Blair Williams

Everything is an Experiment

Pretty Link

More Twitter Automation Comes to Pretty Link Pro

More Twitter Automation Comes to Pretty Link Pro

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multi_twitterIn the 1.4.27 release of Pretty Link Pro there are some major refinements. The first of these refinements is the ability to set up multiple twitter accounts that your blog can post to. You can now automatically post notifications of each of your blog posts to however many Twitter accounts you want to simultaneously. This feature arose from my need to tweet posts out to 3 twitter accounts that I own — before I was auto tweeting to my main account @supercleanse and then re-tweeting to my other two. This was time consuming and kind of defeated the purpose of auto tweeting altogether.

In addition to multiple twitter accounts, we've optimized the page load time for users of the social media button bar, re-tweet badge and of Pretty Link. Many of the SQL queries were slowing down some of the page load times.

Finally, we made many back end changes to the system so that it will be able to accommodate some of the awesome new features we have planned next (some of which were revealed in this month's survey). Enjoy!

UPDATE: Okay, so there was actually a significant bug that was released with version 1.4.27 — if you haven't done it already go out and upgrade to 1.4.28 where it has been fixed! Sorry for any issues.

Pretty Link Adds Robot Filtering and a Bunch of Other Goodies

Pretty Link Adds Robot Filtering and a Bunch of Other Goodies

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johnny5Over the years, I've learned it can be hard to tell the difference between a Robot and Human … er … well that is, on the Internet. Pretty Link and Pretty Link Pro can now help you unmask those pesky robots clicking your links. There have also been several other features and bug fixes added in the last week that I'd like to update you on and give you a little bit of info about:

Robot Hit Filtering

This one has been a long time coming. You can now go into “Pretty Link” -> “Options” under “Reporting” and select Filter Robots. Robot Filtering will only work for new links — any robot hits that were recorded in a version of Pretty Link before version 1.4.21 won't be able to be filtered. With that said, if you're really wanting your old hits to have the ability to be filtered just comment on this post — if there's a demand, I'll post some code that you can run on your server to do this effectively. Another thing to know about the robot filtering is that it will eliminate the lion's share of bots (like 99% of them) — but there may be a few that slip through the cracks — I'm working on some future enhancements that will close the gap on this — but for now, if you still see 1 or 2 bots in your hit list don't be alarmed.
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Social Network Buttons for Posts Added to Pretty Link Pro

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I just added (in version 1.4.18) a simple but extremely useful feature to Pretty Link Pro — the social network buttons bar. This feature will put a configurable row of social networking buttons on your posts and/or pages that use your Pretty Links!

To enable this feature, just go to your “Pro Options” menu item, click “Page and Post Options”, make sure Automatic Pretty Link creation is enabled on pages and/or posts, and then click the checkbox to enable the social networks button bar… Now you can configure which buttons to display and where to display them (above or below your page/post content).

I'm personally excited to start using this feature on all of my sites — you can actually see it on this post. While this feature is cool and very useful, it is only the beginning — you can expect to start seeing even more exciting enhancements to this feature very soon.

Pretty Link Pro Officially Launched

Pretty Link Pro Officially Launched

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prettylink_no_bg2When I put the pre-launch version of Pretty Link Pro (PLP) out on the market at the end of July, I really didn't know what to expect. Well, let's just say the past month has been a wild ride. 🙂 Scores of people downloaded PLP and I released a ton of fixes and new features. Seriously, look at how much has been added to PLP (above and beyond its already impressive feature set) in just the first month:

  1. Automatic Tweeting of scheduled & XML-RPC posts
  2. The Pretty Link Bookmarklet (for creating pretty links outside of your WordPress admin)
  3. Bulk Editing / Bulk Deletion UI enhancements for the Pretty Link Management page
  4. Public Link creation widget and shortcode (for site owners who want to allow their users to create pretty links using the website's url)
  5. The Quick Add Dashboard Widget
  6. Alternate URL configuration (you can use a shorter version of your url)
  7. Short URL auto-discovery for Posts & Pages
  8. Randomized Keyword Replacements when using replacement thresholds
  9. Slug & message customization for automatic post tweeting
  10. URL Aliases for counting tweets that go to your blog post but are different from your pretty link
  11. Many more smaller fixes & refinements …

Roadmap

Pretty Link Pro has rapidly become a solid and feature rich link management platform that many websites owners are relying on more and more every day — and it's only going to get better! Here's a small roadmap of some of the upcoming features will be available exclusively to Pretty Link Pro users in the coming months:

