Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin Version 2 Released!

Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin Version 2 Released!

Hot on the heels of the first Technorati Rank Plugin, I’ve redesigned the output content to make it CSS driven (below is a screenshot, you can interact with the one in my site’s sidebar):

This one was quite a bit more challenging to produce but the output is much nicer. First, I utilized what I’ve been learning on Bittbox to make each of the output buttons on the image in Illustrator.

The next step was utilizing styles to actually build someone of an image map except that there’s actually no map! It’s pretty cool, actually. You can set the overall div background and then create each of the ‘hotspots’ utilizing absolute positioning and CSS. View the output CSS.

I also added a link to Technorati’s new WTF page and the site’s RSS address. I hope you like it! I think it’s a vast improvement from the first version! There’s an i link in the bottom right that promotes the plugin as well.

Current Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin Version 2.0.4

About Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in inbound marketing leveraging social media, blogging, search engine optimization, pay per click and public relations. Their clients include Angie's List, Mindjet, Webtrends, ChaCha and many more. Douglas is also the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies.

View all posts by Douglas Karr →

http://engtech.wordpress.com engtech

Isn’t bittbox awesome?

Man, that site is an inspiration.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

It sure is! I had been looking for Illustrator assistance for quite some time. I don’t use it enough to do be fantastic at it, so a site like Bittbox saves me a LOT of time!

http://www.winextra.com Steven Hodson

I tried to install the newest and greatest following your directions to the “letter”

but I got the following error

Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: simplexmlelement in /home/winex4/public_html/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 64

any suggestions?

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Hi Steven,

That’s an error when SimpleXML is initiated, which is part of PHP5. Does your server have PHP5?

Regards,
Doug

http://www.winextra.com Steven Hodson

that will teach me to check first .. apparently Lunarpages is running 4.4.4 of PHP

Guess I’ll have to check out the other version or hang tough and see if they upgrade to 5.0

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

I hope they do! But I also hope your host upgrades. PHP5 really brings some much better performance improvements, as well as some better tools for consuming APIs. I utilize Jumpline, you’ll see a link in my sponsor list on my home page. I also believe Dotster has some good VDS hosting with the latest and greatest.

http://www.bittbox.com BittBox

Doug,
I’m having the same problem
I called my host and they said my server has PHP 4 and PHP 5, but if i want to run a file using PHP 5, the script has to have .php5 file extension.

So… I changed the file extensions, and it disappears from the plugins in wordpress.

Any Ideas?

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Wow – I am not sure at all, BittBox. Let me take a look at what Samanthon had done to convert the first version to PHP4.

I’m really surprised at how many hosts there are out there that don’t have the latest and greatest!

http://samanathon.com Saman Sadeghi

I was going to ask what version this ran too!

http://www.bittbox.com BittBox

Awesome Plugin, Excellent styling! Thanks Doug, and great work. I never even knew about the first one, but this is going in my sidebar pronto.

It’s REALLY Rewarding to see that my Illustrator tips helped you make your buttons!!!!!

thanks again,

~BittBox

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Thank-you, BittBox! I think I’ve got a good eye for style, but I never seem to get it right most of the time. Being able to actually download your samples and dissect them is what makes the difference. I’m able to actually execute on those ideas now.

I’m toying with some thoughts on my blog’s header and background next.

http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net Xial

Well, Doug, it seems that the version 2 plugin hates me. I get error messages:

Warning: fopen(/technorati-rank.html) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /..../wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 121 Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /..../wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 122 Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /..../wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 123

Despite the error messages, it also shows my Technorati rank (~26.5k ). I’m not knowledgeable enough about PHP to know why it’s crying over that one file.
Interestingly enough, on our server, we use SuPHP, so everything runs as us (so chmod requirements no longer require world-writable files, and php scripts will not execute if chmod’ed too high, for example).

All php for this subdomain runs as php5.

Any ideas?

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Do you have a wp-content/cache directory Xial? I thought it would be a good idea to utilize the same cache directory as WP-Cache. In hindsight, perhaps it was not a good idea! That line is definitely to write to the cache file.

http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net Xial

I certainly do, Doug. I’ve been running WP-Cache for quite a while.

I was a little curious, too, as to why it’d complain about this, since I do have the necessary directory, but I’m guessing it’s something else altogether.
http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net Xial

Interesting bit of info to add:

$ pwd /..../wp-content/cache $ ls -l tech* -rw-r--r-- 1 meeeeeeee meeeeeeee 1.1K Mar 12 11:47 technorati-rank.html

It still returns the errors.

http://modifoo.com modifoo

Just want to chime in with having the same error. Site runs php5, and the button displays.
I tried commenting out lines 121-123, and the plug works fine. Can I put it live, or will the lack of those lines cause trouble in the longer run?

http://seo-marketingreview.com Richard Curry

I’m getting the same errors as above, I also thought it was my cache dir but I have one and also made sure write rights were correct.
In the side bar it will show the plugin (with rank) but with those errors above it.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Hi Richard,

Can you check to see that you have PHP version 5+ and CURL is enabled? You can do this by building a page on your site with <?php phpinfo(); ?> in a page. Then open that page. The top of the page will have your version of PHP and you can do a search for CURL to ensure it’s enabled.

Thanks!
Doug

http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/ Xial

Well, Doug, I double-checked my PHP version.
I am running PHP5, and cURL is compiled in (one of my usual three requests to my host, for things to be compiled into PHP).

Everything else works fine, but I’m not entirely sure why this plugin is choking, unless it’s the version of cURL compiled in to PHP (We’re at 7.15.4, and latest appears to be 7.16.1). However, I don’t want to pester my host to compile php5 again just for that, if I can help it. <:3

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

I’m going to take a deeper look this weekend. It’s running without any problems on a few sites – so it’s one of 3 things: 1. Cache, 2. cURL or 3. PHP Version.

I can utilize older PHP 4 functionality to pull and parse the XML but it may slow it down quite a bit – I’m going to test this weekend. I appreciate all the input. “Houston, we have a problem!”.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Just a note: Technorati has launched an Authority Plugin.

Also – for all of those who are having problems with this plugin, I’d really encourage you to move to a new host . I’ve got a 12 month free special with my host at the bottom of my About page.
http://technical-itch.co.uk/ Dean

Hi Doug,

Great work on the plugin. It worked ‘out of the box’ on Jumpline and is now installed on my blog.
http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

I’ve received quite a few requests that there have been errors writing or reading from the cache file. I actually identified an issue where I was pushing and pulling the cache file to the root directory. I’ve modified version 2.0.4 so that it writes to a cache subdirectory within the plugin’s directory.

Please let me know how it runs! (Still needs SimpleXML and cURL!)