I recently was notified about a bug which affects the digg Integrator plugin.

This bug does not appear to be related to the digg Integrator code! It appears to be resulting from the JavaScript hosted by digg. I have not yet confirmed this but I have left a message on the "bug report" section of digg's site.

If you, or your users, are running IE6 then the JavaScript does not work properly. Rather than browsing to digg and incrementing the story's count the browser will travel to URL "javascript:null()" which does absolutely nothing.

I've confirmed that this issue exists and I've also confirmed that it has nothing to do with the digg Integrator code. If you visit other pages that use a JavaScript button, based on the digg API, the same problem arises. Things work fine in FireFox but not in IE6. I haven't checked IE7 yet but I'll be sure too soon.

If you see this, and have any suggestions or would like to contact me about it, please do so in the comments here.

Every once in awhile I like to shout out to users of the digg Integrator plugin to see how things are going. If you're using my WordPress plugin please take a moment to let me know what your experience is.

At this point I know of at least a dozen sites using the plugin, but there may be a few more.

If you're having problems or are having a great experience I could use the feedback. Please leave a message here when you get a chance so I can see how things are going and think about future versions of the plugin.

Text Link Ads today launched a new service aimed at bloggers looking to monetize their feeds. If you're using services like Feedburner or Google Adsense you probably realize that ads in RSS feeds are a bit of a hard thing to come across.

Most services require you to have an extensive readership or ask that you meet some criteria that are a bit above the average blogger. Text Link Ads has launched a new service that aims to change that.

First off, you have the ability to add your own links to the your feeds. If you check out my current FeedBurner feed you'll see that there is a link advertising my digg Integrator plugin floating around the bottom of one or another entry. In time, hopefully, that will be replaced by text ads purchased by advertisers.

For WordPress users there's also a plugin that will make incorporating ads much easier than before. One little line of code and you're ready to go.

Having the ability to monetize your blog as well as advertise your own services in the your feeds is a nice addition that should make most bloggers happy. Give it a try and check back if you find it helpful.

In the past couple of weeks I've concentrating a bit more on Gaming news than on some of the other topics that I had originally wished to cover. While I did want Gaming to be a major topic, I didn't want it to be THE major topic for this blog. That said I wanted to get back to including WordPress related posts. That said, I thought I'd start by running down some of the plugins that are currently used on RotW and a few of my other blogs.

1. Akismet: I've only really tried using one WordPress Anti-Spam plugin. After installing Akismet and getting it running I found that there really wasn't a need for trying out any other. Occasionally it catches a comment that isn't spam, and occasionally it misses one that is, but that's really rare. On this blog alone Akismet has blocked nearly 300 pieces of junk, elsewhere its blocked well over a thousand. Akismet is also included in the WordPress 2.0 package (which should stand as another glowing review.) It's easy to install and very will make monitoring your comments very easy.
2. WordPress Database Backup: Whenever you want to upgrade your WordPress install, edit your database, or even install new plugins you should backup your database - why not make it as easy as possible? This plugin by Scott Merrill automates the whole process letting you save to the server, download or even email the backup file for later use.
3. Google Sitemap Generator: Sooner or later you want your site to start turning up in Google - right? Getting your page indexed and turning up in Google is almost essential for any successful blog or website. The Google Sitemap Generator by Arne Brachhold automatically generates a Google compliant sitemap for use by Google. Setup is very straightforward and highly customizable - it also can generate a new sitemap everytime you post getting your site indexed that much quicker.
4. Feedburner Feed Replacement: This plugin by Steve Smith automatically forwards all feed traffic through Feedburner.
5. WordPress Related Entries: This plugin is part of a 1- 2 punch of plugins for suggesting posts to your readers. Using this plugin you can generate a list of posts that are related to posts currently being displayed. You can see it in use at the bottom of this page under the "Related Posts" heading.
6. Landing Sites: Based on the Related Entries plugin above, this plugin helps create a list of related plugins based off of search results which lead to your page. If a user is running a search for a keyword and lands on your site, this plugin creates a list of similar posts/pages that might cover the topic they searched for. You can use this a variety of different ways but I keep it on my 404page (for when links get broken) and my index page (for those rare occasions where posts on my index page are accidentally indexed by google). The link above provides some great suggested usages.
7. Jerome's Keywords: This is by far my favorite WordPress plugin for integrating keywords. You can see it used at the top of my sidebar and also at the top of all of my posts & pages. Besides allowing for simple listing of keywords, you can also create a "cloud" view to show the popularity of each.

Generally speaking I like plugins that are install and forget. While Jerome's Keywords requires setting keywords when you post and WordPress Database Backup needs to be activated when used, all the others run in the background until you need to activate them. You may need to add one or two lines of code to include them in a theme file but otherwise they run on their own int he background making your blog or website that much more versatile.

I played around for a few days trying to figure out WordPress plugins. While in the end it's a pretty easy process, I wanted to do a really basic tutorial for folks who were just getting started. While the WordPress Codex has some links that are great for figuring out some of the more complex tasks, the real basic stuff can be daunting when your getting started with WordPress and especially PHP (basically a requirement of plugins).

To get started I recommend having or getting a basic knowledge of PHP. It's really, REALLY not that hard to come across. I recommend getting started with a book like Sam's Learn PHP in 24 Hours. It's one of the first PHP books I bought and after reading it I was ready to do most of the basic stuff that will be covered in this first tutorial.

This first plugin is going to be very simple. To keep a theme page from getting over cluttered, we're going to add a small plugin just to add a Google Ad quickly. Instead of several lines of code on our index.php file we'll have only one to call the whole Ad. Read the Rest of this post