Here is the 1.5 fix for Wordpress 3.0.

I had just found this old “Templates” plugin from 2005. People are still downloading this plugin, and it doesn’t even have a description. I haven’t checked it out; maybe it became part of the Wordpress template functions and was no longer needed as a plugin.

If anyone can tell me why people are still downloading this bad boy, let me know. I am going to take a look under the hood sometime later.

The pro is that this Wordpress plugin is very easy to use, but there are many cons.

There is no TinyMCE to work this baby out with any links or features, and it is simply just bare-bones.

Also, some people in the Sidebar posting forums have had issues with installation.

This plugin is way too early to use, unless you want to post like I have ( no links, images etc. )

Would wait for the next release before deciding if the plugin is useful.

You will see this code:

“jQuery(‘#postTabs_li_’+tab+’_'+post).addClass(‘postTabs_curr’);
jQuery(“#postTabs_”+tab+”_”+post).show();
self.focus();”
Essentially, the code is saying “I am currently showing information from one tab, but when you click another tab, I will show the other tab. Instead of .show, replace it with a fadeIn:

jQuery(‘#postTabs_li_’+tab+’_'+post).addClass(‘postTabs_curr’);
jQuery(“#postTabs_”+tab+”_”+post).fadeIn();
self.focus();

Should be self-explanatory. And you could use other parameters to fadeIn for your specific purposes. See the fadeIn page here for more information. Go to my new Musicology wiki page to see the plugin work, and give Leo Germani some money for this plugin; he deserves it!

Although many “Facebook Connect” plugins do exist, most of them are either overly complex and difficult to customize, or fail to provide a seamless experience for new visitors. I wrote this plugin to provide what the others didn’t.

One of the features he has is an easy integration into Buddypress. It seems though this was the issue where people had the most problems. There were many, many, many questions about configuring this plugin, and it still seems to be a lot of work to get it going in WPMU.

My judgement is that:

• Justin has worked to fix the issues on his website and in the Buddypress forums.
• This plugin is fairly new, his next version will probably be very good.
• It works for Buddypress, and MU support may not matter once 3.0 comes around.

I was able to install it on a single Wordpress install, but as of yet no WPMU or Buddypress. But the March 19th 2010 update; the next update will probably show off the best of what this plugin can offer.

When that happens, we can see how it matches up against Otto’s FB plugin. The only current con I have with it is the many plugins that have to be installed. The module-based approach is good there isn’t a need for all the plugins, but it would’ve been nice to have an option of an all-in-one plugin as well.

If you have comments/judgments on either plugins, please let us know.

Many people are now encouraged by sites like ChatRoulette and Ustream to make their own video sites. But how easy can it be? How much would it cost? And how much work will it take to manage a website? We have made a guide on how to make your own Chatroulette video webiste.

1. Requirements.

• Hosting: You need a host that can provide an RTMP (Real-Time Message Protocol) program. We have a list of recommended hosts you can use. You can also use non-RTMP hosting, but we will talk more about it later.
• PHP/Web Developer: You will need to know a tiny bit of PHP, or find a web-developer who can help you out. This is optional, but it could save a lot of time.
• Money: You will need it since most of what we recommend cost money. There are “free” Chatroulette apps out there, as well as free/cheap hosting. 99.9% sure your website won’t survive with either.
• Marketing/Adsapce Mojo: You need to know how to spread the word about your site through social media, flyers, and networking. .01% of sites, even the good ones, thrive just off word-of-mouth. You also need to know how to make money off the people that come to your site. If you don’t, you will lose money very quickly.

2.  The ChatRoulette Program

WhisperVideo has a 2-Way Video Application that allows you to make your own ChatRoulette website. This application, and also others on the internet, uses Peer-2-Peer (P2P) as the primary function of the program. What this means, is that the only thing your website does is connect to people together to video chat. So you don’t have to pay for a lot of bandwidth.

There are other scripts that are out there, but we picked this application because it is customizable, and you can set-up your own site on WhisperVideo’s servers with the Chatroulette application for just $80 per month. This is the cheapest you will find to be able to get a video site, installation, and hosting without weeks of work, stress, and forking out money for the program.

But if you want to, you can get the application, find your own host, an set it up as well. Make sure to use the trial version first; if it is something you don’t like, it won’t make sense to fork over the money. You can take a look at the demo here.

We half-recommend this Chatroulette Clone Theme script; it seems to work wonders for those using it, and you can host this on ANY host. But the con is that is uses Adobe Stratus, which is a free hosting service that manages video applications. Since so many people are downloading Chatroulette Clone scripts, the service is up&down. But it is a much cheaper way to go if you don’t want to use a RTMP host.

Also, the Chatroulette Clone Theme is planning to make it’s application compatible for Red5 hosting ( a type of RTMP server ). So this could be very good.

3. PHP Knowledge/Web Designer

The scripts above, if you follow directions and there are no bugs, are easy to install. But it would be safe to find someone who knows a little about PHP/MySQL who can help you out.

You can download the trial version and take it for a spin. But if you don’t know much about computers, you will need a web designer to help you out.

