Crenk » plugins http://crenk.com Web Apps, Mobile Apps and Reviews Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:53:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Top 5 Plugins for Google Chrome http://crenk.com/top-5-plugins-for-chrome/ http://crenk.com/top-5-plugins-for-chrome/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:43:56 +0000 Luis Sandoval http://crenk.com/?p=8078 For those of us that are exploring browser options, there’s a lot out there to choose from. With all the pros and cons, the plugins that Firefox

Google Chrome can offer a unique browsing experience.

Top 5 Google Chrome plugins.

features makes it hard to break away. We’ve become so accustomed to customizing our experiences in Firefox that when we try other browsers we naturally try to do things that we did in Firefox. Obviously we’re quick to realize that we’re in another browser, and not the Firefox we remember, and naturally we quickly close out and go back to the browser we’re so familiar with.

Now with Chrome on the scene there are noticeable speed differences which make Chrome a more appealing browser in terms of search, but can we mimic the same functionality. The answer is yes and no. Yes in that there are plugins for Chrome that are useful, but also no because these plugins are slowly making their way to users.

But if you’re on Chrome and loving the experience like I am, then here are five plugins that will get you started on the right foot.

AdBlock

The familiar plugin is just as powerful as it is on Firefox. Block unecessary pop-ups, be warned if something wants to load on your page and never worry about surfing the net again. It takes a little doing, but you can get instructions on how to get those ads blocked here.

GreaseMetal

If you’ve installed Grease Monkey on your Firefox browser you know just how useful those little scripts can be in customizing your overall experience. Well Chrome users can now integrate this functionality very easily by just following these easy steps.

Download YouTube Videos

Last night the team at Crenk gathered around to share some of the top video downloaders for Firefox, so it was a natural that one of the plugins today would be a natural fit for Chrome. To gain the same experience of capturing your favorite videos, be sure to install this Chrome video download plugin and give it a try. Some code customization is required.

Bookmarking Plugins

If you’re looking to bookmark your findings on Digg, StumbleUpon or Delicious straight from your browser, then be sure to take a look at the plugins and how you can once again make them a vital part of your search experience.

Twitter Plugin

A Twitter plugin is probably one of the most requested additions to the browser. Until recently there were few options, but now Chrome can boast it’s own Twitter plugin to allow you to update and catch up on updates without leaving your browser window.

So these are some of the most highly requested plugins. It’s not necessarily as easy as with Firefox, as some customization is required, but for those of us savvy enough to experiment with our browsers, the end goal could be big payoffs!

]]> http://crenk.com/top-5-plugins-for-chrome/feed/ 1 Top 4 Video Downloaders for FireFox http://crenk.com/top-4-video-downloaders-for-firefox/ http://crenk.com/top-4-video-downloaders-for-firefox/#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:54:39 +0000 Luis Sandoval http://crenk.com/?p=8075 Firefox is home to many browser plugins.

Firefox is home to many browser plugins.

Firefox plugins are extremely useful. I’ve made the switch to Google Chrome as an experiment to see if I can live without the plugins, but I find myself opening up a second browser from time to time because the plugins are just so useful. I for one love capturing video from sites for a variety of reasons. It’s not always easy, especially if it’s a Flash embed, you’ll more than likely end up having to remember the URL or bookmark it in order to come back to it.

Well for those of you who have not been made aware of some of Firefox’s handy plugins to pull videos from the sites you visit, Crenk is sharing the top four plugins we think you’ll want to use in 2010 to get the videos you need.

Flashgot

This is the mother load in terms of what you can capture on sites. Not only can you capture videos from the site, but you’ll also get photos, and audio files. It’s not always the most user friendly plugin out there, but when you need to mass download content from a site, this plugin is hard to beat. I include it only because it’s so versatile, but the rest are going to be straight video downloaders.

