WordCamp Beijing happened, and WordCamp Israel is coming soon. WordCamp Texas? WordPress 2.3 in beta with tags, AtomPub, redirection, and more goodies. WordPress 2.3 may break some WordPress Plugins – you are warned. The WordPress Theme Viewer is working, though uploads still on hold. WordPress.com users get “coded”, though it’s still censored in Turkey and Thailand. Car WordPress Themes. Twitter Tools is broken. The Ultimate Ad Management Plugin is updated. And a lot more WordPress, WordPress Theme, WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Community news and tips.
WordPress News
WordPress 2.3 Beta: Version 2.3 is due later in September and is currently in beta testing mode. It features a ton of bug fixes, security improvements, and:
- Post Status Transitions
- AtomPub Support
- Tags with tag lists, clouds, and more tagging fun
- URL Redirection for changes in Page and post titles, slugs, and links
- Upgrades and improvements in TinyMCE and spell check
- Improved Plugin interaction
International WordCamps: WordCamp Beijing was this past weekend. Anyone found news of the event in English?
WordCamp Israel will be in October and there is now an English Version of WordCamp Israel. They are looking for sponsors and are lining up some top notch speakers. There is a huge blogging community in Israel, so this should be an exciting event.
Celebrating Two Years of WordPress.com With WordPress Tips: I and some awesome guest bloggers are celebrating two years of WordPress.com on Lorelle on WordPress with the entire month of September dedicated to WordPress tips for WordPress and WordPress.com users.
eAccelerator and WordPress: Donncha discusses some issues with eAccelerator and WordPress, a PHP accelerator which cashes PHP bytecode and helps your PHP-driven site run faster. If you are using eAccelerator with your WordPress blog, check out his tips.
Increasing WordPress Performance: Segala has some tips for increasing the speed and performance of your WordPress blog.
Update WordPress: The latest beta version for WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 is available for testers. The final version of that release should be out next week. WordPress 2.2.2 and 2.0.11 are security-related upgrades, thus are mandatory upgrades for all full version WordPress users.
The WordPress Podcast: The latest WordPress Podcast is out with WordCamp memories, theme hijackers and vulnerabilities, and even more WordPress news and information.
WordPress on Your Calendar: Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change):
- WordPress 2.2.3 – September 5, 2007 (probably with September 24 release)
- New York City WordPress September Meetup – September 15
- WordPress 2.0.12 – September 15, 2007
- The Baltimore-Washington WordPress September Meetup – September 20, 2007
- WordPress 2.3 – September 24, 2007
- WordPress Meetup in London after Future of Web Apps – October 4, 2007
- Conservative Leadership Conference of Bloggers (RIGHTOBERFEST) – October 11-13, 2007
- WordCamp Israel – October 2007
- WordPress 2.4 – January 15, 2008
- WordPress 2.5 – May 5, 2008
- Blog Business Summit Now in Seattle – December 5-6, 2007
- WordCamp Texas – Spring 2008
- WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco – July 2008 (we hope)
If you are having a WordPress-related event that isn’t on the calendar, post them below or via email.
WordPress WordCamp in Dallas, Texas: Work is underway to put together a WordCamp Texas in early 2008. Want to join the fun? Contact Charles Stricklin via the WordPress Community Podcast if you are interested in helping, attending, or sponsoring. More information coming soon!
Vote for WordPress Ideas: Did you know you could have your say in how WordPress works? You can add your idea and vote on any of the ideas to push them to the top in getting them added or removed from WordPress future versions. The WordPress Ideas section on WordPress is an open forum for you to have your say. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.
WordPress.com News
Publish Code in WordPress.com Blogs: I’ve been writing for years about how to write and publish code in your WordPress blog posts and now WordPress.com has added a feature to make the process easier. Using a specific tag around code in your post, you can designate code as “code” with [sourcecode language='HTML']<h2>Title Here</h2>[/sourcecode]
and the code will be recognized and generated as “code” on your blog with a Plugin that adds copying and some other features around the code.
Currently, it recognizes, HTML, CSS, cpp, java, javascript, PHP, python, ruby, SQL, and a variety of other codes. It is based upon the syntaxhighlighter Google Code project by Alex Gorbatchev.
For those using math equations, WordPress.com offers an alternative for you to use to publish those universe-shattering scientific equations.
No WordPress.com Access in Turkey or Thailand: WordPress.com continues to be blocked in Turkey and in Thailand. To fight back, CJ Writer shares an “open letter” to the Turkish Ambassador on behalf of all WordPress.com bloggers and bloggers in Turkey that might motivate a letter of your own. What are your thoughts on this? Should countries have the right to take such sweeping actions? What should WordPress.com do?
New Blog Statistics Charts: The blog statistics on WordPress.com blogs has been improved with the addition of three ways to view your blog statistics charts, by days, weeks, and months, giving you a better perspective on your blog’s activity and traffic.
Honoring the Languages of WordPress.com Blogs and Bloggers: This week, to honor the international nature of WordPress.com bloggers, we explore the top ten blog posts in Tagalog, a language in the Philipines. I couldn’t find any online translation services for Tagalog to English or other languages. Anyone know of any? Some of these posts are in English or a combination of English, Tagalog, and other languages.
- AWAT NA!
- Natutulog ba Ang Diyos? Episode 33
- SMS Jokes Atbp.
- ninakawan kami.
- Q & A #010: Kupal Ka
- Bahala Na Si Francis (1).
- Letter to my friend in the Planet KhVYENC::TX
- Birthday Tribute…
- Pa-kontes
- The Office Breakfast Club – Business Ideas (Why not)?
