With so many blogs out there, I keep hearing about people copying material or ripping off graphics. The plugin, WP-CopyProtect apparently takes care of this issue – for the most part. A person can just view the source of the site by going to the browser’s menu and filch the code directly.

The plugin is suppose to prevent selection text and disables the right click on the site. It is a pretty simple plugin created by Chetan Gole. I am all for preventing theft of hard work. However, this plugin is not a necessity. There are ways to disable right click. If you search the words javascript disable right click on Google, you can find really easy code to insert into your theme. Same goes for searching javascript disable select text on Google.

I do appreciate that this plugin is available, but there are far better alternatives. In fact, a lot of places online provide some nifty javascript tools for site owners and come with easy directions for installation. Most of it is just inserting code in a certain place in the theme’s code. There are also ways you can encrypt your website’s code too.

Have you tried this plugin? What other alternatives can you suggest to those not wanting to install yet another plugin?

I came across Revision Diet after looking for a temporary plugin solution for my blog, Blondish.net. For those unaware, I just cute 150 static pages from the site, but I still have over 120 static pages, and over 300 blog posts. Just imagine the number of revisions I have hoarded! It was insane an putting some strain on the allocation I gave to my individual hosting account on my server.

Installation was easy, and using the plugin is really simple. All you have to do is put the number of revisions you will allow your blog to remember. After that, you can eliminate or as the plugin says ‘trim’ your revisions on your blog by simply clicking a button. It takes a moment to do, but it is worth it. For me, I make a lot of revisions – some even months after I wrote the page or post.

Other plugins I have tried, even the popular ones do not have a way to trim out the posts, and as the Revision Diet plugin creator, David Miller noticed, some of the plugins were only hiding the revisions, not removing them completely. While some people do not even like the revision option at all, this is a way to at least limit how many revisions are saved so any accidental deletions will not occur.

Have you tried this plugin? How has it worked for you? Or if not, do you use a similar plugin?

Better Blogroll is a plugin created by Jon Dyer to allow bloggers to create a blogroll much different from the default WordPress blogroll abilities.

How is it different? Well, in the widgets, you will select how many links you can show, and if you want the links random order, title acending order, and title descending order. You can even add images to show up by the links and much more. This is all done by marking the checkbox fields in the Better Blogroll widget. This makes it easier for those who do not know how to code, or not able to follow the nifty WordPress tutorials. Better Blogroll was recently updated on December 23, 2009 to include the ability to separate the links by categories, and even rate your own links.

The creator also gives a great suggestion on how users can use Better Blogroll as a simple text or image ad rotator too!

I am using Better Blogroll on Blondish.net and have found it to be quite helpful as I really hate to have a long list of links in my sidebar. Of course, I could whip up my own snippet, but choosing this plugin was a great convenience and not much of a hindrance on load time. It also did what I wanted when I have first installed the plugin. I recommend this plugin for anyone that needs something time saving and allow them to organize their blogrolls far more efficiently without being knee deep in code.

Have you tried Better Blogroll? If not, do you try another type of trick or just use the default WordPress blogroll abilities?

Email Chat Contact Button Sidebar is a plugin designed by the creators of ContactMeButton.com with the purpose of extending more ways your visitors can contact you. The plugin allows your readers to contact you through email, live chat, or even instant messenger services, rather than go to separate pages (in some cases of how people set up their site) to get the information and end up leaving your website. The concept of this keeps your visitors on your website.

To use this plugin, you have to sign up at ContactMeButton.com. You will have to go into WordPress admin panel and enter your ContactMeButton.com username so the plugin will work. You can then drag and drop a widget into your sidebar that will display a contact button.

The problem is that this makes you sign up and there is only a 30 day free trial. No offense, then this should not even be listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory unless the creator changes the description to inform people they put ads in the free version (which, remember – is only a 30 day trial anyway.) Currently, there is no disclaimer or notice that this is only a 30 day free trial nor that there are ads. Anyway, after the free trial, the pricing starts at $5 per month and limits your emails received to 120 per month and 60 chat sessions. And even so, you are limited to email and chat received.

You are better off using open source and FREE services like Crafty Syntax Live Help (which is not a WordPress plugin nor comes with one, but its own script that you can copy and paste the source into a sidebar text/html widget) and Oggchat (only allows for one chat operator for their free plan) that allow you to see when the person is online.

It is a nice idea for a plugin, but there are other ways people can get by this without having to sign up and possibly pay another cent.

Have you heard of this plugin or tried it? What do you think?

I had been looking for a decent player for a client’s website and tried quite a few until I came across WordPress Audio Player. The plugin was developed by Martin Laine It is currently on version 2.0 beta 6. The plugin WILL work in WordPress 2.8.6.

To install, you can simply look up ‘WordPress Audio Player’ in your WordPress admin under Plugins> Add New or go to the WordPress Plugin directory and download so you can manual install.

One of the issues I came across and this was actually something that came up in the WordPress forum is the fact that the player might not show up or the following message was seen in place of where the player was suppose to be:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

To remedy this, I simply added the following snippet of code in my header.php file of my theme before the body tag.


<?php wp_head(); ?>


and the following in footer before the ending body tag.


<?php wp_footer(); ?>


After that, the player worked great.

One other issue noted was that you could not properly insert the image from your WordPress admin panel. Although you could upload your audio file to your Media gallery, inserting the file was not working. I resorted to manually inserting the file, which was really easy to do.

Example:
[audio:your-audio-file-name.mp3]

You can insert single files or multiple files and it works great. Other than a few kinks to work out, I find this plugin very useful and recommend it.

Have you tried WordPress Audio Player out? What do you think?