I’m excited. I just put up a new Wordpress plugin that I’ve been wanting for awhile now. It’s called Recommend It.
Recommend It - Allows your blog’s veteran readers to recommend posts to first time visitors through a simple voting system.
You’ll notice that at the bottom of every post is now a button that allows you to recommend that post to first time readers. So now first time visitors here will be greeted with the posts that got the most recommendations from the veteran readers.
I’ve been wanting a plugin like this really bad. I think it’s a great way to point your new readers to the real meat of your blog. I first got the idea for this when I saw several blogs that recently got links from bigger blogs and so they made special posts to welcome the readers. They all recommended a few of what they felt were their best posts for the new readers to check out. My reasoning was that they might be worried that the new flood of visitors would leave after not being able to find the good posts, or get the wrong impression about their blog from the most recent post. I started thinking about how much I could use something like that. Sometimes my most recent post isn’t always the best representation of the rest of my blog or the best for new readers to get introduced into the community with. It’s often best to leave it to the people who know your writings the best, your readers, to point your new visitors in the right direction. I personally would like to see this at the top of every blog I first visit.
So I asked a buddy of mine,
If you would like to use Recommend-It on your blog he was gracious enough to allow me to share it.
Installation Instructions
If you need any coding work done I’d strongly recommend you contact
E-mail:
“webuildspam.com”
I love it!
Been looking for coders like that for a while now. Thanks for the info.
This is a great idea, I’ll be throwing this up for a test drive tomorrow for sure.
Very nice idea I must say, I might add it as well when I’ve managed to increase my reader base some. Markj, the domain is superb indeed!
Cool plugin Eli,
Here are a few links for you http://aglobalwarming.stumbleupon.com/review/8451698/
I will be using this on a few older sites this week.
Thank you for the great ideas,
Mark
I think its a great idea.. does the blog owner’s recommendations count as well?
yes they do. It does have a fairly effective system for stopping duplicate recommendations. I’ve been removing a ton of the votes for this post, just because they are coming from people testing the button.
Thanks Eli, I’ll give it a run on some of my blogs this weekend to see how it goes.
It’ll be cool if there was a option to show the recommended posts according to cookies. E.G. New visitors who visit your blog up to the X number of times will be shown the Recommended posts. After which, they won’t see it at all.
An example is the What would Seth Godin do Wordpress Plugin which focuses on increasing your RSS subscribers.
Great Idea!
I will put it in some of my blogs!
This kinda works , I must have something messed up the recommending functions work but I get these warnings:
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/content/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 84
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/content/path/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 43
Any ideas?
What version of php is installed on your server. Also what version of Wordpress are you running?
I have the same error than David !!
I used Php 4.4.4 and Wordpress 2.1.2.. So what can i do ?
Thanks
Im too stupid to work this one out.
I posted the codes and nothing seems to be happening.
In the installation instructions don’t forget to do step 3.
Put that line of code as the first line in the template.
I suspect that it is david and phoenix’s problem
Hi, cool. I’ve installed it and added a function to create an ‘users-home’, based on the users recomendations. A kind of inverse Digg system
The code is here.
Just a question, how can we know the number of recomendations by post?
Thanks.
I have the same problem with the Warning: array_search()
I did every step and check twice for the step 3.
What we are missing? or maybe our templates are missing something:
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument
The problem point to this line:
if( array_search( $p, $_SESSION[’recpost’] ) != NULL ) {
And we are not alone:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Warning%3A+array_search%28%29+%5Bfunction.array-search%5D%3A+Wrong+datatype+for+second+argument
Tobsn just put up a new version that fixes all this.
Go ahead and redownload it guys.
Hmm. . . yeah I downloaded the new version, but I get similar errors again:
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/content/k/u/b/kubicka/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 94
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/content/k/u/b/kubicka/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 52
I am using wordpress 2.0.4, would upgrading to 2.1.x help you think?
yeah its only been tested on 2.1 i believe but i can try it on 2.0. Just give me a day.
btw thanks for all these bug reports. it helps in making it more compatible and work better.
Hi Eli,
The code insertion worked fine, but the problem is to display it. Think this is because I’m using widgets on my site.
Any thoughts?
I have the same problem as David , but i already solved the problem on my site.
My mistake, I added the step #3 code under the index.php of my themes template, I think it should be added on the main index.php under root folder.
Thanks for the heads up on this plugin. I was not aware of it, but noticed the “highlighted” posts the moment I came to the site.
It’s hard to beat wordpress for all of the add ons that come almost on a daily basis.
Thanks,
Robert
It´s working now,
thank you!
I´m using WP 2.1.2
Ok I finally figured it out, put the code in step #3 into index.php in the root directory as elibest said.
I’m having BlueHatSEO withdrawls…
hehe sorry man. I’ll be all over the posting soon. I got a lot of projects on my plate right now. No time for the chit chat at the moment.
That’s a cool plugin, although I think a feature is missing:
I’m NOT new to BlueHatSEO but still, the focus point of my visual perception is reserved for the recommended posts.
Maybe you could add a counter cookie or something to the code so that after X times, the reader doesn’t see the recommend-it box. (10 would be nice, making it configurable would even be better)
Just a thought
I’m gonna try mixing this with the WWSGD plugin and see if that works. check my site to find out.
The plugin with a little twist, thanks to Manuel Meida from www.mangasverdes.com for the plugin variation
You can see it in action here: www.malditoweekend.com/te-las-recomiendo/
Is in spanish, but you will get the picture.
Regards,
Sabo
Oh damn, wrong website credits, the website is http://mangasverdes.es
Thank for this great plugin Tobsn.
Recommending is always good way of advertising. I have some recommend function on my site but I am not sure if someone is using it…
I just got a new domain, and downloaded and installed Wordpress. So far, I’m loving it. Seems very easy. I love this plugin, great “recommendation”. Here are two more I got that I like:
Share This and All in One SEO Pack
I know Java but never learned PHP. It seems easy but does anyone know if there are any ‘how-to’ to help with manipulating the Presentation > Themes .php files to help in adding SEO-type stuff like more header tags and description tags, et.?
Hi all
I have tried all the suggestions posted here so far but I still get this error. I am running wordpress 2.1.2 and php 4.4.6. Can anyone advise on how I can resolve this? It’s a really cool plugin and would love to get it working. Thanks!
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/ethantan/public_html/weblog/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 94
Warning: array_search() [function.array-search]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/ethantan/public_html/weblog/wp-content/plugins/recommendit.php on line 52
Just an update, I have resolved this issue. And it’s easier than I thought.
I asked a friend who got it to work to send me his index.php file and I realised that we got slightly different files. So the simple solution to those of you who have this problem, place the code needed in step 3 inside your themes header.php file instead. It solved my problem
I am implementing this on my new blog www.whatsimplyworks.com sometime today.
thanks for the nice feedback and sorry about the errors… i didnt do any error testing etc. i mean its just a small plugin… nothing special… nothing big… if you have any problems let me know
oh and i’ll have a look in this array_search() problem… prob just because of a empty array if you have not yet recommended anything…
- seo-blackhat.com
hey,
any fix for the array problem yet?
it would be really cool if i could get it to work on my site…
ok, i found a solution. anyway, thx for the plugin
Thanks for the plugin, I’ve downloaded it and will give it a try later on.
i’ve just downloaded the plugin and will give it a go on m y blog.. thanks a bunch!
Great plugin, now I just have to hope my readers have the sense to make decent recommendations!
Nice script. But where are the lists of recommended resources?
The more I read your blog the more I get the feeling that I will be visiting quite often.