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Better Click To Tweet: My Second WordPress Plugin

Better Click to Tweet is my second official plugin in the WordPress repository. Like most second plugins, this one is far more advanced than its older brother. For starters, I am beginning to grasp more advanced concepts like internationalization, and this plugin comes ready to translate into different languages, depending on the language of your WordPress install.

It started as a search for a plugin to create simple, styled boxes in posts that would allow readers to click on a link that produces a ready-made tweet. Like this one:

The Better Click To Tweet plugin is simple, user-friendly, and translation ready! Share on X

Go ahead and click on the text above, it will pull up a tweet that links back to this post, and gives you the ability to immediately click to tweet it (it has an extra step to let you customize the tweet to your liking!)

I went in search of that functionality, and found a plugin that I liked parts of, but not how it handled the actual meat of the process. It’s pretty technical to explain, but the short version is that the original plugin doesn’t properly use the WordPress shortcode API (because it was written before such a thing existed), and it also makes some mistakes in calculating the number of non-Roman characters like © or ∆ or œ.

Also, at the time, the plugin I based mine off of had an annoying “powered by” link that appeared in every box. In addition to being annoying, it’s against the WordPress rules.

I was going to suggest some changes to the original plugin, but as I went to do so I noticed it had been pulled from the repo (the WordPress overlords were obviously displeased by the “powered by” link as well). So I set out rewriting the plugin from the ground up, using the official shortcode API, and some other tricks I learned.

Thanks to Canva for the great little icon!
Thanks to Canva for the great little icon!

Long story short, the original plugin is now back in the repo (sans the “powered by” link) but mine was released in the meantime.

Since its launch, my improved plugin has been downloaded more than 1,000 times, with only 3 support requests.

If you’re looking for a great way to drive twitter engagement on your blog, give my plugin a shot!

Here’s the official plugin on the WordPress repo.

Oh, and if you want folks to come read this cutting-edge journalism:

The story of how I got over 1,000 downloads of my second straight #WordPress plugin. Share on X
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Phone lessons: How I’ve used stickers to make my smartphone even smarter.

When I place my phone on the little sticker on the top of my bicycle saddle, I hear a pleasant little “blu-doomp!” that tells me the following sequence has been triggered:

  1. Send my wife a text that says “Just got on my bike”
  2. Open the Map My Ride application.
  3. Tap the “start workout” button.

Once I hear the “blu-doomp!” indicator, I watch my phone for 1.5 seconds until the workout starts, then put the phone back in my pocket (or my amazing Novara Gotham Rack Trunk from REI) and take off.

Photo of bicycle saddle with NFC sticker
That little beauty there on the seat works all the magic.

The smartphone in my pocket (a Republic Wireless 1st generation Moto X) has an astounding amount of computing power. The one in your pocket does, too.

The one thing that computers do better than anything else is speed up repetitive tasks. You can tell a computer using one line of code to copy the paragraph you are currently reading 1,000 times, outlining each paragraph with a different-colored box, and it’ll be finished before you get done reading the paragraph the first time.

Computers are good at repetition.

App developers seem allergic to harnessing that power as it relates to end user experience and NFC, most likely because geeks like me are the only ones who put in the time to get it set up.

(As an aside, the market is ripe with need of an open-source standard uniting the internet of things with the internet in our pocket. I doubt any of the Googles or Apples or Microsofts in today’s world could pull it off. It’ll have to be a newcomer. But that’s another post entirely.)

The magic of NFC (Near Field Communication, or the technology powering the little sticker on my bike) has not taken mass-market hold as I’d imagined it would by now, apart from Apple Pay and Google Wallet with their 45 minutes of fame earlier this year.

Have you made your smartphone smarter? Use stickers! Share on X

You can do a nearly infinite number of things with NFC stickers. Here’s my top-of-the-head starter list:

  1. A sticker in your car that sends a text to your spouse that says “just got in the car” (I use that one), while opening the navigation app and beginning to play music from your most recent playlist.
  2. A sticker on your nightstand that puts your phone on vibrate, turns off cellular data, and opens the alarm clock app for you to confirm wake-up time.
  3. A corresponding sticker placed on the way out the door to turn on cellular data, launch your podcast app, or load up a live traffic app.
  4. A sticker on your desk at work that toggles between “Home” and “Work” profiles.
  5. A sticker on a keychain that automatically toggles you between “on the clock” and “off the clock” for an app like Freshbooks for freelancers.
  6. A sticker that places a call to your mom in a spot you see about every other day, to remind you you haven’t talked to her in a while.

I recommend the Trigger app, to make even a newbie Android user into an automation guru, if you’re willing to put in the minimal time.

Or, if you’re local, I’m more than happy to get your automation set up. Contact me for an estimate on what you want automated.

You should start using that super-computer in your pocket like it was designed to be.

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The Best Wireless Company Just Got Better!

