» WordPress plugin: What Would Seth Godin Do Richard K Miller

WordPress plugin: What Would Seth Godin Do

Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site:

One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people. (Source: In the Middle, Starting)

I built this WordPress plugin to implement Seth Godin’s idea. For WordPress users it reduces the “work at first” to almost nothing. Installation is simple:

Download the WWSGD WordPress plugin and unzip it.
Copy what_would_seth_godin_do.php to your WordPress plugins folder.
Activate the plugin on the Plugin Management page.
Customize settings on the Options page.

By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 3 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location.

This plugin requires cookies. Users without support for cookies will always see the new visitor message. It has been tested with WordPress 2.0, but it may work with earlier versions.

New visitors will appreciate some context and background information about your site. This is your chance to offer them a special welcome and invite them to become permanent subscribers!

DOWNLOAD the What Would Seth Godin Do WordPress plugin

I can be reached at richard AT richardkmiller DOT com. I appreciate comments and suggestions.

UPDATE: Richard Eriksson has developed a version of this plugin for Drupal.

If you want to be notified the next time I write something, sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for reading.

391 Comments

HandySolo
December 12, 2006 at 1:25 pm

Neat idea. Is there a way to contrain it to only single post views?

Having the box on every post of the main page is a bit… scary!
Björn Lindström
December 12, 2006 at 1:50 pm

It seems to me that it would be a good idea not to show the message at all to clients that doesn’t allow setting cookies, thus making the site look normal to people who generally block cookies, and to search engines and such.
Richard K Miller
December 12, 2006 at 2:17 pm

Handy & Bjorn — these are good ideas. I’ll add them and repost a version 1.1.
Marco Raaphorst
December 12, 2006 at 4:02 pm

Great idea! I’ll check when I have a bit time left.
Orlando
December 13, 2006 at 7:58 am

Nice idea.
Richard K Miller
December 13, 2006 at 10:32 pm

Björn: As far as I know, checking for cookie support requires two page loads, which I may not have for first-time users to the site. I may have to think about this one some more.
danithew
December 19, 2006 at 3:52 pm

A-ha! You write WordPress plugins!

(adding you to list of people I talk to about plugin ideas)
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December 19, 2006 at 4:22 pm

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Christer Edwards
December 19, 2006 at 9:00 pm

This is a good idea. I’ve recently started following SG’s blog, which has a lot of good info, but hadn’t made it to the posts you referred to.

I think I’ve found one more feed to add to the reader. Thanks
Modulus
January 2, 2007 at 9:50 am

Odd… I love the idea but something seems to be off. I set up my browser (IE7) to accept all cookies and yet, after 4 page loads, I still see the message inviting people to join my RSS feed. Any idea what’s going on?
Richard K Miller
January 2, 2007 at 10:19 pm

Modulus, does IE7 let you see your cookies? If so, you should see one called “wwsgd_visits” and it contains the number of visits to the site, and it should increment each time you visit. Is that part working?
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January 5, 2007 at 12:51 pm

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Darren
February 8, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Great idea! +1 on differentiating between the home page and individual archive pages.
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February 8, 2007 at 3:55 pm

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Darren
February 8, 2007 at 3:59 pm

Hmm…I’m having the same bug as Modulus. I checked my cookies, and while thec cookie for your site is incrementing each time I visit, the cookie for mine stays at ‘1′.
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February 9, 2007 at 10:04 am

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Jean
February 9, 2007 at 10:29 am

well i just found this pluggin and downloaded it and was curious to install it directly and I am satified with it, thank you a lot, you can see it at my personal blog http://jean.ghalo.com/2007/02/08/6-steps-for-blogging/ posts, it is a real support and i believe it will get the nbr of my RSS readers higher…

Regards,
Jean
Bes Z
February 9, 2007 at 10:01 pm

Hi Richard,

Thank you for such a wonderful plugin. I tried it with WP 2.1 and it worked on most pages.

On pages that use the Comment Analysis plugin:

http://www.lambic.co.uk/blog/wordpress-plugins/

I see the following error message at the top [I have removed the path urls]:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in what_would_seth_godin_do.php on line 86

The page does load, but with the above message at the very top. I am not sure if this issue is because of a conflict with the Comment Analysis plugin or with WP 2.1 itself. Just wanted to let you know.

Thanks again for releasing this plugin.
Richard K Miller
February 10, 2007 at 2:29 pm

@Bes Z
Thanks for your comment. The problem may be extra blank lines in the plugin outside of the < ?php ?> tags. I don’t think the plugin has any extra blank lines but they may have been inadvertently inserted when you put the plugin on your site. You can open the plugin file with a text editor and make sure there are no blank lines at the beginning of the file before “< ?php" or at the end of the file after the "?>“.
Bes Z
February 14, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Richard,
Thanks for the explanation. I just tried it and removed the spaces and unfortunately the same error still shows at the top.
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Boris
February 16, 2007 at 3:14 am

Great idea! Simple and elegant and very effective. RSS readers have doubled since I installed your plugin.

