"Here comes the sun" as The Beatles once said. Of course summer is finally here and, if you ask me, that is not such a great thing. It would be kind of the same thing as asking a lion whether it would enjoy eating salad. With summer and sun comes the heat. It seems the dry heat of summer even succeeded in stunning Wikio’s ranking since July will be our quietest month for  the leaders of each category with only 5 categories featuring a change to their first places owners.

For the Beer category, Brookston Beer Bulletin switched its place with Beervana and comes back in first. This flurry has been going on for 6 months now and it seems it is not going to stop just yet! But this is not the only flurry which has been going on for quite some time, The Selvedge Yard and Bike EXIF did the same thing in the Motorcycle category again.

Where these blogs keep on dancing despite the heat, in the Wine category, Dr Vino’s wine blog has waited all spring to get back at Vinography and take back the first place. Let’s hope that this try will not result as the Toy Society one in Plush Art which took back the lead last month and lost it again, perhaps struck by the heat. LucyKate Crafts did not wait to take the top spot.

Finally, the Paper Craft category which was dominated by Friday Sketchers last month saw most of its blogs earn at least one place since the previous leader was inactive. As everyone may know, Wikio’s ranking does not rank blogs with no article for two months, but one gets back in whenever they start publishing articles again. Delightful Sketches did not dare to wait on the second spot and decided to take the first, or keep it warm as long as possible.

A quiet month of June, here at Wikio we hope there will be more changes next month. Meanwhile we wish you a nice week after the long weekend of Independence Day and if you go on holiday, have a great time off and try to check your mailbox at the end of July, just in case you receive an offer for Wikio’s August preview.

Florian

Thanks to a German blogger Peter Pfeufer, you can now get a Wordpress plugin for Wikio’s Boost Button! This one is really easy to handle and there should be no worries at all if you are already familiar with using Wordpress.

If you still do not know Wikio’s Boost Button, let me sum it up a little. As I was telling you in this article, it is our new Vote Button. It allows your readers to vote for your articles and thus help them appear on the frontpage of Wikio!

If you want to install it on Wordpress, you will have to use the plugin.

1.       You have to get the plugin, either by downloading it here : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wikiovote-button/, upload it and go to step 3 or by going to your Wordpress dashboard, in your menu go to the plugin part and click on “Add new”. There, search for “Wikio” or “Wikio Vote”.

2.       In the search result find the plugin named “Wikio Vote-Button” and click on install now and do not forget to activate the plugin.

3.       In your menu, go to “Plugins”. If you forgot to activate it at step 2, do it now. Then click on “Settings”.

4.       You will arrive on this window.

Here you can customize your Boost Button and how it is displayed. You have to change “Your Wikio” to www.wikio.com. Then just choose where you want to display the button on your blog and in your articles, use only the “Boost Button” like style since Wikio’s Vote button is going to be deactivated. Finally you can modify the CSS in the styling text input if you know your way through this language.

When you are finished, click “Save Changes” and Wikio’s Boost Button will appear on your blog. Note that for your articles to be boosted, your blog has to be registered on Wikio, so do not forget to submit it if you haven’t already, it’s quick and free.

Be also aware that this does not work on Wordpress.com blogs for the moment, we are looking for a way to allow our users to set up this button there and we will give you information as soon as possible.

Florian