It’s Release Week. WordPress 2.7.1 Beta 1 released for testing. WordPressMU updated. BuddyPress Beta 2 released. WP Scanner beta released. WordPress.com releases January stats. Akismet updated and improved. WordCamp.tv releases more WordCamp videos from last year. Scott Wallick releases his site and the Sandbox WordPress Theme for sale. Kym Huynh of WordCast released from hospital, and does blogging with WordPress suck?
WordPress News
WordPress 2.7.1 Beta 1 Released: The first WordPress 2.7.1 Beta has been released and is undergoing testing. It is a maintenance release with 66 tickets fixed. Expect the final release within the next week or so.
WordPressMU Update Released: WordPressMU 2.7 is now available, the multi-user version of WordPress than runs WordPress.com and other blog networks. This new version includes the latest version of WordPress and a lot of bug fixes. It also includes the exciting announcement that Viper007bond’s admin bar has been added to the core to make it even easier to use.
BuddyPress News: BuddyPress 1.0 Beta 2 has been released and all components and Themes are available for download. Hundreds of fixes have been patched and fixed since the first beta and now will synch up with WordPressMU releases for the eagerly anticipated WordPressMU social media and networking WordPress Theme and Plugins.
Akismet Reports CAPTCHAs are dead: In “Akismet: Make Commenting Easy,” Akismet reports that CAPTCHAs are now officially dead and useless, and cite a report by ZDNet that a quarter of a million CAPTCHAs are easily broken by bot and human spammers every day. Modern comment spam fighting tools, like Akismet and Defensio, do the job without interferring in the interaction between a reader and their comment.
Akismet Reports Stats Accuracy Improved: Akismet reports they have improved the accuracy of their blog reporting stats for counting and tracking blog comment spam. There is no Plugin upgrade required.
Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection reported recently on Google safety and security after suffering from a phishing attack on Orkut, a Google service. Many bloggers rely upon Google products such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Groups, Google Translate, Blog Publishing, and more for their blogs and businesses, and the questions are what if Google goes under, and how good is Google security really?
WordCampTV, part of WordPress.tv, has added more videos and audio files to its collection of WordCamp presentations, slides, and interviews. See:
Recent WordCamp presentations include:
Does Blogging With WordPress Suck? In response to a post by Craig Burton that blogging with WordPress sucks, Joseph Scott highlighted some of the issues Craig brought up, and offered tips on how to backup your blog, one of the complains. The ability to export blog posts for backup, and to backup WordPress blogs with Plugins or manually, have been around for a long time. For a simple backup on WordPress full versions or WordPress.com blogs, use the Tools > Export feature. For more sophisticated backups, use one of the many different WordPress Plugins that offer backups of not just the database, but Plugins and Themes as well.
Don’t Let WordPress in Your Domain Name: Do you use “wordpress” in your blog’s domain name? This is in violation of the WordPress trademark. If you find a site using WordPress in their domain name, remind them of the trademark rules so they won’t be asked later to remove it. And WordPress is spelled with a capital P is you are using it in your blog posts.
Writing Code in Posts and Comments: In case you’ve forgotten, there is a method to the madness of posting code in posts and comments. Please use the techniques in Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts to avoid the frustration of having your code go bonkers when you hit submit on a comment or post, and frustrating the blogger who has to fix your mess.
Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress News: Logogate, WordCamps Everywhere, WordPress.tv, BuddyPress, WordPressMU, WordPress Plugin Podcast, and More.
WordPress Fan Blogs and Podcasts
WordCast Podcast: WordCast 44: Blubbery Muffins is the latest podcast by WordCast, featuring guest host, Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress, in for Kym Huynh who is recovering from a bad car accident. Topics discussed include how WordPress saved a city USD $19,000 in web costs, WordPress Plugin Directory reaches 4,000 Plugins, Thank a Plugin Developer Day, launch of Plugins Podcast, Celebrity Pressers Brityn Mykhail, Ford, and LeVar Burton, Mike Arrington taking some time off and blogging celebrity warnings, WordCamps, and WordPress tips, Themes, and Plugins.
WordPress Weekly Podcast: Farewell Keith And Get Well Soon Kym is the 40th episode of the WordPress Weekly Podcast with Jeff Chandler, and this past week says goodbye to co-host, Keith Murray and sends good wishes and a speedy recovery to Kym of the WordCast Podcast. Other topics included news that the All In One SEO Plugin reached one million downloads, WordPressMU 2.7 was released, WordPress.tv launches, Thank a Plugin Developer Day, CForms 2 being removed from the WordPress Plugin Directory, WordPress Documentation, and a lot more WordPress news, tips, and information. On Friday, Jeff will be interviewing Scott Wallick, one of the designers behind the popular Sandbox WordPress Theme, about his leaving the WordPress Community.
