I’ve seen a lot of great products go downhill because the author cannot keep up with development. I wish some of these authors would embrace the world of opensource and let others work on their code. Seriously, why else would they start a project?

I can see someone wanting to get paid for a project. I think my first guess is that these people are waiting for someone or a company to buyout the project or waiting for people to start paying for it. I can completely understand this as I believe people should get paid for their hard work. But why don’t these developers say anything about it?

There are some products out there that would be great for social networking and blogging that really need to be updated and no one is working on them. Do we ask the developers to open the code? I’m sure we all can give donations, but is that enough? Many of these guys are programmers with jobs other than creating free plugins. So, how do we keep them developing and upgrading?

I loved using Social Links, but I have way too many social networking products that I use that are not in the social link library. For now I will just use text links on the side so if you need to find out if I use a service just look for Socialize With Me at the top of the right side.

Enjoy!

If you’re networking through WordPress you will want to install this nifty tool called Future Post Dates. It is a calendar that gives you a quick glance of the month you are working on so you can plan your future posts if needed.

Although it can be really handy, one thing I do not like is that it is too simplistic. For some that is all they need, but for me, I would like to be able to click on the future date and see what posts I have planned. Right now I’m creating this post on the 9th of August and it is scheduled for release on the 11th of August. It adds a light green color to the days where a future post is waiting for release. This is extremely handy, but I would also like to see it highlight the current day in a different color. I would also love to see it produce a list either under the calendar or in a pop-up window of the titles of the future post. This feature would be so handy for planning.

If you do create future posts then check it out and see if it is for you.

Putting your email address out there for the world to see is risky business. We can all benefit from a great service such as gmail that has an incredible SPAM filter, but it doesn’t always catch everything. Just the other day I had a nasty porn message come through on one of my email accounts on google and it was from one that is not protected with a form. A SPAM filter is only as good as the latest techniques.

So how does a social networking pro with a website protect her email? The answer is the same as it has always been in the past: use a form. There are quite a few plugins for email forms. The one I enjoy using is Contact Form 7. The simplicity of the form is almost unbelievable.

With Contact Form 7 all you need to do is put it into your plugins folder and then activate it. Visit the plugin from your admin page and give the form parameters for the desired fields. The format is basic HTML so the options are limited to what you can put in an HTML form. If you’re really concerned then you can add a CAPTCHA tag by utilizing the Really Simple CAPTCHA plugin.

Once the code is generated then simply name the form and then add the code to the HTML side of your WordPress post.

Simple. Easy. I’ve added it to the Contact Page of this site