WordPress 2.2.1 is a mandatory update. WordCamp is going to be a sell-out weekend conference with the best of the best in the blogging and WordPress world. There are a ton of new and updated WordPress Plugins to try. A WordPress Meetup in Japan along with a book about WordPress in Japanese is on the schedule. And more WordPress news you can use.
WordPress News
WordCamp 2007 – July 21-22: WordCamp 2007 is now rocking. July 21-22 in San Fransisco, California, registration is required and tickets are $25 USD through PayPal. The WordCamp Schedule and line up is awesome:
- Podcasting – Dan Kuykendall, author of PodPress
- Blogs vs. Journalism – John Dvorak and Om Malik
- Content Connections and Blogging Tips – Lorelle VanFossen
- Blog Monetization – Jeremy Wright
- Getting Involved with WordPress – Lloyd Budd and Mark Jaquith
- Designing the Obvious – Robert Hoekman, Jr.
- Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers – Matt Cutts
- High Performance WordPress – Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg
- Interative Design in Agile Environments – Rashmi Sinha
- Musical Interlude – Andy Skelton
- Past, Present, and Future of Web Publishing – Dave Winer
- Usability Analysis of WP – Liz Danzico
- State of the Word – Matt Mullenweg
- Developer Duke-out – Michael Adams, Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, Andy Skelton, et al
WordPress is also looking for WordCamp Sponsors to help make this a big bang party and conference. Interested? You’d be reaching the best of the best in blogging.
WordPress 2.2.1 Upgrade: The WordPress 2.2.1 upgrade has been released and 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. Several security issues were also addressed, which makes this a mandatory upgrade. It is highly recommended you upgrade immediately as some evil doers have exploited these recently. Other bug fixes included Atom feed validation fixes, XML-RPC, Widget backward compatibility, Widget layout, and Page and Text Widget improvements.
WordPress Plugin Competition: The Weblog Tools Collection called “WordPress Competition 2.0” runs to July 31 with great prizes for inspired WordPress Plugin development and creation. See the Plugin Competition Blog and the announcement for more information.
Sandbox Theme Competition: The Sandbox Designs Competition was announced last week. The Sandbox WordPress Theme is a “blank template” with a LOT of customization features and excellent CSS structuring. I use it on on my WordPress.com blog and put together a first draft of all the styles for the Sandbox Theme in a CSS stylesheet and Engtech of Internet Duct Tape offers some tips on designing with the Sandbox WordPress Theme. There is a competition participants page and some wonderful prizes for the winners. Like many such competitions, the key is to use the architecture in place and focus only on the CSS stylesheet for your design elements. There is a lot of information on how to submit your entry and the Official Rules and more on the The Sandbox Designs Competition site.
Found: The WordPress Blogging Bible: Some scraps of parchment from the long lost WordPress Blogging Bible have been uncovered and translated by Letters Home to You, revealing for the first time The 20 Blogging Commandments. One of particular note is number four:
Read the Scriptures contained in the Forum at Wordpress.com, a veritable Font of Assistance in Matters technical and otherwise.
I’m sure the translation is a bit fuzzy and they mean the WordPress Support Forums and WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, as well as the WordPress.com Forums, depending upon your religious affiliation. :D
If that isn’t enough, OctoProfit offers the 10 Commandments for SEO on WordPress.
WordPress Traveling Buddies Teaming Up: I mentioned that Andy Skelton is riding his motorcycle to WordCamp and he’s just teamed up with fellow WordPresser, Brooke Kuhlmann, for 1,300 miles on the last leg of the trip. I’m still debating about driving from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco, and it would be neat to have a WordPresser along for the ride in the small motor home. Interested? Anyone else teaming up to make the trip?
Are You Involved With a WordPress Group? If you are involved with a WordPress group that meets regularly or as part of a special event, please let me know so I can promote the event here and elsewhere.If your group isn’t listed with Incoming.org or Meetup.com with WordPress as a keyword, I and others might not find you. Help us to help you promote your WordPress group.
Integrating MediaWiki Into WordPress: Remediation Roomy-nation offers Integrating MediaWiki Into WordPress, a good step-by-step, code-filled example of how to get MediaWiki into your WordPress blog.
New WordPress Book in Japanese: Matt Mullenweg reports that there is a new WordPress book in Japanese.
WordPress Works for Non-Blogs: Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts writes that “WordPress Makes Sense For Many Non-Blog Websites”, an interesting perspective and analysis of how WordPress works as a CMS.
WordPress.com News
What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:
- I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
- GigaOM
- Digital Headbutt
- Web Worker Daily
- A Hot Mess!
- USB Tools & Portable Programs
- Travels with Tish Girlfriends’ Getaway Guide
- Ladies…
- The Grand National Championships
- Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News
The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:
- GooCentral… Really?
- Teh orange ones…
- Apologize for the delay
- I fear I am slowly becoming Stephen A. Smith.
- For prospective seminary students…
- konqueror and firefox
- Susitna string shopping bag
- Master Chief, a True Guitar Hero
- Andrew Bogut Media Blackout: Crimes of Omission
- UMNO wants state to stop granting the building of Non Muslim place of worship?
WordPress Plugins and Themes News
Bad Behavior has a New Permalink: One of my favorite comment spam fighters is Bad Behavior and it has a new URL, http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/, so if you have promoted it to your readers, you might want to update the link.
Pick a Past Post: Previous Post Picker WordPress Plugin helps you pick previous posts on the Write Post Panel for link inclusion and reference within your blog posts. This is ideal for someone who blogs on a consistent subject, creating a body of work, allowing the blogger to create quick links to their past blog posts within the current one they are writing. I’ve longed for something like this!
