WordPress wins Best Social Networking, but loses to Drupal overall. WordCamp Argentina was a hit. WordCamp Melbourne is next. WordPress at Blog World Expo. WordPressMU 1.3 released. WordPress 2.3.1 released. WordPress Themes being sold on WordPress.com are being thoroughly discussed and hashed out. Hot new WordPress Plugins are coming out fast and furious. And more WordPress news.
WordPress News
WordPress Wins and Loses: Drupal won the Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award, and WordPress won for the Best Social Networking for Open Source, a new category “designed to recognize Content Management Systems that promoted the collaboration and distribution of information and development of communities.” The award netted WordPress another USD $2,000 in addition to the monetary award for being a finalist in the award competition.
WordPress 2.3.1 Released: The latest version of WordPress is out and contains security fixes, which makes this a mandatory upgrade. It also includes tagging support for Windows Live Writer, faster taxonomy database queries, and fixes to the login and link importer.
For a list of all the changes between the last two versions, see the Trac, and download WordPress 2.3.1. For more information, see Peter Westwood’s description of the changes in WordPress 2.3.1. Also see PlanetOzh’s WordPress Upgrade Script for those with shell access to their web server, making upgrading WordPress “a matter of painless seconds”.
WordCamp Melbourne: Australia, is the next international spot for WordCamp Melbourne for November 17, a little over a week away. There is now an Upcoming Events page which list WordCamp Melbourne will be at the Watermark Bar.
WordCamp Argentina: WordCamp Argentina, October 31, 2007, appeared to be a great success for bloggers and WordCamp fans.
WordPress Hamburg News: WordCamp Hamburg’s registration is open with tickets at 20 Euros ($29). Sponsor tickets are 400 Euros ($575), also available online. Blog Yoda writes about the excitement of the upcoming WordCamp Hamburg or WordCamp Germany, as many are calling it. The author also points to the popular wordpress-deutschland.org, which services German speaking WordPress users with helpful articles and tips. I’ll be searching for new reports and news on the upcoming WordCamp event, so please point me in the right direction if you have information on this!
International WordCamps: Is there a WordCamp coming to your area? Volunteers are needed to help coordinate WordCamp conferences around the world. Below are some of the first, and they need your help to be a success, so pitch in and spread the news.
- WordCamp Melbourne November 17, 2007
- WordCamp Hamburg – January 26-27, 2008
- WordCamp Dallas – March 29-30, 2008
- WordCamp San Francisco – July anyone?
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):
- Silicon Valley, California, WordPress Meetup – November 8
- WordPress 2.3.1 – November 15, 2007
- The New York City WordPress November Meetup – November 17, 2007
- WordCamp Melbourne November 17, 2007
- The Baltimore-Washington WordPress November Meetup – November 24
- WordPress 2.0.+ – December 1, 2007
- Blog Business Summit Now in Seattle – December 5-6, 2007
- WordPress 2.4 – December 12, 2007
- WordCamp Hamburg – January 26-27, 2008
- WordCamp Dallas – March 29-30, 2008
- WordPress 2.5 – April 1, 2008
- WordPress 2.5 – May 5, 2008
- WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco – July 2008 (waiting confirmation)
If you are having a WordPress-related event that isn’t on the calendar, post them below or via email.
Speedy Gravatars: With the recent purchase of Gravatar by Automattic, Barry talks about speeding Gravatar up in the integration process with WordPress.com. If you are tired of having a slow avatar, consider switching to a Gravatar for faster responses.
WordPressMU 1.3: The latest version of WordPress MU 1.3 is now out and includes improved sign-up control, protection from search engine indexing of the signup form, ability to set your primary blog via the Profile panel, ability to assign imported posts to other uses on the blog, an optional taxonomy sync script, UTF-8 database tables, and many fixes and improvements.
WordPress at Blog World Expo: Brian Layman and Mark Jaquith made a presentation on WordPress at Blog World Expo and they share their slides.
Secure WordPress Whitepaper in German, too: Blog Security’s Secure WP Whitepaper is now available in German as well as English.
WordPress Podcast: The latest WordPress Podcast is out: Episode 31: Automattic acquires Gravatar, Automattic being acquired? It covers a ton of information including Charles’ trip to Podcast and New Media Expo, Aaron sharing about PodCamp Philly, Automattic buying Gravatar, rumors of the sale of Automattic, WordPress tags, Blog Security’s Whitepaper on WordPress security flaws, problems with WP-Cache, international WordCamps, wPhone WordPress Plugin and much, much more.
WordPress for Dummies: WordPress for Dummies is officially released Monday, October 29 by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
WordPress 2.4 Digest: In this week’s WordPress weekly digest on WordPress 2.4 development by Peter Westwood, he reports on a ton of upgrades, fixes, and new bells and whistles for the next release of WordPress 2.4, including more work on caching, AJAX added to a few more features, and so much more.
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.
Here’s a few to consider expressing an opinion and voting on:
- Posting Via Email Improvement
- Extend Category Selection Box
- Password Protection for Categories
- Easy Updating of WordPress
- Default searching of both posts and pages
- Tag-cloud widget with thresholds
Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Last week’s WordPress Wednesday News report covered WordPress 2.3.1 Released, Get Your Upgrade, WordPress Podcast Speaks out, WordCamp Israel a Success, Argentina is Next, and WordPress Wins., if you would like to catch up with the news on WordPress.
WordPress.com News
300 Servers for WordPress.com: If you are into the geek side of WordPress.com, Barry announces the 300th server for WordPress.com, and offers some server tips and techniques behind the power that runs WordPress.com.
