Category Archives: Plugins

It’s great to use your blogroll inside of Wordpress.  They have a great system setup where you can use categories, XFN attributes and so much more.  The only problem is when you actually want to use the dumb thing.  If you want to utilize your links, you are usually restricted to a sidebar widget.  And if you have large amounts of links, it quickly becomes quite the cumbersome task.

Sure you can utilize a theme that has a linking structure set up.  But now you are limited to only a few links.  Sure, you could go in and create your own theme file, but if you don’t know how to do that, you are screwed.  Enter Blogroll In Posts.

Blogroll in Posts is my new Wordpress plugin that easily allows you to add your blogroll into any post or page you want.  You can separate by categories, customize the style, header, and much more.

Head on over and give it a shot.  Thanks!

http://www.coolryan.com/plugins/blogroll-in-posts/

Now available on Wordpress.org!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blogroll-in-posts/

Now in order to keep track of updates, bug fixes, and more, I have added Cool Ryan Easy Popups to the Wordpress.org Plugins Repository.  Now you can track progress, see updates, and more from WordPress.

You can find it here.

Talk soon!

The latest plugin I have written is named after the greek god Chronos.  Chronos is the personification of time.  His name in modern Greek translates to the word “year” and he is even depicted in Greek art as a great man turning the Zodiac wheel.

Easy Countdown Timer is meant to give you control over your timers.  Many plugins just let you countdown to a certain day.  You input day, month, and year and that’s it.  But time isn’t something that is so static.  Many times you want recurring dates, repeating timers, and continual countdowns.  The other plugins simply won’t let you do that.  So you must go in and continually change this.  That is a lot of work that no one wants to do.

Just for a little fun, I have created a quick plugin called Blackbeard Your Blog.  It basically turns your blog content into pirate speak.  Why?  Because it’s fun, that’s why.  Not everything has to be work all the time last time I checked.  It is these little fun things that makes doing this kind of work so great.

So hop on over and get it.  And enjoy!

Blackbeard Your Blog

Edit: Yarr Har!!

It always seems that when it comes to plugins inside of WordPress, one thing always reigns true:

No TinyMCE!

TinyMCE as you know it is the visual text editor you use when you make posts and pages inside of Wordpress.  It is used so you don’t have to have any HTML knowledge to style your articles.

When it comes to plugins, they always leave out this feature.  So WordPress basically goes through all this trouble to make sure you have a smooth writing experience, and once you get to a plugin, you get totally screwed.  Bummer.

One of the reasons for this is the fact that is the complexity of implementing it into your plugin.  This doesn’t make for an easy process.  I made sure that no matter how difficult, I wanted it in my plugin.  I wanted it in there because I wanted to make this plugin as simple to use as possible.

Next is the fact that some plugins will utilize coding as part of the user input.  Basically that means you have to put in some code on your side for it to work properly.  A lot of times this translates into things like Adsense Code, tracking code, opt-in form code.  And when you have to put those into a Visual Text Editor, (like WordPress), the editor usually breaks up the code.  It is such as hassle.

I have addressed that as well, by making an entirely separate area for your code.  That way you don’t have to worry about meshing your styles and your code together.  Keep them separate so you don’t run into any trouble.

And if that weren’t enough, I made sure that your visual editor still had the HTML toggle, in case you wanted to turn it off for any reason.

Right now Easy Popups is available now free during the Launch, so hop on over and get it now!

Click Here To Get It Right Now!

There you are.

Reading your favorite blog.  Getting in the latest article that the blogger has written.  Suddenly, from out of the left, (right bottom, or top) comes sliding in a popup.

No biggie. You read what it has to say.  You are not interested, so you click close and continue reading.  All is well with the world.

You click to the next page in the article.  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there is comes again.  The SAME popup.  Yup.  Once again, you have to wait for the animation to finish, then click close again.  Patience isn’t something in abundance on the Internet.  You are already annoyed.

You finish reading your article.  You see a related post and decide to take a look.  The page loads and then…

You see where I am going here.  If you have a popup plugin installed, good for you.  But if you pester your reader over and over again with it on every page, they aren’t going to open up their wallets just because you beat them over the head with it.  They are just going to leave.

You need to set a delay in the amount of time between views before you show them your popup again.

Cool Ryan Easy Popups does just that.  You can set the amount of time in between views.  If you get a lot of return visitors to your blog, (check your logs) you will want to adjust this accordingly.  Don’t harass your visitors.  Reward them!

Right now, Cool Ryan Easy Popups is in Pre-Launch, now live! so head on over and grab it to try it out!  On launch day, if you signed up, you will get a special discount on your purchase!

Edit: It is now free, so go download it right now!

Click here to go to Easy Popups Now!

The first version of Cool Ryan Easy Popups will be named “Isis” after the Greek goddess.

Why Isis?

Isis was the Greek (or Egyptian, depending on what you read) goddess of simplicity, among other things. She was coined to be “from what all beginnings rose.”

What I wanted to do with Easy Popups was focus on simplicity.

I noticed that with all the other popup plugins and popup software in general, it was a very cumbersome and technical challenge to setup and implement.  From my short time as a programmer in the IM world I have definitely learned this: ” The more complicated you make it, the worse off you are.”

So, I took a look at what all the popup plugins did.  And I then took a look at what people actually used. The difference was pretty big.

I have done some integrations for clients with popup software on their blogs, and I saw that even though there were a thousand features inside each of these plugins, I noticed that a lot of it wasn’t even what my clients wanted.