WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp, WordCamp, WordCamp, WordPress Theme Viewer, and Even More WordCamp News

WordPress WordCamp is the news of the week! The WordPress Theme Viewer is being totally revamped and cleaned up. WordPress.com and Facebook create a relationship. And more WordCamp news!

There is so much news and live blogging reports out there on WordCamp 2007, it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of it. I’ve included a few links to help you get started tracking the news down, but please add more in the comments.

WordPress News

WordCamp 2007 – July 21-22: was this past weekend and there is so much news and information, with tons of links, trackbacks, Flickr images, and so much…I’ll only scratch the surface of all the sources of information on the weekend conference in San Francisco.

I'm Attending WordCamp 2007 badgeThe WordCamp Schedule features links to the specific speaker’s topics and bios, and participants were asked to trackback to those when they blogged about a specific speaker. That will be a huge resource for reading about the different topics covered.

The WordCamp Flickr group features a ton of photographs, but also check out the WordCamp 2007 Flicker tag for photographs by Donncha, the guru of WordPressMU, who didn’t sit still the whole event. I spotted him crawling around, hanging over the balcony, and everywhere taking photographs of everyone at the event.

Patrick Havens of http://www.wordcamp.info has been incredibly busy working overtime live blogging the event and gathering up links and information from all over the web on WordCamp. He’s put together an amazing WordCamp Wrap Up, summarizing the entire weekend filled with tons of links. Here are some more goodies:

THANK YOU to All Who Helped WordCamp Be the Success It Was: Mucho cheers, applause, hugs, and kudos to all who pitched in to make WordCamp the successful weekend conference. It took a lot of work to handle the 400 participants or more, with registration, setup, food, speakers, coordination, and timing. Big claps for all involved. It was amazing. Thank you!

WordPress 2.2.1 Upgrade: The WordPress 2.2.1 release is mandatory. Mark Jaquith has the upgrade files with the list of the changed files and a zip file containing all of them to speed your upgrade process.
WordPress Competitions: The WordPress Plugin Competition is coming to a close on July 31 with great prizes for inspired WordPress Plugin development and creation. There are rating systems in place, so go vote on the Plugin Competition Blog to rate your favorite WordPress Plugin entrants.

The Sandbox Designs Competition is also drawing to a close. You still have a week to get your WordPress Theme in based upon the Sandbox WordPress Theme. Engtech of Internet Duct Tape offers some tips on designing with the Sandbox WordPress Theme, and adds tips on creating 3D buttons and Alister Cameron offers pure CSS Asides tips for the Sandbox Theme, showing you the versatility of the Theme and the power of CSS.

The New WordPress Store: Matt Mullenweg announces the new WordPress store is online and open for business. Currently, they are selling red WordPress t-shirts for men and women with a variety of sizes, with more fun WordPress stuff coming soon. Indigo, the t-shirt company, has written more information about the launch of the WordPress store. Besides ordering online, you can order by toll free telephone number (1-800-293-9693) for US orders. They’ve also opened up to selling WordPress products internationally, so get your WordPress t-shirts now!

Sploggers Beware of WordPress: In Why Google Is The Service Of Choice For Sploggers by the Guardian, WordPress.com scores well against Google’s Blogger for free blogging services that keep the spammers out: “But if you’re planning on setting up a spam blog – or “splog” – don’t try your luck at WordPress. While Google’s Blogger is sometimes described as a haven for splogs, with some estimates suggesting that three-quarters of the blogs there are just empty spam, WordPress.com keeps the tricksters out, with splogs estimated at just 1% of the total.”

Let Your WordPress Voice Be Heard: 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. According to Matt at WordCamp, the Ideas list heavily influences which features are added or removed from WordPress. This is the place to have your say by rating the idea by clicking on the stars on the idea post and comment on the idea with your support, recommendation, or nay on the idea.

Here are some interesting ones to consider, vote, and have your say:

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoWordPress.com Meets Facebook: WordPress.com announces “Your WordPress Is In My Facebook”, a new WordPress.com Facebook App that connects WordPress.com blogs with Facebook. If you are a Facebook fan, check this out!

Time to Renew Your Extras in WordPress.com: If you signed up a year ago for WordPress.com Extras like CSS, extra storage, and such, it may be time to renew your annual subscription to your WordPress.com extra features.

Live Writer for WordPress.com: WordPress.com also announces “Windows Live Writer FTW”, and introduces WordPress.com bloggers to XML-RPC, a “communications” programming function that permits other programs to “talk” to WordPress. Windows Live Writer is a “desktop blogging client”, one of several programs that allow you to blog to your WordPress or WordPress.com blog from your “desktop” rather than through your browser. WordPress.com now has a Page about the benefits and usefulness of blogging with Windows Live Writer, including their support of extensions for WordPress that allows you to edit pages and quickly access your stats. Why not download Windows Live Writer and give it a try.