WordPress.com Marketplace: In the works for a long time is the idea of a marketplace for products and services for WordPress.com bloggers. Recently, Matt Mullenweg expressed his ideas and thoughts about a WordPress.com Marketplace on his blog and at the WordCamp Argentina conference. He also offered a follow up with more explanation, but many are offering their suggestions and ideas and awaiting more information on the proposals, which include selling access to “premium” WordPress Themes to WordPress.com bloggers. If you have an opinion on the subject, get your voice heard.
What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:
- Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures – I Can Has Cheezburger?
- CNN Political Ticker
- POPSEOUL! entertainment, style and beauty in seoul
- GretaWire
- pollycoke :)
- 38 Pitches
- GigaOM
- The Page
- Club Penguin Cheats l Glitches l Secrets
- Les Amateurs de Stars
The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:
- What is the truth about Ivy?
- KDE4 e Raptor: il menu definitivo?
- Boosting to 5 Star Douchebaggery
- Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani
- Another Glimpse of Roeder’s Motivational Skills
- Khairy Jamaluddin Jangan Bongkak Dengan Sijil Nikah- Zahrin Zahran
- [+] Vô, Num Vô na FAAP!
- KDE4: Oxygen “chiude” baracca!
- Naturkatastrof i Finland – Sju uppges vara döda!
- Jag känner doften av rädsla från Stureplan
- i can has gurlfrend?
WordPress Plugins and Themes News
WordPress Super Cache: Donncha O’Caoimh announces WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin, the “next generation” of the popular WP-Cache WordPress Plugin by Ricardo Galli Granada. Donncha’s version creates static HTML files served directly by the server as well as the usual WP-Cache data files, and fixes some much needed-to-be-fixed bugs, and adding some new flexible features to this powerful, “digg-effect”, blog saving Plugin.
Speeding Up Comment Replies: Absolute Comments WordPress Plugin is the new “Comment Manager with Instant Reply” by Ozh, another brilliant attempt to add AJAX to the Comments panel and speed up the comment response time on WordPress blogs. We need to get such features put into the WordPress core as comments are so critical to the social aspect of blogging.
Polaroid Style Thumbnails Meets Lightbox: In Polaroid Style Thumbnails, Bretton explains how to use the Thumbnail Viewer WordPress Plugin, Windows Live Writer, and his Polaroid WordPress Plugin to create easy Polaroid-style framed pictures on your WordPress blog.
Interesting WordPress Plugins: Some interesting WordPress Plugins I’ve stumbled across recently include:
- WordPress Plugin: Recent Posts Grouped By Date does exactly what it says, a great way of featuring chronological recent post lists.
- Post Information WordPress Plugin puts post meta data information in a collapsible panel on your blog posts.
- Il Filosofo’s Remember Attachment Link Preferences WordPress Plugin keeps track of how an image should appear each time when uploading images to Wordpress. For instance, it remembers if the last time you checked “Show Full Size” and “Link to Page” in the image options, saving you the redundant selection process each time. WordPress.com could definitely use this.
- Language Switcher WordPress Plugin sounds almost too good to be true. It allows the blogger to switch easily between different languages to blog in, as well as allows your readers to switch between languages without page reloads, using DHTML layers. Anyone tried this?
Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, which now lists 1,204 plugins and 2,177,105 downloads, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection of WordPress Plugins released daily.
Plugins from the WordPress Plugins Directory: The posts tag is the most popular tag on the WordPress Plugin Directory, and I thought I’d list a few of the 138 Plugins in that tag.
- Author Complete Post List
- AWSOM News Announcement
- Excerpt Editor
- Favourite Post plugin
- HeadSpace2
- Post Templates
- Real WYSIWYG
- Sobek`s Posts in Category
- Templatedia Chess
- Text Control
- Tiny Table
- WP-Definitions
- WP PukiWiki
- WP-SimpleViewer
- WP-Sticky
Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer features more than 10 million downloads now and lists the most popular WordPress Themes as:
- 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.
- Make Your WordPress 10X faster During Traffic Storms
- Tag Options for WordPress 2.3
- 5 WordPress Hosting Lessons – How to Survive the Digg Effect
- Showing a WordPress Posts Last Modified Date
- Wordpress Part 1 – Installation Video Tutorial
- ZEPREZ WordPress Video Guides – How To Select And Use The Image You Want To Put In Your Wordpress 2.0 Post From The File Uploads
- Full Feeds and the “more” Tag
- How to Hide Sub-Categories in the Sidebar
- Alex King – WordPress as a CMS
- John Chow – How To Get RSS Readers To Visit Your Blog
WordPress Community News
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.
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.
Using WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: Just a reminder. WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s name or URL unless you have permission of Automattic and WordPress. Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).
Even More WordPress News?
Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.3.1 Released, Get Your Upgrade, WordPress Podcast Speaks out, WordCamp Israel a Success, Argentina is Next, and WordPress Wins.
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Israel, Argentina, Australia, and Germany, Tons of WordPress Plugin News and Updates, Beta Security Release Announced, and More
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Israel and Melbourne, Tag Troubles, Cell Blogging, WP-Cache and Comment troubles, and More
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp Israel Full, Tag Frustration, Security Tips and Plugins, Drupal, wPhone, WP-Cache, Akismet, and Mailing Lists
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.3 Released, Plugin Trouble, International WordCamps and Regional Meetups, Edublogs 100,000, and More 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