Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’
We are super excited to announce a new update to our Wordpress Plugin. The same plugin that brought sweet search functionality and stats information to your wordpress blog is now even better. You might not notice much, as the core of this update revolves around backend functionality. So what does that mean to you???
- Our search form override functionality is now compatible with just about any wordpress theme out there. (if you find one that doesn’t work, let us know, and we’ll try to add it)
- The plugin enables new widget functionality which results in faster widget loading for your readers.
If you are using Wordpress 2.7 or higher, you should see auto upgrade notices for version 1.1 showing up in your admin console within the next 24 hours. You can just auto upgrade from your plugins screen. Or, you can always manually install/upgrade the plugin from the Lijit Wordpress Plugin page. For handy install tips and instructions, you can always reference our Lijit Help pages for guidance.
As always, if you have any suggestions or feedback, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at support@lijit.com.
Tags: features, release announcements, wijit, wordpress | View Comments
Yesterday, we released the ability for people to have more than one account under a single profile. Yet, we decided that just wasn’t good enough. “No,” we said, “there must be more!”
We huddled together (we often huddle) and thought about options.
Many of the options were just untenable. We thought about having all of our search results in Comic Sans.
Quickly, we realized that wasn’t a great idea.
After a little while, it dawned on us.
“We should integrate Wordpress comments!” (After all, “wordpress” is our #1 search result internally, and we have a kick-ass wordpress plugin.)
A cry rose from our huddle…
(I think one of the developers might have actually cried, but I am certainly not one to to mention any names)
…and away we went. Now along with our integrations of Disqus, JS-Kit, Intense Debate, if you are using the default Wordpress comments, you will find a nice link in the lower left that will expose a few of the comments on the post, and a link to view more comments.
With the inclusion of Wordpress comments (even Wordpress.com comments, which is ironic since *cough* Automattic wont allow us to be installed on their Wordpress.com platform *cough*) our publishers can see the direction we are going with our feature set.
Our mission is to expose the expertise and influence of our publishers to their audience by surfacing more of the blogger’s content to their readers. It is clear that OnceUponAWin.com has great 80’s nostalgia content, and a passionate user base making them experts on, well, Shrinky Dinks.
As a user, there is nothing you need to do to have your Wordpress comments surfaced. They will automagically appear within results as of today on bloggers who are using our backend search.
More integrated content; more understanding of bloggers by their audience; more surfaced expertise and influence.
Seems like a win for everyone.
Tags: features, search results, wordpress | View Comments
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to speak at WordCamp Denver. What is WordCamp you ask?
Basically, WordCamp is a day (or two) long event where bloggers and developers (specifically Wordpress developers) get together to talk about all things Wordpress.
This was the first time that Denver has hosted a Wordcamp, and Crowd Favorite (the makers of our Wordpress widget) put it all together.
What a great show it was.
It was broken into two segments, the first, in the morning started as WordCamps usually do, with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress, giving his “State of the Word” talk. He brought up all the interesting things that the Automattic (the team behind Wordpress) was working on, what the next release of Wordpress would have, and he talked about a couple new resources that were launching, Wordpress.tv and the Wordpress Handbook.
The morning included a panel on web design, with Kevin Menzie (Slice of Lime), Jeremy Harrington (crawlspace|media) and Brian Warren (Be Good, Not Bad). Jane Wells of Automattic talked about Open Source, and right before lunch, one of my favorites, Ben Huh of ICanHasCheezburger who spoke on how his company, Pet Holdings, focuses on the core aspects of their business by outsourcing all technical needs. And he did it without once showing a LOLCat.
In the afternoon, there were two tracks. A technical track and a blogger track. True to Alex King, the technical track was highly technical, with Jake Spurlock and Joe Scott coming in from Utah (Jake spoke on BuddyPress, which one day will be released! Joe spoke on XML-RPC, which might be one of the coolest things ever).
Over at the blogger track, there were a varied subject matter. Boulder’s Jim Turner was on a panel talking about making money blogging; Gil Awsakwa spoke on Media and Publishing, which was especially timely given the recent close of the Rocky Mountain News.
Jon Fox (another Boulderite) spoke about his company Intense Debate and how they are attacking the comment space.
Dave Moyer, an incredibly intelligent and successful kid (and by kid, I think he is 15 years old) spoke on Podcasting. Working at Bitwire, he has become quite the expert on the subject.
At the end of the day, I spoke about Measuring Online Influence, and tried to focus on the reasons why we blog. I have embedded my deck below:
All in all, WordCamp Denver was a great experience. After speaking out at Wordcamp Las Vegas, it was great to get to be involved in a WordCamp closer to home.
If you are interested in attending a WordCamp, check out the upcoming ones. I am speaking at Wordcamps in Chicago and DC, and may be at the ones in San Francisco and New Orleans.
