I have written a couple of new WordPress widgets that I haven’t put out on the WordPress Repository.
I wrote a Google keywords type plugin that only appears to users who arrive by search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo). Searchers see a widget that shows the posts that are related to their search terms. Rather than use keywords I buzz the database looking for instances of the words in the posts and titles. I count the instances of keywords and use that for a sort so that surfers see posts related to their search.
As you can see, it is hard to described although very very useful. I have placed it on a few sites and it does get people to hang around longer. I’ve noticed a increase in pages per visit for people arriving by search engines.
On the lighter side, I really like my Blue Oyster Cult random stanza widget. You can see it over on the right. I wrote another for Black Sabbath figuring that I could get a whole ‘nother group interested in it, but I am not that fond of the Black Sabbath lyrics. I might make a BB King version or a Beatles version and let people download them from here. Who’s your favorite lyricist? Harold Arlen, Billy Joel, Ira Gershwin? I’ve go them all. (Maybe I’ll make a Cole Porter version next).
I can’t add the lyric widgets to the repository because of copyright problems. I haven’t added the search engine widget because it is too obscure for the average user.