NaNoWriMo Report Card

Last updated Oct 19, 2009 by David Williamson
I’m currently working on creating a new version of the plugin that pulls your wordcounts from the NaNo site directly, it’s not quite ready yet but since WordPress has automatic plugin updates you’ll know when it is.

For NaNoWriMo 2007, I decided that instead of just keeping track of my word count in a spreadsheet on my computer where only I’d ever get to see it, I would write a plugin for WordPress to keep track of my progress and generate some interesting statistics so my friends could follow along and, when I get behind, help to provide that push needed to catch back up.

I decided I would base my plugin on the NaNo Report Card that seems to be very popular with NaNo participants. The initial version of the plugin generates all the same stats as the spreadsheet and also can create a graph of total word count by day. I’ve tried to make the functions you can use in your theme as customizable as possible because I know I’m always wishing I could change one little thing with the way something is displayed; that said, if there is something that the plugin doesn’t let you do feel free to email me and I’ll see about working it in, same thing goes for any additional statistics you’d like to see generated.

Template Tags

The NaNo Report Card plugin comes with four different template functions you can use to display stats and info about your novel’s progress. The documentation for each function can be found on the following pages:

Installation

Installing the NaNo Report Card plugin is a very simple process. Just download and unzip the file below, then upload the nanorc.php file to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory, log into your administration area and activate the plugin. You should see a new tab on your Dashboard page where you can enter your word count data. If you want to add a quick summary of your novel to your sidebar and your theme supports widgets you should see a NaNo Report Card widget in the list of available widgets.

Download

You can download the plugin from the WordPress Plugin Database located here.

Feature Requests/Bugs/To-do

  • Make the plugin work for Script Frenzy, and NaNoEdMo
  • Pretty graphs :-)
  • Add option to update wordcount direct from NaNo site
  • Allow user to update just Title/Author/WC Goal section – get rid of the error that occurs.
  • Fix Done On bug – finishing in the past
  • Make the widget

Timeline/Changelog

  • Oct. 19, 2007 – v0.2 Released
  • Oct. 9, 2007 – v0.1 Released
  • Oct. 2, 2007 – Work started on the plugin