WordPress Publisher Blog

Over email I asked Zemanta’s Director of Products, Boštjan Špetiča, to discuss his firm’s new blogging discovery / auto-suggestion service and the WordPress plugin they recently released:

What is Zemanta?

Zemanta helps you create rich posts by recognizing your topic and suggesting useful links, tags, and pictures. So it makes the web experience nicer for both authors and their readers. Zemanta is a relaxed state of mind, where you focus on creativity instead of tricking the search engines to show what you are looking for.

How was the company formed, and where are you located?

The company is based in London and all our development is based in Slovenia, where the founders are from. Our core contextual technology was developed for a project for generating online archives of national television.

After that, we figured it’s a shame nobody is making this experience available to everyone online. We applied for Seedcamp, a European version of Y-combinator, won, and then moved everybody to London for a three-months geek picnic experience. Since then we’ve raised funding and launched the service in March of ’08.

Why should bloggers use the Zemanta WordPress plugin?

It’s painless, it’s pleasant, it takes most the friction out of creating the content. The question is, why would anyone not use it?

Describe the process you took to create the WordPress plugin.  Any lessons learned about plugin development you could share with others?

When we first started working on Zemanta WordPress plugin, we did not know much about WordPress platform or PHP. So we set a modest goal of making a plugin for version 2.5.

We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of information you can find on Codex or when that is not enough, in the WP community. Our advice to those, who might follow our footsteps would be to read introductory articles on Codex and read relevant parts of code of other popular plugins that perform similar tasks. It’s amazing how quickly you may reach your goal even if you are a novice when it comes to PHP and WP.

How is Zemanta different from other related-content products and services?

Some only offer some of the functionality (i.e. tags), some only help the readers instead of authors, some are simply hard to use. We are a one-stop-shop with special attention paid to usability and design.

We are also offering access to increasing number of premium content, where we make sure it is appropriately licensed. Sometimes people think we are just an interface to some picture search, while we actually do much more to deliver only the best select images.

What’s been the most surprising event since you launched your product?

Fred Wilson blogging about it. Twice.

What new features do you have on the roadmap that users of your WordPress plugin can look forward to?

Most prominent new feature on the roadmap is the ability to limit suggestions to your preferred trusted sources, or your friends or your own feeds. Along with more freedom at layouts, this will make our service very much personalized, as it should be in the social media.

Thanks Boštjan for your time. You can read more about Zemanta on their site, and download their WordPress plugin from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.

Boštjan is the Director of Products at Zemanta, and blogs frequently at bostjan.konstrukt.it.

A few weeks ago we mentioned that Sony had contributed WordPress plugins to the community which they had originally developed for the official PlayStation.Blog.

A few more details about these plugins and the overall project were just posted by cnp_studio, the very talented lead development firm that built the PlayStation blog:

A few highlights from this innovative project include :

Plugins We Used

The great thing about WordPress and the community behind it is that in most instances if you want to do something, someone has already created a plugin for that. In our case we have quite a few plugins at work on the PS Blog including:

* Audio Player - Enjoy those soundtrack posts
* WordPress Download Monitor - Helps us track the number of downloads on the PS Blog Widgets.

and

Plugins We Developed

Sometimes you need something and there isn’t a plugin for it. No problem, you develop a plugin to fill that need. What’s really great is when you have a group like the guys at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) who want to contribute back to the WordPress community and then release these plugins back for others:

Lots of other good info to digest - so I highly recommend heading over to the cnp_studio blog to read the full details.

[Visit cnp_studio_blog]

Looking to blog from your mobile device ? You are in luck ! WordPress offers lots of different ways to keep blogging even on the go.

On WordPress.com we have m.wordpress.com. It’s a very light and speedy version of the admin dashboard, and works well on smart phones like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Treo.

On the mobile WordPress.com site you can post, manage comments, see stats, and basically do everything you normally would do. Just point your mobile browser to m.wordpress.com and login with your username and password.

For self-hosted WordPress there are several plugins for mobile usage including WPhone and the iPhone / Mobile Admin plugin:

Mobile Admin adapts the WordPress admin UI to be more friendly to mobile devices, specifically phones.

The iPhone / iPod Touch browser was the first target, but most other mobile browsers are supported at a basic level, and plugins can be used to customize for specific browsers where desired.

In addition, there are a ton of exciting mobile WordPress projects being worked on within the larger WordPress community — stay tuned !

For publishers looking for a way to manage, publish, and track podcasts there is a great WordPress plugin called PodPress.

PodPress features:

* Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM and BitTorrent RSS)
* Preview of what your Podcast will look like on iTunes
* Podcast Download stats, with cool graphs. See below.
* Support for Premium Content (Pay Only)
* Makes adding a Podcast to a Post very simple
* View MP3 Files ID3 tags when your Posting
* Control over where the player will display within your post and what it will look like.
* Support for various formats, including Video Podcasting
* Supports unlimited number of media files.
* Automatic Media player for MP3, OGG, MP4, MOV, FLV, SWF, ASF, WMV, AVI, YouTube, and more, with inline and Popup Window support.
* Preview image for videos
* Support for separate Category podcasts
* Podango hosting integration

For more information, demos, and tutorials about PodPress, visit the PodPress plugin site.

Alex King of Crowd Favorite, chats with Download Squad about WordPress and his favorite plugins on the latest Download Squad Podcast:

The team at Crowd Favorite has worked on many WordPress projects, and offers the following WordPress services:

Custom plugin development services, WordPress as a CMS development, WordPress theme design and development, WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) development, integrations, and general “how can I do this?” services for WordPress.

