Thanks to Internet Business Daily for pointing me to a couple of new Wordpress Plugins - WP-PostRating and WP-PostViews. Both Plugins are the work of Lester Chan, a web programmer from Singapore. He has a bunch of Wordpress Plugins on his programming page but so far, these the two I have chosen to run.
WP-PostRatings
WP-PostRating adds an AJAX rating system so readers can rate your blog post. Ratings are based on a 1 - 5 star system. A cookie is used to ensure one vote per reader. The stats display how many total votes and the average rating the post received. It’s a cool Plugin for getting reader feedback and will help gauge the usefulness of your posts.
Installation is very easy and the documentation is fantastic. Just upload to your Plugins folder, activate in your Plugins control panel, and then add a line of code to call up the script. I placed it at the bottom of the post.
WP-PostViews
The WP-Postviews Plugin enables you to display how many times a post had been viewed. It can also display the top 10 most viewed posts or pages. The counter begins the instant you turn the Plugin on and install the call codes.
The view count does not include the posts on the front page. The count will only increase when readers click on the post to view the post individually - this would happen if they want to make/view a comment or if they were coming from a RSS feed or Google search. It’s interesting to note that not many readers click beyond the top post. It’s also interesting that the current 2nd most read post is, Who Is John Chow?
Like WP-PostRatings Plugin, WP-PostView is very easy to install - upload Plugin, activate, then place the PHP call to where you want the PostView to appear. Another piece of code is supplied to list the top 10 most viewed posts. I placed that in my sidebar.
Lester Chan has 15 Wordpress Plugins in his programming page. I haven’t tried them all but there are some really interesting ones that I may test. If you’re using any of the other Plugins and like it a lot, please let me know. You can do so in the comments.
*Update - I’ve turned off the Comment Karma and the Challenge Question Plugins.
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(75 votes, average: 3.84 out of 5)
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Woh… Weird… no more comment question and I can’t see the comment above me ?
There was never a comment above you. I don’t know what happen.
I guess during one of my posts you took it out in the middle of it. It told me to answer the question, but there was no question to answer!
So people can rate it over and over again if they choose to clear out their cookies when their browsers exit?
Anyway of modifying it to be IP based? Yes.. people can spoof their IPs but its a bit more work than having IE/FF/Opera etc clean out cookies etc
Oh now if you could make it so that I could edit my own comment that would be fun.
I have a Most Viewed Posts thing too though I don’t show the views, perhaps I should modify the code to do that, it be interesting to see the results.
Then it’s done it by IP.
Cookies/Sessions are different on the various browsers.
You have a option of what to use.U can either set by ip or cookie
I am not sure if it does it by cookie or IP now. I voted using IE and then try to vote again using FF and it said I already voted!
John, I am using the Poll plugin and you can set that setting inside the Polls options for this plugin in your admin panel [cookie, ip, both, none], something like that. I liked the most views plugin and am going to try it now, btw.
That poll plugin looks really cool! However, I’m not sure I have any room left in my sidebar.
Yeah, the sidebar’s quite full as it. Don’t think you’d have room without going to a 3 column and I always find those so claustrophobic.
3 columns make me feel that I dont have any room to breath.If neatly designed might look good
Yeah, what happened to the comment question?
I removed it.
I’m glad, it was a hinderence then anything else.
Thanks for the post view plug-in. Now I can proudly show off my (less than) impressive stats.
Its good if you have good page views.Small blogs if they start using this will be like they are saying “Hey i got a low traffic”
The Post rating is something I was in the market for actually..!! Thanks John!
Thanks for the plugins, John!
I like the rating plugin. Think I may incorporate that one into my blog as well. Any comments as to why you ditched the challenge question? The karma plugin clearly wasn’t really going anywhere so I understand ditching that. It was a fun experiment though.
The top post plugin is interesting. I’ve been looking for something similar but I don’t think that will be it. Possibly something that would show the top rated posts from the ratings plugin…
The challenge question wasn’t do much to stop the spam. I’ve found the best spam killer to the be the comment timeout that closes off comments after a set number of days.
