Custom Query String Gets Reloaded For WordPress 2.3

The Custom Query String plugin for WordPress was originally developed by Matt Reed and is one of my favorite plugins. As far as I’m concerned it’s a must have plugin and honestly, I’m not sure why its functionality is not part of the default WordPress program.

If you’ve never heard of the Custom Query String (CQS) plugin, then you should take a moment to familiarize yourself with it and make sure it’s on your radar. You can read my previous article on the Custom Query String Plugin for more details on why I use it.

In short, this plugin allows you to modify the default number of posts displayed by the Wordpress loop before it creates a new page.

When I first found CQS, Matt Reed had already discontinued support and development for the plugin. A disheartening revelation, but the plugin worked fantastically so I wasn’t concerned. Since then, a few attempts and reviving it have been made.

The first to take the helm was Andy Beard. Andy made a few simple changes and added support for UTW which allowed those that used the UTW plugin to specify how many posts appeared on the tag pages. However, with the release of WordPress 2.3 and the rework of the entire category system, the CQS plugin once again was in need of updating. Not to mention UTW was now pretty much obsolete with the addition of tagging in WordPress.

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BlogRush Gets Upgrade; Still Waiting On The Rush

Early this morning John Reese enthusiastically announced the release of the long awaited “Phase 2″ of BlogRush. It seems they have put quite a bit of work into it and made some significant upgrades. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Dashboard

I’ll admit I’m a sucker for stats and BlogRush definitely delivers on this front. BlogRush not only provides all the stats you would expect, they also look fantastic.

The stats displayed on the dashboard include “Credits Earned From Your Traffic”, “Credits Earned From Your Referral Network”, “Where Your Credits Come From”, “Current Bloggers In Your Network”, “Current Credit Balance”, a breakdown of your referrals by level, a “Credit Earnings Report”, and a breakdown of impressions and clicks for you 12 most recent posts.

Reports

The reports section is nice feature for those who wish to review stats over a specified time period. Stats include credits earned from your traffic, from your referrals traffic, referrals in your network and a breakdown of impressions and clicks from posts shown during the specified time period.

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Google Finally Updates PageRank

With all of the false alarms and mis information about when, or if, Google was going to update PageRank, I was beginning to wonder if Average Joe Blogger would ever get a rank. Or if I would be destined to see N/A forever. Well, apparently the wait is over. I just check my PageRank and much to my surprise Average Joe Blogger now has a PageRank of 4.

It’s no 7, but for a blog that’s only a few months old, I think it’s pretty respectable. If you haven’t checked your PageRank lately, you should go see where you now stand with Google. iWebTool has a great tool for checking PageRank.

Has your rank been updated? Was Google kind to your blog or not?

When Opportunity Presents Itself

First of all let me apologize for the lack of content in the last couple of weeks. As many of you regular readers know I was on vacation for awhile and while I was initially planning on at least writing a few posts during that time, I never got around to it. There were a lot of vacation activities that kept me away from the computer (more than I had anticipated) and the time I did spend in front of the computer was busy with answering emails and general upkeep.

Thankfully Steven Snell from Vandelay Website Design and Chris Chris Jacobson from Money Making Scoop wrote a couple guests post to keep things somewhat moving along. A special thanks to both of them. If you haven’t visited their sites, I’d recommend it. Their both in my RSS reader.

My goal was to get back into the blogging routine and start posting daily content again once we got back from vacation. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet and probably won’t for a little while yet.

After we got back from vacation we were presented with an incredible opportunity that just couldn’t be passed up. I will get into all of the details at a later time, once everything calms down a bit, but for now I just wanted to let you know what was going on. I’ll still be writing new content and finding new plugins and tools to share with you, it just won’t daily for the next week or so.

Community Cloud Plugin

I’m a firm believer that one of the best ways to get noticed, attract readers and develop a community is to link and link often. The more link love you give, the more link love you will receive.

As a result of this philosophy, I’ve incorporated several things into this blog including a weekly list of links to articles I think readers might find interesting, the Top Commenter’s plugin and removing the nofollow tag from comments left by repeat commenter’s. All of these things help bring in new readers and encourage comments and participation in discussions.

Along the same lines as the Top Commenter’s plugin, except with tag cloud goodness, comes the Community Cloud Plugin for WordPress. I recently ran across this plugin and love the idea.

What is the Community Cloud Plugin?

The Community Cloud is a plugin that was recently developed by the good folks at Web Addicts. The plugin displays a “tag cloud” of all the people in your community (blog) who have added value by commenting and participating in discussions. The more a person has commented, the bigger and bolder their link is. Here is an example of what it looks like:

You can also see a live version of the plugin by visiting the Average Joe Blogger Community page.

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