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I’ve been playing around with the Squidoo Module Development Kit and have been making some pretty good progress.
I’ve made rough drafts of a few new modules in the past week or so and met with some pretty good success. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on how squidoo has the system set up. I’m not a superuser with APIs, but I’ve been able to put some things together that I think are pretty neat…
Now I’m stuck on what modules to make. Anyone have any ideas? Wasn’t there a ‘most requested modules’ list out there somewhere? anyone know that link to that lens?
Yesterday, Gil announced the release of a new Table of Contents Module.
Gil’s Example:
Fluffanutta’s example after applying some of his CSS Tricks:
How it Works
The module automatically creates links to all of your modules with Titles. If your module doesn’t have a title, it doesn’t show up on the list, that simple.
Lot’s of exciting stuff going on at Squidoo this week and it’s only Tuesday!
I think that the ‘Plexo’ modules on Squidoo are probably one of the least understood aspects of Squidoo. I have always been kind of ambivalent towards all of the plexo modules just because I never really saw how they could benefit me. Until Now.
The Real Facts about Plexo Modules:
- Votes are pooled across all versions of the plexo. If you grab a plexo module from one lens and drop it on another, votes on either lens will add to the vote count on every lens that plexo is on.
- The Lens Owner earns Plexo Revenue. After checking and double checking the Amazon Associates IDs on the plexos, I’m almost positive that the owner of the lens that the plexo sits on generates the Amazon revenue.
- Plexo Modules are Evergreen. Plexo Modules are indexable by the Search Engines.
Now, for a long time I thought that Plexos could be useful on Squidoo if you had a really viral list or something but for the average user they just didn’t have the user base to really do anything cool. In fact, I often see Plexo modules out there in Squid Land all by themselves looking lonely. Unless those lonely plexos are on a superstar lens getting thousands of hits a week (and some are) there simply are not enough visitors, much less other squidoo users who are going to come ‘grab’ your plexo. This method of ‘build a plexo and leave’ just doesn’t work that well. Sure, you get some benefit from it, but it’s not super duper cool.
However, unlike most of Squidoo that pulls data from other sources for the visitor to read, Plexos both pull (from Amazon, your list, YouTube, etc.) as well as push (votes, links to your lensmaster page) data around Squidoo.
I can think of a few ways that this can actually be super powerful and has been way under-utilized. I think I’ll save some of my thoughts for my next issue of the Captain Squid Newsletter
Plexos: Love ‘em or Hate ‘em ?
