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Now that Zeitgeist has been released on WPPlugins.org, its page here has been set aside for the release manual and discussion. This post contains the contents and comments from the pre-release page.

Personal note, 10^th April 2006: Anyone arriving from this WordPress support forum thread is welcomed to continue the discussion below as that post has been closed and I can no longer debate there.

Owner’s Manual (by the designers)

Don’t own Zeitgeist? Want to know what all the fuss is about? Find out for yourself by exploring the demonstration and browsing this manual.

New Zeitgeist owner? We welcome you and thank you for your purchase. We want you to enjoy every moment you spend and save with Zeitgeist, from the first onwards, so please read this manual carefully as it has been carefully designed to help.

Returning Zeitgeist owner? We welcome any feedback about your experiences with your purchase and this manual. Please feel free to leave us a comment below or send us an e-mail.

Internet Explorer user? Sorry, Zeitgeist isn’t for you. Zeitgeist is designed to work only with browsers that comply with modern web standards, namely CSS 2 which was introduced May 1998. Browsers that comply include Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, Konqueror and many more.

Introduction

Zeitgeist is a plugin for WordPress which creates a dynamic index page for your blog showing and linking to the latest interesting activity. Zeitgeist allows you (almost) total control over what you get, without getting in your way.

An Important Note About The WordPress Dashboard

While activated, Zeitgeist replaces the Dashboard and disables access to both the WordPress news feeds and the Technorati Incoming Links feed. If you want to check these feeds, bring back the Dashboard by deactivating Zeitgeist. You should check the WordPress Development Blog regularly if you are interested by important security-related announcements regarding your blog.

System Requirements

• WordPress 1.5.2 (released 14^th August 2005) or 2.0.2 (released 10^th March 2006)
• MySQL >= 4.0.12 (released 15^th March 2003)
• PHP >= 4.3.4 (released 3^rd November 2003)

Installation

1. Ensure the computer that hosts your blog meets the system requirements. Generally, if WordPress works, so will Zeitgeist.
2. Upload zeitgeist.php to the plugins folder of your blog: path-to-your-blog/wp-content/plugins/. Important! Zeitgeist will not activate if placed in a sub-folder.
3. Activate Zeitgeist on the plugins page of your blog’s administration menu.

If all goes well, Zeitgeist will replace Dashboard on the menu and the homepage of your blog administrative interface will now be Zeitgeist.

Don’t worry if WordPress fails after activating Zeitgeist. Removing or renaming the uploaded zeitgeist.php file will fix it. We are interested in any and all failures, so if one happens please record whatever details you can and send them by e-mail to zeitgeist-support.

A Quick Tour of the Zeitgeist Page

It is normal the first time you see Zeitgeist to think:

Oh my God… it’s full of links!

Don’t panic! On closer inspection you will see they are mostly all links to things already on your blog. Links to things that happened recently. Interesting links.

The next time you see Zeitgeist, as well as the interesting links, there will be:

1. The green Change settings link,
2. Zeitgeist for you and the time now,
3. the interest limit and interest period,
4. the navigation list of interesting blog things, linking to
5. separate divisions listing and linking to the most recent and interesting blog posts, comments, categories, people, drafts and future posts.

What appears and how it all looks depends on a) your blog, and b) your Zeitgeist interest settings. A busy blog would appear something like this screenshot.

Zeitgeist Basics

The word zeitgeist^Wp is from the German language and means spirit of the time. In common use, the zeitgeist is the general culture, education, and morals of a given era. Your blog forms part of today’s zeitgeist.

The index page generated by the Zeitgeist plugin shows you what is happening on your blog today and, up to the limit you deem interesting, what happened in the recent past. Within reason, the Zeitgeist page directly links to those interesting things, making them all just one click away.

The Interest Limit

This limits the number of interesting things shown in any list. Unless you change it, the interest limit is the top 8 of anything.

The Interest Period

This limits how far back in time is interesting. Unless you change it, the interest period is anything in the last 14 days.

