Scheduling cronjobs is normally something you’d do through your hosting administration, but for some people the interface can be confusing or a pain to access. Check out this new plugin from Scott Kingsley Clark called Crony Cronjob Manager. It allows you to easily set up cronjobs directly through your WordPress dashboard. Crony Cronjob Manager utilizes the wp_cron API and works like this:

As you receive visitors on your site, WordPress checks your database to see if anything is scheduled to run. If you have a wp_cron() function scheduled ever 12 hours, then the very first visitor 12+ hours from the last scheduled run of that function will trigger the function to run in the background. The Cronjob (or Cron Job) sends a request to run cron through HTTP request that doesn’t halt page loading for the visitor.

Here’s what it looks like in your dashboard:

Simplify your cronjob scheduling with this handy tool!

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Google Buzz offers you one more way to allow users to share links to your website. In just two days after launching, Buzz had nine million posts and comments with approximately 200 posts per minute from mobile sites. While those numbers have gone down since its debut, it demonstrates how much influence Google services have in the landscape of social media.

If you want to leverage the power of Google’s sharing capabilities, a Buzz button is one of the best ways. It allows users to share content that is longer than the allowed limits for Twitter and Facebook. I previously posted a way to add the button in a post called 5 Ways to Incorporate Google Buzz Into WordPress and BuddyPress, but in the meantime I’ve discovered another way that incorporates the button more seamlessly and makes it look like a natural part of BuddyPress. Check out the screenshot below:

A Buzz button will be added to the activity entry meta area of each post on your BuddyPress site, enabling users to share the permalink of that particular post with their followers on Google Buzz. Clicking the button will launch the Buzz window:

Add the Google Buzz Button in 2 Simple Steps:

Step 1: Add the Buzz button javascript to your header.php file:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js"></script>

Step 2: Add this function to your BuddyPress child theme’s functions.php file:

function my_gbuzz() {
$activitylink = bp_get_activity_thread_permalink();
echo '<a title="Post to Google Buzz" class="google-buzz-button" href="http://www.google.com/buzz/post" data-button-style="link" data-url="' . $activitylink . '"></a>';
}
add_action( 'bp_activity_entry_meta', 'my_gbuzz' );

I found this quick trick on the BuddyPress forums, thanks to Simon Dabkowski and r-a-y, which provided the basics for this idea. I like this solution, because there’s no need to get 10 folders deep in BuddyPress theme files. You can do both steps through your WordPress dashboard theme editor in less than a minute. Get your site more exposure with this simple, unobtrusive Buzz button.

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