WordPressHelp.org features

WordPressHelp offers several handy features to authors and readers. We have selected a few plugins that help to create increased readability and connectivity within the post contents. Here is a brief summary of plugins used, what they do and how to use them

1- aLinks. This plugin automatically links keywords both systematically and automatically. It’s a complex plugin that uses algorithms to search and match kewords you input to relevancy on the page. Thats the automatic part, once you enter a keyword in the admin section of the plugin. This ’search and match’ is based on a scoring method and the top match is used in the link. This match changes, as posts get added, because it’s a dynamic action that gets passed to the database as the page is being rendered. The actual links, don’t exist, until the page is displayed. Additionally, the ’search and match’ is restricted to a maximum of 30 days previous posts, to make the process as fast as possible in the database scans.

The other option of this plugin is to create a keyword with a specific URL for it to go to if the keyword is found in any post. This is more deterministic and the link to that URL remains indefinitly. My guess is there is less processing involved and no DB scans are involved.

Alinks also has an Amazon associate section, that searches amazon items according to keywords. We don’t use this function in our context.

If we DON’T like the automatic linking, via scoring of posts content, but prefer to hard link a post to a specific keyword, we should consider a simpler (with less overheads) plugin called SH-Autolink. (this is already installed) This plugin has no scoring system, but only offers a ‘keyword to specific URL option’. The only downside is that it matches EVERY occurance of a word in all posts, where as aLinks only matches the first occurrance of a keyword per post, to avoid link saturation.

Do we have a preference as to which method we prefer?

The other WPH author features are more straight forward and easy.

1- Footnotes. This is a neat plugin that lets authors add footnotes really easily to their posts. The footnote is linked (anchored) from a numbered superscript character to the actual footnote on the page. The footnotes have a ‘return’ link that takes you back. Here’s how you use it. Any text, link or content that you want to be a footnote is created inline with your page text as follows. ((This is my footnote)) yep, 2 curly braces round your content makes a numbered footnote. Make sure you leave a space between the start and end braces!

2- Snippet Highlight. Great plugin that renders code in well formatted lined snippets for easy reading and copying. Simply enclose any code snippet with <pre> </pre> to render full html, php, etc unparsed on the page.

3- Image Caption Easy. Transforms the alt text of an image into a caption which can be controlled through css. When you insert an image into a post you can make a caption and a nice genle border round the image. To make a caption, the ALT tag must be entered and this becomes the text in the caption. No ALT tag and no caption is created. I’ve asked the developer to add an option of allowing an ALT tag, but not transforming this to a caption to make images xhtml compliant. He’s agreed. This plugin allows nice captioning for diagrams, charts, images etc.

WPH also has some other connectivity features that work in the background. These are designed to create a ‘thick website’ of interlinks and related content. These are listed as follows:

1- Simple Tags. Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3. Auto-completion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags. One of the best available tagging system for 2.3 after UTW. This tagging plugin produces rich cross referencing and auto -suggests tags in posts creation.

2- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold. The list is conveniently situated below the full post. It can be configured for matching thresholds.

3- TreeMagic-Cypress. Provides instant queries against any word or phrase on the page. Query resources are configurable and provide highly focused, non-intrusive supplementary information for the user.

WPH posts management features.
1- Audit Trail. Keep a log of exactly what is happening behind the scenes of your WordPress blog. This needs to be accessed in the website admin section. Although it does not allow for conventional ‘rollback’ to a version previously, versions can be viewed and re-saved, or data salvaged.

2-WP Admin Bar Reloaded. Adds a small admin bar to the top of every page. Simple and fast access to admin sections through this discreet addition to the header of every page. Seen by logged in users only and permission based for the available links.

3- WP-DownloadManager. Adds a simple download manager to your WordPress blog.

4- User Permissions. Provides user read/ write permissions on a per post basis. Easily set from a block in the editor write page. If we trust this … it’s useful for internal posts not for public consumption

5- Subscribe to Comments. Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

Related posts:

1. WordPress as a wiki?
2. How to get an edit post or edit page link
3. WebMaster Tools
4. Using Mimbo theme
5. TreeMagic Cypress

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.