Thanks…
Joe
February 16, 2007 at 3:08 pm

Hey Richard,
I didn’t read all the comments, but what about if the newcomer lands on an individual post, say from a Google search?
Is there any way to show the caption there also?
Richard K Miller
February 16, 2007 at 3:17 pm

@Joe
Yes, this plugin also works for individual posts in addition to the home page.
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February 18, 2007 at 8:53 pm

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Michael
February 25, 2007 at 9:48 am

That has got to be the best name for a plug in ever. Terrific idea too. Thanks. I just love the WP community for coming up with such great and varied plug ins.
noah kagan
March 3, 2007 at 6:40 pm

I installed it and love it. It might be nice to have an easier way to move around where the message shows. Anyways, beggars can’t be choosers.

Check it out on okdork.com
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Astorg
March 14, 2007 at 9:11 pm

I would definitely want to install this, but not if it appears on every post on the home page, which looks rather like overkill.

IMHO, it would make more sense to have it appear (1) on individual post pages when people open them (which means they have sufficient interest to justify sending them the incitement to subscribe) and possibly also (2) at the top of the home page (but once only).
Richard K Miller
March 14, 2007 at 11:40 pm

@Astorg
These are fair suggestions. I don’t have a next version planned yet, but these would be good features. Thanks.
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Avinash
March 22, 2007 at 2:18 pm

What a wonderful idea + plugin! Thanks for developing this highly useful plugin!

Kind regards,
- Avi
Stephanie
March 23, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Hmm, I’d like to install this, but not if it’s going to be at the top of every post on the home page. Otherwise, I love the idea. Is there some mailing list or something I could subscribe to, in case you ever design a second version?
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Matt Ellsworth
March 25, 2007 at 6:30 pm

This is a great plugin - thanks for that - we have implemented here - and we plan on adding it to several other blogs as well.
Jim Kukral
March 26, 2007 at 12:03 am

Smart plugin. Gonna test it out, thanks.
Ben Klinger
March 27, 2007 at 11:23 am

what an awesome plugin!
is there a way to display it above the title of the post rather than above the content?

thanks so much for writing this!
Richard K Miller
March 29, 2007 at 10:35 pm

@Stephanie
I’ll see what I can do about limiting the notice to one post only. That will be in the next version.

@Ben Klinger
Thanks. I don’t think the WordPress API offers a way to put the notice above the title. The notice gets lumped in with the content, either before or after it.
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April 6, 2007 at 5:07 am

Great trick… It is much better than a dull RSS icon lost in sidebar…
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April 10, 2007 at 3:06 am

Thanks for the great plugin Richard.
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April 12, 2007 at 2:18 pm

Great plugin, thankyou!
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Ralf Skirr
May 9, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Hi Richard,

This has to be one of my new favorite plugins for wordpress.

Thanks for sharing
Richard K Miller
May 9, 2007 at 4:11 pm

Thanks Ralf, I appreciate it!
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May 12, 2007 at 12:15 am

Awesome Richard! Implementing this on my blog right now. Everyone be sure to digg this to the front page of Digg.com: http://digg.com/tech_news/What_Would_Seth_Godin_Do_He_Would_Use_This_Word_Press_Plug_In
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Jeremy Ricketts
July 6, 2007 at 11:55 am

I’d like to hear what people think about hiding/showing ads based on visits. For instance, one the first couple visits to a site, it might be good to hide google ads so that the visitor is shown a more content-focused blog or page. More inviting. True this mean less overall click conversions, but I wonder if that is a price one might be willing to pay while their blog or site gets off the ground. Gathering an endearing audience from the start might be better than an influx of quick but non-regular reader base. Thoughts?
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Talkhomebusinessblog
July 7, 2007 at 9:15 pm

Hope this excellent plugin will greatly increase number of our RSS subscribers soon! We barely just begun…

Thanks Richard
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beara’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 个步骤把 WordPress 打造成 Web 2.0 门户
July 8, 2007 at 9:54 pm

[...] What Would Seth Godin Do – 一个非常优秀的插件，它能大大提高你 RSS 订阅。高度可定制化这一点做得非常好 — 当访问者来到你的站点他们看到一个选项能订阅你的 feed，这个选项是自动插入日志或者页面。多次访问你站点的访问者可能不喜欢看到这个信息，你可以通过后台管理界面设置它让它避免打扰你博客长期读者。 [...]
推荐：增加RSS订阅数的WordPress插件 at Smartr.cn
July 9, 2007 at 2:01 am

