WordPress Wednesday: WordPress and WordPressMU Upgrades, Powered by WordPress Companies, and Build More WordPress Blogs

There is a lot of news about WordPress this week, especially about the recent upgrade and security patch for WordPress 2.1.1 and the news about the upcoming release of WordPress 2.2. WordPressMU 1.1.1 was released, I discovered a new Multilingual WordPress blog and community, and there are WordPress contests, challenges, and memes spreading across the web.

WordPress News

New WordPress Release UPDATE: If you updated to WordPress 2.1.1, please redo the update immediately. See WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2 for information.

WordPress 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 are out with bug fixes and security patches. Download the full version of 2.1.1 or choose 2.0.9, which includes a security patch only and not the WordPress 2.1 major updates and changes. A list of file changes are on the announcement, and Mark Jaquith and Techtites offer changed file sets of only the changed files for the two different versions for those who just want to “patch” not redo.

WordPressMU 1.1.1 Released: The latest version of , version 1.1.1, has been released. This is the software that runs , Edublogs, and other multi-user blogs. You can download to upgrade or start your own multiple user blog network. The new features include the latest within the WordPress 2.2 development trunk.

Custom Fields Contest Still On: Aaron Brazell is sponsoring a “WP Custom Fields Contest” for full version WordPress users. It is designed to showcase what is possible using the Custom Fields feature. While researching my WordPress Plugin series, I’ve found a lot of Plugins which take advantage of the custom fields. The deadline should be in the next day or so. I hope there are some great entries.

Company Websites Powered by WordPress: It seems like a challenge has been issued. Matt Mullenweg announced that moo.com was now powered by WordPress and Donncha followed with the announcement of two Irish WordPress powered companies, with the incentive that if you leave a comment on his blog, you could win a free iPod. Matt responded back with USPS and Speaker.gov with links to the US Post Office’s Deliver Magazine and Nancy Pelosi’s The Gavel blog at Speaker.gov. So the challenge has been issued (besides the free iPod): Name corporations who are using WordPress to power their blogs.

More Peeks at WordPress 2.2: WordPress 2.2 is due out in April and Ryan Boren offers more peeks at what to expect in the next version. Some of these I’ve highlighted in past WordPress Wednesday news, but others include feeds everywhere including category comment feeds, new Blogger importer, PHPMailer and Upgraded Mail Fetch class from SquirrelMail. There are a lot of fixes and other goodies on their way. It’s going to be an exciting upgrade.

Let Your WordPress Blog Be Heard: Segala offers “Add a voice to your blog post using Talkr”, a how to article on incorporating an MP3 style “voice” that reads your blog to your visitors who want it. I’ve been looking at this for a while and I wish I had access to it on WordPress.com. It would definitely increase usability and accessibility.

Word in WordPress? SkatterTech announces that Word 07 now supports WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and Live Spaces with the new “publish post to blog” feature. Write your post and publish it directly to WordPress, though I recommend you post it as a draft so you can make sure the results work for you before unleashing it on the public. The article also includes a tutorial with step-by-step configuration and usage instructions.

Weekly WordPress Wish List from Weblog Tools Collection: The Weblog Tools Collection Weekly WordPress WishList started a couple weeks ago and continues to offer solutions to those seeking help beyond the , , WordPress Theme Viewer, and the web, looking for a WordPress Theme or Plugin to meet your needs. If you can’t find what you need, why not ask.

Multilingual WordPress: WordPress Multilingual is a blog dedicated to the international WordPress community. According to it’s purpose, “WordPress Multilingual is a collaborative blog, featuring posts from authors spread around the globe, dedicated to discussing and improving the process of blogging in multiple languages.” It offers posts in Italiano, Russian , Español, Deutsch, Magyar, Français, Hebrew, Português, and Català. It also provides extensive information on Gengo, a WordPress Plugin that allows bloggers to blog in the same blog in different languages. I reviewed it in Blogging in More Than One Language. If you are one of the many international users of WordPress, check out the WordPress Multilingual blog to stay on top of what’s happening within that community and improvements in the international language handling capabilities of WordPress.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

Update Your WordPress Theme and Submit the Update to WordPress Theme Viewer…NOW! Get your WordPress Theme and Plugin updated and listed in the WordPress Plugin Compatibility List and WordPress 2.1 Theme Compatibility List, and then head over to the WordPress Theme Viewer and and update your Theme and Plugin files and description so everyone can enjoy your latest version. Both of these services will soon be undergoing updates and remodeling, so make sure your WordPress tools are updated and still active with these sites.

New Plugins Resources Documentation in WordPress Codex: The , the online manual for WordPress Users, is an ongoing project supported by volunteers writing up the documentation, instruction, and guides you need to help you use WordPress. If you want to write a WordPress Plugin, a new document has been added to provide you with a full range of helpful information and articles called .

Other helpful WordPress Plugin articles in the WordPress Codex include:

Save Flickr Blog Posts to WordPress as Draft: Frustrated with blogging about a photo in Flickr and having it publish the moment you save it? So was Donncha O’Caoimh, so he wrote a new WordPress Plugin called Flickr Blog This to Draft. Now, instead of rushing to your WordPress blog to resave the post as a draft, this Plugin saves it as a draft for you, so you can then go in and edit it, cleaning it up “before anyone notices all the extra line breaks or broken links.” Then you can tag and finish it off, ready for publishing.