What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:
- Facebook Opens Up To Public Search
- Sen. Larry Craig reconsidering resignation
- Arsene And The Youth Of Today
- quid pro quo, clarice
- So I got a startup job
- Time
- Welcome to The Pump Handle
- SHAQ GETTING DIVORCED!
- A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web
- Friends on CrackBerry? Miss Manners’ advice
- Strangest phrase to send your child to school with…
The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:
- CNN Political Ticker
- I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
- GigaOM
- tennis served fresh
- A Hot Mess!
- The Pump Handle
- Do the Right Thing
- The World According to Roland
- Nine Inch Nails – Tour Blog 2007 Archive
- Michael Arrington’s CrunchFood
WordPress Plugins and Themes News
Warning: New Tagging in WordPress 2.3 May Break Plugins: Ryan Boren warns that the new WordPress 2.3 Taxonomy Schema may break some WordPress Plugins:
The taxonomy schema is hidden behind a fairly comprehensive taxonomy API. The category API remains as a backward compatibility layer on top of the taxonomy API. Plugins that use the category API should not require any changes when upgrading to 2.3. Plugins that perform direct SQL queries on the categories, link2cat, or post2cat tables will break, unfortunately.
Please update your WordPress Plugins accordingly.
The WordPress Theme Viewer Fixed: The WordPress Theme Viewer has been fixed and is able to be searched and used again, though uploading and updating of your WordPress Themes to the Viewer is still on its way. Matt also announces:
…we developed a set of functions around the new taxonomy system that allows [search, filtering, and paging] for ALL WordPress blogs, and those improvements will be included in the upcoming 2.3 release.
Worried About Your WordPress Theme? Pro Blog Design offers some tips on how to test your WordPress Theme for unwanted links and hidden nasties that you might not want on your WordPress Theme, or even know that you may have. Also, check out the WP-Scanner WordPress Plugin to test your WordPress Theme for common security vulnerabilities. Just to be on the safe side.
Blog Stats – pMetrics WordPress Plugin: Performancing announces the release of a new pMetrics WordPress Plugin for monitoring your blog stats. It includes auto-updates, one-cllick install and uninstall, and the display of your blog stats in your WordPress Administration Panel’s Dashboard.
Improving on a Winner: One of the popular Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition has been upgraded and is new and improved. The Ultimate Ad Management Plugin is more stable and secure, and offers some additional features based upon the many requests and feedback.
Twitter Tools WordPress Plugin Broken: Fans of Alex King’s Twitter Tools WordPress Plugin should know that it isn’t working right now. King says that the problem is with Twitter and he’s trying to resolve the issue.
Internationalizing Your WordPress Plugins: Weblog Tools Collection offers “Localizing a WordPress Plugin Using poEdit”, tips for helping WordPress Plugin authors to make their WordPress Plugin international, adding hooks and features for easy translation options, helping your Plugin cross international borders.
Exploring jQuery: Steve Lam has tips for using K2 and jQuery, which could be used in any WordPress Theme.
Some WordPress Tips and Tutorials: WPDesigner offers a list of some basic WordPress tips, tools, and tutorials that are good to keep handy.
Car and Auto WordPress Themes: Bloggerholic offers “Top 11 Car WordPress Themes”, a look at some WordPress Themes which feature automobiles in their design and graphics. If you are a car fan, check the readme.txt file and licenses to make sure these images are GPL and free for you to use.
Fix for Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin: Quark-o-blog offers the Ultimate Tag Warrior fix for WordPress 2.2.1 which may allow the popular Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin to work in the latest version of WordPress.
Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection of WordPress Plugins released daily.
A Few Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are a few interesting WordPress Plugins I’ve discovered recently:
- Delink Comment Author WordPress Plugin adds a link to your Comments Panel and email notifications that removes the URL that a commenter left in their comment.
- Mini-Slides WordPress Plugin allows you to feature “individually styled mini-slides” in your blog posts.
- Search Unleashed WordPress Plugin improves WordPress search with full text search options covering posts, pages, comments, titles, URLs, and more.
- A-Z Navigation WordPress Plugin allows navigation of your blog posts by post title on a form of a site map. Type in the first letter of the post title and a list of appropriate posts appears for the reader to click and access.
- Sign-out Reminder WordPress Plugin reminds your users to sign out of your WordPress blog before they leave, increasing your blog’s security.
Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer has been cleaned up and now features 1,626 WordPress Themes with 6,736,981 downloads. The most popular WordPress Themes are:
- Africa theme 1
- Cutline 3-Column Split 1.1
- Sodelicious Black 1.0
- Yourblog 2.0 theme
- NetWorker 1.0
- Pop Blue
- Naruto Strikes Back
- LoseMyMind 1.0 with Sidebar
- Red Secret 0.1
- Talian 1.0
WordPress Techniques and Tips
Here are some featured articles and videos from around the WordPress Community and the WordPress Codex, 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.
- How To Widgetize A WordPress Theme
- How To: Move a WordPress Blog to a New Hosting Account
- How To Add A Sidebar To Your WordPress Blog
- Install wordpress via Dreamhost – Screencast
- WordPress tutorial – installing on a local server
WordPress Community News
WordPress 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.
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 Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.
Even More WordPress News?
Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Plugin Winners, 2.3 Beta, WordCamp in Beijing and Israel, WordPress.com Banned in Turkey, and More WordPress News
- WordPress Wednesday News: Happy Birthday WordPress.com, WordCamps in Beijing and Israel, Censorship in Turkey, and More WordPress News
WordPress News Sources
- WordPress Planet
- WordPress Development Blog
- WordPress.com Blog
- Weblog Tools Collection
- BloggingPro’s WordPress News and Tips
- The WordPress Community Podcast
- Lorelle on WordPress
- Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
Each Wednesday on Blog Herald 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