Hello Dolly! Dolly'll Never Go Away Again

If you have a wordpress blog, you've probably seen the Hello Dolly plugin. It's automatically installed with every wordpress blog. It's cute, but I've never "got it." It puts the lyrics to Hello, Dolly! in snipits in your admin panel. I've never seen the value in having those lyrics on my screen, so I've always deleted the plugin just to get it out of the way.

Here's what Wordpress.org has to say about it: 

"Hello Dolly: This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong. Hello, Dolly. This is, by the way, the world's first official WordPress plugin. When enabled you will randomly see a lyric from "Hello, Dolly" in the upper right of your admin screen on every page but the plugins page."

Today, as I was getting ready to delete this from Julie Ferenzi's plugin folder at LivingInPlainfield.com, I decided to open the .php file. I was just curious. Since this was the original plugin, I just wanted to see how it was written. Well... it hit me as I looked at it, that it's just pulling in the lyrics based on the lyric lines in the hellodolly.php file. I know some of you reading this are probably saying, "Duh, it's just php, Jeff." But it was a light bulb moment for me. "I can change this!" So, why not use it to help "coach" Julie when she's inside her blog? It would be like I'm always right there beside her. :)

Here's what I did.  I replaced the lyric lines with this:

// These are the lyrics to Hello Dolly
$lyrics = "people matter
think about how to engage your reader
it's all about relationships
key words are meant to attract consumers, not other agents
kiss your husband
pick one or two categories for a post, not six :)
are you having fun? if not, stop... come back later
your voice is good enough... don't try to be anyone else
hug your kids
how would you say it to a friend?";

Now... when she logs into her account and cruises around the back end, each time she goes to a new page she gets a different message... from me! Here's an example, highlighted in yellow.

You can change it too.

I'm doing this as a coaching tool. And I'm going to add more as time goes on.  But if you have a blog built on the Wordpress platform, you can do this for yourself as well. All you need is a text editor. Open up the hellodolly.php file and replace the lyric lines with quotes that you like, or reminders about where your focus should be or hints on how to be a better Dad... whatever you feel will add value.

Hello Dolly! I'm never going to delete you again.