Your favourite plugins/addons for your blogs

I like the neocounter [www.neoworx.net], which shows which countries visit your site. When you hover over the country name, it shows its location on a side map. A geography lesson on your blog is a great tool.

heza - that's great! I've seen this on other people's blogs and debated adding one to mine, but never gotten around to it. I had no idea about the hovering thing. now I'm definately going to add it! Thanks for posting it!

julien - my favourite thing for a blog (not sure if it's a plug-in as such) is the Flickr badge. I used to have a lot of other little things like this on my blog, (clocks from different time zones, weather, etc.) but I found it looked messy and slowed down my page loading too much. But I just love the Flickr badge! This is also one of the things that I like the most when looking at other people's blogs.

Heza, I have NeoWorx, I just love it!

Hmmm...I never got an email when I tried to register. I might have to try a different email address.

Jo Ann - when I went to your blog, it seems that the maps don't all come out right. They kind of get chopped off for me when I look at them using Firefox (doesn't happen in IE). I wonder if it's because they're on the right.

Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention was my counter. I really like Stat Counter. I like it a lot better than some of the other counters I've tried (like Site Meter).

Sheena, I think it's because they are rolling? I compared with Heza's, and that's what I supposed... I changed the size of the board too...

Jo Ann - it's partially because they're rolling. The one's at the bottom get cut off. But on the board above that one that says who's online, the map gets cut off despite the fact that it isn't rolling. (I can only see half of Australia!)

I still can't get it on mine. I tried a second time with a different email address that I know won't filter it out as spam, and they still haven't sent me an email! hmm...

I had a bad experience with NeoCounter. The whole thing is run and operated by one guy in France who has no clue as to what customer service means. His program was not working as advertized, so I asked him to fix the problems, but he did nothing. Then when I asked for a refund, he gave me the silent treatment and ignored my repeated e-mails. The guy is a crook. I'd caution anyone from sending him any money before checking carefully that the software does exactly what you expect it to do or else you'll never see your dineros again. It looks pretty and attractive at first, but if you want to do more specific configurations or if it doesn't deliver as expected, don't expect any customer support. You stand warned.

I've got a flickr badge, which is always good to have. I use the free version of Statcounter as I don't have the sort of blog that needs to be tailored to its readers. I've got a little Amnesty International quote box just to make me feel as though I'm doing something good and a clustrmaps visitor counter thing. It sounds like neocounter but it gives a small map of the world with red blobs to show where people are visiting from. It's free as well!

I love ExtremeTracker because it's interesting to see who visits my blog and how they found it.

I have the search box from Technorati.  I personally like it because it makes it easier for me to find certain things on my blog
I use Google Analytics now to track hits.  It's extremely detailed, but not always in real time...sometimes there is a day delay.

I have:

***For http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com
(the shortstories about travel):
- the flickr badge (running through all my pictures, even though it only shows the recently uploaded ones in the badge itself
- bloxflux local poll: highly customizable, works great for quick polls and it is for free
- Neocounter to show the last 10 visits and country totals: works well, though it does miss some countries, expecially the exotic ones
- clustrmap to visualize the visitors on a map
- mapstats: to show the last 10 visitors
- babelfish for online translations displayed within your own template (even though it does give real funny translations from time to time, see my post http://theroadtothehorizon.blogspot.com … chine.html
- wholinked linklist showing which sites linked to you, even though the list is not extensive and much better stats can be taken from google analytics.

*** for http://verslaafdaandehorizon.blogspot.com
(the stories about my three expeditions to the Pacific and Antarctic)
I use several flickr badges (one for each expedition), but for this, you need to make changes the script, otherwise the three badges interfere one with another.

TIP#1: a great tool to manage/monitor the traffic on the website is Google Analytics. A short piece of code is enough to get very details stats (who came in, how long did the stay, what pages were visited, returning vs new visitors, search engine entrances, etc..) AND IT IS FOR FREE !

TIP#2: i use flickr to upload all my pictures, and in the blog, i refer to the URL in flickr, rather than to upload the pictures individually onto my blog page. Flickr has a great tool to upload batches of pictures fast. And the link from Flickr to the blogengines are often very fast... flickr does have a limit for free users of 3 picture sets (folders) per user (and it is difficult to figure out how to switch users to bypass that system), and a certain limit of upload data per month. If you pay about $27 or so per year, there are no limits.

TIP#3: I also include a banner for the UN World Food Programme and the FIight Hunger campaign (the banners for the latter can be found on: http://www.fighthunger.org/en/download
This site has a sponsor who feeds a child with one click.

hope this helps!

Peter.

I've found an audio comment system: http://www.mychingo.com/

Looks pretty cool. Anybody using it?

Oh, and found another plugin.. Had been looking for a good free guestbook for my site since a long time. Found an excellent one: http://www.ultraguest.com

Have also been playing with http://www.feedburner.com for email subscriptions and customized RSS feeds. Recommended!

p.

Julien wrote:

I've found an audio comment system: http://www.mychingo.com/

Hey that is pretty cool! Thanks for the tip!

How do you add the Expat-Blog suitcase logo badge to my blog? I cant seem to find it on here anymore!

for the logo's, look at this post:

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=118

rgds,

Peter

An update on plugins/addons for blogs.

1. Many are now using Feedjit plugins. One which tracks and displays the last x visitors on your blog, from where they came, which post they landed on, with basic data from the visitor. One displays the map. Another one lists the most popular posts on your blog, and yet another tracks for each post where people click next. The latter is particularly practical as it encourages people who landed on one post, to also click on another post.

2. Wildly popular is Addthis, which provides a little icon under each post, allowing readers to bookmark a post. For most blogplatform it takes a bit of hacking to ensure the icon appears under a post, but you can also put it in a side column.

3. similar feature is available from Addtoany.

4. If you are interested on link statistics, page ranking and tools to see who is linking to your blog, have a look at this post.

5. One of the better online translate tools, I have found from Google-translate.

Most of these plugins, you can find used on The Road to the Horizon

Peter

I love who's among us
I love to see what country pops up next

And yes, I love feedjit too.

My blog is on wordpress.COM so I can't use too many plugins. What I use is a twitter plugin and a Flag Counter

My favorite gadget is Feedjit.  It shows what posts people read and where they are from.  I find it a great motivator as I know more about the readers of American Russia Observations.