[...] 下载：What would Seth Godin do Plugin [...]
Business Blog Boost » Blog Archive » Top ten Wordpress plugins for your blogs.
July 9, 2007 at 3:42 am

[...] Message for new readers - welcomes new readers and asks if they would like to subscribe to the [...]
RSS Explained : Miazma blog comix
July 9, 2007 at 1:05 pm

[...] Here’s the link for the WWSGD plugin If you’re new to Miazma and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Go widget go! [...]
brainpipe » Blog Archive » What would Seth Godin do?
July 9, 2007 at 1:17 pm

[...] I’m not entirely certain that’s the question I should be asking myself, the What Would Seth Godin Do? WordPress plugin (also known as WWSGD) looks to be pretty useful. The plugin uses a cookie to [...]
Ken
July 9, 2007 at 10:47 pm

Hi

I installed your plugin and everything works fine except one thing. The link for the rss feed gives a 404 ‘not found’ error.

The rss link from the built in cutline chicklet works fine, it links to “http://kenstech.com/blog/index.php/feed/”

I went in and edited the plugin so that the line in the href that read “.get_option(’home’).”/index.php/feed/ ” was replaced with the above hard coded link directly to my feed.

This unfortunately did not work. Even though I edited the plugin, the link still shows up without the “index.php” bit between the “/blog/” and “/feed/” in the path.

This makes no sense to me since I changed the path. Yet it still shows the old path and still gives me the 404.

I hope this isn’t too confusing. Any help would be appreciated.

Ken Steen
Ken
July 9, 2007 at 11:26 pm

GAH!

Never mind….

I feel like an idiot. I figured it out, thanks anyway.

Ken
Richard K Miller
July 10, 2007 at 7:01 am

Jeremy Ricketts: This is an interesting idea. I’ve also seen the opposite proposed as well — turning off ads for your longtime readers. It’d be interesting to try both.
Richard K Miller dot coooooooooom / Market segmentation on your blog
July 10, 2007 at 9:04 am

[...] it might deepen the loyalty and increase the satisfaction of your biggest fans. Or you could do the opposite. Personally, I like the first more than the [...]
WP Plugins DB » Plugin Details » Recommend Google Pack
July 11, 2007 at 12:23 am

[...] a custom welcome message to new visitors who are running Internet Explorer. Based heavily on What Would Seth Godin Do by Richard K Miller. Requires the WordPress Browser Detection Plugin by Priyadi Iman [...]
marktpraxis_blog » Blog Archiv » Begrüßung neuer Blog-Besucher
July 11, 2007 at 3:01 am

[...] erste Eindruck zählt für Problogger” bin ich auf das Wordpress Plugin “What would Seth Godin do” gestoßen. Das Plugin ermöglicht die Begrüßung von Besuchern, die z.B. [...]
More Links | So You Want To Teach?
July 11, 2007 at 8:57 am

[...] Thank you Seth Godin. Thank you Copyblogger. See that red box at the top of your screen? This is the power of using WordPress plugins. If you don’t see it, you’ve been to the site a few times. Welcome back. Incidentally the one that does the red box is called What Would Seth Godin Do? [...]
7 Steps To Building A Blog | So You Want To Teach?
July 15, 2007 at 5:03 am

[...] Listing, Popularity Contest, Similar Posts (which is my personal favorite), SRG Clean Archives, What Would Seth Godin Do, and WordPress.com stats. If you haven’t visited the archives or category pages of this site, [...]
AdSense Referrals 2.0 - A Plugin Success Story
July 16, 2007 at 12:12 am

[...] visitors to a web site by using cookies. Richard K Miller ran with this idea and created the What Would Seth Godin Do (WWSGD) plugin for [...]
Syndication Through Email: Using FeedBlitz RSS to E-Mail Services
July 16, 2007 at 11:17 am

[...] for WordPress the tool to use is the plugin What Would Seth Godin Do by Richard Miller. THis puts a nice little box either at the top or bottom of every post that [...]
What would Seth Godin do? Probably not one-size-fits-all . . . | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technology blog | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments
July 16, 2007 at 5:08 pm

[...] Burslem mentioned the What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in today, and Jim Duncan has also written about it [...]
Landing on Long-term Value | Rain City Guide | A Seattle Real Estate Blog...
July 18, 2007 at 1:17 am

[...] final thought… Earlier this month, there was some buzz about a WP plugin that gives new arrivals a different message than people who’ve been to the site many times… Joel gave a decent plug for it and Jim [...]
A Grandiose Blog
July 21, 2007 at 9:00 am

Hey thanks, for the great plugin! I’ve got it installed and it’s working great. I did edit the default text somewhat to try and increase comments also, you can see it at http://www.agrandioseblog.com.

