WordPress is 5 years old. WordCamps in Philippines, New York, Toronto, Australia – everywhere. WordPress 2.6 new improvements and features coming out fast for August release. WordPress Plugin Competition heating up. WordPress.com by the numbers, and multilingual bloggers rejoice. Genko’s been updated.
WordPress News
WordPress 5 Years Old: Bloggers are celebrating all around the world as WordPress turns 5 years old. If you were lucky enough to be in San Francisco Tuesday, May 27, you could have been part of a party hosted by Matt Mullenweg and other WordPress fans. Did you celebrate WordPress turning 5?
WordCamps Sprouting Everywhere: Is there going to be a WordCamp near you? Thinking of starting one? Check in the calendar section below for a listing of the announced WordCamps, and WordPress Meetups, and where to find more information on how to start your own in your area.
WordPress 2.6 New Features: The following are recent announcements about new features and improvements in WordPress 2.6:
- WordPress Development: Work continues on WordPress 2.6 and beyond. The WordPress Development Updates announced recently include updated jQuery and jQuery UI to the latest from the jQuery trunk, the ability to relocate the
wp-config.php
configuration file up one level from the blog install directory, support for Google Gears, a new style loader to complement the new script loader, drag and drop sortable gallery collections for the new Media Library, and adoption of the WordPress.com WordPress Theme preview ability which allows “lightbox” previews of Themes before you make your final selection. - Google Gears Meets WordPress: Google Gears support has been integrated into WordPress 2.6 to make blogging from one stop resource even easier.
- WordPress Post Revisions – WordPress Meets Word Processing: Without a doubt, blogging is writing and one of the problems many have faced, including me, is how you can lose post information if your browser crashes or something goes wrong during the post creation phase, which is why I use a text editor to write my blog posts. In WordPress 2.6, Michael Adams reports on a new feature called “Post Revisions”, which will work with the autosave feature to store a history timeline of your blog posts so you can get protection from accidental changes, as can happen with multiple blogger blogs, and if something goes bork in the blog while posting.
- Gravatars and Identicons in WordPress 2.6: Viper007Bond discusses the inclusion of Identicons with Gravatars coming to WordPress 2.6 and how this is going to improve gravatars and avatars in general in WordPress.
- Password Secure Storage: Barry Abramson writes about
mod_auth_mysql
andphpass
, a new patch for Apache authentication which works with the new WordPress secure password storage feature.
WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ is on. They’ve published WordPress Plugin Competition Q&A to help answer your specific questions about the competition. Have you checked out last year’s winners? These Plugins continue to be some of the best of the best this year!
WordCamp and An Event Apart in San Francisco: WordCamp San Francisco is August 16, which is conveniently followed by An Event Apart in San Francisco, August 18-19, 2008. WordPress users get an Event Apart Discount up to USD $200.
Usability Testing of WordPress: If you caught the news recently and got signed up right away, you could have been part of a group doing usability testing of WordPress in New York City recently. Hopefully there will be more news on such tests and their outcome soon.
WordPress 2.5.1 Mandatory Security Release: WordPress 2.5.1 was released earlier this week and is a mandatory security release. It includes bug fixes, performance enhancements, along with the security fix. The corrected files are wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php
and wp-admin/media.php
, if you want to just replace the changed files. Theme Lab offers a simple upgrade guide for this upgrade. Included in the upgrade are fixes to Internet Explorer issues with the new Media Library.
WordPressMU Updated: Donncha O’Caoimh has announced the update of WordPressMU, the multi-user version of WordPress. It is now WordPressMU 1.5.1 and synchronizes with WordPress 2.5.1 and includes a few other bug and security fixes.
WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Podcast: Episode 41 covered the release of WordPress 2.5.1, Sphere integration into WordPress.com blogs, Webware 100 award winners, and a lot more WordPress and WordPress.com news.
WP Weekly Podcast: Jeffro’s WordPress Weekly Live Show included an interview with Matt Mullenweg and BuddyPress developer Andy Peatling.
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.
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: WordCamps Everywhere, Apache Patch for Securer Passwords, WordPress Plugin Contest, and More WordPress 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):
- Los Angeles WordPress Users Group – June 8, 2008
- The Boston WordPress Meetup – June 19, 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 – Manila
- South by Deep South WordCamp – September 26-28 – Birmingham, Alabama
- WordCamp Toronto – October 4th, 2008
- MinneWordCamp – Minneapolis – November 15, 2008
WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: Minneapolis is going to have a WordCamp. Boston and Los Angeles now have WordPress Meetups. What’s the difference? A WordPress Meetup is a social gathering that happens on a regular basis, usually monthly, where WordPress fans can get together and talk WordPress and blogging. There are sometimes special speakers or a topic for discussion, and the focus is on the social.
