Welcome to the new Planet WordPress Canada. Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin Competition has some great offerings. Have you checked them out? WordPresss developers have created a development branch for the Administration Panels interface called Crazyhorse. First peeks at the new BuddyPress Default Theme is out. Worried about your WordPress blog being hacked? We’ve got some solutions. WordPress.com gets XML Sitemaps. All-in-one SEO Pack WordPress Plugin finds a home. And there are WordCamps everywhere. Are you going to one? Or many?
WordPress News
Welcome to Planet WordPress Canada: Peter has created the first aggregator of WordPress news specifically featuring Canadian bloggers and experts on WordPress. Called Planet WordPress Canada, this unique geographical version of the official Planet WordPress and unofficial Planet WordPress aggregators, the main sources for information on WordPress news and events. Hopefully, their feed will be added to the unofficial Planet WordPress to increase their international coverage of WordPress news and resources. Who knows where this might lead. Anyone for Planet WordPress Minonesia?
WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ is now up to USD $3500+ in prizes. Here are the Plugin entries listed on the Plugin Competition Blog so far:
- Simple Flash Video WordPress Plugin
- Sermon management WordPress Plugin for churches
- Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin
- Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin
- WP Comment Remix WordPress Plugin
- Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin
- Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin
- WordPress: Display Comments On Main Page WordPress Plugin
WordPress Development: Word is out in the WordPress Development Blog that the new “code name” for the WordPress interface branch of development is Crazyhorse as the team continues to work on improving the Administration Panels for future versions of WordPress. Jeffro2pt0 has an article describing the process and development. The development team has been working on improving the performance of the hierarchy walkers and taxonomy queries making category listings faster, and made improves in the Manage Panel for Pages and Categories to do paging in a way that won’t orphan sub-tress across pages.
WordPress Blogs Hacked: If you have not updated your WordPress blog, your blog maybe at risk from hackers due to security vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress. Recently, Donncha tackled the issue of hacked WordPress blogs and how to know if your blog has been targeted by these redirected hits from Google techniques and older ones.
Donncha also wrote an article on catching website file changes with AIDE, a server based program you can install within your WordPress blog’s host site to help you track activity within the server logs of your blog. Using his tips, you can set up an email notification to help track potential evil doers when any of your WordPress files are accessed and modified. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if something like this was built into WordPress as a warning system?
Peter’s Useful Crap also published information to change notification of WordPress blogs on Linux to avoid being exploited and prevent future exploits by hackers. I covered a lot of issues on how to find out if your block has been hacked in WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares. Remember, the best protection is prevention. Update now.
WordPress Plugins Security Issues: Blog SEcurity announced that the Nextgen Gallery WordPress Plugin has been found to have an XXS flaw which makes this Plugin a risk. They say that currently no fix is avaialbe and you should discontinue use of this Plugin.
WordPress Podcast: Episode 42: Our favorite Plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design is out from the WordPress Podcast and features a new segment by Matt Mullenweg answering questions about WordPress news and issues, discussion of new WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, WordPress Themes, and more on their favorite WordPress Plugins. They are also seeing your top ten favorite WordPress Plugins for an upcoming episode.
WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Episode 20 is out and included Patrick O’ Keefe, author of “Managing Online Forums“, Darren Hoyt of the Mimbo Pro WordPress Theme, and a ton of information on WordPress, WordPress Plugins, and blogging in general.
Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News.
WordPress on Your Calendar
WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.
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).
- New York City Meetup WordPress – June 21, 2008
- The Bay Area WordPress Meetup, San Francisco – June 22, 2008
- Huntsville WordPress Meetup, Alabama – June 28, 2008
- Nashville WordPress Meetup – June 28, 2008
- Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress Meetup – June 28, 2008
- WordCamp UK – July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK
- WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF – Aug 16, 2008
- WordPress 2.6 – August 2008
- WordCamp Philippines – September 6, 2008
- Blog World Expo, Vegas – September 20-21, 2008
- South by Deep South WordCamp – September 26-28 – Birmingham, Alabama
- WordCamp Portland, Oregon – September 27, 2008
- WordCamp Toronto – October 4th, 2008
- MinneWordCamp – Minneapolis – November 15, 2008
WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup or WordCamp, just finding a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, as many track WordPress event announcements there, and contact the new WordCamp Central to add your WordCamp event to their list.
If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp.
WordCamp San Francisco August 16: August 16, 2008 is the next WordCamp San Francisco, considered by many to be the premier WordCamp event. This year, it appears it will be only one day instead of two, but details are still coming. It will be at the Mission Bay Conference Center this year.
WordPress Plugins and Themes News
BuddyPress Default Theme in the Works: Andy Peatling writes and shows off the interface of the new BuddyPress Theme being developed for WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs that integrates BuddyPress into WordPress. The Theme under development will become the default Theme for BuddyPress, and give developers and designers a baseline from which to design their own.
Using WP-Cron: Scompt started a series on “Taking control of WP-Cron using WP-Crontrol WordPress Plugin and now offers Using WordPress Cron and WP-Crontrol to make you post more and Use WP-Crontrol to keep track of Akismet in this interesting series on using the automatic features in WordPress to automate your blog’s routine activities and actions.
Manage More Than One Blog: Nerdaphernalia has released Virtual Multiblog WordPress Plugin, Plugin that turns your WordPress Administration Panel into a mutliple blog management system. It’s been recently updated to work with the newest version of WordPress and has a lot of new features and improvements.