The Safety Limit (Why Are There Only 216 Comments?)

To prevent unintentional overuse of your blog server’s resources, there is a factory-set limit of 216 for many things. Zeitgeist will not show more than 216 items in a list even if there are more of interest. This most commonly affects the list of comments.

How Zeitgeist Tells Time

Zeitgeist makes it easy for you to tell time at a glance and precisely, so long as your browser can display pop-up titles (most can).

To save space, all times on the Zeitgeist page, except the current time, are in human short-hand form and relative to the current time. For example 4½ hours ago, 2 days ago and ~1 month ago. The last example should be read as roughly one month ago.

If you want to see the precise time for any short-hand time, hover your mouse cursor over one. The pop-up title shows that time in long-hand formatted according to your blog options, except that the date is dropped for times during today and yesterday.

The Posts Division

A list of the top posts in time order, those with recent comments first, then recent edits then latest posting.
The title of each post is a link to view that post, followed by last edit time then the posting time.
If a post has comments, the total and number of interest are shown, linking to the first comment and first interesting comment respectively. Next are listed the authors of interesting comments, linking to their latest comment. If an author has left more than one comment, counters will show the number of interest and total, linking to the author’s first interesting comment and first overall comment against the post. Finally, the count of comments outside the interest period, if any.

If there are more posts in the interest period than your chosen interst limit, the count remaining is shown, followed by the count of interesting comments against those posts, if any.

Comments Division

Comments ordered by time, listing author linking to comment, time of comment and post title linking to post.

Categories Division

Categories in order of most recent post, linking to category archive and listing post titles linking to posts.

People Division

Authors and commenters in order of most recent appearance, linking to user homepage if given, when they last participated and linking to that post or comment.

Drafts Division (Signed-in Users Only)

Draft posts edited within the interest period in order of edit time, listing post titles linking to the “Edit Post” page, time of edit and author.

Future posts Division (Signed-in Users Only)

All posts scheduled for publication in the future in publication order, listing post titles linking to the “Edit Post” page, author, posting time, time of last edit and the count of comments linking to the comments section of the post.

How to Make Your Zeitgeist by Changing the Settings

If the top 8 things from the last 14 days doesn’t match your interests, click the “Change Settings” link to enter change mode.

In change mode, green links appear around all the things you can change, including the interest limit, the interest period, the visibility of each division and, if you are signed-in, yourself!

Click the out link to exclude yourself (almost) completely from the display. Click the in link to include yourself only (excluding all others). Click the back link to reverse the effect.

Click the ÷2 link to halve the associated setting. Click the ×2 link to double the setting.

Click the X link in the top-right of a division heading to hide that division. Hidden divisions are still listed in the Zeitgeist heading as “(hidden)”. Click a (hidden) division link to show that division again.

If you change a setting but do not like the result, you can reverse it either by clicking the opposite setting link or using your browser’s Back button.

When you have the settings the way you want them, click the Keep link to store them in your browser as a cookie^Wp. The settings links will disappear.

To remove your settings cookie and return to the default Zeitgeist settings, click the Forget link.

How Your WordPress User Level Affects Your Zeitgeist

Registered user’s names are shown bold to distingush them from unregistered user’s names.
The public (and signed-off users) may see only published posts, comments, categories and people.
Signed-in users may include and exclude themselves from the display.
Signed-in users get links into the management interface for posts, comments, categories and users via the headings for each division.
Signed-in users may see drafts and future-dated posts.
Administrators see the number of comments in moderation and get a link to the moderation queue.

Take Complete Control Over Your Zeitgeist Settings

If you are comfortable typing URL^Wp query strings, you can take complete control over your Zeitgeist settings.

For example, if you want to see the top eleven from the last three weeks, issue the following URL:

?zeitgeist=11,3 weeks

Controlling Zeitgeist by URL automatically enables Change Settings mode.

Your Secret Zeitgeist

Hover your mouse cursor over various things to get more information.

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