Out of curiosity, who has the best custom message that has increased RSS subs and comments?

Thanks

A Grandiose Blog - Cocktails, Gadgets & More …
Richard K Miller
July 21, 2007 at 10:24 am

A Grandiose Blog: One use of the plugin I recently saw and really like is at Upper Fort Stewart. At the bottom of each post there’s a paragraph that reads “Wait, there’s more!” It doesn’t wrap the message in the dotted line, so it flows well. I like it.
极客吧 » Blog Archive » 记录我使用的WP插件
July 22, 2007 at 2:29 am

[...] What Would Seth Godin Do 1.3 提示新到访的朋友订阅rss（根据cookies判断）可自己修改提示内容或次数。 [...]
Celebrienne
July 22, 2007 at 10:48 am

Richard, thanks a bunch for this plugin. It’s a great and useful plugin. I use it on my celebrity blog and display a modified message. The message displays 3 times to new visitors at the top of the page.

The plugin works great on IE 7 (couldn’t test it under IE6), but under Firefox the welcome message is always getting displayed. It just won’t go away though cookies are turned on. When I took a look at the FF cookies for my blog I couldn’t find “wwsgd_visits” there.

Any suggestions? Does this only happen to me or is this a known bug/issue? Maybe it’s my fault, but I just can’t figure out where I could have gone wrong… :-/
Celebrienne
July 22, 2007 at 10:52 am

Forgot something… Is it possible to prevent bots (like the Googlebot) from indexing the welcome message without changing the message position? I just noticed that Google indexed the message on some of my pages.
satest
July 22, 2007 at 11:36 pm

I get a 404, page not found error on the feed link, after activating the WWSGD plugin. A similar problem is quoted above, but the solution is not specified..

Any body please help..

Thanks in advance..
Richard K Miller
July 23, 2007 at 7:14 pm

Celebrienne: I visited your site in Firefox and the message disappeared as expected. I don’t know a way of excluding the plugin content from search enigne indexes (though I could see the value in a tag like this.)

satest: The 404 error above seemed to be resolved in the following comment. Any luck with your site?
Celebrienne
July 23, 2007 at 8:21 pm

Thanks for taking the time to review my problem, Richard. I really appreciate this. Good to know that at least it seems to work for all the rest of the website’s visitors. Problem might be (my) Firefox then.

Hopefully, the Googlebot is also able to store cookies (?), so the message won’t be displayed after the first 3 times it crawls the site’s content.
satest
July 24, 2007 at 5:31 am

No, the 404 error is not resolved yet. Do we need any htaccess setting for this to work?
I set the .htaccess file as

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]

Still it does not work.

Thanks.
Richard K Miller
July 24, 2007 at 9:31 am

satest: You shouldn’t have to change your .htaccess file at all. The WordPress defaults are fine. Does the plugin work when you delete the .htaccess file?
satest
July 25, 2007 at 12:25 am

When deleting the htaccess file, when I click on the feed link a popup is generated..

which is a: application/x-httpd-php
from: http://...

What would firefox do with this file?
open
save to disk

Many thanks for your valuable response..
blue&blue 精读 » 10 个步骤把 WordPress 打造成 Web 2.0 门户
July 25, 2007 at 12:38 am

[...] What Would Seth Godin Do – 一个非常优秀的插件，它能大大提高你 RSS 订阅。高度可定制化这一点做得非常好 — 当访问者来到你的站点他们看到一个选项能订阅你的 feed，这个选项是自动插入日志或者页面。多次访问你站点的访问者可能不喜欢看到这个信息，你可以通过后台管理界面设置它让它避免打扰你博客长期读者。 [...]
Richard K Miller
July 25, 2007 at 7:38 am

satest: Not sure why you’re having that trouble. It sounds like it’s more than a matter of the plugin.
FatMan
July 25, 2007 at 8:58 am

I have the same 404 error problem here is the actual response to clicking oon the RSS feed. I am using wordpress 2.2.1. Can you solve this mystery?

thx

fatman

Not Found
The requested URL /fmblog/feed/ was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.37 Server at fatmanmelts.com Port 80
Tal Galili
July 26, 2007 at 8:25 am

Hi.

I love your plugin. BUT:
I am having problem using it with the hebrew language (utf-8, right to left).
Could a fix to that be implemented into the plugin ?

thanks,
Tal.
satest
July 26, 2007 at 8:52 am