WordCamps are fairly structured events that happen annually and encompass a lot of speakers and coordination. They also offer a great opportunity for bloggers and WordPress fans to meet and share their WordPress expertise and experiences. It’s also a chance for sponsors to meet with bloggers and vise verse, so we all learn more about how all this blogging and WordPress stuff works.
If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup, 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.
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
Multilingual Bloggers: Genko Updated: Gengo WordPress Plugin is a multiple language Plugin I’ve reviewed previously has been updated to work with WordPress 2.5 to current “bleeding edge” versions. I allows for an unlimited number of translations and summaries for any post for those who blog in multiple languages. This Plugin does not provide translations but helps multilingual bloggers blog across language variations and characters. It allows side by side editing of translations, features visitor language detection and filters, and is highly configurable. If you blog in more than one language, Genko is invaluable.
Lookup Template Tags: WordPress Template Tag Lookup Tool by Theme Lab is an AJAX tool that searches through the Template Tag list to find the one you may be looking for as you design your WordPress Theme.
Greasemonkey Not Updating – Comment Ninja and Auntie Akismet Stop Working: Be aware that Greasemonkey FireFox Extension has been updated to work with the latest version of FireFox, but for some reason, it doesn’t find the update and automatically install it. If you are a fan of WordPress Comment Ninja and Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress Greasemonkey Scripts for FireFox by Engtech of Internet Duct Tape, and they aren’t working for you, be sure and manually upgrade Greasemonkey to the new version.
Interesting WordPress Plugins: With the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Contest underway, combined with the many Plugin authors updating their Plugins to work with the latest versions of WordPress, a lot of Plugins have been announced and updated. Here are some I stumbled on recently:
- Plugins List WordPress Plugin is another Plugin that lists all the WordPress Plugins you are using on your blog. This Plugin does not create an automatically updated list but rather an HTML list for you to paste into any post or Page on your blog.
- Branded Admin WordPress Plugin adds custom header and footer graphics to the WordPress Administration Panels for custom and commercial blog interfaces.
- Feed Wrangler WordPress Plugin creates custom feeds for WordPress blogs.
- Role Scoper WordPress Plugin adds role management with fine-tune reading and editing capabilities to your WordPress Administration Panels with “CMS-like granularity” for term-specific and object-specific role assignments for user levels.
- Admin CSS Designer WordPress Plugin uses colorful color palettes from COLOURLovers to play with the colors of your WordPress Administration Panels in WordPress 2.5+.
- List All Authors WordPress Plugin adds a Plugin tag to list all the authors on a multiple blogger blog.
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.
Customizing and Categorizing Search Results in WordPress: Pressing Pixels wrote “Categorize Search Results in WordPress” with tips on how to improve your WordPress Theme search result pages by categorizing your search results on the page.
WordPress Techniques and Tips
Overcoming Feed Abuse: Perishable Press took apart WordPress feeds and learned some invaluable lessons on how to consolidate and localize your feeds for your WordPress blog. WordPress adds feeds to your blog, but WordPress Themes add more, and sometimes the blogger adds even more feeds, so feeds can get complicated and feed users can easily get confused. This is an interesting guide for how to clean up all those feeds and get back to the basics.
Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:
- Nathan Rice – WordPress Single Post Templates
- JJ and the Kids Podcast – Episode 8 – Complete WordPress Install Using a Web Browser
- WordPress Tutorial: Customizing Widgets Using CSS
- How to select different inside WordPress Page Templates
- Make a Site Map Page For Your WordPress Blog
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.com News
WordPress.com Statistics: Every month or two, WordPress.com releases stats on how WordPress.com is doing, but did you know you can track stats on WordPress.com any time from their official WordPress.com Stats page? You can check the numbers for Signups, Posting activity, Pageviews, Embeds, and other Miscellaneous stats and numbers.
WordPress Community News
Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list Automattic the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.
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.
Do You Need Help with WordPress? I’m finding a lot of people still asking for help with their WordPress and WordPress.com blog by blogging their request. This is really dumb, folks. You don’t know who is reading or how qualified they may be to help you. Or you might never get the help you need. Please, go to the WordPress Support Forums for help with the full version of WordPress and the WordPress.com Forums for help with WordPress.com blogs. Get the help you need directly from those who can help you.
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.
Using 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: 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 Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5 Issues, WordCamps Everywhere, Mullenweg Addresses Security Fears, Coffee2Code Finishes 14 Days of Plugins, and More
- WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5, Security Issues, Plugins Updated, WordPress vs WordPressMU, and More
WordPress News Sources
- WordPress Planet
- WordPress Development Blog
- WordPress.com Blog
- Weblog Tools Collection
- BloggingPro
- 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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