  1. PrettyBar enhancements — I've had many requests for ways to make the Pretty Bar more customizable, more interactive and more helpful. Here are just some of the enhancements I have planned:
    1. 100% control of the HTML & CSS without having to modify files every time you upgrade PLP
    2. Tweet badge which can be optionally integrated into the PrettyBar (you'll be able to get a tweet count on any link you create that uses the prettybar)
    3. Ability to modify or remove the Pretty Link Attribution link on the PrettyBar (PLP users are starting to manually replace the standard link I have there with their affiliate links — which I think is a fantastic idea so I'm making it easier to do so)
  2. UI enhancements — there are a myriad of enhancements to the UI that are in the works right now. These enhancements will make creating and managing your links sooo much easier
  3. Better website analytics compatibility
  4. Group specific link defaults — you'll be able to override the global link creation defaults depending on what group a link is placed in.
  5. Firefox Pretty Link Pro Sidebar Widget — this will be a *huge* enhancement — since Pretty Link is getting more hooks into twitter and other social media platforms, you'll be able to do many of the tasks you'd normally perform within your wordpress admin right from Firefox!
  6. Many other smaller — but awesome features 🙂

And remember that even if you purchase PLP today, you'll receive all of these future updates absolutely free!

Affiliate Program

Also, don't forget that when you purchase Pretty Link Pro, you'll automatically be enrolled in the Pretty Link Pro Affiliate Program … So you'll get a 50% commission for every person that purchases PLP using your affiliate link (which you'll get when you purchase)! This is great if you have an affiliate marketing presence, have clients that need Pretty Link Pro or just have friends that need it.

I'm pumped about all the activity that's been going on surrounding Pretty Link Pro and the cool features I'm working on right now. Seriously, between the fact that this the best link management software in the world, you'll get lifetime updates, there's a 100% money back guarantee on it and there's a generous affiliate program along with it — why don't you just get Pretty Link Pro today, start using it to build your brand and make some money while your at it? Sounds like a no brainer to me. 🙂

Randomized Keyword Replacements and Bookmarklet Updates

Randomized Keyword Replacements and Bookmarklet Updates

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I just pushed another release today that I think clears up many issues that users were having plus I got 2 major improvements in.

  1. The first is with the keyword replacement algorithm in Pretty Link Pro. When keyword replacements were turned on and a threshold was set of say, 3 keyword replacements per page, my algorithm was just replacing the first 3 keywords it saw. In this release I altered the algorithm so instead of replacing the first 3, it will now replace them in a more distributed randomized order. This feature request was from one of my users that noted some other apps that were doing this. I dove into the code and luckily my existing algorithm was such that it only took me about an hour to modify.
  2. So, remember how I released the Pretty Link Bookmarklet yesterday? Well, I was immediately flooded for 2 additional features to be added to it. The first was that the title of the URL should be used as the name of the Pretty Link and the second was that people wanted a way to post this link to some of the social networks. In the 1.4.12 release today these features are available.

Here are some screenshots of these features:

Some users have been happy but some others have been a bit bothered that I'm pushing so many updates lately, well don't worry too much … I'm just ramping up for the Official Launch of Pretty Link Pro on September 1. So get ready for some awesome new features to get rolled out next week — I'm working on some really cool stuff for the free & pro users alike!

Create Short URLs on the fly with the Pretty Link Bookmarklet

Create Short URLs on the fly with the Pretty Link Bookmarklet

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bookmarkletThe Pretty Link Bookmarklet is finally available! My #1 request from users for a while has been to make it easy to create Pretty Links outside of the WordPress admin — and now you can.

If you aren't familiar with what a bookmarklet is, it's basically a button that you can add to your browser's toolbar that will do some action–in this case it's creating Pretty Links. Bookmarklets are great because they are very simple, javascript based buttons that work in practically every browser.

The Pretty Link Bookmarklet is available starting in Pretty Link version 1.4.11. Here's how you'll go about installing it in your browser once you have version 1.4.11 or greater installed in WordPress:

  1. When inside your WordPress admin, click the menu item: “Pretty Link” -> “Tools”
  2. You'll see a link named “Get PrettyLink” under the Bookmarklet section … you'll want to drag that link to your Browser's bookmark bar

That's all you have to do to install it. Now let's look at how you'd use the Pretty Link bookmarklet:

  1. When you're browsing the web and you find a page that you'd like to create a Pretty Link for, just click “Get PrettyLink” in your toolbar while on that page.
  2. Pretty Link will automatically create the link for you and redirect you to a page where you can copy your newly created Pretty Link.

Here are a few screenshots of the bookmarklet in action (in Safari — but the same steps go for FireFox, IE, etc):

I'm currently working on some other ways to easily create Pretty Links soon — so it's only going to get easier to manage your entire link portfolio from Pretty Link!