Insights – This WordPress Plugin Is Awesome

Vladimir Prelovac is quickly making a name for himself in the WordPress community thanks in wide part to his innovative plugins. Insights is no exception. Insights is a WordPress plugin that really brings the write panel to life. After installing the plugin, you’ll have the ability to:

  • Search your blog for posts, edit them or insert links to them into the current post
  • Insert Flickr Images
  • Insert Youtube videos
  • Search and link to Wikipedia
  • Search Google
  • Insert a Google Map

Easy Access To Blog Archive:

One big reason why I’m such a big fan of this particular plugin is that, I can search my blog archive from within the write panel which makes it easy as pie to link to previous articles I have written on the same subject. I used to open up my blog archive in a new tab or a new window, perform a blog search and then copy the link URL to paste into the Write panel. Thanks to insights, I no longer have to go through this process anymore.

Images:

Adding images is as simple as performing a search from within the Insights search box and clicking on the image. The image will automatically be inserted into the post. You can choose from the following image sizes, 75px, 100px, 240px, 500px, and 1024px. When images are inserted into a post, the image will automatically be linked to the Flickr page from where the image is being hosted. This plugin does not display creative commons information that may be attributed to the image.

Videos:

Videos are taken from Youtube.com and although the code is published into the post content area, my testing of the plugin on my own blog revealed that the YouTube videos would not display. However, when I would add Youtubes own embed code into my post content, the video would display just fine. Not sure if there is a bug or an error on my setup but beware of that inconsistency.

Wikipedia:

During my trial and error of using the Wikipedia search, I discovered the search worked just fine but when I clicked on the icon to add the link to the search result into the post, the action did not work. However, I was able to manually copy the URL and place it into the post. Again, not sure if this is a bug or an error with my configuration.

Google:

When using Insights, I find it really convenient that even a mini Google search is built into this plugin. That means I can perform all sorts of research from within the Write panel or at least, link to other articles on the same subject.

Also, if you happen to have a Google API key which can be obtained for free here, you can access Google maps from within your write panel allowing you to easily publish maps or directions.

Conclusion:

Despite the hiccups I encountered, Insights provides functionality to the write panel that I have been wanting for quite some time now, especially since I can now easily access my blog archive from the write panel itself. Being able to easily add images, video or Wikipedia links is also a nice touch. All in all, the plugin provides users the opportunity to spend more time creating your posts rather than browsing and copying links from various places. Definitely a time saver for me and I’ll be using this plugin on my own blog from now on.

10 thoughts on “Insights – This WordPress Plugin Is Awesome

  1. Hey Vlad, what would be the best way to get in touch with you? I have disabled all of my plugins and I can’t get the video to work properly via your plugin. Manually embedding works but the code produced by your plugin does not.

  2. But – nothing worked for me.

    I mean – everything worked – per say – but, only My Blog search am I able to right click and copy the URL of these posts. That’s actually a nice feature!

    But – it won’t let me “click to add” or “add me” buttons to add any other feature into my write box.

  3. Incompatibility perhaps. My active wordpress plugins now are:
    Audio player 2.0b6
    Author Image(s) 2.0
    CyStat 0.9.7
    Fotobook 3.1.3
    Get Recent Comments 2.0.2
    Page Link Manager 0.3
    Random Image Widget 1.3
    Search Everything 4.7.6.2
    Smart Youtube 2.3.2
    StatPress Reloaded 1.4.9
    Tabbed Widgets 0.77
    WordPress Database Backup 2.2.1
    Wordpress PDA & iPhone 1.2.6
    WP-Morph 1.6
    WP-PageNavi 2.31
    WP-PostRatings 1.31
    WP lightbox 2
    I’ll test it too asap! Thank you!

  4. He knows about it but the feature is functioning correctly on his own site. I’ll be doing some testing later today to confirm if it is his plugin or someone else’s plugin that is causing the issue

  5. Yeah, youtube video inconsistent in my blog. The same problem! 🙁
    Is this a known bug? I suppose it has been reported to the author. ¿?

  6. I will be doing more testing as well such as disabling some plugins which I think might be causing the issues and if I discover that to be the case, I’ll add an updated section to this post.

  7. Thanks for the cool review.

    I thought linking the image to the image in the author’s profile (different link then the displayed image) would do the job as far as attribution goes.

    The problems you encountered should be local to your WordPress as I did not get complaints about it but will check them nevertheless.

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