I was hoping for some kind of help after 3 days – anybody out there?
@jtpratt: thanks for the feedback.
Search term highlighting was broken in bSuite 2.x. I’m working on a new approach, but it’s not part of bSuite 3 yet. The related posts is there as a sidebar widget and a function/template tag that can be used in the loop. I’ll add an option to put the list in the post content in the next release.
The bStat reports page is changed to reflect its purpose as a tool to surface popular stories rather than a all-in-one stats tool. Because of that, bStat no longer tracks referring links, just the search terms they may contain. The plan was to include a feed from Google blog search of referring sites, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I only just now realized it’s missing that entire section. I’ll get that in the 3.02 release ASAP.
I’ve added the referrers info to the stats reports in the latest version.
misterbisson:
I’ve been thinking about this, and I haven’t responded yet because I’ve been thinking about how to word this. I don’t think you have any idea how widely used bsuite version 2 was. Tens of thousands of wordpress blogs used that plugin – maybe more. I know I was using it on more than a dozen wordpress sites. I don’t think I realized how dependant on it I was until I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 on some sites and it failed to work.
The best part about bsuite v2 was that it did multiple things. I loved the stats, but honestly the defining feature was the related posts and search highlighting that it did. I know that you said it was broken in version 2.x but it worked just fine for me in every site I had.
I write about your plugin many times on my blogs because I wanted to recommend it to as many others as I could. So when I upgraded to version 3.x I was taken aback when the related posts option and search highlighting wasn’t even included. I mean, that really freaked me out because the release notes and information about the new version didn’t really even state that. I don’t want you to think that we don’t appreciate your coding this plugin, many are created and then abandoned by the author. But creating a new version that actually removes key functionality your’ve been using for a few years is really disheartening.
I thank you for putting the referrers back in the reports. But would you consider at very least creating a new plugin as part of the bsuite – a ‘brelated’? You may not know this, but there aren’t many options for related posts plugins at all. There are many issues with the ones that exist, some are abandoned, and I don’t see a single one that says it will work with WP 2.3.1. If you create a new version of related posts yours could (once again) become the default standard. The only reason I installed the original bsuite on every blog I owned was because of the related posts and search highlighting. It was a ‘must-have’ plugin.
Please consider doing this, and your plugin work is more than greatly appreciated by the WP community at large.
oh, forgot to mention, for anyone reading this the only solution I could find for now that would work was Aizatto’s Related Posts plugin:
http://dev.aizatto.com/2007/04/05/aizattos-related-posts-plugin-released/
@jtpratt:
Thank you for your comments. Really. I didn’t discover them until a week or so ago, but you’ve completely re-energized me on this project and I’ve finally coded up some of the things I’d meant to do all along. The SVN trunk version of the plugin now includes search word highlighting* and an entirely new stats counting mechanism. Importantly, both the SWH and stats counting are based on JavaScript, so it works with caching.
I’m coding the options panel now, including simple options to put the related posts and such in the post body without having to muck around in the theme. I hope to have it all in beta condition very soon. I’ll post again when I do.
*screenshot of the SWH: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/bsuite/trunk/screenshot-1.png
@jtpratt: Here’s bSuite 4 beta:
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/bsuite
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/12142/bsuite-4-public-beta
I think it fixes a lot of the problems you identified and adds some useful new features.
I will be checking out the new version – thank you very much!