The WordPress Podcast: Episode 49: WordPress 2.7 released, Oxite, Blog World Expo and New Media Expo to merge, Pownce closes is the latest episode.
Talking WordPress Plugins: The WordPress Plugins Podcast is a new podcast covering WordPress Plugins with Angelo Mandato. Each week, he aims to bring you a variety of interesting WordPress Plugins and interviews with Plugin authors and developers.
WP Engineer: WP Engineer has tips and techniques for using WordPress, including this week’s batch:
- Numbering your comments, pingbacks, trackbacks or all
- Removing WordPress Login Design
- Spelling WordPress Always Correctly
- Update Information Only for Admins
WPRecipes: The WPRecipes site offers a daily batch of tips and techniques for using WordPress, and recent posts include:
- How to: Redifine title tag with a custom field
- How to: Randomize posts order
- How to: Number your comments
- How to: Get parent page/post title
- How to: Display your current mood on your posts
- How to: Display a text/code only if more than X posts are published
- How to style posts individually?
WPTavern: The recent news from the WPTavern forum includes:
- Andrew Rickmann Spotlight Special
- Chances Of WPTavern Getting Into Dashboard?
- Fix For Filosofo Comment Preview Plugin
- Justin Tadlock Releases Hybrid News Theme
- Live Stream Of New Jersey WP Meetup
- Media RSS The Next Core Integrated Plugin?
- Sandbox/Plaintxt Goes Up For Sale
- WordPress 2.7.1 Beta Released
- WP 2.5 Wins OpenSource App Of The Year
WordPress on Your Calendar
WordCamp News: WordCamp NOLA changes its dates from March to April. WordCamp Columbus is open for registration. WordCamp New York set for October. WordCamp Denver close to selling out. WordPress Meetups are forming all around the world to bring together WordPress fans. WordCamp Indonesia and WordCamp Whistler resounding successes. WordCamp Paris is this weekend!
WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.
Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar.
February 2009
- Gulf Coast WordPress/Blogger Meetup – Mobile, Alabama – February 5, 2009
- Beer & Blog WordPress Meetup – Las Vegas, Nevada – February 5, 2009
- Toronto WordPress Meetup – Toronto, Canada – February 7, 2009
- WordCamp Paris 2 – Paris, France – Feb 7, 2009
- Los Angeles WordPress Users Group at Philippe’s French Dip – February 8, 2009
- South Florida WordPress February Meetup – February 10, 2009
- Portland WordPress User Group at CubeSpace – Portland, Oregon – February 12, 2009
- WordCamp Jena Germany – February 14, 2009
- The Boston WordPress Meetup Group – Blogging @ The Brewery – February 16, 2009
- New York City WordPress Meetup – February 17, 2009
- The Scottsdale WordPress Meetup – Scottsdate, Arizona – February 18, 2009
- WordCamp Education Vancouver 2009 – Vancouver, BC – February 19, 2009
- 2009 Northern Voice – Vancouver, BC – February 20-21, 2009
- WordCamp India – Delhi – February 21-22, 2009
- WordCamp Miami 2009 – Miami, Florida – February 22, 2009
- WordCamp Denver 2009 – February 28, 2009 (Facebook)
- Dallas/Fort Worth WordPress Meetup – Dallas, Texas – February 28, 2009
- Atlanta WordPress Users Group Meetup – Learning WordPress 2.7 – Atlanta, Georgia – February 28, 2009
- The Chicago WordPress February Meetup – February 28, 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
- Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) – Chicago – May 1-5, 2009
- WordCamp Columbus – Ohio – May 16, 2009
- WordCamp Mid-Atlantic – Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia – May 16, 2009
- WordCamp Milan 2009 – Milan, Italy – May 22-23, 2009
- WordCamp San Francisco 2009 – May 30, 2009
June 2009
- WordCamp Chicago – June 6-7, 2009
- WordCamp Dallas 2009 – Dallas, Texas – June 27-28, 2009
July 2009
October 2009
Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:
- WordCamp Indy (Indianapolis)
- WordCamp Augusta
- WordCamp Seattle (WordCamp Seattle Twitter)
- WordCamp Argentina
- WordCamp Perú
- WordCamp New Zealand
- WordCamp Iowa
Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News
Buy WordCamp T-shirts: The recent WordCamp Las Vegas is selling their surplus WordCamp shirts if anyone would like to add to their WordCamp t-shirt collection. Actually, many are creating a WordCamp t-shirt collection, whether or not they attend the event.
