Those that follow me on twitter will know that I’ve haven’t been well this week so James has been nice enough to help out by writing this post so all I have to do is add screenshots and extra tips.
It’s Christmas at Edublogs and, in the spirit of the season, Edublogs Supporters will find themselves with a few extra treats wrapped up under the tree.
Specifically there are four new plugins which may well prove popular, just head over to your ‘Plugins’ menu to check them out.
Threaded Comments
First up there’s Threaded Comments, a plugin that does exactly what it says – adds threaded comments to your blog. Why not jump over here and have a play with them, not bad huh!
Below is a screenshot from a threaded comment on yesterday’s post. Threaded comments means you can reply to specific comments = cool!
I’ve switched on threaded comments on The Edublogger so feel free to test them out.
Twitter Tools
Then, there’s the return of Twitter Tools – an immensely powerful Twitter integration plugin that allows you to tweet from your blog and blog from your tweet! If you’re a Twitter fan, it’s got the lot.
Your twitter tool options are:
- Send a tweet to your twitter network whenever you write a blog post
- Create a blog post from a tweet
- Displays your tweets on your blog and post tweets from your blog
However I wouldn’t recommend having both a) Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog? and b) Create a blog post from each of your tweets? set to Yes. If you choose this combination it grabs each tweet and creates separate blog post for each tweet then send a tweet to your twitter network to tell them you’ve created a blog post. I managed to spam my twitter network with 20 instantaneous tweets and was sent to the twitter penalty box.
I suggest you stick to “Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog?” as shown in the screenshot below. You can edit your Twitter Tool options using Settings > Twitter Tools.
To display tweets on your blog and be able to send tweets from your blog you’ll need to add the Twitter widget to your sidebar (Design > Widgets). If you want to add the Twitters widget you will first need to activate your Widget Pack plugin.
If you look at my left sidebar you will see these widgets how these widgets work.
Greet Box
And, in case you happen to also be a Digg/Google/Netvibes/Delicious/StumbleUpon/etc. etc. etc. fan – the new plugin ‘Greet Box’ will allow you to display specific (and rather spiffy) messages to visitors to your site coming from those sources… for example, you could invite a new visitor to subscribe to your RSS feed… or a Digg visitor to Digg your site.
What happens is when a person clicks on a link to one of your posts from any of the services listed they will see a greet box displayed.
You can alter the messages in the Greet boxes and choose whether they are displayed above or below your posts by going to Settings > Greet Box.
Snow
Oh, and of course, it being the season for it, there’s also Snow… yep, you want a gentle fall of the seasonal white stuff on your blog, then turn this on and your Xmas wish will be granted!
Check out Local District 4 Instructional Technology News blog to see what snow falling down through your blog header looks like!
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