Ant.com Video Downloader

This unique downloader is one that I just plugged into my browser last week. What I like about it is that I’ve yet to come across a site it can’t strip the video from. I surf a lot of sites and not everything is posted on YouTube so we’re not sharing only YouTube plugins only because we figure our audience wants something a little more diverse. Ant.com definitely falls into the diverse category, not only offering you the ability to download but also the ability to instantly watch what you download in their built in video player. It’s a nice way to make sure you got what you wanted without having to dig into the folders on your system.

Flash Video Downloader

This no nonsense downloader claims to be able to download from 200+ sites. While other plugins simply mention that it’s rare when their plugin does not download videos, at least this one gives you a good idea of how many sites it’s been put up against. Most of us, being creatures of habit, will explore the same video sites over and over again, so once we know it works on those particular sites, we’re golden. The plugin pulls from sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Break, and more, but it also has the power to pull mp3’s, mp4’s, and flash games.

Download Flash and Video

A nice combo in this plugin. You get the ability to capture movies, but also capture that Flash video that was once unattainable due to the format. This particular plugin takes out the complexities by making it easy as one click. With one click you’re downloading content from popular video sites, but you also have the ability to capture games, much like the Flash Video Downloader above.

]]> http://crenk.com/top-4-video-downloaders-for-firefox/feed/ 1 MobilePress: Wordpress Plugin To Turn Your Blog Mobile Compatible http://crenk.com/mobilepress-wordpress-plugin-to-turn-your-blog-mobile-compatible/ http://crenk.com/mobilepress-wordpress-plugin-to-turn-your-blog-mobile-compatible/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:35:15 +0000 Steven Finch http://crenk.com/?p=2255 mobile-pressMobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes. The plugin also allows specific themes for specific devices / mobile browsers, such as iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows CE Mobile and other generic handset browsers.

The plugin also allows WordPress theme developers to create custom mobile themes for WordPress blogs using the MobilePress plugin. Therefore, theme designers can create specific iPhone themes or generic themes.

MobilePress also features Mobile SEO which detects Google and Yahoo mobile search bots. These mobile search bots will see the mobile version of you blog which allows your blog to optimized and indexed on Google and Yahoo mobile search.

]]> http://crenk.com/mobilepress-wordpress-plugin-to-turn-your-blog-mobile-compatible/feed/ 5 To Do List Plugins for Wordpress http://crenk.com/to-do-list-plugins-for-wordpress/ http://crenk.com/to-do-list-plugins-for-wordpress/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:00:47 +0000 Steven Finch http://crenk.com/?p=2165 There are so many sites out there that are based on Wordpress and have numerous writers, including Crenk. Here at Crenk we sometimes find it hard to keep track about what sites to write about and who is writing about these sites. Previously we used Our To Do List Wordpress Plugin to keep track of these tasks, but since Wordpress 2.7 launched we have had numerous issues with this software and we are interested to find out if there is an alternative.

With the Our To Do List Plugin we are currently finding that we can add new tasks but when it comes to removing or editing these tasks it just does work.

Are there alternatives to the Our To Do List Plugin?

]]> http://crenk.com/to-do-list-plugins-for-wordpress/feed/ 3 EmbedIt WordPress Plugin Review http://crenk.com/embedit-wordpress-plugin-review/ http://crenk.com/embedit-wordpress-plugin-review/#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:57:05 +0000 Mike Panic http://crenk.com/?p=1220 I adore WordPress, so much so that I use it to design websites that don’t even require a blog, just solely based on the CMS, ease of installation and abundant supply of options and plugins available for it. With all that being said, now and again I run into an issue with some stupid coding somewhere along the lines that won’t let me do exactly what I want.  Today I ran into a problem implementing a plugin that would allow me to place a Google Maps map onto a client’s website.  Google is nice enough to give the code out to hard code their maps into any site, but it requires the iframe tag which does not play nicely in WordPress.

After 10 minutes of searching the web and three more failed map plugins, it dawned on me that this was really stupid, I should be able to use whatever HTML code I want in WordPress, including the iframe tag.  This is how I found the EmbedIt Plugin.  According to their site, EmbedIt is a,

simple plugin that allows you to embed any html code in a post, deciding precisely where to embed it, allowing you freedom of coding your html without being annoyed by the wysiwyg editor.

