WordPress Plugins - The strength and the weakness of WordPress

By Mike | July 24, 2008

Before I start my rant let me say that I appreciate the effort put in by numerous developers creating plugins. They add a functionality that greatly enhances the usability and power of as a platform. I will apologize in advance to those that continue to improve and support their work this is not aimed at those.

There is a problem though with the current structure of how people look at plugins especially in the non marketing world.

Often developers create a great plugin, get a lot of people using it and then just get plain bored with continuing the development of it.

Not sure why that happens but it does happen way too often. My guess is because it is done gratis and they don’t have a way to monetize it.

Yes, they may put up a donation button but that does not necessarily generate sufficient incentive to continue the development as evolves.

At the same time those that do create a plugin and add a monetization model are skewered for asking for an email or having an offer in their marketing process to give away a free plugin. Yes, they continue to market to those people but if they are ethical (and most are) you can unsubscribe easily. (Of course you then miss the updates.)

These developers despite being seen as the lowest in the world of plugin creators have a vested interest in keeping their plugin fully supported because it helps to fill their marketing funnel.

These plugins are changed and supported well unlike some of the ones that just depend on donations and get bored.

Truthfully I would rather deal with the marketer that has a vested interest in supporting and improving their plugin than with the person that creates a great plugin and has no reason other than kindness or ego to support it.

After seeing a new plugin with a marketing funnel be skewered for their marketing (not for the quality of the plugin) like Tweet My Blog has been at this post where it only focuses on the fact that it only works on (note it is plugin - duh), has a way to make money and does not look at the differences between what is on the market and what is not.

Plugins rarely do something that is unique but make doing it easier. If you can code and want to tweak your theme and the code you can (if you know how) or you can upload a plugin and click activate and add options if necessary. Something non tech heads can handle.

Yes I can add my Twitter feed to my sidebar with the proper code, I can use other services to post my RSS feed to Twitter (at a delayed time frame as they only check once an hour) and avoid the marketing.

Now my question to you is the fact that a developer adds a marketing funnel to their delivery of a free plugin enough to skewer them?

Or would you rather deal with someone that does it out of the goodness of their heart, ego or some other factor and then has no reason to support it in the future?

I know what my answer is but would love to hear yours.

Mike Paetzold

If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • Replay of the Qand A Call Available

    By Mike | July 23, 2008

    Last nights call is available for replay.

    You can listen to it at -

    Call Replay

    Hope you enjoy it and please leave your comments.

    Mike Paetzold

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • Q and A call on Tuesday evening

    By Mike | July 21, 2008

    With everything that has been going on it has been a while since I have done an open call so…

    EVENT: Q and A
    DATE & TIME: Tuesday, July 22nd at 8:00pm Eastern
    FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
    TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…
    http://instantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=3664803

    So you can enter your questions now by clicking the link and then come back tomorrow night and I will be answering all of them.

    Hope to see you there.

    Oh! Have you grabbed your TweetMyBlog plugin and added the power of Twitter to your ?

    As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

    Mike Paetzold

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • WordPress 2.6 - A further review

    By Mike | July 18, 2008

    Did a video to show a few of the new features that I like in the latest version of and give you some ideas on how powerful the Press It return can be for your .

    Let me know what you think of the latest version by leaving a comment below.

    Mike Paetzold

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • Tweet My Blog - A great new plugin

    By Mike | July 17, 2008

    You always here the buzz about Web 2.0 and for a reason - it works. Two of the things that work well together are Twitter and blogs.

    I have been usnig the two together for a while. It can be time consuming as Twitter is like a mini but it is ever so effectiove at getting more readership to your blogs that it is worth the effort.

    Today that effort just got cut appreciably. Tweet My Blog is a free plugin from Soren Jordansen and John Merrick. It will leverage your feed and Twitter automatically.

    Now I have been using this for a few days and it ROCKS!

    My Twitter followers are increasing at 3 times the rate they normally do.

    I was using a different service to post from my feeds and because this is on the itself it posts my content much quicker than the other did.

    Set it and forget it. Yep anything that can make me more active on Twitter without doing anything extra is huge. This is a must for any serious blogger and allows you to leverage your and Twitter to the advantage of both.

    Go get Tweet My Blog.

    By the way the plugin is totally free but you should take a close look at
    the special offer they have in store for you when join. I instantly grabbed my own copy, and I know it will skyrocket my marketing power when using Twitter and .

    As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

    Mike Paetzold

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • Upgrading WordPress revisited

    By Mike | July 16, 2008

    Today’s question is a consistent one each time upgrades to a new version.

    I am always a bit hesitant to Upgrade. What does one really have to do to Upgrade?
    Is it easy or a Monster?

    First you do need to understand a few things.

    If you are comfortable with that it is a piece of cake. If you are not it can be a monster.

    has a nice 3 step process that will easily walk you through it or I have a video below. It is from earlier versions but the upgrade process has not changed.

    Tomorrow I hope to have some more info on the new version and some of the new features not previously covered.

    As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

    Mike Paetzold

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • WordPress 2.6 is here and working

    By Mike | July 15, 2008

    Well while I was away yesterday released the new version 2.6.

    As soon as I added it I saw something that I love.

    Image1

    It will now let you know if your plugins have updates. A great new feature.

    Now to the important thing. All the plugins I recommend work and the upgrade was painless. I will be adding it to each of my blogs as soon as possible.

    There were 4 other big changes and a lot of little ones.

    The two that really caught my eye though in just a quick glance are the plugin upgrade notice and the theme preview. I will have to play with the others before I can comment on them. The rest of the changes are listed below and are quoted from the WordPress blog.

    Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
    Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
    Bulk management of plugins.
    A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
    Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
    Plugin update notification bubble.
    Customizable default avatars.
    You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
    Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
    Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
    You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
    Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
    Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
    You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
    A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
    Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
    Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

    Will be having fun testing some of the new features and will be reporting back in the future.

    As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

    If you enjoy the information here you can buy me a coffee.


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    • Increase your visitors with 5 free services

    By Mike | July 11, 2008

    You need to take advantage of the many free services to help get your