I am so excited about this guys! I am currently in the process of making the ULTIMATE WordPress plugin for book bloggers! It will basically contain everything you could ever need to make your book blogging life easier and more awesome! Below is a list of features I plan on having so far. Some of these you may have seen me advertising already, but some of them are BRAND NEW!
- Automatically updating review indexes. That’s right, these indexes ALL update 100% automatically! You can display the index by using a shortcode on any page you want. There are four different shortcodes, one for each kind of index: sorted by book title, by author’s last name, by series, and by date/year.
- Automatically updating giveaway widget. A widget that automatically displays your current giveaways, and then removes them from the widget when the giveaway is over. You never have to manually update this widget!
- Automatically updating “this month’s reviews” widget. A widget that automatically displays cover photos of the books you’ve reviewed this month on your blog, and links to each post.
- Automatically updating review goal widget. This widget allows you to set a goal for an amount of books to read that year, and then displays a progress bar to show how far along you are on your goal. You never have to update this widget yourself! (See the top right of my blog for an example ;))
- An advanced blogroll. You have a custom area in the back-end of WordPress where you add a new blog to your list. There are fields to fill out like blog name, blog URL, button URL, etc. Then all the entries get automatically generated into HTML and automatically displayed on your blog in a widget. There will be many options for how you want the blogroll widget to be displayed: in a textual list, or a rotating image marquee. Here’s what mine looks like right now. The screenshot shows the admin area and the blogroll page. The one in this plugin will be slightly different, but that’s just an example!
- Easy book information display. Click here to see an example. On the post creation page, you have boxes to fill out for book title/author/series/etc., and then all that information gets automatically generated into HTML and inserted into your book review posts. This way you don’t have to format the HTML each time!
- Easy book ratings and related ratings. The rating plugin I talk about in this post will be included! Check the link for full details.
- Custom taxonomies where you can input the book author and/or series, and then have special indexes for those tags. For example:
- Here is what it looks like in the back-end. You can see how there are different boxes for tags (already there by WordPress default), authors, and series.
- Here’s what it looks like on the review display page. Notice how there are links to go to the book author, the series, and then there is an automatically generated list of other books in the series.
- When you click on the author link, you get taken to a page like this. You see all posts by that author, along with an author bio. All the posts are generated automatically and you only have to manually fill in the author bio and add a photo (both of which are optional).
- My new book review statistics plugin will be included. Check it out and download it here!
- More to come!
This is my list of features so far, but I am 100% open to suggestions! I’d LOVE to know if you guys can think of anything that I’ve left out! Please let me know in the comments section. I can make shortcodes for just about anything, and can make almost any WordPress widget or feature update automatically! Just le me know!
Since the list is so extensive, I will be charging for this plugin. I don’t have a price yet, but it will probably be around $35 USD.
It will probably take me a while to finish this and put it all together, but hopefully it will be done by the end of January or mid-February! It depends on how many features I end up adding. 🙂
Ashely, this is amazing! I’m definitely going to be keeping my eye out for it’s release!
THIS IS AMAZING.
This sounds awesome!! I’ll look forward to the release of your plug-in 🙂
THIS is exactly what I need (want? no, need)! 🙂 Can’t wait…
This sounds absolutely incredible!
I might convert to WordPress if all this will actually be made possible!
It really will make our blogging life so much easier… You’re absolutely amazing!
You totally should! WordPress is AMAZING! …Not that I’m biased. 😉
Haha, but WordPress also seems complicated.
When I first thought of opening a blog I looked at it, and it told me to download it (and I didn’t understand exactly why I had to download it), and then the guide to how to download it really confused me (I’m not too technological…)
Any advice? 😛
Okay basically there are a few key differences between Blogger and a self-hosted WordPress Blog:
Blogger is a free platform. Google has set up a bunch of servers and web space where people can come make a blog for free. Everything his hosted on Google’s end, and thus Google is in control (and technically owns) all the content/hosting space. Since they own it, they set up the Blogger platform and get everything working for you. But since it’s a free space, there are a lot of limitations. You can’t customize it however you want, since Google has it a certain way. And since you don’t have access to the hosting or servers, you can’t do certain coding or PHP scripts (like the plugin I’m making).
A self-hosted WordPress blog (wordpress.com = free platform, like Blogger; wordpress.org = self-hosted) means you have to host it yourself. So you have to buy hosting space from a company (which is basically like renting space on the internet to put up your own content), and a domain name (the web address). Then once you have that hosting space, you have to actually put WordPress on there! Since Google hosts Blogger for you, they already have Blogger set up. But when you host it yourself, it doesn’t exist yet. So you have to download it and install it. Most hosts do have a one click “install WordPress” feature though.
That’s honestly just a quick and dirty explanation. If you actually do want to move to WordPress, you’ll probably want to read a full guide. If you dig around on Google, you could probably find one that’s written out really well and in a user-friendly way. Or you could even talk to other book bloggers who have made the switch and they could give you some advice! I’m sure there have been a few book bloggers who paid someone to move their blog for them. I don’t personally do that, but people who have made the switch might know of someone. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to explain this for me <3
It still sounds complicated, but when you publish this plugin I may just make the effort (since this is an incredibly amazing plugin)
You're awesome!
This is so great! I’m looking forward to it, especially the book information display. 😀
Ashley, has anyone ever told you that you are amazing AND innovative? Because you so are. These plugins look like they would be incredibly useful to book bloggers everywhere! If I were ever to transfer over to WordPress someday I would definitely use some of these incredible plugins. I wish I was nearly half as code-savvy. However, WordPress in general just confuses the heck out of me. Continue being awesome-sauce! 😀
Aw thank you so much!!! 🙂 You should really give WordPress a try! 🙂 I mean, I can probably appreciate it a little more than most people since I am a developer, but in general WordPress is fabulous. There are so many amazing plugins and themes!
Just kill me now for not starting with wordpress. *sighs*
*HUGS YOU TO DEATH* seriously? HOW AMAAZING ARE YOU?!?! I can’t wait until this is out. I’m going to sign up to be a beta tester 😀 I don’t even care if I get picked because I’ll buy this plugin anyway lol
YAY! You can always e-mail me or comment here if you have any suggestions for it!
I have been debating switching to self-hosted, I use the free wordpress stuff right now, but that plug-in sounds completely PERFECT!
hmmmm
You should definitely consider switching to self hosted Elisa! There is so much more freedom with a self hosted blog, and not just for the sake of this plugin! There’s a lot more you can do with your blog theme and other plugins as well. 🙂
Is there a shortcode for the month’s reviews widget? I’d like it to show on the bottom of my page horizontally instead of inside the sidebar.
Sorry, there’s not a shortcode for it. Maybe I’ll make one though!