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Welcome back, WDD readers! It’s time for this month’s round of WordPress plugin goodness.
As usual, we’ve got quite a variety of plugins, with a variety of potential use cases. Take note, though: some of these plugins are very new, and some might need a few more iterations before they’re perfect; that said, they’re all pretty awesome right now, so let’s jump right in…
Bump This adds a button when viewing a post that will allow users to “bump” the post. If enough people click that button, the “bumped” post will be moved to the top of the list of posts. This is a great way for your users to help you to put popular content where others will see it.
Some small issues: currently, only logged-in users can “bump” posts. Worse, one user can bump the same post over and over again by navigating away from the post, coming back, and just hitting the button again. That said, I’m interested to see where this idea goes once the plugin gets updated a couple of times.
This plugin brings video capturing to your WordPress installation. Place a shortcode into any page or post, and users will be able to record short videos, up to three minutes in length.
Once the videos are recorded, you can access them from the WordPress admin panel. You can download or delete them… and, I imagine, embed them elsewhere.
The videos themselves are rather low-quality .flv files, and are stored on a third-party server. (Boy does that ring a few alarm bells!) Still, if you need a simple, free way to get webcam video from your users, and you’re okay with the terms and conditions, this plugin can do it well.
LeadIn is one of the more polished plugins on this list, and incredibly useful. It integrates with a number of form plugins for WordPress, and anytime someone submits a form (ie. a contact form) on your website, they are added to a database of contacts.
The page view history for each contact is listed in their file, so you can see what parts of your website interested them most.
The plugin also comes with a simple, optional newsletter sign-up form that only appears when a user scrolls all the way to the bottom of any page on your site. Signing up, or simply closing the “pop-in” sign up form keeps the user from ever having to see it again.
Gmail Comment Approval takes a bit of set-up to make it work, but the end results are pretty awesome. Once the plugin is installed, your WordPress notification e-mails are DKIM signed, and you’ve registered your e-mail address with Google for doing this kind of thing, you can approve new comments on your WordPress site without ever leaving Gmail.
While it was originally designed with photographers in mind, this plugin could be used for a variety of scenarios. Essentially, it creates a new custom post type designed to accommodate client stories and testimonials. These “client pages” can be sorted by category, linked to blog posts, and more.
Not happy with the fonts in your pre-made theme? GWFC adds a section to the “theme customizer” in your admin panel. This will allow you to choose any font from Google Web Fonts for your headings, paragraph text, blockquotes, and for some unfathomable reason, list items.
Ever seen one of those websites where they have pictures of their team members, and you can click on them to load more information in a lightbox-like modal window? I can tell you from experience that those can be a pain in the rear to make from scratch (though it is doable).
If you can’t make one from scratch, this plugin will provide you with a custom post type designed for displaying team members and their info. A shortcode displays the team members in a responsive grid on any page or post you like.
There aren’t any settings as such. Any visual changes you wish to make will need to be done via CSS. If you have to do that, might as well just roll your own. However, if all you need is a plug-and-play solution, this’ll do it!
tinyfier-wp optimizes your CSS, JS, and (if you want) HTML assets, removing all unnecessary data to make your site load faster. I tried it out, and well… it works. The code gets minified.
I didn’t see a huge increase in speed, probably because I’m using a basic WordPress install with the default theme as a test environment. Still, if counting bytes is your thing, give it a try.
Here’s one for the sports geeks. Simply put, WP Club Manager is designed for managing sports club websites. I’ll let their feature list tell the rest of the story:
Firefox OS Bookmark may be a newcomer to the market, but the reviews are glowing. If you want to register your WordPress-based site as a “hosted app” on their marketplace, this plugin will give you everything you need to pull that off.
A mobile app that has recently piqued my curiosity is Spritz. Basically, it makes speed reading easier by allowing you to focus on just one word at a time.
Zethos has re-created this functionality with JavaScript, allowing anyone to embed it in their web pages. This plugin embeds Zethos in every post, enabling readers to choose how they want to read your article.
The plugin needs work because, currently, there are no configuration options whatsoever. In addition, the Zethos embeds currently show up in posts in the main loop. If there is more than one post on a page, each instance of Zethos will “play” them all.
With time, though, I could see this plugin becoming a useful and fun addition to text-heavy blogs.
Featured image/thumbnail, WordPress image via Shutterstock.
| WP Plugin: Add Legal Pages to your Site – only $17! |  |
March Madness is the ultimate hoops party � and two standout UMBC freshmen are giving the Retriever Nation renewed hope that their basketball squads soon will return to the Big Dance for the first time since 2007 and 2008, when the women�s and men�s teams debuted at the NCAA Championships in back-to-back years.
Sara Tarbert, a Delta, Pa. native, and Rodney Elliott, a local product with exceptional pedigree, were named America East Conference Rookies of the Year at the end of this season. Both players also were named to the league�s Third Team � the only freshmen to earn that position amongst the conference�s elite.
Tarbert, a 5�11� forward, received a UMBC program-record five America East Rookie of the Week honors during the 2013-14 campaign and led all conference freshmen in scoring (13.8) and rebounding (7.1). She also led the league in minutes per game (36.3) and ranked eighth in both field goal (43.5) and seventh in free throw (76.3) percentage.
