Live Blogging version 2 - looking for beta testers

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on version 2 of the Live Blogging plugin for WordPress which I originally released last year, and which subsequently won runner-up in the 2009 Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition – an acolade very gratefully received!

One reviewer of the plugin did point out that:

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.

which is a very fair, and accurate, assessment. It’s no secret that I developed this plugin in a few days for Nouse’s coverage of Roses 2009.

Version 2, however, changes all that. It’s been rewritten from the ground up for WordPress 3.0, with no constraints on time for a release date, so it’s coded a lot better than version 1 was. It also addresses a lot of niggles people had with version 1 of the plugin. It no longer relies on Meteor (it can use an AJAX polling method which is suitable for low traffic blogs), the backend user experience is better and the plugin as a whole is a lot more flexible.

When the final version of the plugin launches, I’ll be writing a full blog post detailing the changes and new features – but rest assured, this is not the same plugin as version 1, but contains the same principle – microblogging without your readers having to refresh the page.

As for now, I’m looking for beta testers. Particularly people who have used version 1 of the plugin, as the migration functionality is one part in particular I’m keen to test. If you are interested in testing and blogging using Live Blogging v2, please comment on the post, drop me a tweet, or e-mail me. I’m hoping to have a beta ready within the next week, which I can distribute and elicit feedback on, and hopefully squash a few more bugs before 2.0 hits the WordPress plugins directory.

I think this plugin could be something big, especially for professional bloggers, and making the barrier for entry considerably lower than what version 1 could provide is something, I hope, can achieve this.

The second beta is now out, and can be downloaded here. Any feedback will be gratefully received.