Archive for March, 2009
| 5 Mar 2009 |
TS Ad Integration v2.0 – You’ve got the power! |
TS Ad Integrartion v 2.0 is the latest major upgrade of slayer’s custom widgets v1.0 which was released last year in august.
What does it do?
The main purpose of this plugin is to help you monetize your blog, in a smart way i mean. Ad Integration is an all-in-one ad managing platform which lets you create, manage and assign ads to your posts and sidebar as widgets (new feature).
Just as at Custom Widgets 2.0 the management and options panels were tuned up to fit the WordPress 2.7 design, and along with the tune-up we removed useless elements which used up the space. By this way everything got more organized and cleaner.
Assign Ads as sidebar widgets
Did i mention that you can now add your ads as sidebar widgets? I think i did, but eh here’s a quick in-depth look:
After setting the ad location as Sidebar Widget the plugin will automatically create a widget which you will be able to add to your widgetized sidebar from the good old widgets page. And there you have it, you can manage the ads from your sidebar also 
How do i use it?
After you’ve installed and activated the plugin a stand alone meu item will appear right below the main menu. This provides quick access to the Custom Widgets management section.
Main Management panel
There are 3 main segments in the management panel: The ads display box, The Options box and the Donation box.
The Ads display box will show all the Ads you’ve setup. Those ads which are written in light grey aren’t public, and those which are written in black are live and running.
The Options box is meant to give you more flexibility and it allows you to define a custom css for the ads and even add html code to appear before or after the ad. The max ad count per page defines the maximum number of ads that should appear in the same time on a page.(category pages, tag pages, etc).
Adding a new Ad
Things can’t get simpler than this! Adding a new ad takes just seconds(after a bit of practice of course) and you will easily realize that Ad Integration is a very powerful ad management plugin and it will save you a lot of time and earn you a lot of money(hopefully).
To distingush one ad from an other give a title to your ad(will be visible only to you via the management panel) and insert the html code. The exciting new feature in this release is thge much requested show in sidebar option which if delected will create a widget that will addable to your sidebar from the widget managemenet section.
If you choose to inser the ad into posts you can choose it’s location and it’s alignment. The final step of the new ad setup is the publish function where you can select to publish the ad or not.
Editing An Ad
You can easily edit an ad by clicking the Edit button in the right part of your ad management panel. This will take you to a page where you can edit your ad: rename it,change the code and it contains all the settings which were present on the Add new ad page + EXTRAS.
The extras consist in two handy features:
1) You can choose wether to load the ad automatically or manually. Loading the ad manually means that you will have to inser the generated code() into your post for the ad to show up.
2) By default after adding a new ad it will be automatically activated. You can deactivate it by selecting the No tickbox and saving the changes.
Download Ad Integration 2.0
-
-
Installation
***To upgrade from Ad Integration 1.0 to v2.0 simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.
1) Download the .zip file to your computer and log into your wordpress admin panel.
2) In your admin panel head over to the plugins section and select the Add new segment. Browse to the custom widgets.zip file and click the Install button. WordPress will unzip the plugin and install it for you after which press the Activate Plugin button.
Stay Updated! Subscribe to my RSS feed
Support us by donating
We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) feel free to use the widget below.Once the donation meter fills up we will release a new theme and a new exciting plugin!
| 4 Mar 2009 |
Contest: Care to win a custom made WordPress template? – $600 value! |
If you constantly read my blog you most probably know that i’m a professional wordpress designer and my colleague, mbogdan is a professional coder. Together we create custom themes, plugins, but also release free themes and free plugins to the community. To check some of my previous work take a look at my portfolio (it is outdated due to my lazyness).
Say what?
A lucky reader(maybe you?) will win a custom made wordpress theme based on their requirements, which will be ready to upload & use on your blog.
You will be treated just like other customers: you will describe your blog, the niche of your blog, and you will tell me your vision of the desired wordpress theme(color combinations, number of columns, structuring, and anything else you find important for me to know).
After getting all the details i will open up Photoshop and i will make a detailed draft and this will represent the starting point.