I love Republic Wireless. Give me 10 minutes of your time to convince you why you should switch from one of the “big name” wireless companies, and I will work hard to do just that. I’ll take 30 minutes if that’s what it requires.

The only frustration as a participant (active!) in the refer-a-friend program is that every few months it feels like they shut down the program and overhaul it. I’ve missed at least two referral bonuses because they recently (as of October 31st most recently) shuttered the program.

So in light of the program being shut down, and me missing some referrals, I have now transferred my link (http://benlikes.us/republic for those keeping score at home) to a simple affiliate link. This means, dear reader, you no longer get $20 off for using my link. But you’ll still get $1000 off per year, so that’s something.

I get paid a small commission for every person who uses my link and signs up for service, but it doesn’t increase the cost to you at all.

They’ve recently announced that they’ll be releasing the new Moto X (2014 edition) as an option, which is phenomenal. Reading the reviews around the web, you’ll soon see that the new Moto X is an upgrade in every way from the already-good first generation X.

It’ll be available for order on December 10th. Why not use my link to start saving $1,000?

Have you seen the new Moto X on Republic Wireless? Save thousands! http://benlikes.us/republic Share on X
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On Becoming

How many hours this week have you spent becoming someone you’d like to be?

Me? I’ve spent about 5 hours this week becoming a more proficient web developer.

Now, I had to cram my other responsibilities in there, to be sure. But I intentionally set aside time to code, test, cuss at broken code, and recode some code for which there is no immediate payoff. Nobody is paying me to write this code. In the end, this particular code is functionally not very consequential. It isn’t fancy, or anything others haven’t done before. It’s just a simple, incremental change to my smart little WordPress plugin.

It probably won’t even ever be released, because I’ve learned while making it that I don’t really like it.

That’s right. I spent 5 hours this week doing something that I am probably not going to use.

But in the larger scheme of things, this code is foundational. It’s helping me to learn something that I didn’t know last week. In particular, I learned about the $wp_filesystem method of safely and securely saving files within a WordPress plugin or theme. (I know, stop the presses… thrilling stuff.)

But more than just learning something, this week I consciously became something different, something incrementally better.

That same itch to improve and learn is driving me to attend WordCamp Raleigh this weekend. I can’t wait to meet others in the area who are neck-deep in WordPress development.

Are you a developer attending WordCamp Raleigh? Hit me up, I’d love to meet you!

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Ello, Puppet: Musings on the Ad Free Social Network.

Because I swim in digital marketing waters, it was tough to miss the announcement and hype surrounding the flavor-of-the-moment new social network Ello.

I'm sure the joke has been made before. But I simply had to. Original image wikimedia commons.
I’m sure the joke has been made before. But I simply had to.
Original image wikimedia commons.
The service bills itself as “ad free.” In stark contrast to the popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, the users are not the product being sold.

It’s an intriguing premise, and frankly the reason I’m now on the network (though I won’t be forsaking my other networks any time soon).

Here’s the short version: I genuinely hope that Ello takes off, and “regular users” hop in and give it some time to mature.

Over-eager marketers and hype-slingers are quick to try and pick the “Facebook killer.” Like comparing a 2006 Steve Jobs keynote speech to a sweaty teenager’s valedictorian address, it’s not a fair fight. Nobody is killing Facebook right now.

Of the not-good chances, Ello’s got the best to dethrone Facebook, because they are attacking the most sound-bytable public-facing link in the Facebook chain: the greedy businessman angle.

The average user (think: your aunt who likes everything you post on Facebook within minutes but still has an AOL email address) is unaware of, or at least unconcerned with, the revenue being generated by Facebook. They just happily post about their vacation, the grandkids, what the preacher said, and the latest political cartoon. If enough of those average users start to realize (or be bothered by the fact that) they are the product being bought and sold, that’s the moment Facebook is in trouble.

Ello is using its pocket-knife to whittle away at that taproot, highlighting and calling into question the ethical underpinning of the big social networks, and then holding themselves up as the “we can look ourselves in the mirror” developers trying to restore order to the universe.

It’s great storytelling. Unfortunately for right now, the only ones sitting crosslegged in front of the storytellers are marketers and/or web geeks like myself.

More fundamentally, it’s a story that resonates loudest with progressives. The conservatives in the crowd aren’t as susceptible to the greedy businessman angle (regardless of whether it’s true or not) because they are predisposed to consider business (even big business) to be a morally good thing.

So the task of the storyteller is to know his audience.

Ello team, how are you going to reach those Facebook users who are aware that they are being marketed to based on what they post, and are generally OK with that fact? I’ve got to think that’s a majority of folks.

In the meantime, you’ve got a lot of developing to do to make the network more user friendly, and squash the bugs that come with overnight explosions in user-base. And that’s not even mentioning figuring out how you are going to pay for this thing, long-term.

We’re cheering for you.

Oh, and by all means, come say Ello.

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