What is Chat Catcher? (http://www.chatcatcher.com) (creator Shannon Whitley)

Chat Catcher is a simple Blog Plug-in Application that scans Twitter and FriendFeed for references to your blog posts. When someone links to your blog, their post will be published to your blog’s comments.

What stood out Chat Catcher the most in my eyes is the sheer ability to scan all URL Shortners instead of just one URL Shortner like Dan Zarrella’s Tweetsuite which only scans Tinyurl.  Another great feature was the amazing filter option where others lacked in only filtering one username.

Also Chat Catcher was more efficient and faster than the other competition because Chat Catcher posted the Twitter comments directly to your Blog comments section.  Feedback from the Tweetsuite was that it sometimes was a bit laggy.

• TweetBacks – Yoast’s Plugin

• Tweetsuite – Dan Zarella’s Plugin

I actually have used Chat Catcher just for a short while but as you can see in my previous posts it works amazingly and increases post comment count

The Bad News…

Just as quickly as Chat Catcher was released and became increasingly popular, Shannon Whitley the creator has announced the shut down of Chat Catcher.

Via Twitter – Shannon has admitted that the cost of running Chat Catcher was a burden.

Having only 3 donations…..

Expensive costs of $10 dollars a day

This is indeed sad news especially with the release of a Drupal plugin.  It has however sparked some interest if the funding was there the plugin might stay.  Fellow competitor Dan Zarella seems to be engaging in conversation with the idea and who knows maybe Chat Catcher will be revived down the road…

Below is the actual E-mail sent out

“As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that needs to be processed by Chat Catcher.  I don’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Chat Catcher Twitter Plugin Shuts Down

10 Basic Newbie Must Have WordPress Plug-Ins

There are many websites out there and blogs that point out the “Top” or “Most Wanted” Plugins out there for WordPress users but the problem is most of the Top Lists out there only showcase Advanced Plugins for the WordPress users.

Most WordPress users run into the problem of what plugins to start out with and haven’t event started blogging yet to fully take advantage of the more complicated plugins. 

Simple is better and below are the layman basic package for WordPress users Must Have Plugin Package.

The 10 List

1.  Akismet –  This is probably your most important plugin to use and most WordPress versions already have this plugin installed when you first download WordPress.  This is your basic spam fighter preventing spammers leaving spam comments selling you something.

2.  Broken Link Checker - Checking broken links can be a tedious chore and this plugin makes this task simple by checking images and links if they are broken will be notified on your dashboard.

3.  All in One Seo Pack - The grandaddy of popular plugins to use.  The reason why this plugin is so popular because its so simple to use in helping you with your SEO by making it easy to change titles,prevent duplicate content and other optimization options.  A must have.

4.  Contact Form - A simple and must have plugin.  This your everyday “Contact Form” that is used to notify the blogmaster or webmaster of users wishing to contact them.  This is a popular plugin because of the ease of use and privacy if the Author does not wish to disclose their real e-mail address.

5.  RSS Footer - This plugin allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.  This is very useful to prevent sploggers of not linking back to the original article.

6.  Google XML Sitemap - This plugin generates XML enabled sitemaps to help with indexing by search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and more.

7.  Popular Posts –  (WordPress 2.7 has added this) WordPress Mobile Edition – This must have Plugin automically configures your Blog to show an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device.  No configuration is needed, so its a great plug and play!

8.  Post-Plugin Library - Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

 9.  Related /Similar Posts - A cool plugin that returns a list of the related entries based on a unique algorithm using titles, post bodies, tags, and categories.

10. WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WordPress 2.7 has this now) Sharethis – Is a great plugin to put a social bookmarking content in every post or page you want.  This is definitely a good starter and advanced Plugin must have.

Post from: Social Media Vision

10 Basic Newbie Must Have WordPress PlugIns