Matt Mauldin

This blog’s title sounds like a bad Meat Loaf song, but it’s actually easy to set up, works great, saves time, and is pretty freakin’ sweet.

I have lots of social media accounts (twitter, facebook, and identica)  that allow for status updates.   I’m also running chat accounts, which allow for status.  So I finally found a way to update all of these accounts at once from anywhere I can IM.

1. Identi.ca account – There is a setting to manage your Gtalk IM settings to confirm your Gtalk address, and a checkbox setting so that you can post a note it your Identi.ca profile each time you update your Gtalk status.
2. Gtalk buddy list – Add “update@identi.ca” to your buddy list.  Each time you chat, identi.ca adds a dent (aka tweet in identi.ca-speak) to your profile.  (important: do this!)
3. Identi.ca account – Add your twitter account to your Identi.ca settings and check the box to send new notices to your twitter account automatically.
4. Facebook account – Now add the twitter app for your facebook account, and set it to update your facebook status when you tweet.

That’s it. you are done. Your status flow will look like this:

Now you can update your status from the Gtalk client, from the chat in Gmail, from Gtalk on your blackberry/iPhone, or from another client like Pidgin or Digsby.

(By the way, Meat Loaf doesn’t have any bad songs)

Popularity: 76% [?]

Wordpress is one of the most well-developed open-source software packages available on the net today.  I’ve used it for blogging, as a review site or an article directory, as a CMS, and even for a simple e-commerce site.  All of these uses are possible using the stock Wordpress install because of the huge selection of Wordpress plugins.

As of the time I write this post, there were 4,245 plugins available for download in the Wordpress Plugin Directory.  So the question is this: How do you decide which Wordpress plugins to use?

MattMauldin.com runs on WordPress 2.7.1 with quite a bit of custom work, but the main functionality on this site comes from my use of 15 Wordpress plugins (at the moment).

15 Best WordPress Plugins (because I use them)

Akismet – Keep your comments spam free (or damn near) with this plugin.  It will automatically remove comments marked as spam from your comment queue.  This plugin has saved me a ton of time weeding through jibberish, stupid “great post, admin” comments and sale notices at oversea pharmacies.  I mean, come on; I don’t want a stupid Viagra ad running on my website (unless it’s from my own affiliate link).

No Self Pings – This plugin keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.  It’s incredibly helpful if you record pingbacks as comments, or if you are trying to manage your internal link juice.

All-in-One SEO Pack – This is the #1 most popular plugin on WordPress.org.  And there’s a reason why: you can manage most of the lacking SEO items for your blog from a single settings page.  Set how your Title and META tags are displayed for each page and post, tag, archive, and category page.  Set the same tags for your home page individually.  Beyond that, you can customize the Title and META tags for each page or post if you choose to.

Google Analytics for WordPress – There are a few other plugins that integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress install, but none are as easy or as configured out-of-the-box as this one.  There’s also a great resource available from Joost de Valk here to help you with some of the more powerful (or complicated) tracking options Google Analytics offers.

Google XML Sitemaps – Keep your XML feed to Google Sitemaps up to date with this easy plugin.  Take some time to set your settings correctly, and then you can forget it – it runs itself.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Manage your RSS feed with Feedburner.  Then use this plugin to ensure all of the subscribers subscribe through your Feedburner feed so your tracking is accurate.

PS Auto Sitemap – Use this plugin to quickly create a Site Map for your WordPress blog.  It comes installed with several CSS skins you can choose through the admin settings page.  In fact, there are quite a few powerful settings you can choose through the settings page to create a helpful sitemap.

Page Link Manager – Add additional navigation and pagination to your blog.  Although I’ve got an archive, categories, and a tag cloud, I thought it was important to provide the pagination at the bottom of this blog for usability.  The last thing you want is a blog that is difficult to navigate.

WP-PageNavi – This plugin allows you to choose which pages appear in your blog menu if you use the wp_list_pages hook.  It works will with the next plugin.

My Page Order – This plugin provides a drag-and-drop interface for changing the order of your pages.  It’s great to easily manage the menus on your blog.  Use it in combination with the previous plugin and you have almost total control over your blog’s menu.

Simple Tags – Simple Tags offers three powerful new options to manage your tags.

1. Manage your tags: search tags, rename tags, delete, add or edit a tag, change the sort order of your tags, and even see how many times each of your tags are used.
2. Mass Edit your tags: changes tags on multiple posts at once instead of going post by pont – a huge timesaver. and
3. Auto tag: this is by far the most powerful function of this plugin. Choose the tags you expect to repat among your posts and enter them here, then Auto tag will automatically apply them to new posts if they match the headling or content.

Popularity Contest – This plugin scores your posts by calculating the number of comments, links, and a number of other attributes.  You can then show the result in a number of ways.  My footer contains a “Popular Posts” that uses this plugin.  I also use this plugin to help rank my page importance in my XML sitemap.

Twitter Tools – The Twitter Tools plugin is just what I was looking for to integrate my twitter account.  I’ve scheduled a post once per week, early on Monday mornings, that pulls all of my tweets over the past week.  I also use it to post a notification tweet each time I publish a new post.

