Google Reader WordPress Plugin
This week we christened our Software section with a called Recommended Reading: Google Reader Shared. The plug in, optimized for the latest major build of WordPress (2.7 at the time of writing), will let you easily feature selected items from any number of standard web feeds (be it a blog or company news) on your WordPress site. All you need is a free account!
The plug-in is also in less than 100 hours.
Once you’ve added the feeds you’d like to highlight in Google Reader, just install the plug in (easy in 2.7+), customize by going to the new “Rec. Reading” menu option under “Settings”, and in your sidebar or add it anywhere in the template manually. Then just choose the items you’d like to feature by clicking the “Share” button below any item in Google Reader.
PRFirms features member posts on their home page
This plug-in was inspired a mini-application we built for the Council of Public Relations Firms (PRFirms) called Firm thinking. The idea behind Firm thinking was to feature “Insight and Intelligence from Council Member Blogs.” PRFirms wanted to add value for its members by featuring the newest noteworthy posts on their home page and a longer list of recent noteworthy posts on a dedicated page on their site. Their members benefit from intangible exposure as well as the tangible search engine optimization benefits of the featured links.
This particular application was actually built on CitySoft Community Enterprise, and we’re considering releasing a plugin for that platform if there’s interest. Combining lessons learned from that project with our WordPress expertise, we were able to rapidly develop the WordPress plug-in it inspired in about one day.
One of the pieces we’re most proud of is the ability to fetch a user’s arbitrary 20-digit Google Reader ID automatically. Sadly, Google Reader’s API provides no method for directly returning this ID. While we could instruct the user on how to find the ID manually, we believe that usability is #1, so we devised a way to pull out the ID with just your Reader user name and password. To avoid making this post to technical, we’ll follow up with another blog post just on that subject for our technical audience.
What do you think? If you have WordPress and can install the plugin, we’d love your feedback!
I was wondering if your Google Reader plug-in was able to handle comments in one’s Google reader feed, such as when you add a note to something you’re sharing.
We’re working on v1.1 and we’re aiming to add two new features… and that’s one of them!
We’re going to make the widget more customizable, and we’re going to add support for notes / comments. I’m hoping it will be ready for release no later than Monday.
It looks like a great plugin. I receive the following error when trying to install on WP 2.7 (and 2.7.1):
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in ……wp-content/plugins/recommended-reading-google-reader-shared/googlereader.php on line 67
$urlPost = $entry->link->attributes()->href;
Running PHP 5.2.6
Toastie - not certain offhand why you’re getting that error. This happens when you try to activate the plugin…? When you just try to install through the “add new plugin” UI? Try and be as specific as possible about when this error occurs.
I’m about to call it a night where I am, but I’ll investigate a bit in the morning.