For those of you who are regular readers, you know that I previously published blog updates regularly to keep you guys posted on the changes I’ve made to the blog like the plugins I’ve installed/uninstalled or the changes in the layout like adding, removing or moving banners, widgets or other stuff. I haven’t published a blog update for more than year and I think its about time I did another one.

Uninstalled Plugins

• Firestats – Firestats is a WordPress plugin that keeps track of real time statistics, recent referrers, search engine keywords, recent popular pages and other visitor information. It also displays the country, operating system and browser used by a person who left a coment. I used to love this plugin, but because it uses up too much disk space and increases the size of the WordPress database, I decided to uninstall it and instead use other online services to keep track of my blog statistics and analytics.
• WP Grins – A plugin that displays emoticons/smileys for readers to use in the comment form. I uninstalled this plugin because it had a conflict with the WMD Editor plugin.
• WP Post Ratings – Plugin that enables the readers to rate the post. Uninstalled WP Post Ratings because I felt like it doesn’t serve its purpose and it wasn’t really that relevant. Aside from that, I also discovered that there were a few visitors who purposely sabotaged the posts by rating posts low. I don’t know the reason why they did it but WP Post Ratings keeps track of the visitors IP address so I know who did it and what posts they rated.
• MyAvatars – Plugin that displays a commentators MyBlogLog avatar or Gravatar. Really liked this plugin but decided to get rid of it to minimize the use of plugins and instead use Gravatar which didn’t require a plugin.
• Lightbox 2 – Javascript that enables viewing of larger images within the same window.. Had a conflict with one of the scripts used by my theme – Fresh News.
• WP-Polls – Plugin that adds an AJAX poll system to any WordPress blog. I’ve temporarily removed it coz I have no use for it right now. I might put it back when I come up with something that I might need your opinion with.

Installed Plugins

• Blog Stats – Adds shortcodes so you can easily insert and display certain blog stats on your blog posts or pages.
• Global Translator – Plugin that automatically translates blog posts into 41 different languages using 4 different online translation engines Google Translation Engine, Babelfish Translation Engine, FreeTranslations.com and Promt.
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress – Plugin makes using the Google Syntax highlighter to highlight code snippets within WordPress simple.
• UserAgent Spy – Plugin that displays the visitors operating system and web browser in each comment they make. Used this to replace the Firestats plugin feature that displays country, operating sytem and browser.
• WMD Editor – Adds the WMD Editor to the comment field, to make it easier for visitors to leave comments. You can see it in action above the comment form.
• WP-Clickmap – Plugin that creates a clickmap (similar to heatmap) that displays the areas where visitors click for each page.

Other Blog Changes

• Moved FeedBurner to my Google account so JaypeeOnline’s new RSS feed URL is now http://feeds2.feedburner.com/jaypeeonline/HhAk. Please update your RSS readers and aggregators.
• Added the Twit This Post option after each blog post. If you like any of my posts, please feel free to share it with others on Twitter.
• Installed the UserVoice feedback widget that lets readers/visitors anonymously give feedback and vote for suggested ideas. Feedback tab found on the left side of the blog.
• Moved the Previous Post and Next Post links from below the comment form to the section between the post and the comments.

For those of you who are still not aware of the Top Commentator of the Month award/contest, you might be interested to know that each month I’ll be giving away prizes like cash, tshirts and schwag to the person who leaves the most comments each month. Check out the official page to know more about the rules and how to join.

There are some WordPress plugins that I’ve recently installed that I will be writing a review of in the next couple of weeks so if you’re interested and would want to know more about it, make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss the upcoming WordPress Plugin reviews.

Also, if any of you guys have any comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments or contact page. If you want to remain anonymous, you can use the feedback tab found on the left side of the blog. Thanks and have a nice day!

What is WMD?

WMD is a simple, lightweight HTML editor for blog comments, forum posts, and basic content management. You can add WMD to any textarea with one line of code. Add live preview with one line more. WMD works in nearly all modern browsers, and is now completely free to use.

WMD is a WYSIWYM Markdown Editor, which is something new to most people. Here’s a little bit more information to help you understand it better.

• Wysiwym stands for What You See Is What You Mean. WMD produces clean semantic HTML, leaving presentation details like fonts and colors up to style sheets. But you’re not left in the dark about cosmetics; as you type, WMD’s live preview shows you exactly what your text will look like after the current styles have been applied.
• Markdown is a simple markup language that’s as easy to read and write as plain-text email. WMD uses Markdown as an input format, converting it into HTML behind the scenes. You can also mix raw HTML with Markdown, so the full expressiveness of HTML is always there if you need it.

Screenshot:

I’m really glad I found this WordPress plugin. The WMD Editor makes commenting more user-friendly and more convenient. With the WMD Editor, users can now easily insert blockquotes, codes, links and images in their comments without struggling with the codes. Aside from that, the WMD Editor also has the “Undo” and “Redo” options in case you make typographical errors or mistakes.

The WMD Editor WordPress plugin also has another cool feature which is the Live Preview. Now, you don’t have to use a separate WordPress plugin to display the comment’s live preview because this feature is already built-in with WMD Editor. All you need to do is edit your comments.php template and add this line of code.

I haven’t had any problem/issue using the WMD Editor plugin, except that it has some sort of minor issue/conflict with the WP Grin plugin which I used to have here. The grins and the WMD Editor panel were overlapping each other so I decided to get rid of the WP Grin plugin since its not really that important.

Btw, I’d like to thank Chad Coleman for taking the time to port this to WordPress and also adding the Live Preview feature. Great job!

I’ve already installed it here so if you’d like to see the WMD Editor WordPress plugin in action, just scroll down to the comment box. You can also try it out by leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts, comments and experience with the WMD Editor WordPress plugin. Anyone else tried using the WMD Editor? Any issues/conflicts with other WordPress plugins?

Download the WMD Editor WordPress plugin.