I’m working on a relatively big update to Viddler’s WordPress plugin and something that doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere is how to test a Dashboard Widget if your plugin supports one.

It is fairly easy to add just a bit of code to make it pretty simple to test your widget. First, rather than only loading your WordPress Admin URL (ie. yoursite.com/wp-admin) you simply prepend the appropriate information to the end of the URL. Like this: yousite.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=viddler&noheader.

Then, somewhere within your plugin’s code, you add something like the following:
function viddler_page() {
if ( isset( $_GET['noheader'] ) )
return viddler_dashboard_content();
}

Obviously viddler_dashboard_content() is the function that I use to build the HTML for the Dashboard Widget. This will return the HTML you’re creating for your WordPress Admin Dashboard Widget sans JavaScript and CSS. But at least you’re able to test your output.

But I think it is time to stop complaining and start helping.  How?   What if we created a list of “well built” applications that use the Twitter API?  By that I mean applications, tools, widgets, etc. that do a good job of not pummeling Twitter’s servers with requests.

The A-list of Twitter apps

I’m not foremost expert on scalability – but I know a well-built application from a bad one.  Any application, widget, or tool that does not use even the simplest form of caching, for example, will not make this list.

I will need your help.  So please comment below with any applications or tools I have not yet linked to, I’ll vet them a little, and add them to the list if it makes the cut.  If you are a developer – please include what you do to help Twitter with your link.

• MW Latest Tweet - by Eric Meyer – A WordPress plugin that shows your latest Twitter status anywhere on your WordPress-powered site.  In order to make sure that I am also helping Twitter, I’ve installed this here on my site.  You can see it on the sidebar of my front page.
• Twitterrific – by The IconFactory – A Mac OS X application that allows you to view your friends timeline and post to Twitter.  Twitterric only requests the Twitter API on a set interval (customizable, and I have mine set to every 15 minutes now).
• Twhirl – by Marco Kaiser and now owned by Seesmic – An Adobe AIR application, which means it runs on both Macintosh and Windows platforms, that lets you follow Twitter, FriendFeed, Pownce, and others.  The highlight of how this application helps Twitter is that it has a requests-per-hour-slider.  I’ve got mine set to 10 (but I only have it check for new statuses every 15 minutes).

Do you have any applications you think should be added to this list?  Why?  Leave them in the comments.  As I update this, I’ll notify people through Twitter, FriendFeed, and Pownce.  ”Follow” me if you dare.

Miscellaneous tips

A few tips and tricks to helping Twitter out, regardless of the tools you choose to use.

 

• Decrease number of requests.  No matter what applications you use, increase the interval (or decrease the number of requests per hour) between requests to Twitter for updates.  The common “side effect” of doing this is actually being more productive.  Give it a try!
• Don’t manually refresh after update. I’ve noticed myself doing this too.  When you send in a new status, don’t manually update.  Chances are it will take a few moments for your latest status to appear in whatever application you are using.  Send in the new status, if there isn’t an error, wait for the next scheduled request. I can’t imagine how many requests this could potential get rid of.

 

But that isn’t all, I can now post to this site using my iPhone (which I’ve tested once so far), using the mobile admin plugin. Although a little slow, even on Wifi, the interface works really well on the iPhone to write up quick mobile notes.

I’m really happy with these two solutions so far. Now I just need to get WordPress to recognize the iPhone’s email attachments (photos) and I’ll be well on my way to bringing it all together.

Update March 20, 2008: After using this mobile interface, I’m finding it way too slow even on Wifi on the iPhone. I’ve now begun searching for a simple, mobile interface that is optimized for working on slower bandwidth connections. Any suggestions?

The first is “related posts”. There are countless related posts plugins out there and all of them work fairly well but since I already use the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for my tagging efforts, and it has a function for related posts, I’m using a slightly tweaked version of that. When WordPress 2.3 is released, and tags are included by default along with a way to import all of my UTW tags, I may need to adjust the way I handle related posts. Until then, these seem to work well enough.

The second was I’ve always wanted to utilized my Ma.gnolia bookmarks better. Bookmarks seem to come and go and rarely are they ever used as a really valueable resource. I think the way I am using them now will add a lot of value to bookmarks that I’ve stored on Ma.gnolia, even if I had saved them there a very long time ago*. What’s more is that I’m adding value to my posts too!

The way I am using my bookmarks is through “related links” which can be found just to the right of the related posts on the bottom of every post on my site. I’m using Ma.gnolia’s API to search my Ma.gnolia account for bookmarks tagged with the same tags as the current post and constructing a list of the latest five of those. I’ll be working on extending this somehow to show every applicable bookmark but I’ve found that five should provide enough of a resource in most cases.

