I had intended to do a complete comparison between the two poll plugins on WP-Extend but only one of them worked as intended, WP-Polls, which pretty much makes the comparison a non-starter. This then is just a review of WP-Polls

All the reviews I do are based on a few simple concepts. I believe things should be immediately obvious. If I can’t get a poll, for example, up and running in 5-10 minutes without heading to the website then that to me would be a fail. WP-Polls answered that test very well.

The plugin creates a new top-level menu option that adds everything you need. Not only the options to manage and add polls, but also a usage page that explains how it all works. There really isn’t anything else you need.

Adding a poll is very simple, as you would expect, but the impressive part of this plugin are the customisation options.

In the poll options there is a choice between a flat bar, a gradient bar, and a CSS coloured bar, with a height choice. You can also choose a the order the answers are shown in: random, exact, or alphabetical, and the order the results are shown in:ascending or descending.

It is also possible to amend the poll template. There are around 20 different poll-template tags that can be used to change how poll header, body, footer, results, error messages, disabled poll messages and archive pages appear. Although I didn’t choose to amend any of these the potential is there to do pretty much whatever you want to do.

One thing I particularly liked was the different ways a poll could be added. It has a widget, you can also include it in a post, or as part of a theme file by using the PHP commands. There is also an archive page where all the polls can be displayed.

I previously reviewed Poll Daddy. While Poll Daddy appears slicker than WP-Polls, i.e. the results are presented in a much more graphically rich way, I feel the differences are only superficial. The key different is that one is part of your WordPress install and the other isn’t and that honestly makes all the difference.

Rather than review WP-Polls, which my last poll used, I have opted to wait so that I can compare it with PowPoll which I am using for this Poll Both PowPoll and WP Polls are WordPress plugins which seems to cry out for a direct comparison.

In this poll I want to get a feel for the way people use WordPress. I have added all the options that I could think of and the poll should let you add other answers as well, as I’m sure there are loads of uses I haven’t even thought of.

Update: The poll plugin failed to accept any votes and so I have disabled it.

I’ve just uploaded the newest version of Fun with Plugins, this will be version 0.3

I’ve completely rewritten the logic that runs it so while this is a newer version it is possible that bugs will appear that were not present before.

The changes to this version are:

• Completely re-written to work more quickly, and ask less irrelevant questions.
• Amended URL - http://www.wp-fun.co.uk/wizzards/fun-with-plugins/
• Added Javascript Options
• Added CSS Options
• Added selections for database fields
• Added WP Extend Readme file basics
• Added a PHP 5 constructor and amended the PHP 4 constructor to point to it
• Uses DocBlock compatible comments (I HOPE)

You can try the newest version at http://www.wp-fun.co.uk/wizzards/fun-with-plugins/.

I’m quite please today to be on the receiving end of a Reader Appreciation Project, Readers First Award.

I won’t write too much about what the award itself is for; if you want to read more about it you can do at the Reader Appreciation Project explanation page.

This blog came about as a result of asking readers on my other blog what I should do next. The Fun with Plugins tool was the result of that and it triggered a lot of other thoughts about what I could do with WordPress. I started this blog and created it around the tool.

In designing it I remembered a lot of the points that I had read at the Reader Appreciation Project, some of which I was trying to do already and some I wasn’t.

If you have a blog you should read it as it offers some very valuable insights.

As this is a post about reader appreciation, consider the comments on this post an open forum to say what you want about the blog, about the tools, about things I should do, or shouldn’t do. Any feedback is welcomed.