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Archives for December 2009

JW Flash Video Player 5

If you like to post videos on your blog, one option is to use JW Player 5 from LongTail Video. It gives you the ability to play FLV, H.264/MPEG-4, MP3 and YouTube videos from your blog. You can install several WordPress plugins that support videos, but WordPress plugins tend to slow down your blog if you have several of them installed. Running the JW Player directly from your site gives you the flexibility. You can apply different skins and plugins to it. In addition, you can monetize it by running your own ads. How popular amd stable is JW Player? Well, a little company named YouTube used it as their first player back in 2005. JW Flash Video Player is free. Learn more.

WordPress Plugin: Drop Caps

Here’s another WordPress Plugin called Drop Caps. A Dropcap is when the first letter of a paragraph is enlarged to “drop” down two or more lines. It’s a very common typeset used in magazines and now a few blogs. I’m releasing this plugin similar in look to the Dropcaps article I wrote two years ago. Check out the first letter of this very paragraph. Download the plugin and place it the plugins folder of your WordPress install. Activate and that’s it. Enjoy.

[download id=”5″]

WordPress Plugin: Page Load Time

I am releasing a new WordPress plugin called Page Load Time. It’s a simple plugin that displays the amount of time it takes to generate a WordPress page. The output is displayed in seconds and placed in the footer section of a theme. The plugin uses a WordPress function called timer_stop(). Placing this function manually in the footer.php will do the same trick. The advantage of having this function as a plugin is, you’ll have the ability to turn on or turn off this feature at any time you want with a single click. There will be no editing or uploading required. This plugin is great for troubleshooting slow sites or for just showing off the speed of your web server. Please note, you need to have this code in the footer: <?php wp_footer(); ?> for this function to display.

[download id=”6″]