Offer Closed
***
Update: You can watch the overview video above (okay I got carried away and it’s a full feature-rich tutorial) and also see a working demo of the Alert Bar in action on the link below.
On Wednesday at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) I’m releasing a very cool (and sneaky) new plugin called the “Click-Me Alert Bar.”
I outright stole this idea from a WSO, but I think I’ve made mine a lot better. You be the judge. 😉
In the other plugin, you had to upgrade to the “pro” version just to get the features that mine has right out of the box. Mine is a third of the price in this sale.
So what does it do?
You know those little “alert” bars that appear at the top of your browser when a pop-up is blocked or you’re missing an addon to play certain media? Well this plugin does that but you get full control of the alert bar on your blog so that you can deliver your own message.
We’ve been a little bit clever with it and added in WordPress Conditional Tags (we *like* those) so that you have total control over which alerts show where.
Features?
o Create multiple alerts and have different ones show on different pages and posts including special pages like home, 404, tag, category pages etc.
o Multiple alerts on the same page (one at a time only), either rotated or picked randomly.
o Split test statistics for clicks so you can see which alert performs best.
o Set the delay time before the alert shows.
o Rich Text HTML editor for the clickable URL text.
o Rich Text HTML editor for the message.
o Select one of the built in icons or use your own.
o Colour picker for the alert bar, so you don’t have to use plain yellow.
o Set the alert bar to your preferred height.
We’ve been testing all day and as is typical with me I’ve just asked for some usability changes but they should be done by tomorrow.
Now there’s going to be a little change with tomorrow’s sale if you’ve been a customer for any length of time. I’m going to be running it through an affiliate scheme. OMG! I know… 😉
So you’ll be able to snag it yourself and then get your money back by promoting it. (That’s something I typically do for products I buy and like and it works for me.)
Set yourself a reminder and tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) the sale goes live. At any rate I’ll drop you a line a few hours before, and then again when it starts.
More details tomorrow.
-Frank Haywood
Hi Frank,
Any demo for this plugin?
Regards
Anwar
Hi Anwar,
Yep, please watch this space. 😉
-Frank
Watched, nothing happened..any advise
Regards
Anwar
Hi Anwar,
Sorry, it was a colloquialism. I meant I’ll have something for you soon, probably tomorrow. 😉
My bad.
-Frank
I should just wait for you to do things…I bought that other plugin and have not installed it yet. Naturally I want yours. It sounds *much* better.
Great features!
Hi Kathleen,
Well thank you. If you see any other plugins you like the look of, please let me know. 😉
-Frank
Dear Frank,
I have other plugins with this functionality so I’m not convinced to buy this one…
1. Can the visitor Hide/Show the toolbar?
2. Have you included or considered nice templates?
Well, let’s see those videos and the Demo and decide 🙂
All the best
Hi Diego,
#1 – Yes they can hide it (x on the right hand side) but then it’s gone until the page is refreshed and it also depends on the admin settings as to how many times it displays.
#2 – Well no because it’s a thin strip at the top normally although you can make it much deeper if you want to. But what we are including are some nice built in icons for the left hand side of the alert.
I *think* (I hope) this isn’t what you’re expecting and that you’ll like what you see. 😉
-Frank
Hi Frank,
#1. That’s the same as the tools I already have 🙁
#2. Well, I was not thinking in Not complex designs, just a decorated border or drop shadows using CSS so it wouldn’t matter the height of the slider. You already know that I like light color schemes 😉
Unfortunately, yes 🙂
That’s exactly what I’m looking for. Something like the “Hello Bar”. In fact I would recommend you to add this functionality not only to this plugin but also to PG Slide Out and Up. I really hope you can.
All the best
Hi Diego,
It’s not a slider. I guess you’ll have to wait until I put the demo up tomorrow. 😉
What’s an “Hello bar”? You have me intrigued…
-Frank
Hi Frank,
Yes I know that it’s not a slider 😉 I meant the slide (the smooth movement).
“Hello Bar” is the “original”. The plugin at the Warrior Forum (and others) took the idea from there.
http://www.hellobar.com
Please, pay attention to the features and the details.
The bad part of the Hello Bar is that it’s a subscription based service. I’m not willing to pay monthly for such functionality. In general, I use to search for alternatives to subscription based tools. BTW: I need a non WP version to use on standard HTML or PHP pages/sites.
This functionality offers lots of possibilities, not only for advertising, but also to use as reminders for the visitors, as a place for social icons and so on.
Another Nº1 reference of a tool of this kind:
http://wibiya.conduit.com/
HTH
Hi Diego,
Okay you just made me spit my coffee. They’re charging $4.95/mo for 100 clicks! WTH? I can’t even begin to understand how they have the hutzpah to charge such ridiculous prices. Even more amazing is that some people must be paying them.