Comment Relish Improved: PatchLog offers “Comment Relish WordPress Plugin Optimization”, an article that offers modifications for improving how this popular WordPress Plugin works, making it faster and less liable to break under high comment loads.
All-in-one SEO Pack WordPress Plugin Not Lost: The All-in-one SEO Pack WordPress Plugin by Uberdose has found a new home with Semper Fi Web Design, author of several other popular WordPress Plugins.
Linking Need to Plugin: I want a WordPress Plugin to … 450+ solutions is a fun gimmick that links specific tasks to specific WordPress Plugins. It lists over 450 tasks you may want to do on your blog and provides a link to a WordPress Plugin the author recommends to accomplish that need. There are thousands of WordPress Plugins to choose from, and not all Plugins work for all blog types and needs, but this is an interesting way of promoting WordPress Plugins. Personally, I’d love to see some of these tasks become categories and tags in the WordPress Plugin Directory, making it easier to track down a helpful Plugin.
Code for Deactivating Plugins when Uninstalling: A few months ago, there was a lot of talk about the problems associated with turning off WordPress Plugins that aren’t really gone. They still live in your Plugins folder on your blog and their data may exist in your blog database. Weblog Tools Collection presents “Plugin Deactivation Issues Solved With Actions and Filters” covering techniques to prevent deactivation issues for WordPress Plugins and Theme authors. It is the responsibility of the WordPress Theme designer and Plugin author to ensure Plugins play nice.
Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I stumbled on recently:
- Flexible Upload WordPress Plugin adds image upload functionality and features to WordPress blogs such as resizing images, inserting captions, watermarks, and custom-sized thumbnails.
- Newspaper Style Posts WordPress Plugin creates two columns of text in newspaper-style columns on single post pageviews. It doesn’t change your WordPress Theme, just adds the style modification to single post pageviews.
- Plugin Stats WordPress Plugin has been updated and helps Plugin authors track file downloads in three ways on their blog or Administration Panel.
Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.
WordPress.com News
WordPress.com Gets XML Sitemaps: WordPress.com bloggers now have XML Sitemaps built right in. An XML sitemap is a file stored in your blog’s directory that acts as a roadmap to guide search engines that recognize XML sitemaps, which currently include Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and MSN. The purpose is to direct the web crawler through your site, directing it to most recent posts and post modifications. It helps eliminate “orphans”, pages without intrasite links. Unlike what some will tell you, you do not need to do anything with the new XML Sitemaps. You won’t even know they are there. You do not need to register with Google or make any changes. If you have disabled pings and search engine indexing in your blog options, Google and other search engines won’t visit on purpose.
WordPress Techniques and Tips
Highlight Author Comments: Nyssa Brown offers tips on author comment highlighting techniques to help you feature comments by the author within the comments list on WordPRess blogs.
Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:
- How to Set Up Non-duplicating Recent Entries
- WPThemesPlugin.com – How To: Rearrange WordPress Comments (Latest On Top)
- Perishable Press – Preventing the Unpredictable White Screen of Death for WordPress Sites with Multiple Themes
- ZEPREZ WordPress Video Guides – How To Create Strike Through Text In WordPress 2.0
- JJ and the Kids Podcast – Episode 4 – Download WordPress Installation Files and Themes
Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.
WordPress Community News
Give Something Back to WordPress: Jeff Chandler of Weblog Tools Collection has written “24 Ways To Contribute To WordPress” with suggestions on how to get involved in helping WordPress development. If you would like to help with the WordPress Codex, the official online user manual for WordPress users, we need you. If you would like to contribute to WordPress as a volunteer in the WordPress Support Forums, testing, coding, and more, see Contributing to WordPress. If you would like to help improve WordPress by reporting bugs, please report them via the WordPress Bug Report form. Your help is needed to ensure WordPress works.
Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug and shared my love with a lot of people recently. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies.
Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The WordPress Ideas section. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.
Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list from Automattic, the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.
WordPress Installed For Free: Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress) is a free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.
Don’t Use WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: It’s about respect. Please use WordPress names right because WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s domain 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).
Found a Bug in WordPress? If you find a bug in WordPress, report it by following the instructions in Reporting Bugs on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.
Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress at 50, WordPress Tweeters, Tracking WordPress 2.6, WordPress.com Stats, and Hot WordPress Plugins
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 5 Years Old, WordCamps International, WordPress 2.6 On Track, Plugin Competition is Hot, Genko Updated
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Apache Patch for Securer Passwords, WordPress Plugin Contest, and More WordPress News
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPressMU Updated, Press-It Coming Back, WordCamp Milan, WordPress Keys, and Plugin Contest News
- WordPress Wednesday News: Which Bookmarklet, WordPress 2.5.1 Mandatory Upgrade, WordPress Plugin Contest, WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco, and WordPress Mugs
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5.1 Released, WordPress 2008 in August, Plugins Contest, 3 Million, WordPress.com Responds to Brazil Court Ban, and More
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Webware 100 Again, Plugins to Fix WordPress 2.5, Change Admin Colors, and More
WordPress News Sources
- WordPress Planet
- WordPress Development Blog
- WordPress.com Blog
- Weblog Tools Collection
- The WordPress Podcast
- Lorelle on WordPress
- Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
- WordPress Publisher Blog
- WordPress Weekly live show with Jeffro2pt0
If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.
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
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