Tags: events, speaking, wordcamp, wordpress | View Comments
With our WordPress plugin and Micah’s speaking at WordCamps (Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago and DC) one might think that at Lijit, we dont love other blogging platforms, such as TypePad or Blogger, as much. Even some of the newer blog platforms, such as Tumblr and Posterous, sometimes have told us that they feel a bit left out.
But, you see, this is just not the case. At Lijit, we love all blogging platforms equally. Whether you are using Expression Engine, or Moveable Type, or even Drupal, Lijit happily installs (some times with an added love tap from our ability support staff) on them all.
And, you might be surprised to hear, we do it without having our love reciporcated. (Yes, I am speaking to you Wordpress.com!) So when one of the blogging platforms reaches out to their users and tells them about how great we are at Lijit, well, we get just a bit excited.
“Professor” Andy Wibbels on the Everything TypePad blog does a great job of explaining how TypePad users can get the most out of Lijit.
We love you too TypePad! We are excited to hear from other blogging platforms about how their users are getting the most out of Lijit.
How about publishers on other blogging platforms? How are you getting the most out of Lijit?
Tags: blogger, blogging platforms, expression engine, posterous, tumblr, typepad, wordpress | View Comments
By gets, I mean made the unbelievable choice of asking me to speak. At a conference. In front of people.
The truth is, speaking on subjects that I am passionate about is something that I love to do, and I am excited that WordCamp Las Vegas has given me the opportunity to do that.
So what is WordCamp?
Well, as the name implies it is all about the WordPress blogging platform. At a WordCamp, you get to meet lots of WordPress developers and folks that use the platform for really interesting applications.
This year’s speaker line up is fantastic. There are some really heavyweights speaking, and my hope is that some of the bloggers that are currently at CES, will take the time to come visit WordCamp as CES winds down.
What am I speaking on?
Not Lijit. The beauty of WordCamp is that unlike trade shows, the focus is not on vendors or products, but rather users. This was never more clear than when I attended WordCamp SF last year and got to hear developers, theme designers and non-developers talk about all the awesome stuff they were doing. It really helped drive my blogging to a new level.
I decided to speak on a topic that has really been sitting in my brain for awhile. Expertise, Personal Branding and Influence. The title of the presentation (which I will put online) is called: You Are The Center of Your Universe.
Here is the concept (tell me if you think I’m an idiot):
As we create content online we develop our online identity, influence and expertise. Every Flickr photo, every blog post, every link on delicious is a small piece of a complete picture that other people are collecting to determine our influence and expertise. Therefore, it’s imperative that there is some central location where potential clients, friends, colleagues can discover one’s social content in order to truly understand one’s influence/expertise. This is the act of building a personal brand.
Make sense?
Obviously, the best place to create that location is one’s blog, and I will highlight some plugins and techniques to showcase one’s expertise and/or influence.
I’m excited, and I hope others find it interesting.
What do you think?
Tags: lijit, micah, speaking, wordcamp las vegas, wordpress | View Comments
After a lot of work, we are proud to introduce something new for our WordPress.org users. If you like the Lijit search and want it to be integrated on your site in a more, how shall we put it, hijacked fashion, then this plugin is for you.
As everyone knows, you can currently install the Lijit widget on your blog in the traditional, add-the-code-to-your-sidebar kind of way. But now, with this new Wordpress plugin, you can keep the current search bar you have on your WordPress blog, but have Lijit power the search results. It’s like magic.
It looks like a normal search bar, but when you do a search, BAM! Search results brought to you courtesy of Lijit.
Like any other Wordpress plugin, you can find the Lijit Search (version 1.0) in the plugin directory. Or HERE.
Once you download the widget, simply log into your WordPress dashboard, go to the plugin page and activate it. Upon activation, you get to choose whether you want to use your existing Lijit account or you can create a new one inside the WordPress admin console.
You can also choose between the classic widget install option OR hijack the existing WordPress search box and make it Lijit-enabled.
But wait! That’s not all. We’ve also included another super-cool feature…integrated statistics. You love the stats that Lijit gives and now you can see those from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard. Simply click on your Lijit stats and you’ll see all that detailed goodness, telling you exactly what you need in order to keep your readers happy.
Many of you asked for a better way to integrate Lijit search on your WordPress blog and here it is. With a cleaner and tighter feel, Lijit and Wordpress.org are playing even better together than ever.
***This plug-in is only available for those WordPress users with versions 2.3-2.6.***
We would like to thank the great team at Crowd Favorite for helping us to make this happen. And by all means, let us know what you think of the plugin. We think it rocks, but are more excited to hear your thoughts.
Happy hijacking!
Tags: blog integration, features, wordpress | View Comments