  • embed Youtube videos into wordpress
  • embed ustream into wordpress
  • embed a custom Google Map into wordpress
  • embed whatever html code into wordpress
  • embed specific Adsense code into wordpress posts deciding WHERE it should go inside an article

The appeal to this plugin is that it will allow anyone to use any code they want without a funky plugin or breaking the framework in their WordPress theme.  EmbedIt utilizes the custom field in WordPress and is fully documented with screenshots on the official page.

My only complaint about this plugin is that you must submit a valid email address which grants the publisher of this plugin to send you an email now and again about new WP plugins he is working on.  I got the email instantly which has the link to download, but I still don’t like it.  I fully understand people take time to create these free plugins and never really get a lot of credit, but I think he’d be better off allowing free downloads and putting a Paypal donate button on his page instead of collecting email addresses.

]]> http://crenk.com/embedit-wordpress-plugin-review/feed/ 2 What Are The Best Plugins for Wordpress? Here At My Top 20 http://crenk.com/what-are-the-best-plugins-for-wordpress-here-at-my-top-20/ http://crenk.com/what-are-the-best-plugins-for-wordpress-here-at-my-top-20/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:41:27 +0000 Steven Finch http://crenk.com/?p=826 Wordpress has to be one of the most popular if not the most popular blogging software in the world today. Due to its popularity there are thousands of developers all over the world who are building plugins to add to the platform. Thus, I thought I would put together a short list of my favourite plugins, so here is my top 20.

  1. Akismet
    The must have spam catcher. It’s already present in your default wordpress installation, if you haven’t activated it, please do it before those spams accumulate.
  2. All in one SEO pack
    (Inactive)This is an great plugin that will help you manage the meta tags for articles enabling them with unique meta and titles.I use an even better plugin now (Headspace2), which is AllinSEO x 10 times. So this one is inactive. You may want to use it if you are looking for a hassle free and easy meta tag management.
  3. Feed copyrighter plugin
    This one is reposible for throwing up those copyright statement at the end of the feeds in RSS readers. It is one way of fighting the scrappers, not sure how effective it is, but it is indeed one weapon we hve right now.Bad thing – The credit link will appear on all RSS footers.
  4. Better comments manager
    This is one of the best plugins I’ve always cherished using. It enables easy management of comments, lets you reply to them easily, mass edit/approve them. And yes, this is from Keith and team. His plugins have exceptional quality after all.
  5. Comment Luv
    This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing – To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
  6. Duplicate sidebar widgets
    This plugin helps you to duplicate the widgets modules to drag and drop on the sidebar. Ex: If you want two instances of the random posts widget, this one replicates it.
  7. Enhanced Contact form
    This plugin is responsible for all those contact forms appearing in the pages.
  8. Feed footer
    Adds anything in HTML to feeds appearing in RSS reader. 10 spots available, suitable for advertising and throwing up messages.
  9. Google AdWrap
    You know about Googles section targeting right?This plugin adds the “sections” to be targeted to comments and content area thereby the ads that appear on Google AdSense will be heavily contextual to the information in these sections.Bad thing – You can’t manually add te google_ad_section code to any other place on the blog.
  10. Google XML sitemaps
    Must have for all blogs. Generates an XML sitemap making the contents visible for search spiders.Bad thing – If you enable the robots.txt rewriting, everything you set manually on robots.txt is rewritten.
  11. HeadSpace2
    The best meta tag management plugin I’ve seen in the recent times. No words to describe – killer plugin!Bad thing – Initially, difficult to understand how it functions and yo use.
  12. Homepage Excerpts
    Adds a “more” link cutting posts on the main homepage within certain limit of characters. Good for curbing duplicate content on wordpress.
  13. I love social bookmarking
    (Inactive)Great plugin that displays a pull down menu for social bookmarking on all the top social media websites.Bad thing – Serious alignment issues.
  14. KB Linker
    Great plugin to increase the number of links within your site. It enables you to select a keyword for which you can set a link. Where ever this keyword appears, it would make it a link.Bad thing – It injects the link code even to links and in between html codes ! And you get html errors sometimes.
  15. Random posts widget
    Throws up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available.
  16. Search Meter
    Gives me access from the dashboard to search phrases on DailySEOblog search box. And also shows if the person who searched the phrase got the info he wanted or not. Good plugin to get an idea of topics to blog.
  17. SEO for Wordpress
    A little outdated plugin, it says is reduces instances of duplicate content. But it doesn’t show us how and where. Otherwise a good concept.
  18. Shylock AdSense
    The killer plugin that allows you to inject adsense codes anywhere on the post, and decide which ads to go where.
  19. Ultimate Google Analytics
    Great plugin that will manage Google Analytics code injection and tracking a breeze. You could very well do it manually, but this one is a laymans friend.
  20. WP- Stats
    Displays the wordpress blog stats from the dashboard. A better stats if you wat uptodate results. Analytics is a day and some hours late.
]]> http://crenk.com/what-are-the-best-plugins-for-wordpress-here-at-my-top-20/feed/ 13 Registered Users Only – WordPress Plugin http://crenk.com/registered-users-only-%e2%80%93-wordpress-plugin/ http://crenk.com/registered-users-only-%e2%80%93-wordpress-plugin/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:26:01 +0000 Mike Panic http://crenk.com/?p=768 A friend with a local business came to me with a somewhat unique request.  He wanted to setup a blog that only his employees and certain other people had access to for sharing information, ideas and other business concepts.  I suggested Google Apps for this, but he said not everyone that would be using this would be as tech savvy to fully grasp how that works and he needed more than just a text editor and a spreadsheet.

