Compete widget

Requirements

• WordPress 2.2 or 2.0.x/2.1.x with WordPress Widgets
• PHP 4.3.0 or greater (needed for function file_get_contents)
• API Key from Compete.com (You can use the one supplied, but that is limited to 1000 requests a day)

Features

• Displays data about your site or any site you choose
• Edit nearly all aspects of it via widget admin
• Caching for large traffic sites

Formatting

You can edit ‘Widget Formatting’ to change how the info is displayed. To access the variables, use this formatting:

• %rank% – Rank of the site
• %icon% – The icon relating to your traffic rank (large or small depending on options)
• %count% – People count
• %host% – Hostname used in lookup
• %link% – Link to the compete page for the host
• %compete% – The compete link – Compete.com

The default formatting is:

<span style=”float:right;”><img src=”%icon%” alt=”%rank%” /></span>
<a href=”%link%”>%host%</a><br />

Ranking: %rank%<br />
People: %count%<br />
%compete%

Nothing shows up when I try it or I get an error that file_get_contents doesn’t exist

This script relies on the function file_get_contents to fetch the RSS feed. If your host doesn’t allow the use of it, but allows the use of curl, you can replace

$stories = file_get_contents($uri);

with

$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5; // set to zero for no timeout
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $uri);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$stories = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

What does cache time mean?

It’s the number of seconds before the content will be requested again. You can set this to be 0 or -1 to not use the caching system. If you edit any of the widgets in the widget admin panel, the cache is cleared.

1. Download compete-widget.zip
2. Extract and upload compete.php to the plugins/ directory
3. Enable Compete Rankings in the Plugin admin panel
4. In widget admin panel, place Compete in the sidebar, and edit it to enter your API key (optional)