WordPress Updates RSS Feed

Update: The sale is now LIVE and is currently $15.00.

Sales from 101 onwards will be $27.00 until the plugin goes officially live.

Buy now

***

Tomorrow Today Wednesday 4th, I’m going to be pre-releasing a cracking little plugin that I can’t believe no-one has done before.

Again, it was James Dunn who wrote to me asking if it was possible that we could supply him with a smart phone app that could somehow pick up plugins etc, that needed updating on WordPress blogs.

He wanted it to be able to keep an eye on a selection of client sites and then notify him when a theme or plugin or WordPress itself needed some update attention.

My first reaction was to say no, but I thought it would be a good idea if WP blogs could somehow tell us they needed updating in some way. (Apparently there are some expensive monthly services that will do this.)

So I had a little think and did a bit of research, and this is what we came up with.

The plugin will create a new RSS feed on your blog, listing everything that needs updating. You specify an obscurely named feed, and a URL is generated from that name.

Then all you have to do is use the RSS feed reader of your choice.

Most new smart phones have RSS readers pre-installed as free apps, or you can get them at very low cost from the relevant market places.

OR…

You can get yourself a PC based RSS reader, and there are even small free apps that sit in your Windows system tray and monitor feed activity.

Whatever your choice of platform, when the feed gets updated, you get notified and you can then go give the blog some update love by following the admin link in the feed. 😉

Really cool huh? And blimming useful too – I already have it installed on a dozen different blogs…

Anyway…

Tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT, I’m pre-releasing it at just $10.00 for the first 50 buyers.

Be there or be square. 😉

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood

9 comments

Hi Frank,

Long time…have written several times, but now just recooperating from surgery and trying to get back into things…where do I find my “previous download page”?? If you could please contact me via Skype or email, I would greatly appreciate it…more to say, but I won’t leave it here. 🙂 Thanks in advance…

Kathleen Gresham

I want this one, too! I’ll be watching for the release. You keep coming up with the best stuff! Thanks.

Frank… great stuff… please note that your confirms for registering the purchase go straight into the Gmail spam folder… while your pitch and reminders go into the inbox…

I’d like to know what SMTP you are using since they are clearly blacklisted by Google 😉

Frank Haywood

Hi Dr. B. Well that’s a strange one as they all come from the same service. I wonder if there are Gmail filters that respond to certain text, and they’re moving the confirms into the spam box?

At any rate, for a long time now (18 months?) I’ve been wanting to move to ImnicaMail, and that’s something I now have pencilled in to do in the next 3-4 weeks, so I’ll be asking you to resubscribe to a new mailing list at some point.

I’ll make it worth your while. 😉

-Frank

Greetings Frank.

I wonder if I was first in for the Wonderful WordPress Updates RRS Feed plugin for WordPress. A bigger mouthful.

It seems like a great idea for keeping up to date with our WordPress projects.

Good luck, Colm.

Frank Haywood

Hi Colm,

You were third. 🙂

-Frank

James Dunn

Frank has created something really useful for me – and I’m sure for others as well. I received this a few days in advance of the sale so I’ve been testing it out. I didn’t realize just how much I needed this until I moved all my sites from a shared hosting server to a dedicated server over the past month. I was thinking I had a dozen or so sites that I was responsible for. Once I got into moving all the sites, I discovered that I was responsible for just over 40 sites – and some I had not visited the dashboard of in months.

A friend of mine asked me how I could add content and not see that plugins needed updating – she adds content everyday and is in the dashboard every day. I use a plug-in on all the sites I build that allows me to make contributions from the front end without going into the dashboard AND another plug-in that allows me edit the site without going into the dashboard. Because of this, I rarely visit the dashboard.

This plug-in will help me keep all my sites (WP Core, plug-ins, themes, etc) up to date and hopefully thwart the hackers that seem intent on getting in to our sites. I had originally thought this would be nice to have the sites send me a text to my phone, but Frank suggested the RSS feed option. That actually works better because I can consolidate all the sites RSS feeds into ONE feed reader and then hopefully have the reader notify me via text when something new is available.

I know this plug-in is not glitzy, glamourous, or salesy – but it’s one of those really dull and boring plug-ins that can save you time (which in turn means it can make you money). If you are responsible for two or more sites, you really need to grab this ASAP. If this keeps even one site from being vulnerable, then you have this plug-in at effectively NO COST. Plus, get the Clone script that Frank has and you can always have a backup in case a WP Update breaks your site.

Thanks Frank. As always you deliver great stuff.

Frank Haywood

🙂