After a week-and-a-half-long slog through PHP tutorials I’ve finally figured out how to create WordPress plugin and hook it up to the Goldhat web app. The funny thing was, it was the idea for this very widget (which displays number of donations made to your blog post/photograph, etc) that was the catalyst for creating the web app. Little did I know that it would be one of the last features I’d develop, at least for Goldhat 1.0.
The widget itself is a little large as widgets go, it’s about 5 times the size of a tweetmeme button. Although I certainly could have made it this more convenient size, I realize that very few people would know exactly what the numbers on the widget represented, or what the heck Goldhat was. That’s why, at least for this particular version, I decided to make it larger and have it provide as much detail as possible. Although I imagine I’ll get fewer users with a larger widget, I believe that they’ll be more committed users. At this stage of Goldhat’s development, that’s exactly what we’re looking for.
The plugin itself will display information on how many donations each post receives, but it will also help you submit links that haven’t been inputted into the Goldhat database. I figured this was better than an “auto-submit” function because we don’t want every “I’m taking a vacation for two weeks” blog post to fill up the Goldhat index.
At the moment, I’m working on a couple more features to improve shareability and SEO for Goldhat. Once those changes are made, I think Goldhat will be ready for it’s first big marketing push (think contests and glamorous prizes!).
In the meantime, you can see just how the plugin works down below this post. If you notice any bugs please shoot me a mail at kenji [at] goldhat dot org. Also, any suggestions for other, better widgets I might put together in the future are appreciated.
To install the widget, just click “Add New” in your plugins sidebar on your WordPress Dashboard. Search for ‘goldhat’ and install from there. You can get the widget here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/goldhat-widget/
For a working example of this widget on a real live blog, you can check out my personal site Unready and Willing. For those who do decide to put the widget up, please let me know, I’ll be sure to mention you on this blog, and elsewhere!