugin header files are similar, except that the comments sit at the top of the main PHP file within the plugin folder instead of in a stylesheet.

The CSS Header Creator, then, will output something like this:

/* Theme Name: WPCandy Theme Theme URI: http://wpcandy.com Description: This is a WPCandy theme, for demo purposes of course. Author: Ryan Imel Author URI: http://wpcandy.com Version: 1.0 Tags: blue, light, two-columns, right-sidebar, fixed-width, buddypress, custom-menu, editor-style, post-formats, threaded-comments
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
*/

While the Plugin Header Creator will give you something like this:

php /* Plugin Name: WPCandy Functionality Plugin Plugin URI: http://wpcandy.com Description: This is a (demo) version of the functionality plugin used at WPCandy.com. Version: 2.1 Author: Ryan Imel Author URI: http://wpcandy.com License: GPLv2 or later License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html */

Nothing world-changing, but hopefully a neat little tool that you can use to avoid copying and pasting from other plugins and themes in the future.

Both tools are available on the WPCandy Labs page.