WordCamp Paris: WordCamp Paris 2 is Feb 7, 2009, at La Cantine – Coworking Paris in France. It is the second annual WordPress barcamp event in Paris. For more information, see WordCamp Paris – WordPress.fr.
WordCampED: WordCamp Education Vancouver 2009 in British Columbia on February 19, 2009, wants your input on the type of sessions do you want at this educational based WordPress event. They have some interesting ideas for topics and want your input. They also have set up the official WordCampEd: Vancouver site.
WordCamp NOLA News: The date for WordCamp NOLA, New Orleans, has been changed from March to April 10-11, 2009. You can follow the news on their site or on their Twitter @WordCampNOLA.
New York City WordPress Meetup News: New York City WordPress Meetup in February features a hot line up of speakers and topics. John LoGioco and Kate Heffernan from Outbrain will talk about building readership, and Michael DiBenedetto of Qwidget will speak on generating audience conversations around your blog’s content. The cost of the event is USD $5 at Mustang Harry’s in New York City on February 17.
WordCamp Denver News: WordCamp Denver is filling up and debating about expanding the event to accommodate the increased number of attendees at the February 28th event. Registration is still open.
WordCamp Columbus, Ohio: registration is open for WordCamp Columbus with the date set for May 16, 2009, at Columbus State Community College in Columbus, Ohio. The Twitter account is @WordCampColumbus.
WordCamp San Francisco 2009 News: WordCamp San Francisco 2009 is open for registration. Some hot speakers are already lined up for the May 30, 2009, event at the Mission Bay Conference Center, including Matt Cutts, Tim Ferris, Philip Greenspun, Douglas Hanna, Tara Hunt, Andy Peatling, and Steve Sounders. This often sells out so get your ticket and arrangements to attend the parent WordCamp event of the year now.
WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere
- WordPress Meetup: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordPress”, as many track WordPress event announcements there.
- WordCamp: A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. Get a Twitter account and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordCamp.
- WordPress and WordCamp Event News: In addition to our weekly Blog Herald WordPress News, you can learn more about the various WordPress and WordCamp Events on the official WordCamp Central site, The WordCamp Report, Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events, and Upcoming: Public events tagged with “WordCamp”.
WordPress Plugins and Themes News
WordPress Permalink Structure and Strategies: Dougal Campbell highlighted conversations on efficient permalink strategies for WordPress from the WordPress mailing lists, in an attempt to understand how to properly structure our blog permalinks to speed up how WordPress process them.
libxml2 WordPress Issues: As reported in past Blog Herald WordPress News, Joseph Scott and his team have been working on resolving the issues with WordPress, XML-RPC and libxml2. He reports that they now have an updated fix to the issue which is not related to WordPress as much as XML-RPC and libxml2. Check their post for more information, and see Rob Richards with his updates to ext/xml (PHP) and libxml2.
WordPress Security Scanner Updated: BlogSecurity has announced that they’ve upgraded the WordPress Scanner by rewriting and porting it to PHP, XML based testing, and implementing it into WordPress for future expansion and functionality inline with the goal of providing links to WordPress vulnerabilities published on BlogSecurity as they are announced, getting the news to the users faster. It is currently in beta testing and they are asking for help.
PHP Mistakes in WordPress Plugins and Themes? In “Are You Making These 10 PHP Mistakes?,” Nettuts offers 10 tips to help you avoid common PHP errors and mistakes when writing PHP, WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Themes.
Using the jQuery Library with WordPress Plugins: jQuery is now being used by many WordPress Plugins. John Resig offers a video called “The DOM Is a Mess” with tips, techniques, and discussion on the challenges of DOM/JavaScript programming.
Scott Wallick Selling Plaintxt Site and Sandbox WordPress Theme: Scott Wallick is offering for sale his popular site, plaintxt.org, and his very popular Sandbox WordPress Theme to move onto new projects. The Sandbox Theme has long been touted as the next “default” WordPress Theme and set the standard high for other Themes to follow with a rich microformats and a powerful CSS framework.
Interesting WordPress Plugins:
- Sapo OpenID Header adds header code to integrate with OpenID accounts.
- Executable PHP Widget works like the text widget but permits PHP code.
- Explore Pages creates an Internet Explorer style for page navigation.
- Greg’s Threaded Comment Numbering Plugin numbers comments in WordPress 2.7 sequentially and hierarchically with customization features.
Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.
WordPress.com News
January 2009 Stats: The January Wrap-Up for WordPress.com is in and includes a new WordPress Theme, the launch of WordPress.tv, and breaking the 2 billion mark for combined pageviews across all WordPress.com blogs. 372,519 blogs were created, with 393,836 new users, and 553 terabytes transferred the WordPress.com datacenters. Almost 9 million comments were posted across 1.4 million active blogs.
