One year after latest release, I am proud to announce third version of my plugin Gravatar Signup Encouragement.

This version improves existing and adds new features. You can check full changelog here but below I’ll highlight most important ones.

Now you can show message to registered user in admin bar so it will follow them through whole site.

Message shown in admin bar

If you use new bbPress plugin, you can show message in a reply form.

Message shown in a bbPress reply form of a Twenty Eleven theme in line with avatar

One issue that was preventing inserting correct e-mail address in field on Gravatar’s signup page was fixed too.

Other issues are under the hood. Everything now has documentation for developers, functions are reordered in a more logical way, plugin uses less resources since settings are moved to a separate file.

Finally, I prepared a video tutorial that shows plugin in use. Don’t forget to turn on captions (subtitles) since this is where you’ll get text.

If you like this plugin, promote it through tools below or donate.

I loved OpenX project. Actually, I loved it when it had old name, phpAdsNew. I even wrote a huge post recommending other to use it.

Unfortunately, OpenX open source project is like dead now. There is no good support, there are security vulnerabilities, installation have problems…

One of common problems (by looking in their forum) is that stats aren’t recorded. This is what happened to me. One day I logged to my OpenX installation and stats page said there wasn’t any impression on that day. I checked my sites and saw that ads are running normally. So I waited to see if it’s something temporary but even after days passed, nothing changed.

Then I noticed there is a new version 2.8.7 available (I was running 2.8.5) so I upgraded my installation. But nothing changed: ads were delivering, I can see old stats but not a new one.

I decided to see if there is some solution on the web and on OpenX forums, but I can see rantings and issues that weren’t applying to me. Then I saw one post of some guy who said that he optimized and repaired his database and after that everything started to work. I did that too. But by looking in my debug.log file, I also noticed that there weren’t plugins in my installation. It appeared that new versions don’t contain plugins in itself, just empty folders. So I copied plugins from old versions.

And then, stats started to record again.

My solution (which is maybe not applicable to everyone):

• check if you actually have plugins (at both place /plugins and /admin/plugins)
• optimize and repair your database; since this requires some time, turn off delivery from you websites

I feel sorry when I see how this once great software is dying. What is worse, there is no any open source alternative to it. The only alternative I see is DoubleClick for Publishers, formerly know as Google Ad Manager, which I’ll consider moving to.

Do you like new Gravatar Hovercards? Why don’t you prepare your visitors without Gravatar for the upcoming plugin with this feature for self-hosted WordPress installation by encouraging them to signup to Gravatar?

Almost one year after initial release, I am proud to announce second version of my plugin Gravatar Signup Encouragement.

This version improves existing and adds new features. You can check full changelog here but below I’ll highlight most important.

Now message is also shown to users who already left comment before. Also, it is much easier to show message on comment form that doesn’t follow standard WordPress markup (I added support Carrington Blog and Mystique themes though users can add support for any other too).

If you was limited with way of selecting page elements for showing of message there are good news: now you can add a message to literally any element by using any jQuery selector! Note that old custom IDs are automatically updated to new form on plugin’s upgrade.

You thought that message shown when comment is written was not visible enough? Welcome the new way to show message: in a dialog box after user posted comment as in picture below.

Message shown in a dialog over a Twenty Ten theme after comment is posted

This dialog will be shown only if user doesn’t have Gravatar, not to all users who left comment. It is not popup window, it is simply a Thickbox iframe showed on top of your page that will be easily hidden after user clicks close button or click on a link to Gravatar’s signup page.

You thought that message shown on profile page was not visible enough? Welcome the new way to show message in administration area for registered users: in an administration notices as in picture below.

Message shown in administration notices

Since WordPress MU was merged to main WordPress branch, I added support to multisite installations so you can show a message to users who signup on your network. Also, you can setup Gravatar Signup Encouragement on per site basis.

If you had problems with Gravatar Signup Encouragement settings, now you can simply click link “example of how this looks” to see screenshot of example of usage of that feature. Also, by clicking “Help” menu in top right corner, you’ll get links to Gravatar Signup Encouragement documentation and support forums.

If you thought that message was not descriptive enough, there is a new, more descriptive one which is shown by default.

Since Gravatar Signup Encouragement uses jQuery to show message, there is now an encouragement to install plugin Use Google Libraries which enables loading of jQuery file from Google’s CDN.

For developers, there are many new hooks and functions that can be used in themes and plugins. Post that describes this features will be posted in the future.

You can easily upgrade to new version via automatic upgrade tool in WordPress or by downloading zip archive.

You like Gravatar Signup Encouragement? Show your love by blogging about it, tweeting or sharing on Facebook or any other social site you use.

Send your thoughts about Gravatar Signup Encouragement in comments of this blog, or via official support forum.

I kind of adopted plugin Cache Images whose original author was infamous Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress. Since I needed this functionality for my own needs, and this (and all similar plugins) was outdated, I rewrote it and send my changes to Matt who in turn gave me rights to update this plugin in wordpress.org SVN repository.

You can now download it from here.

With my new plugin, Gravatar Signup Encouragement, I had a problem with translation of string that is used only on activation.

That string contains default message that is saved in database. No matter what I tried, it would always save original string, not translation.

After asking question on wp-hackers mailing list and exchanging several replies with Otto, I found solution for this. In your function that is used in register_activation_hook, you need to again use function load_plugin_textdomain, even if you loaded it already in init. It should be used before any string.

So if you encounter this problem, you know how to solve it.
Don’t forget to try my plugin mentioned here, Gravatar Signup Encouragement.

Gravatar Signup Encouragement is my first publicly released plugin for WordPress. I got idea to write it after reading comments on post on Weblog Tools Collection titled “Why Is Gravatar Still Not Mainstream”. At that same day I made first version of plugin and posted link to it’s download page as comment on post waiting for responses but comment never appeared.

For last couple of weeks I was doing slow rewriting of plugin while adding new features and finally decided to release it publicly and to add it to WordPress plugin directory. You can now download it from here.

Those who last days came on this blog, saw page with many advertisings. Thats happen because domain expired, but not fully by my mistake. Ten days before expiration, I went to my registrar i tried to renew domain, but they couldn’t bill my card (even I paid before over there with it and same day on some other website). I have mailed for days with their support, but they couldn’t solve problem. And then domain expired. Luckily, by new regulations, there is redemption period of one month during there is possible to renew domain, but is not possible to use it. Meanwhile, I signed up for virtual Visa card and paid with it, since I couldn’t do it on other way.

So from this story you should learn that you shouldn’t wait to renew your domain, you should do it months before it expire.