What would Seth Godin do? Probably not one-size-fits-all . . .
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Monday, July 16th, 2007, 1:38 pm MST
Category: Blogging, Marketing, Real Estate, Technology
(I’m waiting for a phone call, which is how Realtors address that awful burden of time that befalls them between birth and death.)
Joel Burslem mentioned the What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in today, and Jim Duncan has also written about it recently.
I like the idea, I just don’t like the execution. Too much one-size-fits-all for my tastes, where CSS and a WordPress theme can make everything unique and perfect.
I have code that will make the “intro.php” behavior introduced in WordPress 2.0 cookie-dependent. In other words, if the cookie is not set, visitors will see intro.php (or any other “sticky” pseudo-post you prepare under any arbitrary filename). If it is, they won’t.
I have it set with the cookie expiring in 60 days, so if someone has been away for a while, I can remind him of what’s what. People who forbid cookies will get the introductory post every time, but this is the default behavior for intro.php anyway. And if I change the name of the stored variable, I can cause everyone to see my presumably-substantially-revised introduction the next time they visit the site.
(There is a lot more you could do with something like this: Show it the first three visits, for example, or show a special message to very-frequent visitors.)
I don’t use this in BloodhoundBlog, although I could easily enough; it doesn’t require WP 2+. It’s really nothing but bread and butter PHP, as is WordPress itself.
If you want the code, it’s yours, but you have to hold your own hand. You don’t need to know PHP, but you do need to know how to edit and FTP your WordPress theme files. Email me if you want the files.
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Related posts:5 Comments so far
I’m using the WWSGD plugin on my Blog Fiesta site. I turned the cookies off, and use it to post the latest updates about our event on Wednesday. It’s neat, but I don’t think I’d use it long term as a “subscribe to me feed” invitation. You have mail.
Greg, good idea. There are probably many people who will want extra flexibility in a welcome message.
[...] One final thought… Earlier this month, there was some buzz about a WP plugin that gives new arrivals a different message than people who’ve been to the site many times… Joel gave a decent plug for it and Jim went so far as to install it. However, like Greg, I was hesitant to jump on this solution because of it’s one size-fits-all nature. [...]
Reflecting on the point Dustin raises in the trackback immediately above this comment, it would be possible to put the cookie code only in single.php, so that people would see your sticky message only if their first visit to your weblog came via a search or a hard-click into a specific post. This could be a potent counter-measure against a high bounce rate.
[...] Dustin had a post last night that made me rethink the ideas I posted the other day on using a cookie to modify a WordPress.org weblog’s default behavior for first-time visitors. [...]