With the recent announcement of LiveJournal closing, many are transferring to WordPress.com. They reported 7,111 LiveJournal imports.
There have been three WordCamp events so far this year in Las Vegas, Indonesia, and Whistler, BC, Canada.
Improved Gallery Features Coming to WordPress.com: In a blog post featuring photographs, WordPress server guru, Barry Abrahamson let it leak that WordPress.com is working on adding some “cool gallery features” to WordPress.com blogs that are currently found on the Neat! WordPress Theme which add navigation links to the images (next and previous) and a link to take you back to the main post from individual picture pages, increasing gallery navigation and function.
Blog Design Contest on WordPress.com: The first blogging design contest has been announced for WordPress.com called “I <3 Blogging Design Contest” co-produced by Infectious. This isn’t a blog web design or WordPress Theme contest. It is a graphic design contest. Design a “why I love blogging and WordPress” graphic design and if yours wins, it could be printed and sold on laptop and iPhone skins around the world through the Infectious store. Let your creative self loose and show the world how you would design what blogging and WordPress mean to you.
WordPress Techniques and Tips
Videos from WordPress.tv: WordPress.TV is now offering a wide variety of videos to help you learn how to use WordPress and improve your WordPress blog, as well as videos of interviews, WordCamps, and more WordPress news. Here are a few goodies:
- Changing your reading settings
- Adding a widget to your sidebar
- Organizing your links into categories
- The Meta widget – login & feeds from your sidebar
- The Tag Cloud widget – your obsessions made text
- Raanan Bar-Cohen: Seven Tips for Virtual Collaboration (slides)
- Integrating a bbPress Forum with your self-installed WordPress
- PHP Cross Reference of the WordPress Source
- WordPress SEO & Optimization Strategies
WordPress Tips and Techniques: Here are a few more WordPress tips from around the WordPress Community:
- WordPress Hacks: Moving a Static HTML Site to WordPress
- WordPress Basics: Saving and Editing Posts
- Secrets of the Conditional Tag Revealed: How to Gain More Control Over Your WordPress Templates
- Author description outside the WP main loop
- How To: Adding an External RSS Feed to Your WordPress Blog
- How to change your WordPress feed links without using htaccess
- How To Customize WordPress’s Tag Cloud Widget
WordPress Tips on Twitter: I’ve started sharing WordPress Tips and Plugin suggestions I’ve collected over the past couple years on Twitter at @lorelleonwp. I’ll be posting one WordPress tip and one WordPress Plugin link every morning (PST) covering recent versions of WordPress and WordPress usages and features.
Want Your WordPress Tip Shared Here? The WordPress Community generates some of the best WordPress tips, techniques, and resources. If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.
WordPress Community News
Things You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:
- Help Installing WordPress: Installing WordPress for Free
- Finding WordPress Plugins: WordPress Plugin Directory
- Finding WordPress Themes: WordPress Themes Directory
- WordPress Logos: The official WordPress logos are available for use on your blogs or WordPress event promotions.
- WordPress Experts Found: Automattic WordPress Consultants List, WordPress Jobs, and the WP-Pro mailing list
- WordPress Facebook Community: WordPress on Facebook
- WordPress Bugs: Reporting Bugs in WordPress
- Online WordPress Manual: WordPress Codex
- Have Your Say: WordPress Ideas
- WordPress is Trademarked: You are not allowed to use WordPress in your domain name.
- WordPress is WordPress: It’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress” and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).
- WordPress Schwag for Sale: WordPress Shop
Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports
- WordPress News: Logogate, WordCamps Everywhere, WordPress.tv, BuddyPress, WordPressMU, WordPress Plugin Podcast, and More
- WordPress News: WordPress.tv, WordCamp Whistler, WordPress Logo, City Saves Money, and More
- WordPress News: Buddy Press Almost Ready, WordCamp Las Vegas Success, Plugin Author Tips, WordPress Tattoo
- WordPress News: One Million WordPress 2.7 Downloads Coming, Matt Mullenweg Resolutions, bbPress Releases, WordCamp Las Vegas, and More
WordPress News Sources
- WordPress Planet
- WordPress Development Blog
- WordPress.com Blog
- Weblog Tools Collection
- The WordPress Podcast
- Lorelle on WordPress
- Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
- WordPress Publisher Blog
- Planet WordPress Canada
- The WordCamp Report
- WordCast
If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.
Each week, the Blog Herald features WordPress News, a weekly column by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact her at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com
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