Okay this plugin doesn’t do detailed stats or the Twitter feed thing, so I’ll get it changed later at no extra cost to any buyers today, you’ll just get the upgrade for free when we do it. But it does do the custom look and feel as we give you a colour picker for the background and a rich text HTML editor for the text, plus a selection of icons and you can also specify your own too. And it also click tracks and gives you views per click stats so we have that part of it covered.
Of the two missing features, my gut feel is the Twitter feed is the easiest and probably of most benefit, but the stats thing shouldn’t be too hard once we know how to present them.
I’ve made some notes and after this sale is over and the product is live we’ll make some further changes until you have something much better then the Hello Bar. You know the way I work.
Now you’ve really got me thinking I can feel the ideas spinning out of my head for improvements. 😉
-Frank
I’m sorry 🙂
First of all, big thanks for listening and considering these improvements.
I like the twitter tracking idea, but what about other Social Networks as G+ Facebook or others stats?
Well, whatever implementation you decide to develop, don’t loose the right path ;-). That is; providing the required and easy to understand stats to be able to perform testings in order to choose the better performing elements of the toolbar.
Obviously, we all want powerful features but I understand that, at this price, it’s not possible to include everything. Anyhow, since the toolbar allows code insertion, maybe you should consider providing additional functionalities as add-ons in the near future. A good way, in my opinion, to afford development charges while providing a single and extensible plugin. This is obviously related to some of my suggestions for your lateral and button toolbars. You know my opinion about reducing the number of installed plugins for obvious reasons (management, security, updates).
Finally, please allow me to insist on the [B]show/hide feature[/B]. No other toolbar of this kind allow it and I think that it shouldn’t be to complex to develop. It could be included as an optional feature. Nowadays we are bombarded by intrusive advertising (I hate all those pop-ups on TV). I really believe in friendly marketing behaviours for the business model that I’m developing.
All the best,
Diego
Hi Diego,
You’re welcome.
Well what I thought as far as Twitter would go was to place a feed directly into the alert, so that as you updated Twitter, the alert would always contain your latest Tweet. (It would be really good if we could scroll down the last few Tweets wouldn’t it?) So I wasn’t really looking to add any kind of tracking as such. What did you have in mind?
You’ve also made me think a little bit harder about the split testing too and now I need to go have a think about how best to implement the split testing of individual elements. Hmm…
And we need short code support, that would open a lot of doors wouldn’t it? It *might* already do it, I just haven’t tried it yet. 🙄
For show/hides we’ll definitely make them optional and put in a setting that allows the alert to start as showing or hidden. Not everyone likes bits hanging from the top or sticking up from the bottom of the page obscuring it. (Me.) But yes we’ll put that in and some extra little goodies too.
-Frank
Well, since you said “If you see any other plugins you like the look of, please let me know” (granted you were talking to Kathleen, but I’m making a leap of statement extendability 😉
Background:
I have no idea if this is something anyone else would find useful, I just know I was looking for something yesterday and couldn’t find it. Frankly I find dealing with images from the WordPress Media Library to be quite tedious. Plus WP stores multiple versions of differing size for each image stored in the library — a waste of space. So I’ve gone to simply putting images into a folder I created called “resources”, and simply inserting into my post/page via the image URL. This also helps me avoid having WP add style statements, etc. to my image and gives me more control.
Anyway, I have a set of images that I use frequently which are “pre-loaded” into the resources folder (horizontal separators, arrows, etc.). When I create a new website, I assemble all the URLs for my oft-used resource images and keep them “handy” in a text file. What I’d really like to do is have them in a “Notes” widget that shows up any time I create or edit a post or page. I’ve seen notes widgets that save notes associated with SPECIFIC posts/pages, and widgets that put a Notes area on the main Dashboard, but nothing that will show me the SAME notes for EVERY post/page.
Like I said — could be just me. I’m a bit of a productivity freak, so I’m always looking for way to streamline and standardize my processes.
Thanks!
Scott 🙂
I, too, find the Media library a pain to use. Very tedious. I like the idea of bypassing it.
Nowadays even uploading images is impossible unless I select the Browser uploader. It would be nice to be able to upload in bulk to a Resources folder without leaving WordPress.
Hi Kathleen,
Yep, it’s taken me a long time to learn to live with it and it shouldn’t be like that should it? I know they’ve tried to make it simple and functional, but they done the opposite and it’s way too clunky.
-Frank
Hi Scott,
I think that’s a pretty good requirement and something that would want to be used by a lot of people.
Right, so interpreting what you’re saying and turning it into something that would be of use to as many people as possible, I think what would be really good was if you could add a note on any post or page in a new block and give it a short descriptive title. The note would be plain text but could include HTML. You could export all the notes by viewing them on a plain text page in the admin and import them to another blog in the same way, or you could just copy them into the plugin as a text file and upload it to new blogs as you create them.
The notes could then be selected from a drop-down in TinyMCE which would show the short descriptive title only and when selected would paste the note wherever your cursor was.
That would do it wouldn’t it? 🙂
-Frank
See the demo, So great..
Waiting for the launching ..!!!!