We will talk things over again after which i will modify the placeholders to fit your requirements. From this point everything goes straight forward: i work my ass off and finish your design as soon as possible. Also i will offer support via instant messenger (MSN LIVE or Yahoo! messenger).
After the design is complete you will make the final revisions and once you are satsified with the outcome i will forward the design to my colleague mbogdan who will code it(XHTML/CSS valid, tableless coding, widgetized sidebars).
Contest Duration
The contest will run from March 5th(tomorrow) till May 5th(in 2months), and the draw will be made using random.org .
This means that the more entry credits you have the bigger your chances will be of winning your very own custom made wordpress theme!
How to enter?
There are 5 ways you can earn entry points, it’s really simple earning them in fact:
1) Get 3 Entry points by posting a comment to this post with a link to your blog and why you want a custom theme (REQUIRED)
Your name:
Your blog’s tite:
Your blog’s url:
Why do you want a custom theme?
2) Get 10 Entry points by Subscribing to my RSS feed using the form below(use the name you used in the comment form)
3) Get 20 Entry points by blogging about this contest( link to this post so i can track it)
4) Get 50 Entry points by signing up at Bluehost hosting , or referring someone to sign up under my referral id.Before you sign-up read my review of Bluehost.
5) Get 100 Entry points by referring a customer to order a custom wordpress theme(the entry points will be given only after the customer has made the payment)
What’s next?
Go ahead, post your comment and start earning entry points. You can earn 8 entry points in just 2 minutes of work!
Good Luck!
| 3 Mar 2009 |
TS Custom Widgets v 2.0 – sexier than ever! |
The 10 days of awsome releases debutes today with Custom Widgets 2.0. This is a release everyone is excited about, and which contains tons of improvements, bug fixes and extra addons.
The most significant change you will notice will be the overall design of the Custom widgets options pannel. We’ve updated the old WordPress 2.6 styled design to suit the new and sleek design of WordPress 2.7. Along with the new design we’ve fixed several compatibility bugs and implemented two much requested features: Widget name display, and more organized management. Click image below for preview.
Your text widgets will now have their title displayed in the widget management section, and finding posts you want to assign a specific widget to just got a lot easier. We got a suggestion from mufasa in which he suggested we add scroll bars to all the widget categories.
As you can see on the management preview we did implement his suggestion to the widgets that are assigned.
I talked to mbogdan and he suggested we don’t implement this feature for posts and tags, because displaying 1000+ posts at a time would put a huge load on the server and database, so to make everything simpler we added pagination to almost all sections.
All posts/tags/pages, etc are organized alphabetically and by this way using the pagination you will easily find the post or item you want to assign a widget to. Cool huh? Also lets not forget mentioning that using the master tick box you can select multiple posts at once. Click image below for preview.
Basically the bottom line is that you will find the new version of custom widgets more flexible and more simple to use. Even a newbie wordpress user can manage it!
Download Custom Widgets 2.0
-
-
Installation & Usage
***To upgrade from CW 1.2 to v2.0 simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.
1) Download the .zip file to your computer and log into your wordpress admin panel.
2) In your admin panel head over to the plugins section and select the Add new segment. Browse to the custom widgets.zip file and click the Install button. WordPress will unzip the plugin and install it for you.
3) Click the Activate Plugin link, after which you will notice the TS Custom Widgets segment in the bottom of the menu. Clicking it will take you to the management panel.
4) Before you can assign “custom widget” you will have to head over to the good ‘ol widgets section in the Apperance section and add or create new widgets. Once you’re done head over to TS Custom widgets section and assign your widget(s) to the desired sections.
5) That’s it, repeat the second part of step 4 with all the widgets you wish to turn into “custom widgets”
Stay Updated! Subscribe to my RSS feed
Blog about Custom Widgets
You are more then welcome to write blog post about custom widgets in which you may share your opinion and personal point of view about the plugin. To ensure that we also read it please use the following trackback link in your post:
Support us by donating
We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) feel free to use the widget below.Once the donation meter fills up we will release a new theme and a new exciting plugin!
