By Ryan Imel on July 5, 2011

Today’s Daily Plugin is one of my favorites, easily. It’s called Search Meter, and serves up search term statistics right in your Dashboard, including those that return no results. When it comes to plugins that could help you please your visitors, this one ranks pretty well.
The video is embedded at the top of this post’s page, with more about the plugin below.
Search Meter
Search Meter is a plugin that tracks user search results and lists the statistics on the WordPress Dashboard. I like this one quite a bit, primarily because search results are something that I haven’t done a great job of watching and improving myself.
Video recorded with version 2.8 of Search Meter, running WordPress 3.2.
About the author
Search Meter is developed by Bennett McElwee. He has also put together a page for supporting the plugin on his blog.
Is your plugin worthy?
If you would like to see your plugin featured on an episode of The Daily Plugin, send your plugin information over to dailyplugin@wpcandy.com. We’ll see you tomorrow for another Daily Plugin!
Posted in The Daily Plugin | Tagged Plugins |
By Brian Krogsgard on July 5, 2011

Ryan and I will be recording episode 23 of the WPCandy Podcast tonight, live on the WPCandy Stream. We’ll be talking about the release of WordPress 3.2, and we look forward to taking questions from the live audience in the chat.
We’re very excited about this one, and hope you can join us on the stream chat at 9:00pm ET (That’s UTC-05 – July 5th, in case you catch this post later!). It will be a great time to share your thoughts about all of WordPress 3.2′s new features.
Feel free to share any additional things about WordPress 3.2 into the comments below that you’d like us to discuss, or just join us and ask us live. We’ll see you at 9:00pm EST tonight!
Posted in Announcements, Wordpress |
By Ryan Imel on July 5, 2011

Oli Dale has been running a bit of a competition on his WPLift blog. And it does seem to be worthy of its Mega Bundle title: it includes giveaways from each of the shops represented in the image above. At first it seemed to be only worthy of a Super Bundle, or perhaps an Ultra Bundle, but upon further consideration Mega Bundle seems just right.
If you’re one of those people who like to click around at things and, in return, win digital goods, head over to WPLift and get going. Just be sure to get in there quick; the competition ends July 7th at 12pm GMT.
Posted in News | Tagged Plugins, Themes |
By Ryan Imel on July 5, 2011

WordPress 3.2 was released yesterday, and brought with it a number of awesome features and improvements. But with every release of WordPress, one of my favorite aspects remain the same: with 3.2 released, discussions about 3.3 will soon begin.
Talks of 3.3 development have already popped up in a few places. One notable discussion is focused on the plans for a complete revamp of the WordPress Dashboard CSS. This wouldn’t be a redesign like 3.2 saw, but would mean cleaning up and streamlining old CSS files and (wherever possible) enhancing the CSS with more modern techniques.
Lead developer Andrew Ozz is running the discussion on the Make WordPress UI blog, and the request for project volunteers has been made.
Do you spend a lot of time working with CSS in your work? Will you consider taking part in the (possible) CSS overhaul for WordPress 3.3?
Posted in News, Wordpress |
By Ryan Imel on July 4, 2011

Today’s Daily Plugin directly relates to the newly released WordPress 3.2. It’s called Health Check, and makes sure that your host is prepared for the new version, which requires PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5. If you aren’t sure that your host (or your friend’s) is ready for the change, this plugin will set your mind at ease.
The video is embedded at the top of this post’s page, with more about the plugin below.
Health Check
Health Check does just what it says: it checks the health of your WordPress host. Once activated it will give you a simple message on your plugins page depending based on your current hosting configuration. If you’re good to go it will tell you. If not, you’ll know pretty quick.
In addition to playing it safe for WordPress 3.2, Health Check is a handy plugin to keep around. In the future it will likely include a whole suite of checks for other things that might affect your WordPress install.
Video recorded with version 0.2.1 of Login Lockdown, running WordPress 3.1.4.
About the author
Peter Westwood is listed as the author of the plugin, though the plugin itself is an initiative of the core WordPress dev team. So hug each of them. Twice.
Is your plugin worthy?
If you would like to see your plugin featured on an episode of The Daily Plugin, send your plugin information over to dailyplugin@wpcandy.com. We’ll see you tomorrow for another Daily Plugin!
Posted in The Daily Plugin, Wordpress | Tagged Plugins |