WP-PostRatings
My search for a WordPress plugin to add the ability to rate posts didn’t last very long. Either I’m pretty good at using Google for searching (possible) or Google is a darn good search engine (more likely).
I found a good candidate for the task at Lester Chan’s (AKA GaMerZ) Web site: WP-PostRatings.
Like the vast majority of WordPress plugins, this is one is easy to install. Drop its folder in your plugins folder. Then activate it in the Plugin Management administration panel and you’re ready to go.
Inserting the rating code into your theme’s template file may not be as easy as following the instructions. They’re a little vague, telling you to:
Open wp-content/themes/<YOUR THEME NAME>/index.php
Find:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>Add Anywhere Below It:
<?php if(function_exists('the_ratings')) { the_ratings(); } ?>
That didn’t work at all for my theme, Exquisite, which uses a post.php file for the Loop. (As we explain in our WordPress book, the Loop is repeated for each post that should appear on a page.) I had to insert the code in the appropriate place in the post.php file. I experimented with a few positions before settling on the line after the Technorati tags (if present) and before the comment/trackback/print links. (You can see it for yourself on MariaLanger.com unless I’ve grown bored with it and removed it.)
The plugin works with JavaScript to allow site visitors to assign a rating of one to five stars to each post on your site. As readers vote on a post, the votes are averaged for the post. Multiple ratings are prevented by cookies or IP logging or a combination of the two. The rating is displayed where you insert the code.
There’s also some code you can use to display a list of the highest rated posts and the posts with the most ratings. I set that up in my sidebar, but commented it out when I realized that I didn’t like the formatting of the output. I have a support request in to GaMerZ asking for a hack that’ll make it the way I want it.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep this feature installed. It’s a novelty right now and, unfortunately, no one seems too interested in trying it out. I’m also thinking about installing it here, but I think I’d prefer to wait until the book is out and there’s more traffic on the site. Either way, I’ll have to check with Miraz.
What do you think of this post? If you see a rating feature below, use it to share your opinion.
Rate My Stuff
I was looking for a WordPress plugin that would allow blog readers to rate the posts here. I’m curious to know what readers like to read.
What I found first was Rate My Stuff, a plugin by Dave Cantrell, that you can use to display star ratings (1/2 through 5) for the items you review in your blog. So, for example, suppose I saw the third X-Men movie (which I did) and decided to apply a star rating with my blog review. It might look like this:
(As you can tell, I wasn’t too impressed with the movie. Not even impressed enough to blog about it.)
The plugin actually comes with two versions. One version, which I prefer, enables me to use a custom tag to indicate the rating. Where I put the tag in the post is where the rating appears. So, for example, to get the above rating, I entered [rate 2.5] on a line by itself. The other version uses custom fields and requires me to modify the template files for my theme.
Rate My Stuff installs the usual way — just drop its files and image folders into your plugins folder and activate the plugin version you want to use. I tweaked the plugin before I even installed it by downsizing the stars — they were 45 pixels square and I made them only 20. Then I modified my quicktags.js file to create a quicktag for inserting the rate tag characters. (I covered a bit of that in another entry here.)
How often will I use this feature? Probably not very often at all. But what the heck.
Now let me go back to searching for the plugin I was really looking for.
Automatically post daily links
Kevin Lim has a guide for How to automatically post daily links from Del.icio.us to WordPress:
I compile all my links using del.icio.us and through some dark magic, have my links automatically posted on my blog every night at 10.30pm.
Install WordPress on your own computer
To run WordPress on your own computer you probably need to install or at the least configure software. Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP is a brief but useful guide.
[Via OptiNiche: WordPress Optimization Blog.]
New WordPress theme viewer
Thinking about a new theme for your WordPress blog? Visit the new WordPress Theme Viewer. You have various options for sorting and selecting themes, such as by number of columns, colour, fixed width or fluid and so on.
This is so much easier to use. Take a look.
Need an RSS Primer?
Try this link on the Feedburner Web site: Feedburner - Feed 101
It includes basic information about RSS, as well as links to more information and a variety of Feed Reader software products for Windows and Macintosh users.