WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin

Thaya Kareeson

Popularity: 68%

Updated: Aug 14, 2008

Today I would like to announce the release of “WP Greet Box” WordPress Plugin. A plugin that can help you increase your blog exposure and build loyal readership.

Description

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they
will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Professional bloggers know that having these targeted suggestions on their blog increases their blog exposure and loyal readership. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins so you do not have to sacrifice speed.

Currently the following referrers are supported, but you can easily create your own if your favorite referrer is not on the list!

del.icio.us
digg.com
google.com
yahoo.com
stumbleupon.com
technorati.com
twitter.com

Upcoming Features

Referral URL exclusion rules
“noscript” support for users with javascript disabled
Track visitor count
Different levels of visitor tracking (site wide, per referral URL, per page)
Support for GoogleReader, FriendFeed
??? Please submit ideas!

As always, please feel free to post any bugs, comments, questions, and suggestions in the comments section!

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3.4 (-1 people)

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Posted in WordPress Plugins | July 23, 2008

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38 Responses to “WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin”

Brian (Check me out!) commented on July 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Rate this:
2.5
Is there any way you can customize the url’s

e.g. specify other url’s to the ones you have already done

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Rate this:
3.2
@Brian
From the F.A.Q. in readme.txt

How do I add additional greeting messages?
Right now you will have to hack wp-greet-box.php by adding another element in
the arrays in get_default_options() and get_messages() array. That said, I do
not recommend doing it beacuse because I will soon enhance the plugin to let
you add as many greeting messages per referral domain as you want without
hacking the code. Please stay tuned!

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 27th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Rate this:
3.2
Version 2.0 allows you to do this through the WP Greet Box options menu. No more hacking!

[Reply]
Artem Russakovskii (Check me out!) commented on July 24th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Rate this:
3.6 (1 person)
Finally! I think this is a great idea for a plugin and is especially awesome because it’s compatible with wp-supercache. Javascript-powered plugins are the way to go in a cached environment.

Thanks, man, I’ll definitely add this into my blog, together with the Force Preview plugin.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 25th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Rate this:
3.2
@Artem
Thank you for your kind words! Please let me know when you have these plugins integrated to your site so that I can check it out.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!) commented on July 27th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Rate this:
3.2
Released version 2.0 with the following new features:

Added ability for users to add/delete/disable greeting messages.
Added confirmation dialogs for delete and reset function.

Told you it was coming ;).

[Reply]
caschy (Check me out!) commented on July 28th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Rate this:
3.0
Nice Plugin and manual trackback from Germany:
http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/2008/07/28/begre-deine-besucher/

Greets
Carsten

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Rate this:
3.4
@cashy
Thank you for writing about my plugin!

[Reply]
caschy (Check me out!) commented on July 28th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Rate this:
3.0
@Thaya
I’ve added Google-Support for my blog - but the message is also shown in GoogleReader. Any chances to disable this - because i don’t wanna show this message to users who have subscribed my feed.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 28th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Rate this:
3.4
@caschy
I haven’t had the chance to add exception rules to this plugin. I’ll add that to the feature list for the next release (which will probably be soon since this would be an easy fix).

[Reply]
Stefan (Check me out!)
replied on July 29th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Rate this:
2.5
Hi there,

I’m trying to use your plugin after Caschy’s recommendation but I’m not able (no knowledge in PHP and so on) to integrate it into my theme.

If I want to add it below my header, how do I have to integrate this code
"php wp_greetbox()" (sorry, I cannot add it totally correct here, then it wont be shown)

into my theme? I placed it into several positions into my header.php, but no chance to see it… (yes, the plugin is set to active within my backend ).

thanks in advance,
Stefan

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 29th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Rate this:
3.4
@Stefan
Did you place <?php wp_greet_box(); ?> in your code? Make sure you use wp_greet_box() and not wp_greetbox().

[Reply]
Stefan (Check me out!)
replied on July 29th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Rate this:
2.5

Hi Thaya,

yes, I placed

<!– TEST GreetBox –>
<?php wp_greet_box() ?>
<!– Ende GreetBox –>

in it. It should be correct, isn’t it?

Thanks in advance,
Stefan

[Reply]

Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 30th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Rate this:
3.4

@Stefan,
Looks like it should work. Maybe you need a semicolon at the end of wp_greet_box():

<!–- TEST GreetBox -–>
<?php wp_greet_box(); ?>
<!–- Ende GreetBox -–>
Frank Koehntopp (Check me out!) commented on July 30th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Rate this:
3.2
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘&’, expecting T_VARIABLE or ‘$’ in /www/htdocs/w0076451/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/wp-greet-box.php on line 98

Any idea how to get rid of that?

Thanks,
Frank.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 30th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Rate this:
3.4
@Frank Koehntopp
Sounds like you are on PHP4 (right?). PHP4 doesn’t support &$message syntax, but I think you don’t really need the ‘&$’ in this case. Try just removing ‘&’ in ‘&$’ and see if it works for you. I remove this on the next release.

