MediaBugs, now in a WordPress plugin

Announcing the new MediaBugs plugin for WordPress. It’s for anyone who’s running a WordPress-based site that does journalism and wants readers to know that correcting errors is a priority.

Now adding a MediaBugs “report an error” button to any website that runs WordPress is a super-simple, 30-second process. If you know how to install a plugin, you can do it. (Alas, this will only work with self-hosted WordPress installations — or “WordPress.org” sites — and not with WordPress.com blogs, which don’t run plugins.)

We’ve had a MediaBugs widget that played nice with WordPress for some time now (it’s what I’ve been running on my personal blog), but the plugin makes it much easier to add to your site — you don’t need to mess with your theme templates unless, you know, that’s something you enjoy. (Hey, some of us do!)

Here’s what the plugin does: It adds a link to the bottom of every post for users to report errors. The link is customizable — you can use text or an icon or both, and you can edit the text easily, too. When a user clicks on the link, the MediaBugs error-reporting form pops up as an overlay, with the page’s Web address and headline automatically filled in. When the user has filled out the form, the error report gets filed at MediaBugs. (Wanna see? Just click on the little “Report an Error” icon at the bottom of this post!)

If you install the plugin, you can also sign up at MediaBugs to receive an email or RSS notification each time someone reports an error on your WordPress site.

The MediaBugs plugin lives here in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Let us know if you install it — we want to know how it goes!

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