So come to the site, take a look, and let me know what you think. I’ll be releasing this new “Ma.gnolia Related” plugin after I’ve let it run on my site for a little while and I’m able to clean up the code a little. Oh, and it uses an as yet unreleased method argument of Ma.gnolia’s API – so I may need to wait until the next version of their API is officially released. (And to those that will probably wonder, yes I’m caching requests. Expertly, I may add. )

First, I grabbed a modified version of Cutline and made my own little tweaks (which I’m not quite finished with yet). Obviously I changed the way the headers work and brought back my featured headings in order to highlight certain posts randomly. I’ll be adding many more banners over time, since there are ton of posts that should be highlighted. I’ll be doing a little more of this by creating a “random note” area in my right-most sidebar soon.

I also edited the way that the sidebars work. I wanted a 3-column layout to allow me to pull in my flickr photos, some posts from Viddler, ChanceCube, and The uber geeks, as well as a place that I will soon be putting various other collections. However, I wanted to have only 2-columns on my single entry pages because I like having the width for things like photos. Also, some of the pages (like the new diet page), have 3-columns, while some only have 2-columns.

On the frontpage you will notice the latest posts from the other sites that I write on (mentioned above). This section is powered by BDP RSS Aggregator. Obviously I could have built this type of functionality myself but after seeing how well thought out this WordPress plugin was – it made the decision to use it very easy. BDP RSS Aggregator does far more than what I am using it for, and if you are looking to syndicate some feeds on your WordPress powered site, I highly recommend you looking into it.

My most recent Flickr photos, on the frontpage, is powered by FlickrRSS. Since BDP RSS Aggregator has so many options, I could have technically used it and ended up with the same result, but I chose to use something that was specifically built for grabbing my photos from Flickr. Obviously Flickr’s API could have been used for such a task, but all I really wanted was a cached list of my 4 most-recent photos, and using the API would seem like a little overkill. FlickrRSS does an excellent job, is easy to configure, and has just the right number of options. Another plugin that I highly recommend.

For my recent comments I’m using a highly modified version of the recent comments plugin. I’ve added support for Gravatars and a few other options that it didn’t have out of the box. Once I clean up the code I hacked to get it done I may submit the changes, but since it is reliant on someone using the Gravatar WordPress Plugin (site currently under repair as of today) too, I may not. If you want this, just give me a shout.

For my archives I’m using Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives plugin. I like my archives simple, and this plugin allows me to have just that. I see now that its been updated recently, so I may have to get me a fresh copy.

For my keyword tagging I can’t do without the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin – which in my mind is the best keyword tagging plugin for WordPress. It allows me to use MarsEdit to write my posts and put my keywords inline – which has increased the accuracy and ease of searching quite a bit too. There are many benefits to using this plugin.

I’m using Shaun Inman’s Widon’t plugin to help clean up the straggling words on my post titles. This layout doesn’t succumb to these problems as much as the last one did, but this plugin is handy nonetheless. Plugins that work completely behind the scenes and yet make such big differences in your site should really be applauded.

My feed is being delivered through Feedburner via the Feedburner WordPress plugin by my friend Steve Smith. It is all transparent to you on your end, but to me it adds a nice little layer that allows me to pull some nice stats on how many people and who are subscribed to my site’s feed. If you are using Feedburner and WordPress, this plugin is a must have.

Obviously I’m using ChanceCube‘s Slugger plugin to help me never to see WordPress’ administrative area as well as HappyPals to take advantage of my XFN relationships in my links. I also have Mike Stickel‘s Simple Countdown plugin installed and activated, but you’ll have to wait till the weekend to see why. These three plugins have become indispensable for me in how I publish, Slugger the greatest of these. I could never stand using WordPress’ admin (or any administrative area that I’ve seen) to write my blog posts. I’m happy I don’t have to anymore.

I think I covered pretty much everything. Poke around, if you see anything outta whack just let me know. Other slight tweaks will have to wait till the weekend as I have a fairly busy week this week.

Oh! For those of you on the diet that have recently been contacted by me (which most of you have, and if you have not then it probably means you’ve been fairly active in the dieting area over the last few months) – I’ll be updating everyone today or tomorrow but suffice to say that Tuesday begins another 20-week (minimum) run of updates. More soon.

[tags]cdevroe.com, redesign, shaun inman, wordpress, plugins, chancecube, mike stickel, slugger, happypals, simple countdown, ultimate tag warrior, justin blanton, smart archives, flickrrss, gravatar, recent comments, bdp rss aggregator, viddler, theubergeeks, cutline, theme, steve smith, feedburner, flickr, api[/tags]
[slug]cdevroe-v0207[/slug]

I begged and pleaded that Simple Countdown would be able to do simple, easy, in-post countdowns and boy did Mike deliver. Check this out.

I will turn 27 on September 30th, 2007 which is in . How cool is that?

Go grab a copy, and let Mike know what you think.