If you need to do something with, to, or in concert with WordPress - we can make it happen.

Sony has released two WordPress plugins. They are based on some of the customizations they’ve done for their Playstation blog. A good example of a corporation adopting WordPress and giving back to the open source community.

Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. In an email exchange I asked a leading plugin developer, Brian Groce of Watershed Studio, his thoughts on developing WordPress Plugins and how publishers should approach having a plugin created.

How did you get started working with WordPress?

I was part of the exodus from MovableType back in 2004 due to the sudden licensing changes that occurred. After looking around at all of the PHP based open source blogging and content management options I opted for WordPress since that appeared to be the direction most people were headed and the development community seemed to be pretty strong and focused on delivering a solid product that didn’t add any fluff to the core code.

What is a plugin? And what are the advantages to using a plugin?

Plugins are extensions to the main WordPress functionality which enable the use of additional features. The advantage to using plugins is that you can easily add new features that you need while leaving the core WordPress code as simple as possible, which in turn allows for easy future software upgrades of both the core WordPress software and plugins.

In what circumstances should someone use a plugin or have a developer build a custom one?

Plugins should be used when there is a feature you’d like to see added to either the administration or presentation side of WordPress. There are numerous freely available WordPress plugins, but in the event that you can’t find what you’re looking for, having a developer create a custom plugin is your best bet unless you are already familiar with PHP and possibly SQL.

What are the biggest misconceptions about plugins?

I think the biggest misconception about plugins is that if you can think it, it can be done. While that is often the case, there are instances in which a certain feature isn’t available to be “plug into” via the API. Luckily the WordPress development team is on top of it and is adding new “hooks” as versions are released. Also, there seems to be a misconception that every plugin will work on every server setup, which isn’t necessarily the case. If a plugin uses a PHP or MySQL function that is not available or activated on the server, it will not function correctly. Related, plugins may work with one version of WordPress and not another.

Which plugins have you developed?

Of the plugins we have developed, the WordPress Email Notification plugin is by far the most popular, and we’re currently working on a new version which adds a handful of new features and improved functionality. We have also developed and maintain the WordPress Category Posts plugin & WordPress Versioning plugin and assisted in the creation of the Sphere Related Content Widget. Beyond those plugins, we have created custom plugins for clients.

In your experience what are the biggest mistakes publishers make when looking to build a plugin?

The biggest mistake from what I have seen is not looking at the big picture and painting yourself into a corner. Take the time to brainstorm and think about any possible future updates and additions that you’d like to make. By doing so, the plugin can be built with the future in mind and you’ll be able to avoid adding unnecessary additional development time down the road.

What are your favorite plugins?

My favorite plugin by far is PodPress. Anyone who has ever gone the non-plugin route to setup a podcast/vidcast can tell you how much time this plugin saves you. I also like Alex King’s Share This plugin as it is very helpful in allowing readers to share a particular post with others.

Plugin update notifications are now built into WordPress. What impact will that have on developers of plugins and their users?

I think that this will help out tremendously in allowing developers to inform users of new updates. Previously this was a manual process unless the plugin author built in a mechanism to check for updates.

From a plugin developer standpoint, what improvements or changes would you like to see with WordPress?

I would love to see some more hooks added to the API. Specifically, I would like to see a hook which easily allows for the addition of buttons to the editing toolbars in both the WYSIWYG editor and in the Code View editor. Also, I would love to have a way to see what blogs are actually using your plugin(s). With the new update notifications built into WordPress 2.3, this information should be fairly easy to collect.

What tips would you give publishers looking to have a plugin developed?

First, I would suggest looking to make sure that what you’d like to do hasn’t already been done, or at least check to see that something similar hasn’t been done. If you need some additional features or tweaks to an existing plugin, contact the plugin author to see if they can create a custom version for you and if so, how much it will cost. If they can’t (many plugin developers have full-time jobs), get in touch with a seasoned developer who can. Since most WordPress plugins are licensed under the GPL, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Second, if you need to have a plugin developed from scratch, be sure to write down and possibly diagram how you want the plugin to function. Once you have that completed, contact a plugin developer and let them know what you need. Additionally, if you have a delivery deadline, budget requirements or any other special considerations, you should share these with the potential developer as well.

Typically, how long does it take to develop a plugin from start to finish?

It truly depends on a multitude of factors, but in general the total development time depends upon the complexity of the plugin and the communication times between the client and the plugin developer. It is possible that simple plugins can be written, tested and “shipped” within a week. More complex plugins can take weeks to months before the final version is in hand and quality communication is especially vital when working on more complex plugins.

What should publishers be expecting from a cost perspective when hiring a plugin developer?

The cost of having a plugin developed comes down to the amount of time involved, thus a simpler plugin will cost less that a more complex one. In addition, developer rates and time estimates may vary quite a bit. With that said, you should expect to set aside a minimum of a few hundred dollars (USD) for a simpler plugin and into the thousands of dollars for a more complex plugin.

Thanks Brian! You can read more technical information about plugins on the WordPress Codex site and browse hundreds of plugins in the WordPress Plugins directory.

Brian Groce is the founder, President and CEO of Watershed Studio, LLC. Watershed Studio specializes in installing & customizing WordPress for blogs, podcasts and as a content management system (CMS).