Turn Off Widgets: Disable WordPress Widgets Plugin is an interesting Plugin. If you do not want to use WordPress Widgets on your blog, if you have multiple bloggers or users and you want to restrict or deny access to WordPress Widgets, or a client you want to restrict from Widgets, this Plugin turns off the built-in ability to add WordPress Widgets to a blog.
Edit Comments: WP AJAX Edit Comments WordPress Plugin gives users and admins an opportunity to edit comments on a blog post for a specific period of time, set by the administrator. This allows commenters to fix problems or edit their comments within 10 minutes or whatever time period is set.
Custom Write Post Panel: The Custom Write Panel WordPress Plugin adds some customization features to your WordPress Write Post Panel including new customized input fields such as the Textbox, Multiline Textbox, Checkbox, Checkbox List, Radiobutton List, Dropdown List, and Listbox. If you are frustrated with the layout of the Write Post Panel, give this a try.
Category Overload Manager: Category Admin Manager WordPress Plugin, also known as Category Overload, by Alex King, helps those with an overload of post categories, improving management and maintenance of all your post categories.
Tidy Your WordPress Blog: HTML Tidy processes your blog’s template files in your WordPress Theme and reports on the things that need a little cleaning or “tidying up”. While a little complicated to use, Urban Giraffe created Tidy Up WordPress Plugin to help you use HTML Tidy from your WordPress Administration Panels. Great for web designers and WordPress Theme authors and tweakers.
OneClick WordPress Plugin: Daily Blog Tips reviews the OneClick WordPress Plugin which allows easy uploading of WordPress Themes and Plugins. Have you tried it?
Interesting WordPress Plugins: I’m hunting for reviews of WordPress Plugins and will post them here. If you have used and reviewed a WordPress Plugin, please let me know so I can add them here. Until then, here are a few new and interesting WordPress Plugins – try them to see if they will work for you and your blog.
- WP-PDA WordPress Plugins adds a stylesheet and instructions to help your blog be viewed better in a handheld computer.
- Post Notification WordPress Plugin sends an email to registered users on updates and new posts to your blog.
- Excerpt Editor WordPress Plugin allows quick editing of post and Page excerpts.
- Another Wordpress Meta Plugin adds meta tags to your WordPress blog for descriptions and keywords.
- WP-PostRatings WordPress Plugin helps users rate your posts.
- WP-Polls WordPress Plugin is a popular polling Plugin for your blog.
- WP-Sticky WordPress Plugin is the latest “Adhesive” version which allows you to designate one or more posts that sit at the top of the queue in your WordPress blog’s front page.
Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer now features 3,395 Themes and 4,836,293 Themes downloads. Be sure and check out the demos of each WordPress Theme to see if it meets your needs.
WordPress Plugin Directory: The new WordPress Plugin Directory is has a ton of new WordPress Plugins. According to their list, the most popular WordPress Plugins downloaded are:
- Sidebar Widgets
- Akismet
- Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress
- Subscribe to Comments
- Automattic Stats
- podPress
More WordPress Plugins can be found on the WordPress Plugins Database.
Is Your Theme and Plugin Compatible with WordPress 2.2? As should be the normal protocol, if your WordPress Theme and/or Plugin is compatible with WordPress 2.2 or upgraded accordingly, make sure it is on the WordPress 2.2 Plugin Compatibility List and WordPress 2.2 Theme Compatibility List.
WordPress Community News
WordPress Community Podcast: The latest WordPress Community Podcast covers Dennis Kennedy covering copyrights, GPL and Creative Commons, WordPress is looking for translators, and a lot more WordPress news and tips.
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, 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.
- WordPress Japan meetup in Okayama – July 1
- WordCamp 2007 – San Fransisco – July 21-22
- The San Francisco WordPress July Meetup – July 28
- BlogHer Conference ’07: A World of Difference – Chicago – July 27-28
- Blog Business Summit – Chicago – September 17-19
For a WordPress Meetup near you and other blogging events, check out the WordPress Meetup Group List.
WordPress Techniques and Tips
The following are WordPress tips, tricks, and techniques in articles, videos, and podcasts:
- One Way To Use Custom Fields
- WordPress Video Tutorial: FileZilla Installation (Setup Wizard)
- WordPress Video Tutorial: Downloading FileZilla
- Simpler integration of bbPress with WordPress
- WordPress Plugins: Take Your Blog’s Functionality To a New Level
- Exclude Category in WordPress
- How To Build Web 2.0 Site Using WordPress
- How to: Customize the WordPress login screen
- WordPress is Not PHP – Tweaking Your WordPress Theme’s Code
Here are some featured articles from the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, the source you need to turn to first for your WordPress help.
- Displaying Posts Using a Custom Select Query
- Alphabetizing Posts
- Using Permalinks
- AJAX and WordPress
- Editing wp-config.php
Extra Tip of the Week
Choosing a Blogging Platform: Think Import and Export: The Technology Evangelist writes about an important consideration when choosing a free blogging platform often overlooked by bloggers: exportability. The article describes how WordPress works so well for importing and exporting from many various blogging programs, including free services, but there are some drawbacks.
Where’s MySpace in the above chart? This one is huge. The only way to import a MySpace blog as of today is to export an RSS feed from MySpace then upload it to Wordpress. HOWEVER, MySpace truncates posts in your RSS feed, so you’ll only be able to retrieve the first 200 characters of your 10 most recent posts! That’s something worth thinking long and hard about. You could manually copy/paste your previous posts over to your new blog, but you’ll still lose all of your blog’s comments when you do that.
When choosing a blogging platform, free or not, think well on the portability of your blog content. Can you take it with you when you leave? And will you be able to import it into the new program completely and easily.
Even More WordPress News?
For more news on WordPress, see:
- 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