My penchant for using long titles in my blog posts, and my now active involvement in all things Facebook and Twitter, drove me to install this nifty but challenging plugin called YOURLS. I took for granted that this was going to be one of those normal WordPress plugins you get to install through the dashboard.

But it’s not.

My number 1 mistake was thinking that all I had to do was install the WordPress plugin version of it and it will run immediately. Nope, it doesn’t work that way. You actually have to download the package and FTP everything into your web folders. Next, you need to do some manual configuration for both the database and config file, then run it the first time via the admin panel, and ONLY THEN should you install and set up its complemental WordPress plugin within your WordPress dashboard. And I’m explaining these in way too simplistic terms.

My number 2 mistake was to not understand enough the statement in the FAQ that says “You cannot install YOURLS and, say, WordPress, in the same directory” because YOURLS needs its own .htaccess file.  I ignored that and tried anyway. Didn’t work, of course.

I tried to rectify it by reinstalling everything into its own subdirectory (e.g. http://webgrrrl.net/z/), as advised in the FAQ.

Guess what? IT DIDN’T WORK, EITHER!

But then, I had a light-bulb moment — why not set YOURLS up under a subdomain instead?! And that, ladies and gentlemen, did the trick. I hazard a guess that since my WordPress was installed in my root folder, my blog’s mod_rewrite settings were waging war against YOURLS’s, which in turn causes the shortened URL not to work. In any case, I’m fully satisfied with using the domain z.webgrrrl.net for my personal URL shortening service.

I’m currently using YOURLS / z.webgrrrl.net for this blog as well as Blogging Fu. My favourite option in YOURLS is its bookmarklet ability. Whenever I’m on a web page that I want to tweet and get its URL shortened, I just click the bookmarklet on my browser, and it will automatically bring me to z.webgrrrl’s console for me to generate the short URL. Nice.

Hey, by the way, did you get it? z.webgrrrl? As in Ze WebGrrrl? Hahah, hahahah!

Another TCW update has been posted in WordPress.org’s Plugins Repository to include two new additions based on user requests.

Show top commentators between certain dates: This option was requested by James Pearse of Avon School District, MA. In his e-mail, he included a link to his school’s blog, demonstrating the idea that having your name displayed in the site and getting listed in the top commentators’ list not only can be used to increase traffic to your blog, but more so to help generate interest and participation on the posts among your site visitors. What a delight it is to see how something as small as TCW can contribute so much to learning and education. It makes developing WordPress plugins that more worthwhile for me.

Open links in a new window: I received a surprising number of requests lately, both through the WP.org Support forum and e-mails, asking me to include this option in the widget, so there you go – pretty straight forward at that.

As always, feedback and bug reports are appreciated. Do so in the WP.org’s Support Forum (preferably) and remember to tag your post with the words top-commentators-widget, or drop me a line via my Contact Form.

I mentioned before that one of my goals slash New Year’s resolutions for WebGrrrl.net is to create a new WordPress plugin that can support the GEDCOM data scheme to create a genealogy (family tree) site powered by WordPress. I plan to start it within this week.

Here’s my predicament — I can’t come up with a snazzy name for this plugin, so can you help me? Please vote or suggest a name using the poll form below and even let me know what you’re expecting from this plugin. Deadline? I guess this poll will be open until I’m ready to put out an alpha version of it, probably in 3-5 months’ time.

The poll above contains a few titles I’ve been playing around with. That WordPress TNG thing is actually a reference to my favorite Star Trek series, The Next Generation. Sure it sounds a little tacky, but I think it’s funny, and funny is always a good thing, heh.

Any help with digging this and adding to your social network sites will be much appreciated

I’ve finally come around to fixing the bugs in this version of TCW. I have added in most of the codes that support Gravatar, thanks to the work of Sergio Nascimento.

Hopefully the next update would include the ability to add multiple TCW to more than one sidebar within a blog, as suggested by someone via Facebook. I’ll do what I can

I noticed, through reading people’s posts reviewing other blogs, that people make a big deal of having a contact form in your blog, which is a sort of a big no-no if you don’t have one. I finally got off my lazy behind and installed cform II, one of the many WordPress contact form plugins out there. And I’m telling you, if you’re not very plugin-savvy, this one may give you a heart attack. Nevertheless, I chose to use this because I’m smart and I’m a show-off you know. Not really. I choose it for the flexibility and options it gives you, which — although not all are being enabled for this blog — I believe will come in handy as my blog grows.

There are much simpler forms available, but if you do choose to install a contact form, beware of increased spam and try to find a form plugin with a built-in Captcha option to lessen unwanted spam.