May 17, 2009

So the first entry on the WLTC Plugin Competition blog is up and it is an interesting one. A plugin called Live Blogging from Chris Northwood.

I need to start my review with the admission that I have never live blogged anything, so my experience is limited to seeing one in action during Formula 1 races. Despite this I think the concept is interesting and I was keen to try the plugin.

What it does

With the plugin installed you get a new menu option: Live Blogging. From here you can create a new ‘Live blog’ and, using shortcodes, add that live blog into a post or a page.

You can then post new messages to that live blog and these are added to the post, most recent at the top, with a label showing the time it was added.

You can see an example of the plugin in action at Nouse.co.uk.

This is essentially it; however, you can push your messages to Twitter or to a Meteor server, a webserver designed to handle streaming to a very high number of subscribers.

My thoughts

The plugin does what it was intended for just fine, but I get the impression that it is a plugin that was built for a specific use and released, rather than a plugin that was intended to be released.

First of all, when you add a live blog to a post you need to remember the ID and add the shortcodes; there is nothing in the editor to automate the insertion process. This isn’t a problem, but a little polish goes a long way. I also had a minor issue with the live-blog entry page: the WYSIWYG wasn’t working for me but this could simply be the result of testing it using 2.8.

One of the cool features of this, which you can see in the screen cast, is the auto-update feature where users are updated with the latest post in near real time. Unfortunately, this is only available if you have the Meteor Server installed, which I don’t. While it may be wise to discourage users on shared hosting to host large live-blogs I would still have liked to see a basic AJAX alternative. I suspect that most live-blogs will be viewed by a relatively small number of people while the event is occurring so this plugin many not offer the sort of benefits that largest user base would want.

Being fairly unfamiliar with live-blogging it may be that this feature never really comes up, but those I have seen often inserted the users comments into the stream to permit a wider discussion. This plugin will auto-update the comments when using a Meteor Server but it does so in the traditional way, at the bottom of the page. For future updates it might be interesting to see that as an option.

Finally, when I added some introductory text to the post the live blog was on, I found that any text within the post is relegated to the bottom of the post. So adding the short code turns the entire post into a live blog, not just the area where the short codes have been inserted. I also found that the HTML it inserts covers over the sidebar using the default theme.

Conclusion

There is certainly potential in this plugin. The option to post to Twitter is good and the Meteor Server option might very well be the “one big thing” that someone needs. On the whole though it feels ‘made available’ rather than ‘produced’ so I think a bit more polish is needed before it becomes a winner.

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