I’m getting back into the PHP saddle a bit — just so I can whip out a few WordPress widgets & plugins.

WP Widgets are surprisingly easy to develop. I’ve only had to google so far for very few PHP commands that I’ve forgotten since last touching the language (1+ year ago). (to be honest, the php function space is a mess - I could almost never remember the right functions & arguments in PHPland, which is why Ruby is still my main homeboy at the moment)

Widgets coming soon:

• Cobra-Subscribe - displays a nice looking set of RSS subscribe buttons on your blog’s sidebar
• Cobra-Erexa - displays an Alexa Site Stats Button on your sidebar

Yes - pretty simple stuff for now.

WordPress plugin dream list (I will develop if I can find the time / PHP skills):

• Cobra-Cloaker - Affiliate link cloaker. This is all the rage in the internet marketing world. Allows links like: yourblog.com/Recommends/FooBarProduct - which will redirect to the real affiliate link. Helps prevent commission loss & also apparently can really boost clickthu rates in email campaigns.
• 
  Cobra-Directory - Link trading baked right into WP itself. Or use it simply as a link/partner site directory. The closest thing I could find was this which seems like a horribly messy hack.

Why “Cobra”? For practical reasons, I want my plugins to have a namespace and a brand. Eventually you’ll be able to download a whole suite of plugins I’ve knocked out.

I also just think that name is hilarious. Whenever picking team names back in school, I always wanted to name ours “Cobra” or “The Cobras” as a joke, because it just sounds so badass, in that Chuck Norris, almost but not really kind of way.