I set off to search for a plugin that would allow me to accomplish the goal of restricting access to the entire blog, forcing a registration.  After a few minutes I ended up on Viper007Bond’s site.  I’ve used his plugins before, so I knew they’d be top quality.  He wrote a custom plugin called Registered Users Only which, will redirect all users who aren’t logged in to the login form where they are shown a user-friendly message.

Perfect!  Upload the .php to the /plugin directory on your server, activate it and tick one box in the Options screen, you are done.  As admin to the blog, you create user accounts for those people you wish to give access to.  Since it uses the standard WordPress login screen and user database, you can simply add them as a Subscriber and once logged in, can see the entire site.

Total installation time is less than two minutes!

While the idea of putting a blog online is usually done so that someone will read it, this certain situation started to make a lot more sense to me.  WordPress offers so much more than just a blog, it’s turning into a CMS, and a tool to allow, in this case, his business to expand and grow internally.  The more I thought about it the more I realized that a private blog has many other uses to it.

Parents who want to setup a blog for their children, either from day 1 in their life or as they enter the tween stage probably won’t to protect who sees photos of their kids and what activities they do.

This plugin restricts ALL pages of the site, that is the only option.   This fits the goals of my friend and I think many other people.  Be aware, this does not protect your RSS feeds.  I would suggest deleting all RSS feeds from your WordPress install to fully protect your blog, if that is your goal.

Download from WordPress.org

]]> http://crenk.com/registered-users-only-%e2%80%93-wordpress-plugin/feed/ 0 Definitive SEO Wordpress Guide That Shows Plugins and Techniques http://crenk.com/definitive-seo-wordpress-guide-that-shows-plugins-and-techniques/ http://crenk.com/definitive-seo-wordpress-guide-that-shows-plugins-and-techniques/#comments Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:45:45 +0000 Steven Finch http://crenk.com/?p=625

Joost de Valk, a Wordpress and SEO specialist has written a basic beginner’s guide to Wordpress SEO which has to be one the best articles I have ever seen. You can find a variety of different SEO technique and it covers everything from basic technical optimisation to off site blog SEO. Make sure you head over to the site and check it out, I have already added some of the suggestion onto Crenk.

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