[Reply]
Stefan (Check me out!) commented on July 31st, 2008 at 3:21 am
Rate this:
2.5
No, that doesn’t help - maybe I’m to stupid for it.

Can you give me an example file with this code (it is equal which theme you’re usung).

With kind regards,
Stefan

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on July 31st, 2008 at 9:39 am
Rate this:
3.4
@Stefan
I’ve sent you an email. Let’s discuss it there so we can resolve this issue quickly.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!) commented on August 1st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Rate this:
3.4
Released version 2.1 with the following change:

Fixed PHP4 incompatibility.

[Reply]
danielcreus (Check me out!)
replied on August 6th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Rate this:
2.5
Hi Thaya,

I tried installing the plugin but encountered the same problem as Stefan (PHP4 incompatibility) Where can I download version 2.1?

Thanks

Dan

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 6th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Rate this:
3.5
@danielcreus
Sorry you are had this problem. It turns out that I kind of goofed on the last SVN commit so the WordPress plugins directory did not get updated properly. I have resolved the issue and you can now download the plugin at the official plugins directory.

[Reply]
Barry Flanagan (Check me out!) commented on August 1st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Rate this:
2.5
This plugin is a great idea. It takes the idea of the “What would Seth Godin Do?” plugin to the next logical step, custom greeting by referrer.

Is there any way to have a default greeting for new visitors (referred or not) and a default greeting for non referred visitors? Or, is there a way to make this plugin work with the “What would Sth Godin Do?” plugin? I have that one installed already,and GreetBox doesnt do anything if that was i enabled.

Thanks for the great work!

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 1st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Rate this:
3.4
@Barry Flanagan
Let me look into this. I’m planning to enable cookies support too so it can do what “What would Seth Godin Do?” does plus showing customized greeting messages per referrer. This doesn’t seem hard to do at all, but I’m suffering from a stomach flu right now so development might be delayed till next week.

[Reply]
Barry Flanagan (Check me out!) commented on August 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
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2.5
Thanks. I appreciate your hard work.

[Reply]
Frank (Check me out!) commented on August 6th, 2008 at 11:59 am
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2.5
Seems like version 2.1 is missing the .js in the archive.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 6th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Rate this:
3.5
@Frank
Thank you for noticing. This is intended as wp-greet-box.js is supposed to be automatically generated upon plugin activation and every time you visit WP Greet Box options. Please let me know if you have any issues with it.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!) commented on August 7th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Rate this:
3.5
Released version 3.0 with the following new features:

Added cookies support so we do not keep showing the same message to returning visitors.
Added default message when no referrer match is found.

[Reply]
Sid Savara - Personal Development (Check me out!)
replied on August 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Rate this:
2.5
Thaya -

First thanks for releasing the plugin, it’s awesome!

Unfortunately, I have discovered some incompatibility with the DISQUS javascript plugin, but only in IE7. It works fine in Firefox. SInce I am using DISQUS to power my comments, unfortunately I had to turn off WP-Greetbox,even though it’s one of my favorite plugins. Just wanted to let you know, it’s quite possible it’s not the fault of your plugin but rather DISQUS. I have informed them of the issue as well.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Rate this:
3.5
@Sid
Thank you for your kind words. That is interesting. I will have to try this plugin with DISQUS. It’s my responsibility to try to make it as cross-platform as possible :). I’ll let you know what I find.

[Reply]
Sid Savara - Personal Development (Check me out!) commented on August 14th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Rate this:
3.0
Hi Thaya,

BTW, the day after I made the comment, DISQUS released 2.0 of their plugin. So I installed it, and am first making sure that’s solid. It appears to be.

I am going to try out WP-Greetbox with it again when I get home today, in case they have fixed the issue. Also, here is the thread where I told them of the issue:

http://disqus.disqus.com/ie_issues_with_wordpress_disqus_and_other_plugins_52/

Interesting, other people also have had issues

It appears DISQUS and various other plugins also had issues, so I don’t think the issue is isolated to WP-Greetbox - it’s probably just one of those things where they are doing JS one way, and you (and other plugins) are trying to load another way. Or something - I am not as skilled at JS as you are =)

A feature request also - this may make the plugin more complex, but since we are tracking cookies, would it be possible to show the visitor different things depending on whether they are returning from the same referring domain?

For example, a delicious user visiting who has visited multiple times or something - they may just have it bookmarked.

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Rate this:
3.5
@Sid
Thank you for opening a thread with DISQUS. Hopefully you get this issue resolved. Can you please let me know later if it works out for you or not?

As a side question, how do you like DISQUS? Have you tried SezWho? If so, why do you like DISQUS better?

About the feature request, looks like the feature you are requesting is different levels of tracking visitors (i.e. site level, referrer URL level, page level).

So for sites like del.icio.us you would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the “page level”, which means that if they are visiting from del.icio.us to a page that they have not seen before, then the message will show. But if they are visiting from del.icio.us to a page that they have seen before, then the message will not show.

For sites like google.com, you probably would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the “referrer URL level” (which is what we have right now).