Moving To or From WordPress.com: Moving from one blogging system to WordPress.com is easy. So is moving from the free WordPress.com hosted service to your own full version of WordPress. For more information on moving your blog, see Importing Content, Improved WordPress to WordPress Importer, and Can I move my blog from here to another blog somewhere else … from the WordPress.com FAQ.

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

  1. War Deg Deg ah: Muqdisho: Qaar ka tirsan ergooyinkii shirka dib u heshiisiinta oo laga saaray hoteeladii
  2. dacwaddii loo haystay abwaan sangub oo wali socota
  3. As mooi gevaarlik raak
  4. VERGELDING
  5. Geld praat
  6. Kardiovaskulêr
  7. Liefste Ma
  8. Ek sal weer blog . . .
  9. Sonde(r) Twyfel
  10. Normaal?

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

  1. I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
  2. Web Worker Daily
  3. Media Biz
  4. POPSEOUL! entertainment, style and beauty in seoul
  5. A Hot Mess!
  6. Tennis Planet
  7. Scobleizer
  8. GigaOM
  9. CNN Political Ticker
  10. strange maps

The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:

  1. Talking Softball, Mattingly and Canseco…
  2. Ever again
  3. Okay to pass off a fake engagement ring?
  4. Clinton wins body language battle, one expert says
  5. Howard Stern from column A?
  6. Blasphemy at eBay
  7. Huge News: Egyptian Mufti Kills Death Penalty for Apostasy
  8. Why O’Caml is not my favorite programming language
  9. Is Xbox 360 doomed?
  10. Guess who: Old vs new generation legs

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseCleaning Up the WordPress Theme Viewer: Matt Mullenweg reports on cleaning up the WordPress Theme Viewer saying, ” We’ve removed 2,107 themes so far, or a bit under 60%. Those themes had 2,243,735 downloads total, or about 1,064 downloads per theme. There are 1,737 themes still in the directory and those had 3,480,244 downloads, or about 2,003 downloads per theme.”

The Joy of Finding a Bug in Hello Dolly WordPress Plugin: The Hello Dolly WordPress Plugin was one of the first WordPress Plugins written by Matt Mullenweg and comes by default in every installation of WordPress. It adds a quote from the musical “Hello, Dolly” to every reload of your Administration Panel. While technically useless, it continues to serve as an example of how to write a Plugin and what is possible. At WordCamp, Mark Jaquith reported on the happiest moment of his WordPress life was finding a bug in Hello Dolly. He amends this in his blog post. Someone else found the error, but he made the fix within 13 minutes of the bug being found. That’s worthy of joy!

Best Use of Ajax in WordPress: Weblog Tools Collection points to two interesting posts on the best use of Ajax in WordPress Plugins: Best uses of Ajax in Wordpress Plugins and Mashable’s 30+AJAX Powered WordPress Plugins.

Awesome WordPress Powered Sites: Dougal Campbell presents “14+ Awesome WordPress-powered sites” with some amazing examples of what is possible with a WordPress blog used as a blog or a CMS.

View Bad Behavior Logs WordPress Plugin: The Bad Behaviour Log Reader WordPress Plugin allows you to read the comment spam fighting tool, Bad Behavior’s logs to find out who is spamming you.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: I’ll be back next week with a listing of some great WordPress Plugins for you!

Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer is in the process of getting cleaned up, trimmed down, and offering better features, so it’s down for a bit as it gets remodeled. Stay tuned for some exciting information on WordPress Themes next week.

See Also

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 Community Podcast: Episode 27: WordPress 2.2.1 and WordCamp Schedule is out with some interesting topics on WordCamp and WordPress 2.2.1, as well as some reviews and announcements of some interesting WordPress Plugins. There should be a new podcast coming out about all the fun at WordCamp within the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Andy Skelton’s Cross Country Motorcycle Trip to WordCamp: If you have been following Andy Skelton’s cross-country motorcycle trip to WordCamp, he did make it safe and sound and sunburned. I got a chance to rid on his new bright red Gold Wing through the streets of San Francisco and it’s a honey. Photos on my blog soon!

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

Link to Yourself in Every Post: As you write a blog post, make sure you try to include one link to one of your own blog posts on your blog. For instance, as I was explaining last week in the WordPress Wednesday News report, it’s important…like that. I’ve now linked two of my posts together.

When you connect content with your own content, three things happen.

  1. The reader is invited to discover more related content.
  2. The reader understands that you have the historical body of work references to back up what you are writing about.
  3. Search engine web crawlers can more easily track through your blog posts, discovering all of your blog’s posts, leaving no orphans or strays untouched by a poor navigation system or lack of a site map or sitemap.

Most people connect articles in a series, but it’s just as important to link to articles you’ve written previously which provide more information and related content. Always give your readers one more reason to dig deeper into your blog’s content.

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

Picture of Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen

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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