Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin Released

After a couple weeks of modifications and improvements, I present the Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin:

Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin

Here are some instructions:

Requires WP2.1 or higher AND PHP5.0 or higher (it utilizes SimpleXML). If you don’t have PHP5.0 or higher, you can download this version from Samanathon.
Get your API Key from Technorati
Copy the files to the plugin/technorati-rank directory.
Go to Options > Technorati Rank and fill in your API Key and your Blog’s URL.
Optionally, you can set how often you would like to refresh the Cache. The default is 4 hours.
Once you update the plugin, you should see your blog rank on the Options page along with the snippet to add to your sidebar (or where ever you’d like to put it).

That’s it! Questions or comments welcome. There’s a lot of opportunity to expand this plugin with other Technorati API capabilities. I’ll continue to develop those over time.

See the Project Page for the latest and the download link.

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.

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http://dorion.blogspot.com Dorion Carroll

Doug, this is great. Thanks for sharing this with everyone. I’ll see if we can get it on the tools page.
http://geekwithlaptop.com Sean

Hey Doug. Your sidebar Technorati Rank currently says 0 as I type this comment but if you click the link, you do have a rank, so something seems a miss with your plugin.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Nothing wrong, Sean. I worked on the plugin so long yesterday with so much testing that I exceeded the 500 call allotment with Technorati. I have some commented html in there that tells the user exactly what the error is, when it was last cached, etc. Viewing the source provides all the info anyone would need to see what the problem is.

Thanks!
Doug

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http://geekwithlaptop.com Sean

So there is a 500 call allotment. Does that mean every time a user visits your site, it counts as a call to Technorati or is it when your plugin refreshes the information?

I’m going to assume it’s when the plugin refreshes but I’m still a little confused if that’s the case.

Based on your default refresh time of 4 hours, that means the plugin would refresh 6 times in a 24 hour period, so 6 calls.

Maybe I’m just not seeing it as my brain is in rest mode today but I am curious about this.

At any rate, very cool plugin. That makes 2 in 2007 for you. w00t.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

It’s cached so that every user visiting the site refers to the cache. You can set the default cache rate to something other than 4 hours (I have a select from 1 hour to 1 day for users). As a result… you’re right… the default would be 6 calls in the day.

Thanks! I think it’s cool, too. I’m going to continue to expand it as well.

Doug

http://technical-itch.co.uk/ Dean

Nice to see you getting into the plugin business

I’ll avoid the embarassment of putting this onto my web site though, if you add a couple of zeros onto your ranking you’ll get a ballpark figure of how my site ranks with Technorati!

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Thanks, Dean! I really enjoy the creative part of programming. I’ve also seen that it drives a lot of traffic so I want to keep a couple of these going.

As for your rank… that’s not embarrassing at all! I only utilize it as a gauge one whether I’m moving in the right direction – not to say I’m better than anyone. Most of the blogs I read are in the 6-digit rank but I love reading them!

http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/ Xial

Well Doug, I’ve to admit a small issue with your plugin.

Unfortunately, you forget to add the alt attribute to the two images. I tried correcting it, but either I have a plugin interfering (which doesn’t seem likely), or it’s ignoring my addition of the alt attributes to each image.

As a result, those two images pitch errors in the W3′s validator.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Xial,

Thanks! And it’s an excellent catch and I’m a little embarassed. I was so excited to get it out that I missed that. I’m going to work on making it 100% style controlled, even placing the graphics in div styles. I’ll see what I can knock out tonight.

Doug
http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Xial,

I’ve uploaded a minor revision that adds both (deprecated) alt tags and title tags to the img tags. I tested it on the W3C validator and it passed.

I’m still working on a much nicer CSS version using an inline list… but I’m working through some issues. I love CSS but cross-browser can be a challenge!

Regards,
Doug

http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/ Xial

Indeed, indeed, cross browser compatibility is more likely to make you cross, than anything else.

I remember when I was fighting with it, and eventually said, “Oh, bugger that.” and just ended up going with compliant code, instead.

I stopped caring if it didn’t look right in one major browser, as long as the data that I intended would get across to the viewer.
http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/ Xial

Of course, I come back, half-cocked on this, having been unable to have my morning dose of caffeine.

In your code, you have this:
function wptr_add_style() { echo "<style>\n#technorati-rank

I neglected to mention yesterday that I had fixed this locally, since the validator was gagging on this, to:

function wptr_add_style() { echo "<style type='text/css'>\n#technorati-rank

That, however is a rather, aheh… trivial thing. I just wish I had mentioned it yesterday, while you were already pushing in the other stuff.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

It’s up there, ready for download! Please pass on any other thoughts!

Thanks for all the assistance.

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http://cocoa.wops.de Stefan

Excellent, Doug!

However, with my (german version) 2.1.2 of WP I get this error after I entered my API key:
—–
Your current rank:

Warning: fopen(/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/htdocs/wp/wp-content/cache/technorati-rank.html) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/htdocs/wp/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 91

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/htdocs/wp/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 92

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/htdocs/wp/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 93
—–

Should I simply create that “cache” directory in wp-content and everything will be fine?

