www.markpude.com Wasting your time since 2000.

Website Updates

Alright, so I've let it sit a couple of days and think I'm pretty happy with the new setup I've got going here. As I mentioned before I was looking for a bunch of plug-ins to make my life easier in that I don't have to update several websites at the same time (this one, facebook, etc). I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of things like that available.

As I promised before, I will list the plug-ins that I ended up with including a brief description of each.

1 - Contact Form 7 - Very simple contact form generator.  This one I probabaly could have done on my own, but I'm lazy.

2 - Easy AdSense - Added Google AdSense. I don't anyone comes to this site let alone clicks on the ads, but oh well.

3 - Fotobook - This is a pretty slick plug-in that grabs all of my facebook pictures and stores them on the site. It also has cron capability to periodically check for new pictures. See 7 to see how this is implemented. Check it out via the Photos tab above.

4 - Lifestream - This was the last one I added. It grabs RSS feeds from a whole host of services including Facebook status, and things I watch on Hulu. Check it out from the Lifestream tab at the top of the page.

5 - MapMyRide Widget - This pulls off of my MapMyRun.com RSS feed to display the most recent workout I've logged. I had to do significant customization to this one. I wasn't a big fan of how much information it posted, so I changed it.

6 - ShareThis - This adds the "Share This" link at the bottom of each post/page. I don't expect this feature to ever be used, but it makes the website look more legitimate since you see that sort of thing all over the intarweb these days.

7 - Utopia Cron - I think this guy is a very slick piece of work. Its a pseudo cron job manager. Basically whenever someone loads the website, it checks the time to see if any cron jobs need to be run. This is what I use to periodically update the Fotobook stream.

8 - Wordbook - This one interfaces with Facebook to tell people there when something new is posted here. Its really the only evidence on Facebook that this site even exists.

9 - WordPress PDA & iPhone Plugin - This little guy formats the site differently when it is accessed via a mobile device. Again, not something anyone other than myself will likely ever use.

Finally, I added a Zune tab above that just includes my Zune card or whatever its called so you can see what music I've been listening to.

This is a long post. I will end it abruptly.