Contact Form 7 – Create multiple forms with a ton of options for input fields.  You can create forms with text fields, comment boxes, and even CAPTCHA support.  I use it on my contact form, and have used it on other WordPress installs for much more complicated forms with ease.

Note: You will notice that I do not use Sociable.  Instead, I’ve custom coded five social icons that show up inside The Loop beneath each post that allow readers to share my posts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Facebook.  The only reason I bypassed Sociable is for style.  In many other instances, I’ve used it and it will work just fine.

If you have a suggested plugin, please comment.

Popularity: 100% [?]

If your job revolves around the internet like mine, then you probably have  amassed a number of email, IM, and social accounts over the past few years to connect to friends and colleagues, or to access certain services.  In my case:

IM: I have a username for chatting through Google Talk, Yahoo & MSN Messengers, and AIM.  I have a number of colleagues and friends who use each chat client, so it is beneficial to have more than one IM login.

Email: I have a gmail account as my primary address, but I also have a Yahoo email address to access Yahoo’s Site Explorer and some of their other services.  I have a hotmail account that serves as my MSN login, and I have a number of email addresses for the blogs and ecommerce sites I run.

Social Networks: Among others, I have a facebook account to stay connected with my friends, a LinkedIn account to keep connected proessionally with current and past coworkers, and a twitter account to tie all of my activities together, from personal, professional, blogging and miscellaneous.

So how do you stay connected with multiple IM accounts, social networking accounts, and a whole host of emails to check every day?

Digsby.

Digsby talks with each of your IM, email, and social accounts above, and I’ve found that really saves me time during the day, while still allowing me to keep up to date with what is going on in my network of connections.

Digsby offers personalization through different skins and window styles.  Choose how you are notified for each account through discreet popups in the corner of your screen, or through sounds.  You can even create a Digsby widget to put on your blog or website so visitors can chat with you directly, even if they don’t have you set as a friend.

You can learn more or download Digsby here.

Popularity: 85% [?]

Apparently starring in over 40 movies and TV shows does not qualify you to speak at your alma mater’s comencement ceremony.

That’s right, James Franco (James Franco at IMDB) was selected by a committee at UCLA to speak at this spring’s graduation ceremonies. But there’s a Facebook page created by a UCLA student to oppose this selection.

The Facebook page quickly gathered a following, and just as quickly received additional information attempting to suppress racial and homophobic epithets, and threats to both J.F. and any supporter of the Facebook page.

The page’s creator says this is not a personal attack against Franco, but instead a suggestion that the student body deserves a speaker that has “done something to change the world.”

James Franco has been chosen as the speaker for the College of Letters and Sciences Commencement Ceremony for 2009. Clearly, this is ridiculous.

- UCLA Students Against James Franco as Commencement Speaker

Aaahhh ha ha ha!!!  I bet if James Franco was nominated to speak at the 2007 ceremony (pre Spider-Man 3), no one would have objected.

Popularity: 68% [?]

Naymz.com is a business-related social network targeting mainly the same market as LinkedIn.  I was turned on to Naymz after reading an article about their profiles being well optimized to show high in the SERPs.  I am mostly interested to see how soon it will take to see my Naymz profile show up. You can see my profile here:

Is Naymz Spammy?
One user, Ben Poole didn’t find Naymz very helpful.  I wouldn’t either if I had his Spam experience here:
http://benpoole.com/weblog/200801222050
But read carefully past the post and you’ll find some very interesting comments, even from one of Naymz co-founders, Tom Drugan.  Tom responded only 1 day after Ben first posted the problem.  I find that to be very responsive and I certainly wouldn’t expect that from any employee of the big social networks.

One feature Naymz allows is to automatically log into other accounts you own (Yahoo mail, Gmail, LinkedIn, etc) and send an invite to your network of contacts. Volker Weber, http://vowe.net/archives/009346.html, found this very annoying.  So did many of his readers, as noted in comments to this post.
(Notice also that Tom Drugan responded withing a couple of days to Volker’s post also)

Stalkers on Naymz
Naymz has been called A Stalker Enabled Social Network by some because of they provide detailed tracking, including IP address, geographic location, and what time you visited a profile.

Whatever.  Just spend a few minutes on MySpace or Facebook and you can find zip codes, email and IM addresses, hometowns and current towns, and who knows what else.  Sure, you won’t know the exact time of a visit, but you can have a fairly good idea of who is reading your profile.  This isn’t anything new – if someone is serious about tracking you down, your information can be found.

Why will I keep using Naymz?
So Naymz has trouble with spam, provides some questionable tracking practices, and has a much lower adoption than other social sites.  But there is 1 reason that will determine if I continue to use Naymz, and it goes back to the overall goal of “Reputation Management”.

That is, if Naymz can get a SERP listing onto page 1 in Google and Yahoo for my name, then this is well worth it.  That is a whole 10% of the SERP page that I may or may not control without a Naymz profile.

I may not use their premium services, invite my friends, or even spend much time here at all.  But taking up valuable real estate on the SERPs for a page 1 is a benefit that I don’t want to pass up!  Stay tuned and I’ll update in a later post on the results.

Popularity: 39% [?]