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WordPress Wednesday News: Awesome WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Competition, WordPressMU Updated, Theme Security Issues, and More WordPress News
The Blog Herald
The Blog Herald

WordPress Wednesday News: Awesome WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Competition, WordPressMU Updated, Theme Security Issues, and More WordPress News

by
August 15, 2007

Go vote for WordPress Plugins on the Weblog Tools Collection Competition. WordPressMU is updated. Have you checked your WordPress Theme out for security issues? Have you updated it and your WordPress Plugins? A mandatory WordPress Security update has been released. And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

WordPress Plugins Competition: The Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition is still taking your votes on which of the WordPress Plugins you like the most. There are some amazing entries on the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition Prize and Plugins List! I’m playing with some of them now. Have you found some favorites and can’t-lie-without WordPress Plugins on that list? Go vote for them.

Check Out the Sandbox Theme Design Winners: All of the entrants in the Sandbox Theme Competition are winners. Have you checked out their beautiful Themes? The Sandbox WordPress Theme is one of the most powerful and flexible Themes available for WordPress users.

Update WordPress: The latest update of WordPress is out. WordPress 2.2.2 and 2.0.11 have been released and are security-related upgrades, thus are mandatory upgrades for all full version WordPress users. Mark Jaquith reports on some of the security issues covered by this update.

Matt Mullenweg on Blog Security: Matt Mullenweg did an interview on the Blog Security blog about the issues of security and WordPress. Besides tackling security questions, Matt describes WordPress users this way:

WordPress bloggers tend to be the cream of the crop. It’s the 2-3% of the blogosphere that really knows what they’re doing.

Blog Security also points to a series of ongoing articles on WordPress in the German language, Pc Praxis.

Update WordPress Plugin: Techie Buzz’s WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin promises to make the process of upgrading WordPress easier. There have been a lot of attempts previously. Not all successful or able to keep up with the demand for technical support. Have you tried it?

WordPressMU Updated: Donncha announced the release of WordPress MU 1.2.4 with a few great surprises in the new version. The Kses file has been reverted so class and id attributes will work in your post HTML tags again (YEAH! Is this in WordPress.com yet?) which also helps microformats work, and the installer is better and friendlier.

WordPress on Your Calendar: While subject to change, the following are dates you need to put on your calendar regarding WordPress releases, as found on the WordPress Roadmap:

  • WordPress 2.3 – September 20, 2007 (at least ready for testing then release) – to include tags and improved caching among many other new features under the hood.
  • WordPress 2.4 – December 1, 2007 – to include a new WordPress Administration Panel interface, improved caching, and a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
  • July 2008 – WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco (okay – this is speculative but it helps to plan ahead)

Change Blogroll Back to Links: An idea under consideration for WordPress development is to change “Blogroll” back to “Links”. I’m in favor of the name change, which has jumped back and forth over the years, but what do you think? Go have your say on this issue that could once again change the menu item on the WordPress Administration panels.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: The section on WordPress is an open forum for you to have your say on the features you would like to see added or removed from WordPress.

Here are some interesting ones that deal with X on WordPress, worth considering, voting, and having your say:

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoWordPress.com Blogs Scraped: As reported recently, WordPress.com blogs are being scraped by several splogs and scrapers. Requests are in to WordPress.com to help stop this massive scraping of WordPress.com blog content. To report copyright violations, splogs (spam blogs), and scrapers to Google, you can submit the information through their form or the Webmaster Tools Report Spam Form. I reported on this with more information in WordPress.com Blogs Feeds Scraped.

WordPress.com Turns Two in August: Anticipate a lot of fun and activity as WordPress.com turns two years old in August.

Honoring the Languages of WordPress.com Blogs and Bloggers: This week, it’s time to honor WordPress.com Blogs in Galician. To translate these into another language, you may use Google’s Translate Tools by copying and pasting in the link into the “translate web page” option.