�There are so many good, young players in the league and I am truly honored,� Tarbert said upon receiving the award. �Honestly, it�s kind of shocking. You really don�t play for an award, you play to play, so it�s great to be recognized for it.�
Tarbert ended the season on a 13-game double-digit scoring streak and finished the year with exactly 400 points, the fourth-highest total ever for a UMBC freshman. She added 205 rebounds, sixth-highest all-time among UMBC freshmen, and recorded six games with double figures in both points and caroms.
“We are so proud of Sara and all the hard work she put into her freshman season,” head coach Phil Stern said. “It’s a great honor and something Sara should be very proud of. For me, the most impressive thing about her freshman year was how consistent she was on a nightly basis.”
Elliott became UMBC’s first men’s basketball player to earn Rookie-of-the-Year honors in 11 league seasons. earned Rookie-of-Week honors a UMBC-record five times during the 2013-14 campaign. Like Tarbert, he finished the year as the leading scorer amongst all league freshmen with 15.0 points per game, which was the fifth-best overall figure in the conference. In addition, Elliott was fourth in America East in assists (3.6), sixth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.0), and eighth in steals (1.3).
The 6�0� point guard � the son of former Maryland Terrapin standout Rodney Elliott, Sr.� became UMBC’s second NCAA Division I player and America East�s lone competitor this season to record 400 points (451), 100 rebounds (118) and 100 assists (108) in a season. The first-year player�s 451 points scored in the most by a freshman in UMBC�s 27 years of NCAA Division I competition.
Elliott was also selected as the America East Fans’ Choice Player of the Year, UMBC’s first in the eight-year history of the award and the first Retriever freshman in any sport to earn the selection.
�I am really honored to receive this award, it�s a humbling experience,� Elliott said. �I want to thank my family, my parents and my coaching staff – who knows where I would be without their support.�
“Rodney was thrust into a major role as a first-year college player and did a tremendous job,� said head coach Aki Thomas. �His consistency off of the court really helped him be consistent on the court. Rodney is a hard worker in the classroom, a good citizen, and a good teammate. These are all mature qualities that you normally see in veteran players.�
The last time that one conference institution could brag about two first-year honorees was in 2004-05, when Northeastern�s Shawn James and Shaylese Smallwood earned the distinctions. It has only happened four times in the four decades of America East basketball competition.
Tarbert and Elliott will have help leading the Retrievers back to national prominence. On the women�s side, another freshman, Taylor McCarley, also earned America East All-Rookie team honors and a third classmate, Emily Russo, recovered from knee surgery to record an outstanding initial campaign. For Coach Thomas� squad, freshmen Will Darley, David Kadiri and Charles Taylor, Jr. all played substantial minutes in 2013-14 and, with Elliott, form the nucleus of a team with limitless potential.
�Rodney has definitely served as a catalyst in the maturation process of our basketball program,� said Thomas. �He is a true student of the game of basketball, and I look forward to watching him grow as a player.”
(03/31/2014)
]]>While network scientists have been poring over data from Twitter and Facebook, they’ve forgotten about Tumblr. Now they’ve begun to ask how this network differs from the rest.
The study of social networks has gripped computer scientists in recent years. In particular, researchers have focused on a few of the biggest networks that have made their data available, such as some mobile phone networks, Wikipedia and Twitter.
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We hope everyone had a fun spring break! We are back with another talk in our UMBC ACM techTalk series. Professor Tim Oates, who is also one of the faculty advisers of the ACM student chapter, will talk about “What can a Humanoid Robot Learn?”. Dr. Oates will split the talk into two sessions. In the first half, he will introduce the topic and talk about current research being pursued in the area of humanoid robots. Whereas, the second half of the talk will be an interactive session focusing on ideating challenges and future research directions. To make the discussion interactive, Dr. Oates encourages you to spend a few minutes beforehand to think about what you would do if you had access to a humanoid robot for research purposes.
Abstract: Robots and AI have a long history together, both in the popular culture and in research. In this talk I will review some of my past work at the juncture of robotics, AI, and machine learning, as well as ongoing work with collaborators at UMCP along the same lines. With those collaborators, I wrote a proposal to buy a few humanoid robots that was funded, so I’ll next describe the robots that we’ve bought. Finally, I’d like to have an open discussion about my ideas for research using these robots, and ideas that those in the audience might have as well. My goal is to get as many people as is practical involved with the robots, which are relatively expensive and thus not a common resource. If you’re coming to the talk, spend a few minutes beforehand thinking about what you would do if you had access to a humanoid robot for research purposes.
Dr. Tim Oates is an Oros Familty Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1989, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1997 and 2000, respectively. Prior to coming to UMBC in the Fall of 2001, he spent a year as a postdoc in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 Dr. Oates won a prestigious NSF CAREER award. He is an author or co-author of more than 100 peer reviewed papers and is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include pattern discovery in time series, grammatical inference, graph mining, statistical natural language processing, robotics, and language acquisition.
RSVP for the talk at http://my.umbc.edu/events/23881
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