=== Guild Network === Contributors: kduffie Donate link: https://guild.network Tags: License: GPLv2 or later License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Requires at least: 4.0 Tested up to: 4.9.8 Stable tag: 0.3.1 Increase engagement on your site using [Guild](https://guild.network) widgets on your page. We increase pageviews per visit. == Description == Guild is a cloud service that helps you increase engagement on your site, leading to more revenue. As a cloud service, we create and maintain a full index of all of the content on your site. We combine that with analytics and viewing behavior patterns. This plugin adds widgets that you can place anywhere on your pages that help visitors discover content on your site. These widgets provide visitors with a simple interactive way to see all of the content available on your site in a highly engaging way. We use contextual information to maximize the liklihood that a visitor will see another page that will interest them. We currently support two widgets: Filmstrip and Explorer. Filmstrip is very simple. It is typically placed immediately below your page banner. It shown a horizontal array of thumbnails for every post/page on your site, arranged based on the current page so that the reader is likely to see other pages that interest them. Explorer is typically placed in a sidebar and/or below the post content. This replaces the conventional "page recommendations" widget with something that is much more engaging to readers. A large tile is shown for another page on your site that we believe is most likely to be interesting to the reader based on the current context. In addition, we show an interactive "tree map" of the whole site organized by topics and keywords. Readers can tap on topics to discover the corresponding content. There is also a textbox where as a reader types, the list of matching pages is updated in real-time. To learn more, visit [Guild](https://guild.network). == Installation == 1. Visit [https://guild.network](https://guild.network) and submit your site. 2. Once you have your alphanumeric site code assigned, install and activate this plugin. 3. On the settings page ("Guild Network" under Settings), enter the site code and click Save. 4. Place widgets on your pages using Appearance/Widgets, shortcodes ([guild-film-strip] or [guild-explorer]), or using CSS selector settings. 5. Use CSS Styles to customize widgets to match the look-and-feel of your site. == Frequently Asked Questions == = Why bother trying to increase engagement? I'm mostly focused on bringing more people to my site. The revenue you can generate from your site depends on the number of pageviews and the time spent on those pages. You can increase pageviews by finding new people through SEO and social marketing. But you can double your pageviews from existing visitors if you can just get each of them to more of your own content. In addition, if you give them the ability, some people will spend a significant amount of time studying the range of content you have available on your site. This drives up time-per-page. SEO and social marketing are good for driving up number of sessions. We are good at helping you drive up pages-per-session and time-per-session. = Why will these widgets improve reader engagement on my site? Many people start at Google and search for what they are looking for. They may hit a page on your site, and then go to the next search result to see more. But if when they are on your site they see something else that is relevant and interests them, they will stay to see it. Secondly, most people are reluctant for some reason to navigating to a new page to see what they may find there. By presenting all of the content on your site within a simple interactive widget they are more likely to surf the available content for things that interest them. Finally, we do a lot of work to cluster the content on your site and combine that with analytics to determine the other content on your site that is most likely to be interesting to a user -- and present those options to them first. Compared with simple "trending" page lists, we do much better. = Will these widgets slow down my site? No. The total size added to the page is only about 100KB and is served from cache using our CDN, so is very fast. Also, we delay showing our widgets until your page has fully loaded. So we should have no impact on your page loading speed whatsoever. = It looks like you will show screenshots from every one of my pages. Won't that download huge amounts of data? No. We generate tiny thumbnails of your pages and only fetch these thumbnails as they are brought into view. Each thumbnail is only a few KBytes in size. = Why do these widgets depend on the Guild cloud service rather than being integrated into my WordPress server? We use a large amount of cloud processing and storage to be able to present the information shown on your site. This is not feasible within WordPress without bringing your server to its knees. == Screenshots == 1. A sample website showing the Filmstrip widget added just below the banner 2. The filmstrip widget by itself. Scroll horizontally through EVERY page in the site. 3. The explorer widget as it might appear in a sidebar. Use the treemap to explore pages by topics and keywords. 4. The explorer widget is responsive and will switch to landscape if the width is sufficient. == Changelog == = 0.2.1 = - Initial Revision = 0.3.0 = - Added filmstrip and explorer widgets = 0.3.1 = - Improved documentation