For other visitors, you probably would want the plugin to be tracking visitors at the “site level” (which is what the default greeting message display is doing right now).

Is this correct? If so, it sounds good and do-able for me to include this in the next release.

[Reply]
Sid Savara - Personal Development (Check me out!)
replied on August 14th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Rate this:
3.0
@Thaya

Sure I will try it out tonight and report back by this weekend on the DISQUS issue! I have been using “What Would Seth Godin Do” as a replacement, but I think your plugin is superior - more granularity, and Javascript checking versus server side comparison.

I have not tried SezWho, is that what you are using? I basically use DISQUS because a few blogs I read were using it, and it allows you to reply via email to any new comment or replies, and that becomes a blog comment (which I thought would be great, since I always have my blackberry). That said, SezWho may have the same functionality.

I think that what you and I are talking about are two slightly different features. I think your way would be MUCH more powerful (and might be a little scary for users “I know you like my blog, and you’ve read these 5 pages, but not this 6th one, Welcome! MWAHAHAHA”. What I was suggesting was just a simple counter like “what would seth godin do” where it shows the message the first 5 times, and then stops harassing them =).

I’m sure whatever you put into the plugin will be excellent though - it’s super polished. I’ll probably write a review of it on my blog at some point. Or maybe I should keep it a secret for myself

[Reply]
Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 14th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Rate this:
3.5
@Sid
As far as I know, SezWho doesn’t have that functionality. I’ve heard from others that SezWho is pretty lightweight and it doesn’t take over your comments like DISQUS so that’s why I chose it. I do like the email comment reply feature of DISQUS, but I believe there is already a plugin that does this (or a feature that is coming in WP 2.7).

I guess it boils down to which one people use the most. If more people are using DISQUS then I might switch over.

About the WP Greet Box plugin. It sounds like if I want to implement the feature I described, I will need to hide the feature by default, and display it when “advanced options” is enabled. Nevertheless, I saw WWSGD’s feature of counting the number of visits, but I didn’t really like it much in the beginning. I like WP Greet Box’s feature that keeps track of the visitor’s last visit more, but it sounds like you’ve found a good use case for this for bookmarking sites like del.icio.us.

I will definitely add this to the features list for next release.

[Reply]
Sid Savara - Personal Development (Check me out!)
replied on August 14th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Rate this:
3.0

I actually had a bit of the opposite train of thought regarding the “taking over your comments.” It is true, DISQUS has them all on their servers. The new version (2.0) syncs it with both your blog and their servers, however I liked the idea of being able to go to DISQUS.com and seeing all my comments I had made EVERYWHERE and also being able to just reply in thread. That way I don’t have to check every blog I comment on.

For example (and this is an example, not trying to convince you) if you used DISQUS, I always have my dashboard open. I would be able to see you replying to my comments there, and reply there. Or, if I am somewhere away from a computer, I can reply via email, even though it’s your blog and not mine, because it’s all DISQUS powered. Right now, I have to keep coming back here to comment.

My hope is that someday many blogs will be disqus powered, and I won’t have to keep returning to the webpage to reply - just reply from my blackberry, or from the dashboard. I also like the fact that anyone can view my profile on disqus and see wherever I have commented (though I am not really taking advantage of that feature much, since few blogs so far are DISQUS powered relative to how many I read)

================
Topic switch!

I agree with making any new features “advanced options” - don’t want to make the plugin TOO complicated. Other users may be intimidated by it otherwise!

Another feature request - Is there a way to also have a default “noscript” type thing? Like if someone has JS turned off, I want to always show them a “welcome to my blog, please subscribe!” message. Right now (I believe) the “default” message only shows if it does a cookie check in JS.

I know some PHP, JS, etc - if you would like to give me access to it (you would own everything - it’s your plugin) I would be happy to work with you on it. I know I can edit the PHP right now, but if you have a source control system somewhere we could use that - or I can just edit and email you changes. So far I have not done anything to it.

[Reply]

Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!)
replied on August 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Rate this:
3.5

@Sid
Looks like SezWho does have some of these features that DISQUS has, but I just do not know how to utilize them myself. I have to check this out and compare it to DISQUS

===

The default “noscript” thing is also a good idea and is worth adding.

I don’t have source control setup anywhere outside of the official WordPress plugins SVN repository and unfortunately I don’t think the WordPress guys grant multi-user checkins to their database. Regardless, please feel free to make any modifications you like and send them to me so I can integrate it and credit you properly.
Sid Savara - Personal Development (Check me out!) commented on August 14th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Rate this:
3.0
Ahhh! Comment preview ate my comment!

So basically what I said was that DISQUS and SezWho are pretty similar I guess - one big difference is blogs I read already had DISQUS, so I went with them. Also, DISQUS has upmod/downmod versus ratings, and I am not sure which is better/worse.

Cool, if I make any changes I will send them to you and let you know =). I probably won’t get to anything for quite a while as I’m working on my content for my blog and have a hectic schedule for the next few weeks, but this is my favorite new plugin!

[Reply]

Thaya Kareeson (Check me out!<

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