Most of these Video Chat plugins can be installed in a few minutes, regardless of how much web knowledge you have. But some people might also want to “customize” their website to look different, or better. You will need a developer to do this ( maybe we can help? )

4. Flash Media Servers / RTMP Servers

In order for this to work, you need to have this application installed on a RTMP server. These are servers that serve flash media (such as videos, streaming videos etc.), You CANNOT use normal shared hosting like Hostgator or GoDaddy since these hosts don’t have those types of servers. They usually don’t even carry these types of servers, and will charge you to install RTMP software. It is easier to go to a RTMP hosting company that provides these servers.

RTMP hosting can be cheap or expensive. If you plan to have a nice little site with about 200-400 people per day video chatting, You can be safe with hosting plans around $20-40. But if you want to make that next “big” site, you will need to utilize something more expensive. Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) seems to be the most superior server software out there, so hosting isn’t cheap. Other RTMP software that are still good are Wowza Flash Servers and Red5 Servers.

Think of the cost of the hosting like the cost of a party. If you don’t buy enough food, drink, and entertaining, the more likely your party is going to suck. So make sure you have a good server ( preferably a dedicated server) that can keep your site running smoothly.

Some recommended RTMP hosts:

• Onyx Servers
• Influxis Servers
• Cirtex Hosting (HostV)(Look under VPS/Dedicated)

5. Install and you are Ready to Party!

Not yet. Once you have a site out there, regardless if it’s the next greatest video site, make sure you take time to learn how to build an audience to come to your site, and how you can advertise to them when they get there.

Ways to advertise is to use press releases, speak with local and web businesses, post on blogs and connect with people in social forums. Once you have some way to spread the word, make sure to keep up on the best ways to make money on your site once you have a decent audience.

If you need recommendations on getting an audience, making money off of your new site, or web customizations, feel free to contact me at contact AT wpjudge DOT com.

The goal of the index is to organize simple Wordpress information more, and try to consolidate issues into a format where they can be found a lot more quickly than doing a Google or Wordpress forum search. This is an information site, so you don’t have to be an expert to become a part.

You just need to have a passion for Wordpress, and the ability to find information so that we can organize it better for the community. The site will be called wordpressindex.com. The function of the main page will utilize an auto-suggest method fetching pages within the site and throughout the web, making it easy for the user to find what they need.

If you want to become a part, please email me at contact AT wpjudge DOT com. I do plan to have some type of ad revenue or donation method on the site; an incentive for people if they want to help out.

Since this guy got placed in the Wordpress plugin rss, I am guessing the script is legit, but would wait until he can get the bugs out. People, help this man test the plugin!

What is better, if you want to dabble with multiple themes in different posts, this plugin will let you do it. Haven’t heard of many bugs yet, and it doesn’t seem to have a lot of popularity in the WP community.

• This is a forum for W3 Total Cache. From people’s comments, it seems to have problems with dynamic sidebar content ( such as rotating banners ) and adding comments on different themes.
• For the forum above, this plugin seems to also have a lot of issues with distorting themes. Probably should wait until there is an upgrade from its current version ( give the man some money!)*-see below for updated info on W3 Total Cache.
• This guy says that DB Cache reloaded is better than WP Super-Cache. But this blogger puts it in perspective: WP Super Cache helps more for sites where some posts get a lot of traffic, and DB Cache helps sites that get a lot of traffic for many posts ( ie: Craigslist = DB Cache. Maxim.com = WP Super Cache ).
• Donncha’s WP Super Cache forum: He will answer them in a timely manner.
• Remember that DB cache stores db requests, and super cache stores html pages ( if you didn’t read the post above. ).
• Anyone know about this plugin Object Cache?

The creator of the W3 Total Cache plugin has a rebuttal to my comments:

- Fragment caching is coming in the next W3TC release, making the few users that don’t have ideal implementations for (some) widgets happy.
- W3TC doesn’t break site layouts, minify is tricky and many users use settings that are unsafe for their particular themes because themes are all of varying quality and complexity. Minifcation is not something that can be automated although some try and those plugins actually break sites.
- Please use these forums for W3TC here, not on my site: http://wordpress.org/tags/w3-total-cache or http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/tags/w3-total-cache
- Database caching reduces the execution time for generating new pages, but nothing will ever be faster than providing apache an .html file to serve a page until there are changes to the way operating systems work. So add a database cache to your site if you want to reduce page generation time.
- Object caching at that site is basically using opcode caching to store the contents of wp_options table required to answer various requests and also reusing the memory storage for the finalize objects like pages or queries.

At the moment, W3TC is the only plugin to optimize, browser, front-end and backend performance for WordPress and there’s far more to come before release.

This is good to hear. Frederick Townes means business, and the W3 Total Cache plugin could be a popular and dominant script for Wordpress for times to come. Thanks; I will add you to my blog roll.

UPDATE: Donncha has some input on the Object Cache:

The Object Cache has nothing to do with an opcode cache though. It’s simply a cache (using your desired storage mechanism – memory as in memcached, xcache etc, or disk) for options and high level objects in WordPress.

For example, the in-development version of wp-super-cache can use the object cache to store cached pages. If your object cache uses memcached, it caches to RAM, and doesn’t even have to be on the same server as the web server.
Batcache does this too.

Related information: Opcode Cache for Dummies

Thanks guys for giving some input on my post. If someone wants to do some benchmarking and/or extra comparison with these plugins, I will more than welcome it ( and link it here ). I am not good with time these days, but understand the importance of this topic.