I discovered a couple of nifty hacks while troubleshooting the commenting problems today. If you’re not using a Firefox browser while running a WordPress blog or using Gmail then this will be of no interest, but if you are then this may be of use to you. The beauty of these is that they are browser extensions that will work on any wordpress.org or wordpress.com blog: perfect for those like me who have several to maintain.

All scripts require the installation of Greasemonkey (the Internet Duct Tape pages have the necessary link):

• Better Gmail 2 Firefox Extension for New Gmail (from LifeHacker)
  

  a Firefox extension that adds features to the new Gmail interface

• GreaseMonkey Script: WordPress Comment Ninja (from Internet Duct Tape)
  

  Type your response inside the WordPress dashboard and Comment Ninja will do all the work of sending it in the background: posting the comment to your blog, or sending the comment by email (or both) while you keep commenting.

At this juncture I should also mention how much I rely on one of Internet Duct Tape‘s other Greasemonkey scripts: Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress, a Greasemonkey extension which reconfigures the admin interface to compress all spam messages to single lines on a single screen. I would hate to go back to the old way of wading through screen after screen of spam.

Internet Duct Tape’s Greasemonkey extensions are simple and work like a charm. The Better Gmail extension is more complicated, but I do like both its interface and its output. If you do a lot of administration tasks for WordPress blogs, or rely on Gmail as your email archive, then give them a whirl.

Cheers.

Categories: technology

Tags: blogging