Comments on: Released WP Greet Box Version 4.0

By: Jauhari

Jauhari — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:02:24 +0000

Interesting idea

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:55:47 +0000

I’m glad to hear that! Please remember to write about it or spread the word if you can!

Too many is a loosely used term . I would say that if you have thousands of referrers then the greet box display will definitely show up slower. But 30, 40 or so shouldn’t give you any performance issues.

By: Study Babes

Study Babes — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:55:53 +0000

Thanks, works perfectly now. Check it out

By the way, would having “too many” custom referrers slow it down at all?

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:37:03 +0000

@Study Babes
I’ve released version 4.1.1 that should resolve the adding new custom messages issue. I’ve also written a test plan to run through for each release so I shouldn’t have these many bugs in the future. Thanks for trying it out!

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:42:57 +0000

@MrsDealFinder
I think this is a feature/flaw in the WordPress plugins upgrade system (I can’t do much about that). You can try placing your images outside of the plugins/wp-greet-box directory and use the new images URLs when you specify your custom greeting messages.

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:36:48 +0000

@James
It should work if you place into any of your theme files (I like to place it in header.php). It’s quite odd. I visited your site, did “View Source” and did not find anything that says “wp-greet-box”. Did you remove it from your site?

By: MrsDealFinder

MrsDealFinder — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:18:11 +0000

Love your plugin, but when use WP upgrade automatically to upgrade to a new version it deletes my custom images. It’s not that big of a deal since I keep a copy of them but I thought it might be something to note. Not sure if it is easily fixed or not. Thanks!

By: Lee Robertson

Lee Robertson — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:43:59 +0000

Nice updates! I like new admin interface. Makes it quick to see what is activated and what is not. Keep up the great work!

By: Study Babes

Study Babes — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:56:34 +0000

Works now. But when I try to add new referrers it just bugs up and doesn’t do anything.

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:10:53 +0000

@Study Babes
Can you please try version 4.1? This should fix your issue along with a security loop-hole in version 4.0.x.

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:24:15 +0000

Great idea. Thanks Andrew.

By: Study Babes

Study Babes — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:20:00 +0000

I uploaded the files and activated it, went to the settings but when I try to delete or deactivate certain greetings it says:

Error:[object SMLHttpRequest]

and it doesn’t do it.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:43:27 +0000

Thaya,

I mean just wrapping a standard apply_filters call around it so that another plugin author (or even just a writer) could use it to make more dynamic messages. ie

return apply_filters(‘wp-greet-box-message’ , $message , $referrer);

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:33:30 +0000

@Andrew
That was an incredibly fast response. Thank you so much for your review, tips, and pointers! I haven’t checked out how my plugin fairs in WP 2.7 myself, but I will now. You just gave me a really nice/interesting feature list to help me polish the plugin. I will work hard to implement them.

Question:

I also think it would be good to include a filter for the message so that a plugin can filter what shows up in the box based on the referrer.

Are you talking about providing a filter for a 3rd party plugin? I’m not sure what you mean by filter here.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:24:30 +0000

Hi Thaya,

I just downloaded your plugin in 2.7 to give it a test and I like it. I’m thinking now about how I can use it to do other things.

I have a couple of points for you.

Firstly, it would be a good idea to include transparent PNG versions of the icons. My site is white so no probs there but the green active list in admin shows the white border and the 2.7 style is so slick that it looks out of place.

One thing I think it would be really interesting to do is to include a link to an automatically generated post, possibly the most commented on post of the day / month, the most visited, or perhaps just a chosen favourite. I think that might be a nice touch.

I don’t think it needs any more default choices. You have the main ones, but perhaps some of the other google domains instead of just google.com?

Finally, I think there is a lot of scope to do things with the search criteria if they came from a search engine. A link to the search page would be the most basic but perhaps an option to expand the box to view all the search results for that blog. There might also be some interesting possibilities if any of the search terms match tags or categories.

You may also be able to think of other ways to link in with the APIs of various services, or any referrer information they send beyond the base URL. I also think it would be good, if you haven’t already done it (I didn’t look at the code) to include a filter for the message so that a plugin can filter what shows up in the box based on the referrer.

Lots of ideas for you to consider, but I do like the plugin as is.

By: James

James — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:33:23 +0000

Thaya – thanks for a great plug-in! Now, if I could just get it to work. I read and re-read your documentation. I inserted where I wanted my message to appear, then Google’d my website: nothing happened.

Into which Theme file should this expression be inserted and where? I’ve tried Header and Page Template with no luck.

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:29:54 +0000

@Study Babes,
You can definitely do that with WP Greet Box. You just have to place the where ever you want it to show up in your theme.

By: Study Babes

Study Babes — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:21:31 +0000

Hey, the thing I didn’t like about Referrer Detector is you have to show the greeting in EVERY post, whereas I wanted it to only show one time, between the header and the actual content (so between my header banner and the title of the first post). Can WP Greet Box do that?