WordPress 3.1

WordPress 3.1 will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4.

Are you still using PHP4? Why? Is it some PHP software you are using that doesn’t support PHP5? Is it your host rejecting to upgrade to PHP5?

Please share your experience.

Ideas for WordPress Plugins

Well, I’m micro-ISV who decided to develop some wordpress plugins for sale. So far I have 2,5 plugins for sale available: 1, 2 and a half.

I have my own ideas on what to develop next, but since I’m mostly developer than active WP user, I would like to hear from people who are using wordpress to make money.

What kind of wordpress plugins do you need and there’s no free alternative or there is a free one which is not good enough?

I appreciate your ideas — and if it works out, you will get free license of ‘wordpress whatever plugin’ I build with your input.

Thank you

WordPress Geo Targeting Script

Ok, here is the page which is ranked #1 for ‘wordpress geo targeting’ in google – script by Keith James Lock.

Let’s compare his solution with my wordpress geo targeting.

1. First of all, it’s not easy to do because his script is commercial (so no sources available) and I can’t find any manual/screenshots on the net on how to use it. The sale page says that you will get HowTo Guide after purchase, but you can not estimate the complexity of the setup and/or usage before purchasing. With my wordpress geo targeting you can – it has both online manual on every feature and couple of screenshots to understand how configurable it is.
2. Second — it doesn’t look like it’s actually a plugin. It says it’s PHP script for WordPress and other PHP based web sites. So, I suppose it’s just PHP script which must be called using require/include statements. I can’t say it for sure because I don’t have any docs, but it looks like it’s not wordpress plugin at all, it’s just a php script that, of course, can be loaded in wordpress, but hey – it’s 2010 and wordpress 3.0 is out, with advanced plugins which are installed in one click.
3. Personalization — it says:
   

   Show friendly country-specific messages, such as “Now available in COUNTRY NAME” or “Hello to our friends from COUNTRY NAME”, to make the visitors to your sites feel warm and welcome.

   What about showing country flag to make it even more appealing to visitor or outputting country name in other language then English? With our wordpress geo targeting plugin you can do it.

4. Is it possible to send away traffic from unwanted countries using this script? If you are running commercial website with real adverts Nigerians can make your life really hard by posting comments/sending messages to your customers asking money in advance etc. With our wp geotargeting plugin you can not only redirect visitors from certain countries to another URLs, but log all these redirects to estimate how scammers are finding your website and how much of them are there.
5. Both Keith’s script and my plugin are based on free maxmind geoip database which is updated monthly. My geo targeting plugin is able to update this database automatically, so you don’t have to worry about showing inappropriate contents to visitor because of incorrectly resolved IP address. IP ranges do change, and you need to update geoip database regularly. Keith’s script needs to be configured via cron job to update database. With my plugin this database will be updated automatically if your wordpress allows file uploads. You can configure how often to check for updates or turn this feature off completely.
6. Price. I have to admin that we are losing in price. Keith’s script is $24.97, our plugin is $25.

WordPress Geo Targeting

I have just released WordPress Geo Targeting Plugin.

It’s using free Maxmind GeoIP database for ip2country resolutions, so you don’t have to pay any monthly/yearly fee to use this database.

Database updates are also free. Moreover, with my plugin these updates are also automatic (if you allow, of course).

Basically, plugin does 4 things:

1. Enables Quick Tags to output contents to specific countries like this: [GeoTargeted to="US,UK"]Welcome![/GeoTargeted]. You can also output content to all countries except listed ones: [GeoTargeted out="UA"]Come and visit Ukraine![/GeoTargeted]
2. Allows you to send all traffic from certain countries to URLs specified (1 country ==> 1 URL). This maybe handy if you want to block certain countries from accessing your blog or if you don’t going to monetize traffic from those countries but don’t want to lose it.
3. Enables Quick Tags for country-based personalization: you can output country name and country flag for current visitor like this [GeoTargeting:country], [GeoTargeting:flag]
4. Automatically updates geoip database so your ip2geo resolution is always up-to-date and you are not losing money because of showing wrong deals to your visitors.

Plugin supports quicktags both inside post/page body and anywhere on the page (like sidebar).

Installation is simple – unzip, upload, activate.

More details, FAQs and some screenshots are available on wp geo targeting plugin page.

You are welcome to post your questions here.