My problem was that on another one of my blogs I have a download section of selected ebooks for my subscribers to download. I had to manually email the subscribers the password to access the downloads every time someone subscribed.

After going through the subscription process myself, it finally dawned on me that I could change the welcome message displayed after the subscriber verified their email address.

Here is how I did it

The existing displayed message is:
You have successfully subscribed!

Save a copy of the plugin on your computer so if you mess up, you can delete the mess and upload a good copy, at least copy the code into a notepad file and save it.

Deactivate the plugin then go to Plugins Editor.
Select Subscribe2 in the list.
In Firefox open Edit – Find
Type in: “subscribed!” (without quotes)
You will see a line like this:

$this->added = "<p>" . __('You have successfully subscribed!','subscribe2') . "</p>";

Right after the subscribed! but before the ‘ is where we will add our message.

 Add a double line break after the subscribed!<br /><br />
Thank you for subscribing to MyBlogName <br /><br />

You can access your downloads by clicking on the PageName<br/>
and entering the password: xxxxxx<br />
Please save it in a safe place.<br /><br />

Enjoy your download of ______! '

You can add whatever you like, but no paragraph tags. I did not try a link since the link to the page I am pointing them too is right above the message, nor did Otry an image. Do not use words like it’s, don’t or anything with an apostrophe in it. That will end the code at that point.

The problem with doing this, is that when the plugin is updated, you would have to make the change every time.

Let me know how it goes!

Subscribe2 plugin homepage

Are you tired of logging in to your WordPress blog several times a day just to moderate comments?

Daniel Dura has created a desktop application based on Adobe Air that allows you to approve, delete or spam comments right from your desktop. Just upload the Moderator plugin into your plugin folder then download Adobe Air and you are set to go.

Here are a few features from the developers website:

• Viewing unmoderated comments
• Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments
• Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client
• Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running
• Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment

WordPress 2.6+ required.

Download the Moderator plugin.

My personal choice is WP Tags to Technorati by David over at Geeky Ramblings. What the plugin does is turn your tags into Technorati links for you without your needing to use special characters in your posts to make tags like previous tag plugins used. It is all done automatically for you.

It does not affect your tags in other ways, you can still have a Tag Cloud on your blog that will link to relevant blog posts on your blog, but you will have the Technorati tags under your posts as well (see below).

A few added features include the ability to edit the wording of ”Technorati Tags” under your posts and as of version 0.7 you can even set the links to open in a new window.

I chose to further edit the php file to make the tags appear within small html tags so the text wasn’t so prominent.

So what good are Tags?

I think of tags as being search keywords for my readers. When one of my readers clicks on a tag (in a tag cloud) they are taken to posts that I have tagged with that keyword. Tags are also keywords I would like to found for on Technorati and in addition Tags help search engines sort information that is better sorted than with just categories alone.

I found a great wordpress plugin that does just that. The Feed-footer-plugin from Blogclout allows you to add footers to all your RSS feeds.

To make this work you will need go to your admin panel options/reading and checkmark the full text in the Syndication section then save options.

I know some of you are saying “I don’t want full text in my RSS, because no one will come to my blog”. Well, if you don’t have full text in your RSS many won’t come to your blog anyway, because they are just using feed readers and seldom visit the actual blogs anyway. With this plugin you can monetize those feeds and you are advertising to them right in their reader!

DO NOT go overboard with your advertising or you will lose readers fast! If you want to use a banner put it on the first feed only then use text ads under the other 9. You can have 10 different ads – one for each feed or copy paste to make all 10 of them the same.

This feed works on displaying your ads right in FeedBurner as well.

You can look at my feed for an example to see what I did.

Note: Old posts aren’t effected so you will need to make 10 new posts before you see all 10 ads. This is my first post after installing the plugin so you will only see one footer ad.

Check it out, he calls it Die Spammers! Die!

Technorati Tags: John Chow, comment spam, wordpress plugin, WP file

Technorati Tags: John Chow, comment spam, wordpress plugin, WP file

I’m using this contact form on another blog (ACandleOfLove.com) I had to modify it a little bit so the fields would be named correctly. It is a lot of code if you need to edit it, but if the fields you need are there already, it works great. You can customize which of the standard fields to use in the ‘options’ section of your blog after you activate it though.

This powerful yet easy-to-install PHP contact form features exceptional accessibility and usability while still providing extensive anti-spam and anti-exploit security features. A marriage of communication and peace-of-mind. By Mike Cherim and Mike Jolley.

Notifies an email list when new entries are posted. By Scott Merrill.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.

Technorati Tags: comment spam, anti-spam, Akismet

This plugin will forward all your feeds to feedburner so you can better track your subscribers.

This version does not require an .htaccess file and is simple to install and use. It works on any platform and is compatible with WordPress 2 and 1.5.

Download it at the link below and follow the simple instructions.

FeedBurner Plugin v2.2

Technorati Tags: RSS, feedburner

Inserts Google Adsense inside your posts where you see fit. Simple to use: Edit the adsense.php file to use your Adsense code instead of mine; Activate the plug-in; Click the “Adsense” button on the quicktags bar to insert the Adsense marker in your posts. Please make sure you read Google’s TOS before using this plugin! By Phil Hord.

Technorati Tags: WordPress Themes, Google Adsense, Adsense

Abbreviate all posts when viewed on multiple post pages. This makes all posts behave as if there is a “more” tag at an appropriate spot inside the content. By Bennett McElwee.

Technorati Tags: Evermore, SEO

Meta Tag Generator creates meta tags for posts and pages, if none are set, the plugin will use a default set, the index page will always show the defaults. By Wil Rushmer.

Technorati Tags: plugin, Meta Tag Generator, meta tags

Allows you to create a list of Technorati tags at the bottom of your post by providing a comma separated list of tags between the [tags] tags. You can use it with any blogging tool/method, not just when posting from WordPress itself (doesn’t use custom fields). Supports multiple words within tags. Also allows in-post tagging of words by enclosing them in [tag] tags. Works with the WYSIWYG editor. By Broobles.

Technorati Tags: Simple tags, Technorati Tags

I’ll be listing in this category my favorite plugins and why you should use them as well.