Thx,
Stefan.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Hi Stefan,

Yes, that should do it! I’m sorry about that – I should absolutely write the check to see if the folder already exists. If you want, you can also install WP-Cache and that will take care of putting the folder there.

There’s also a brand new version of this plugin available! I released it today.

Thanks for letting me know about this!

http://cocoa.wops.de Stefan

Hi Doug,

whoa! WHAT a fast reply — THANKS!!

So I made this directory “cache” but still can’t get it running. Instead of “no such file or directory” I now get “permission denied”.
But that was just due to the fact that my default umask does not allow the group to write in that directory.
So I changed the access rights for the “cache” directory to allow the group to write into it and — voilá — everything looks fine now!

(oh, btw: already had 2.0.0 )

So thanks again, Doug, for this nice & nifty little tool!

Cheers,
Stefan.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Fantastic, Stefan!

You caught me sitting at the book store, online. Glad that took care of it, I forgot about the CHMOD needed to write to the directory. Details, details!

Keep an eye out soon for an entry in German. I have quite a few readers in Germany and really appreciate all the feedback. I’ve read that, culturally, Germans weren’t as open to blogging as some other countries; however, my experience is much different. I actually find myself copying and pasting many German blog entries into translation engines to read them.

I’ve also told my friend, Michael, when he translates the entry, he has total freedom to make fun of me in it. I’m sure he’ll take advantage and I hope the translation engine will be able to translate the slang. My grandfather lived in Germany for many years, so I’m hoping he’ll be able to help out, too!

Thanks!
http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Stefan,

Just a note, I just put up version 2.0.1… it now ensures that the cache directory exists and is writeable. Thanks for letting me know about this issue!

Regards,
Doug

http://cocoa.wops.de Stefan

Hi Doug,

thanks a lot for your effort! Really Appreciate it!

You’re still right: I, too, think that most of the Germans who are online still have some kind of technology fear. For sure more than the Americans!
I’m not representative here, unfortunately. I’m a geek, I guess. Lots of toys here in the real and in the virtual world.
–

I still have a problem with your plugin, Doug: I’m using the Widgets plugin, too, and my theme is capable of displaying the widgets in the sidebar.
Now I dragged a pure Text widget into the sidebar and entered the code your plugin produces into it.
However, nothing appears at the location of the text widget in my sidebar.
Do you happen to know whether the Text widget can handle HTML/PHP code?

cya,
Stefan.

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Hi Stefan,

I think you can use Widgetize Anything. It’s a plugin that allows you to actually put PHP code in any sidebar widget.

Cheers!
Doug

http://cocoa.wops.de Stefan

YES! That worked! Finally I see the badge in my sidebar.

However … Because my rank ist something around 1.7Mio. the text rendering is a little bit ugly as you can see here: http://cocoa.wops.de.

There *would* be enough space for the line “Blog Rank:” and the line with the number below it if the first line would start a little bit more at the top of the badge …

Any chance for this cosmetic fix?

Greetings,
Stefan.
http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

That text is actually configurable in the plugin. It’s the “Note before the rank”. You can make it state just “Rank:” or “My Rank:” to shorten it up.

Worst case scenario, you can modify the size of that text in the plugin folder in the style.css file.

PS: Looks great in Firefox

Doug
http://cocoa.wops.de Stefan

Doug, you’re right! Looks good in FireFox! I’m a Mac, so I was nearsighted and just tried Safari. Mea culpa.
With Camino (a native OSX browser that uses the Gecko engine) the badge looks fine, too. And for the rest, I’ll use your hints. Great!

But besides that, I really should work on my technorati rank …

Take care,
Stefan.

http://www.b166er.com Boris Shohat

It really makes new blogs look bad .
Thanks for the tool though

Cheers
http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Thanks, Boris!

PS: You can use the plugin without showing your rank on your site.
http://askax.net/2007/03/15/technorati-rank-widget-release-10/ AskaX

That was a good Idea to include feedburner into your plugin, I’ll see if I can put that on my Technorati Rank widget as well
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http://blog.saboya.org Lefebvre

Well, my cache dir is writeable but I still have the permision denied error.

failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/.hoagie/brevesnotas/blog.saboya.org/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 121

Im using WP 2.1.3. Strange…
http://www.floss.dk Gilbert

Warning: include() [function.include]: Unable to access /usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/cache//technorati-rank.html in /usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 143

Warning: include(/usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/cache//technorati-rank.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 143

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘/usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/cache//technorati-rank.html’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/local/share/pear:/usr/local/www/serverinfo’) in /usr/local/www/flossdk/www/wp-content/plugins/technorati-rank/technorati-rank.php on line 143

i get this problem think chmod all correct !

http://marketingtechblog.com Douglas Karr

Gilbert,

Looks like you’re host is lacking the required versions of PHP and/or the associated libraries. Please see the requirements on the project page and check with your host.

Thanks,
Doug