  1. Perturbación Aleatoria
  2. ocioloxia
  3. PSdeG-PSOE Pontedeume
  4. A Velas Vir
  5. Costa dos Arrieiros
  6. Os recordos gardoos eu…
  7. Bitácora do Nordés
  8. vaitraballar
  9. resonancia inductiva
  10. Club Deportivo Maceda

What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:

  1. CNN Political Ticker
  2. I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
  3. A Hot Mess!
  4. nsharp.org – at least, used to be
  5. GigaOM
  6. Web Worker Daily
  7. Go West
  8. Life & Times
  9. Obsessmuch?
  10. The Browser: Analyzing the tech biz
  11. Media Biz

The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:

  1. Congrats, you are on the frontpage of Digg (and reddit).
  2. VMware: All hail the August tech IPO
  3. Serena Williams arrested
  4. White House calls Clinton ad ‘outrageous,’ ‘absurd’
  5. The Imus discount?
  6. The Natural and The Axe Murderer
  7. TRAFIC CAT MONITORS
  8. And Then He Woke Up…
  9. How to make curled paper edges
  10. Tonight is very important

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseTop WordPress Plugins: Blog Security offers the “Top 11 WordPress Plugins” found by those who have run their blogs through their WP-Scanner WordPress Plugin, which tests WordPress blogs for common security flaws and issues. I was surprised to see ExecPHP and Timezone WordPress Plugins in the list. They are great Plugins but not the top of most people’s published lists, but maybe those who are the power users are getting their blogs tested. Are you?

The WP-Scanner WordPress Plugin is still in development and the more who run their blogs through it, the better it will become through the testing. If you have feedback on improving this, let them know.

The SandPress WordPress Theme Has Been Updated. Has Yours? The popular Sandbox Theme Competition entrant, SandPress WordPress Theme, has been updated due to the amount of interest and usage from the competition. Have you checked your WordPress Theme to see if it has been updated? Check your Presentation panel and click the link to the Theme author’s site to see if they have updated the WordPress Theme you use. Even if you’ve made changes to their original Theme, check anyway!

Downloading Themes from Non-WordPress Theme Sources: There have been a lot of recent warnings about downloading WordPress Themes from non-WordPress “official” sites, and users finding spam links, bad code, security flaws, and problems with those Themes. Not all are bad, but how would you know? For more information, see Are You Risking Your Blog With an Unofficial or Vulnerable WordPress Theme.

Vulnerability and Security Update for Automattic’s WordPress Stats Plugin: Andy Skelton of Automattic announces an immediate security update of the Automattic WordPress Stats Plugin, a mandatory upgrade. Andy’s posted news about the upgraded version, along with some annoyances that they are working on fixing.

Security Vulnerable WordPress Themes: Blog Security has released their “Top 10 Vulnerable WordPress Themes”, a list of Themes which feature some of the common WordPress template flaws. Consider checking your WordPress Theme if you are a designer, author, or tweaker to see if your WordPress Theme is vulnerable.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: The Plugins which are the talk of the town right now were entered in the Weblog Tools Collection Competition and could change how you use WordPress:

For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection of WordPress Plugins released daily.

See Also
Apple Silicon Processor
Apple Delays Launch of New M3 Apple Silicon into 2024

Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer has been cleaned up and now features 1,628 WordPress Themes with 6,153,194 downloads. The most popular WordPress Themes are:

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some featured articles and videos from around the WordPress and the , the online manual for WordPress Users, the source to turn to first for your WordPress help.

NOTE: If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicWordPress Jobs: WordPress Jobs is a new “service” announced by Weblog Tools Collection. It features jobs for WordPress experts and WordPress experts looking for work. Currently, the service is free as it is still in beta testing. Give it try.

EZ Publish Plugin for Akismet: For those using the EZ Publishing content management system, you can now take advantage of the power of Akismet with the EZ Publish Plugin. Protect your site with the best in comment spam fighting.

WordPress Installed For Free: If you have problems installing the full version of WordPress, visit Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress). This free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? Do you want a custom WordPress blog? Want to convert your website into a WordPress blog or use WordPress as a CMS? If you are looking for an expert in WordPress Themes, WordPress development, WordPress Plugins, or other WordPress-related expertise, check out the list of WordPress Consultants on , the parent company of WordPress, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Events

The following are upcoming WordPress group meetings and meetups, and a few special blogging events you may want to attend. If you know of any I’ve missed, please post them or contact me on my WordPress Events Page or via email.

For a WordPress Meetup near you and other blogging events, check out the WordPress Meetup Group List.

Extra Tip of the Week

Have you written a WordPress Tip? If you have a WordPress Tip you’ve shared with your blog readers, why not get it greater coverage by sharing it on these weekly WordPress Wednesday News reports. Contact lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com to send your WordPress tip in and it may be featured!

Even More WordPress News?

For more news on WordPress, see:

Each Wednesday on is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

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