Ping.fm WordPress Plugin

First it was Twitter. Then it was Pownce, Plurk, and Jaiku. Now there’s Rejaw, Identi.ca, Tumblr, and FriendFeed, and more new sites are popping up every day. This whole social networking thing is getting pretty out-of-control, right? What happened to the good ol’ days of just MySpace and Facebook?

Thankfully, Ping.fm came along with a service that posts to all those social networking sites simultaneously. It’s a really cool idea, and it works from the web, email (and therefore, SMS from my phone), and IM. There’s also the option to specify a custom URL to receive POST data so that you can do whatever you want with your updates.

Being a developer with a self-hosted WordPress blog, I immediately set out to put this custom URL feature to use for good and not for evil. Before long, I had developed a WordPress plugin, conspicuously named the Ping.fm Custom URL plugin (catchy and original, isn’t it?). Since the first public release (0.9.1), I’ve added features, fixed bugs, and tweaked the UI on a regular basis.

Here’s a list of what the plugin can do for you, but the best way to learn more about it is to download it for yourself.

You want features? We got features.

This thing has more features than we know what to do with. Check it out:

• Works with Ping.fm’s Custom URL feature to collect blog entries, microblog entries, and status updates and post them to your blog.
• Status updates are posted to the sidebar and displayed with a widget.
• The sidebar widget is customizable with the number of status updates to show and an optional string to prepend all updates with (e.g. you might use your first name if all your status updates begin with a verb like mine do: Matt is…).
• Blog entries and microblog entries can have certain metadata applied to them automatically. You can set the author, category, tags, and post status (published or draft) for all incoming Ping.fm entries.
• Your blog is safe from updates by random outsiders thanks to a highly random and highly secure authentication token that only you know.
• All the cool features of Ping.fm: post to your self-hosted WordPress blog using IM, email, desktop gadgets, mobile apps, etc.

Changelog—this is where the magic happens!

As of version 1.2.1, the changelog has moved over to the WordPress Plugin Directory. This was done to provide a more central point of contact for people who might never visit my site. Please visit the changelog at its new home and bring a nice housewarming gift so that it doesn’t get lonely over there.