Monthly Archive for September, 2009

As a long time user of Pidgin I’ve come to realise that there are quite a few tips and tricks to the program that may not be evident to users that are only loading the program up for the first time.  The issue with this is some users may miss functionality that they’ve become used to in their other programs and so feel that Pidgin has less to offer them.  Nothing could be further from the truth as Pidgin has a great community of plugins and options that can customise the program top suit your needs.

So without further ado, here’s my list of the most useful options and plugins that most users should enable right from the get go when loading up Pidgin for the first time.

• First up is the Release Notification plugin which does exactly what it says, informing you of any new releases of Pidgin with a small box in the Buddy List window.  Probably one of the most important tips for Pidgin is to keep it continuously updated as the newer versions fix security flaws and add in significant fixes.  For instance Pidgin 2.6.1 added voice and video which most users were clamouring for.  So be sure to activate this plugin by going to Tools – Plugins and then selecting the checkbox next to Release Notification.
• Next up is the Log Reader plugin which reads logs from any other IM clients you’ve used before on your PC (Adium, Triallian MSN, etc) and then incorporates them into the chat histories of your Pidgin contacts.  Its a rather nifty way on consolidating all your chat logs into one source.  The plug in once again activated via the Tools – Plugins menu.
• The History plugin also works with your contacts’ chat histories to insert the last conversation you’ve had with them into new conversation windows.  This comes in useful for people such as myself that have a tendency to close chat windows quite frequently and with this plugin enabled you won’t forget what the last question was you may have asked someone if you’re juggling several conversations at once.Once again activate it from the Tools – Plugins menu.
• Another conversation tip is to go to Tools – Preferences and select the Conversations tab.  On that screen you should deselect the “Close IMs immediately when the tab is closed” option.  That way you won’t lose your recent conversations immediately and you’ll also prevent the annoying “User has left the conversation” messages from appearing every time you or the person you are chatting to closes the window (although this only affects Jabber and Google Talk accounts).
• Another feature many users are used to that does not come as standard with Pidgin is the ability to make use of notifications to see when you’ve received a new chat message or when your contacts come online.  Its an easy enough problem to solve by installing the Guifications addon.  You can grab it from the Guifications site and then merely run the installer after which you’ll want to enable the plugin in the Tools – Plugins menu.  This plugin also allows you to download themes for the toaster popups as well as specifying as to which events should make use of the notifications.
• A personal favourite of mine is the Pidgin-Musictracker plugin which uses the current song you are playing as your status message in a similar manner as the official Google Talk and MSN clients do.  Before you can use it you’ll need to download it from the Pidgin-Musictracker site and then enable it from the Tools – Plugins menu.  you can configure how it should display your music status as well as which player it should look at and whether it should use the protocol’s native ability to display your Now Listening status.  Its definitely one of the best community plugins I’ve found for Pidgin.

That should cover most issues the average user will have when it comes to using Pidgin and hopefully you’ll be more aware of how open and useful Pidgin can be if you’re just prepared to set it up correctly for 5 minutes the first time you use it.  feel free to post a comment if you’re a bit unsure of the above steps or if you’ve got a question.  Happy chatting!