I’ve just released version 2.0 of my Custom Windows Pinned Tiles WordPress plugin. This is no small update, as it brings the plugin from a simple favicon-adding-like utility to an immensely powerful tool to app-ify your website for Windows 8.1 users.

Custom Windows Pinned Tiles now creates a live-updating tile when users pin your site to their start screen. All you have to do is pick an image (to be used in the absence of live updates), a background color (to go behind the live post titles), and the frequency with which Windows should check for new posts to display on the live tile.

This is an excellent example of WordPress’ mission to “democratize publishing” because it allows users to equate themselves with, or even surpass, full-blown Windows 8.1 Apps that would be unrealistic to develop from scratch. Live tiles update as you publish new content and the tiles cycle through displays of your recent posts’ titles, excerpts, and images. There’s really no better way to keep visitors coming back to your site than having this dynamic tile that shows off your latest content as you create it, right alongside native apps that do the same.

On the technical side, Windows 8.1 utilizes RSS feeds to find content to display and update on the live tiles. Since WordPress has always featured built-in RSS feeds, plugging them into the Windows 8.1 meta tag needed for live-updates is a no-brainer. Custom Windows Pinned Tiles 2.0 also features huge improvements in image handling. Before, you had to upload a correctly-sized PNG image in order for your image to show up in pinned tiles; now Custom Windows Pinned Tiles automatically copies your image as a PNG and resizes it to all four sizes that correspond to each of the size options avaliable in Windows 8.1. The images are stored in a dedicated folder (wp_content/uploads/cwp_tiles/ or the equivalent) to reduce potential confusion over multiple copies of files with the same name but different file types and different sizes than the rest of the images in the date-based directories. Image resizing and converting functions are handled with WP_Image, which will automatically use the best libraries available on your webserver.

Overall, Custom Windows Pinned Tiles is a significant transformation that retains the plugin’s simplicity and easy of use. More features will come in future versions; possibilities include custom post type support and a  separate field for the wide image size. If you have any feature requests or other ideas, let me know!