Chess Plugins for Wordpress
[Update: After not being overly impressed with the available chess Wordpress plugins available, I decided to create my own. If you are looking for a way to view chess games in Wordpress, check out my Chess Game Viewer Control Panel which allows you to customize the board and pieces that you show in your posts!]
I have been playing chess online a bit more lately and have been looking for ways to incorporate chess into my blog a bit more. I don’t know what form that will take, but one of the things I have been experimenting with is a Wordpress plugin called “Chess by Blog.” This Wordpress Plugin allows you to paste a chess game in PGN format into your web posts. For example, the example below shows a game I played last week.
Here is my initial results from trying to use the Chess By Blog Wordpress plugin. The plugin seems to work after a little bit of trial and error. For example, I had to manually surround my PGN code with the div class of “CBB-board” to get the game to show up. Perhaps I am missing something. In the HTML tab there is a “Chess By Blog” option that I couldn’t get working, either. I am in Safari right now so maybe I should try it in Firefox. It looks like you can create custom styles and themes for your board, which might be fun to play with. I will add to this post more as I figure out more features/problems with the plugin. In the meantime, enjoy the game below…
[Event "rated blitz game"] [Site "Free Internet Chess Server"] [Date "2010.01.31"] [Round "-"] [White "ahanft"] [Black "FICS Player"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "1132"] [BlackElo "1025"] 1. d4 d5 2. Nc3 c5 3. dxc5 e6 4. Bf4 Bxc5 5. Nb5 Bb6 6. Nd6+ Ke7 7. e3 Bc7 8. Nxc8+ Qxc8 9. Bb5 Bxf4 10. exf4 Qc5 11. Qd3 Qb4+ 12. c3 Qxb2 13. Rb1 Qxa2 14. Nf3 Nf6 15. O-O Ne4 16. Ra1 Qb2 17. Qd4 Qxc3 18. Qxc3 Nxc3 19. Bd3 Rc8 20. Bxh7 g6 21. f5 exf5 22. Rfe1+ Kf6 23. Re3 Ne4 24. Rd1 Rh8 25. Bxg6 fxg6 26. Rxd5 Nc6 27. Nd4 Nxd4 28. Rxd4 Rac8 29. g3 Rc2 30. f3 Nd2 31. Rd6+ Kg5 32. h4+ Kh6 33. Ree6 Nxf3+ 34. Kf1 Nh2+ 35. Ke1 Rc1+ 36. Kd2 Rg1 37. Rxg6+ Kh5 38. Rg5# 1-0
This was a fun game. I started out aggressive, but played sloppy leaving myself down several pawns and then a knight. Luckily I was bailed out in the end because my opponent didn’t see the checkmate coming. I plugged the game into the computer at move 37 and was surprised the computer gave me a draw despite being down so much material. I find that some of the most enjoyable games are the one’s where victory is snatched from the clutches of defeat. Of course it is never fun to be the person on the other side of the board when this happens.