FeedWordPress Updated: FeedWordPress has been updated and is now compatible with WordPress 2.1. The announcement includes information on changes WordPress made to the blog feeds, which may be of interest if you are having trouble with feeds on your WordPress blog.

Blank WordPress Themes: Dirty Laundry offers Four Blank Wordpress Themes to help you get started designing your own WordPress Theme. These are all two column formats featuring one sidebar and one content area. They come in fluid and fixed width, with the sidebar on the right or sidebar on the left. This format is the basic layout of many blogs so consider these a fun canvas to work on. I also recommend Sandbox, a highly flexible blank WordPress Theme that allows many different formats, layouts, is widgetized, and highly customizable. Any other good blank WordPress Theme “templates” out there that you recommend?

DivShare WordPress Plugin: DivShare Uploader: The Wordpress Plugin was just released and it offers easy uploading and showcasing of images and files to DivShare to and from your Write Post panel to share with the world.

Month of WordPress Plugins Coming to an End: My month long series on WordPress Plugins will be ending in a few days. Popular articles include Lists of Your Favorite WordPress Plugins, WordPress Plugins for Images, Photographs, and Graphics, Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins, Video, Music, Podcasts, Audio, and Multimedia WordPress Plugins, Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin for Dummies, Monetizing WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Plugins for Comments. I’ve only brushed the surface of all the different WordPress Plugins available. Why not continue the fun by writing about the Plugins your blog depends upon, and spread the Plugin love.

Most Popular WordPress Themes: The most popular WordPress Themes from the WordPress Theme Viewer this week continue to be:

  1. Vistered Little 1.6
  2. MistyLook 3.1
  3. WP-Andreas01 1.5
  4. Water 1.1
  5. ChaoticSoul 1.0

What are your favorite WordPress Themes?

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoDigg This Added to WordPress.com Blogs: If you are a fan of Digg, and want to add a Digg This button to your WordPress.com blog, you now can. For more information and a guides, see Digg This Feature on WordPress.com Blogs.

WordPress.com Blog Stats: You can monitor the activity on WordPress.com through their Post Activity Stats, Signups, Pageviews, Embeds of multimedia files and links, and Misc, which includes how many times people switch WordPress Themes, requests for support, and more. Last week, more than 21,000 Themes were switched on one day. Wow! Post Activity statistics are really interesting. File uploads are on the increase, growing daily as people figure out how to add images, video, music, podcasts, and more to their WordPress.com blogs. Recently, more than 20,000 files are uploaded daily. A nice trend is that the number of requests for feedback and support via the WordPress.com Feedback link has stayed fairly consistently around 200 requests a day, but is actually dropping as more support documentation and help is found elsewhere and it becomes easier and more self-explanatory to use. About 3,000 new blogs are added every day, give or take. Amazing.

See Also

New 4 Column Theme on WordPress.com: WordPress.com bloggers now have the option of a 4-column WordPress Theme called Fjords. There are now 56 WordPress Themes you can choose from. Some allow customization of the header art, and others allow a ton of customization with Widgets and layout structure.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community Podcast: You can get more news about WordPress and the WordPress Community from the WP-Community Podcasts. This week’s podcast features news on WordPress 2.1, Gravatar 2.0, Matt Mullenweg learning to podcast, and some new news and information on WordPress Plugins. It’s a great way to listen to WordPress News.

Build More WordPress Blogs: I haven’t been able to trace the start of it, but so far I’ve counted 8 blogs spreading their “favorite WordPress tip” which is basically each one saying the tip is “build more WordPress blogs” but each one says it differently. How many ways can you say that? Go on, join the fun!

Be Recognized as an Official WordPress User: inner.geek developed Official Comments WordPress Plugin, a Plugin that recognizes you as an “official” member of WordPress when you comment on blogs using this Plugin. It checks in with the to see if you are logged in. If you are, it highlights your comment on that blog differently than the rest of the commenters, honoring you as an “official WordPress user”. Fun!

bbPress Update: bbPress 0.8.1 is the latest upgrade of this very popular forum program, which, by the way, runs the . A list of the files changed is included in the announcement so you only need to replace those files.

Example of the Virtual Office – How Automattic Works: The How We Work page from Automattic offers a peak at the new way of virtually working rather than sitting in an office together. Example: “We coordinate about 95% of our projects on a private IRC channel, which is archived and searchable, 4% via email, and the rest on direct IM, usually AIM and Skype.” The future of the work force – never leave home.

Ideal Handheld Recorder for Podcasting: A couple weeks ago, Matt Mullenweg asked his readers to help him find an ideal handheld digital recorder for making podcasts. This way, he could record on the fly, do interviews, and take it with him when he goes. He’s gotten some very interesting responses and recommendations. If you are looking to create a mobile podcasting system for your blog, check it out.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Know of a great WordPress tips and techniques article? Let me know and it may end up on our weekly list. Here are a few to wet your WordPress whistle.

More WordPress News

For more news on WordPress, see:


Each Wednesday on will be WordPress Wednesday where I will be featuring the news around the WordPress Community. Put it on your calendar!

Lorelle VanFossen blogs about blogging and WordPress on .

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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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