I’ve noticed that as well, I have implemented some other anti-spam techniques, but the challenge question doesn’t really seem to help me much…
Yop Post plugin is awesome.Some of the blogs using that get the maximum clicks there.
Post rating is a neat feature! I have to admit I never really used the comment Karma, found it to be a bit pointless.
I’ve been using the postratings plugin for a while now on my website (PhotoshopStar), it’s a tiny bit edited though
Good post, John.
Glad you’ve found Lester Chan plugins
i have most of Lester’s plugins installed in-fact
It’s one of the most supported plugin maker I’ve seen so far … he’s quite active in improving his plugins
cheers
[...] happened to come across a post from John Chow that talked about two new plugins that he has introduced to his blog. I took a gander over at the website he linked, Gamerz, and [...]
You should try out the WAP “plugin” John. It’s really not a plugin since you only have to copy two files over to the root directory. After that, just let your readers know that they have to point their WAP browser to the one file and you are set. I tried it out for my blog and its not bad. Since your blog is damn popular, it’ll be another great way to have your readers connected to your blog no matter where they are.
Yeah I had been using it since I started using wordpress.But the days of mobile has really not begun.You might have to wait for sometime when ppl get more on mobile than pc
The postview plugin is good but there’s another plugin I was trying to install that can provide a list of top views by a certain time span (say 7 days).
Another similiar plugin you should check out is
Views Counter
It allows you to display the number views by the number of visitors. Which is great, because it will show you how many times your visitors are coming back to the same post.
ie. Viewed 104 times by 33 visitors
Thats’ a bit more then 3 page view per visitor.
That is a plugin I could use.
I would actually love to use a web host for my blog too but currently I am improving the layout and have no money flowing fro it. So after money begins to come Ill switch my own domain and will use wordpress then I will also try to make some plugins
Switch as soon as possible.Coz once you make your blog to pull money you wont like to leave it.Trust me it has happened to so many ppl
Yes, and with the credibility and PR and links that you build with it, those are some things that you cannot take along with.
John, you should take into consideration the amount of strain you are putting on a visitor using dialup. For me it is ok since I am using a fast internet but I am sure not everyone is so lucky.
Dialup? What’s that?
That’s the slow internet a lot of people in the U.S still use
Allen.H
John doesn’t need to cater to AOL users! Chances are they are not on the net to make money if they are using dialup!
Saman for President!
That’s funny! I am partial to the phrase:
Saman=Best
LOl Dial up they still use ???? WOw i thought days of modem are over
Disable pictures, that way would be faster.
View those that you want to see.
hey john,
glad you liked my suggestion and you can show it to everyone
Yeah, Lester’s plugins are really good, been using the WP-PostRatings on my site - http://flickrville.com
Cool new plugins Chow
I guess the reason “who is John Chow” is the most popular post is that many people are searching for your name in SE’s now that you’ve been all around the newspapers and the net.
Nice additions,
Allen.H
Thanks so much John for the compliments =D
Plugins are really nice…wll use them as well..try the ajax poll as well its great..
Thanks for the heads up John.
The PostViews plug-in could be very useful - I think I’m going to add it to my blog.
But wouldn’t it be cool if you could pull the data from PostRatings and list the Top 10 highest ranked posts?
PossRating can pull the top 10 highest rate posts.
OK, nice.
Do you plan on listing those anywhere?
http://www.lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-postratings.html (Under Usage Tab)
You are able to sort by highest rated post also
Your rating section looks ugly with IE6, just to let you know…
It is a bug with opacity with IE
http://www.lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-postratings.html (Under Usage Tab -> Note)
I installed PostRating the other day and I was really impressed. Now I’ve just gotta get readers to vote
Thats what is the difficult job.I tried it but then really less ppl were voting.Its not that interactive….ppl are lazy to vote even though its very easy
The postview count once visiting johnchow.com main page with full content or have to click on posted topic to get it count?