Anwar
When does this go live!
OK, maybe a dumb question and off topic, but which theme are you using for this blog? And why not display the theme name and link in the footer?
D’oh! It’s one of mine – Multiple Streams Themes 6 or you might know it as MST006. I turned some of the stuff off as I tend to like simple even though I know most people like “purty” bits. I’ll get that link fixed. 🙄
-Frank
Got it! That is a great demo video.
I just have a few questions.
1. Can I use bigger icons if I make the bar wider? (I can make the bar wider, can’t I?)
2. Do the plugins have to be a certain size, or does the plugin adjust their size to fit the bar? I would like to be able to use larger icons on a wider toolbar sometimes.
3. Can we adjust the text size? What about the font?
I can and will experiment, but I figured others might have the same questions. Those are all features that I would like. Maybe others would, too.
#1 – Ooh. I don’t know yet. I suspect they get resized but it shouldn’t be too hard to change that.
#2 – The more I think of it, yes they do get resized on the fly and I reckon they don’t resize to fit the bar depth so I’ll get that looked at.
#3 – Yes, but currently only within the limitations of the default settings for WordPress tiny MCE, so you can’t change font or size easily unless you flip it into HTML mode. The problem is when you go back into Visual mode it could well remove your custom styling. I don’t think it would be too hard for us to add at least font editing to the editor, and my guess without trying it yet (I’m VERY tired – I’ve been working some very long days) is that Big Ed being installed would make the editor get the Big Ed capabilities anyway. Something else to check when I’ve had a good nights sleep as I’m making some daft mistakes at the moment because I’m tired.
-Frank
“Frankly I find dealing with images from the WordPress Media Library to be quite tedious.”
I agree with that.
This works better than the covert action bar!
Hi Pol,
Thank you. And there you go – target #1 achieved. 😉
-Frank
Purchased! Like it. I would offer one suggestion; titles. Currently the “text in the Alert Box” is the title of the alert; it would be better to have another title field for title.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for that, and yes that’s an easy one I reckon. 🙂
-Frank
Hi again,
> #1 – Ooh. I don’t know yet. I suspect they get resized but it shouldn’t be too hard to change that.
Yes, please. I think that people rarely click on small icons
> So I wasn’t really looking to add any kind of tracking as such. What did you have in mind?
I was thinking about gathering data from items located into the toolbar. For example LARGE social media Icons or even more that a single link. Since height can be configured it would be possible to put many things inside. Then, tracking what’s clicked (and what’s not) makes sense. Isn’t it?
> And we need short code support, that would open a lot of doors
Uffff, of course, all the doors. I’m very interested about this but, as far as I know, the main problem with short-codes is the compatibility problems that might arise when working with other plugins and Themes that make use of them.
All these things we have been talking about, in combination, are a bomb.
> For show/hides we’ll definitely make them optional and put in a setting that allows the alert to start as showing or hidden. Not everyone likes bits hanging from the top or sticking up from the bottom of the page obscuring it. (Me.) But yes we’ll put that in and some extra little goodies too.
Enough for me 🙂
Purchased!
After watching the video I have more ideas:
1. Include most common or useful examples of conditional tags already inside the plugin. A drop-down, selector o other method to be able to choose the conditions and the parameters. If this is not possible, just some of the most useful snippets at hand. Anything you see fits here (in text format to copy and paste). A visual approach, you know, we are not coders.
2. More than two elements (links) on each alert.
3. Ability to clone the alerts to be able to use them as templates to create new ones
4. Export / import capabilities to copy the alerts to and from another blog
That’s all. Almost nothing at all 🙂
All the best,
Diego
It is an renamed ad, as far as i recognize, or an modified one. One ad at the bottom and one at the top, brilliant. Use other words to describe the same.
What is with people who have an ad stopper and noscript extension and use things like ghostery?
All in one it is only useful for the restless mind of the plug, who things that the things to sell are not worth enough or in less quality and need therefore a gimmick.
Great, I like it..I am in..
Suggestion: Could you add the capability of writing Arabic text witch is directing right to left (RTL)
Hope so..
Thanks
Anwar
Frank,
Have you received an email from me?
Hi Diego,
Yes and answered.
-Frank
Frank:
Replying to your June 27th comment (in response to mine). Sorry for the delay. Been swamped 🙂
What you’re saying sounds useful, but I’m not sure it includes the piece I was looking for. What I want is a widget I can put content into and have the CONTENT show up inside the widget whenever I go to post or page add/edit screen. To further clarify — there’s a plugin that I use now called “sxss Admin Notes”. It places a widget on my dashboard page and allows me to enter content in it. I’d like it to have a setting checkbox that says “Show widget and its content on post & page add and edit screens”. That way my content (with links, etc.) is available to me when I need it — which is when I’m creating or editing posts of pages.
Does that make sense?
Thanks!
Scott <
Ahhh. Gotcha. Leave it with me – that should be fairly straight forward to do. 🙂
-Frank