You can download it now and check out for yourself what everyone is so excited about. There is an entirely new new visual design to 2.7 and should make the entire blogging experience just that much more enjoyable.
It looks as if it will live up to its original release date of November 10th with full and final release by the end of the month. But, if you want to get a sneak peek at it now… go download it and check it out!
Remember… the more testers, the better the design and less bugs!
A new plugin for Wordpress: Stumble! for WordPress written by Brendon Boshell allows your WordPress Blog to support a “random article” feature, similar to StumbleUpon’s StumbleThru and Wikipedia’s (Mediawiki’s) random article feature.
The plugin supports basic “go to any random page” functionality, but can also integrate with Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to stumble similar articles. Stumble! for WordPress will automatically give priority to articles with more comments, so users will be brought to your most popular posts.
The plugin is currently in BETA so be sure to provide all feedback to the author.
Wordpress for iphone is a very cool open source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Works with both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org.
One of the most anticipated blog releases for Wordpress will be coming out in November. I was fortunate enough to get an inside view of the new wordpress version at the WordCamp 2008. This newest version, nicknamed Crazy Horse, Wordpress 2.7 will encompass many user preferred changes such as a new navigation screen, additional header elements, new dashboard look, new post screen, and much more. To take a quick sneak peek at the new design, check out the set of wireframes they put together to illustrate how they think it will turn out.
Everyone wants to gets their blog optimized properly and with a few quick changes and a couple of plugins you can easily do this. However if your theme is not pure and has lots of unwanted links, advertisements, or messy code it can actually hurt your natural search engine rankings. Nathan Rice is in the process of developing a list of tips for bloggers that will help them embrace the natural flow of good SEO in the form of a well optimized theme. He is usually right on the money with his information and makes his tips do-able for most anyone with a blog so we wanted to be sure to get the word out.
If you have ever lost data on your blog or had it hacked into you understand how important it is to keep a recent and updated copy of your blog. Sometimes things happen and we forget to renew hosting or even worse the domain name and what happens- all is lost if you don’t have a backup. It can be time consuming, but it’s super important and so essential if you own a blog.
One of the ways WordPress will be altered for expansion in the future includes the ability to incorporate social networking using BuddyPress. Andy Peatling spoke about BuddyPress giving it the definition as a set of WordPress MU specific plugins, each plugin adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.
The standard features of BuddyPress include the following:
• Extended Profiles
• Personal Blog
• Private Messaging
• Friends
• Groups
• The Wire
• Status Updates
• Albums
Buddy press is still in the development stage however certain plugins are available for use and testing. This is by far a huge advancement for WordPress users as it really opens the door wide for new communities and social networking expectations. You can see the entire slide show here.
Along the lines of up and coming improvements and user focused design, the WordPress team went deep into research to come up with the most positive outcome for a user friendly layout to be used in a future release. Liz Danzico and Jane Wells dubbed the creation of this prototype “Riding the Crazyhorse.” Just a few of the improvements include a new navigation and dashboard, the write page has a new look, the comments screen is much clearer, and the media uploader and media library have a better relationship. Very much looking forward to seeing the completed release.
Jeremy Clarke spoke about Democratizing the Web through Global Voices. He stated that blogs give everyone a chance to publish for basically no financial costs and have their words heard. Very cool to see the outreach and dedication there is to ensure that everyone is able to utilize blogs in different languages, with different backgrounds, and all with unique points of view.
Matt Mullenweg did an interview with Om Malik on publishing, technology, and life. It was unique to hear him speak about taking his site GigaOm from being a blog to being a business. To hear the struggles yet being able to say with confidence that he made it was really a huge highlight for many people that are now in the shoes he once was. His biggest tip for people was- “to listen to your head and talk from your head and the rest will figure itself out.”
The last presentation of the evening was given by Kathy Sierra but not before Chuck Lewis aka SEO Rapper was able to give a fun performance and talk a bit about his real world life and business as an SEO.
Kathy Sierra is truly an inspiration to many and her presentation about Kicking Ass and Creating Passionate Users was just that- creating an audience that was involved and receptive to her. Her true passion for the industry shines through and she just makes you want to become a better person overall. Her biggest piece of advice- “Focus on what the user does, not what you do.”
In general the entire conference was really insightful for the WordPress Community and a fantastic way for users, programmers, and those just interested in blogging in general to come together and learn a bit. It was truly an excitement to seeing such a golden path laid out for the future of WordPress and its community. I am very much looking forward to my next WordCamp and to all those that put on such a fantastic event, a big thank you!
Whoot.. WordCamp SF here I come. Purchased my ticket last night and very much looking forward to it all. There are some really amazing speakers on the agenda as well as some pretty unusual and creative musical acts. Just a few of the ones giving presentations include: Tantek Çelik, Matt Mullenweg, Will Norris, Jane Wells, and a personal inspirational favorite- Kathy Sierra. I am also looking forward to seeing the musical performance from Chuck Lewis aka SEO Rapper.
SF WordCamp 2008 will be held in San Francisco, CA on Saturday, August 16, 2008. This year, the event is located at the Mission Bay Conference Center, you can see the schedule here. Tickets are just $20 and include admission for the day and a free t-shirt. You can still sign up online, so get your ticket now and hope to see you there! I will be covering the event for Search Feature so I will give more details as the time comes closer.
oh yes, if you have yet to see the rapper and are curious- this video is for you.
We have been somewhat hesitant in jumping on the bandwagon to let everyone know about upgrading to Wordpress 2.6. This newest version came out about a month before scheduled and it drove many concerns as to the quality and performance of the newest platform. Overall we were happy to see a new version out given the fact that there were a number of security issues with version 2.5 as well as a minor issue for some in uploading media files.
This newest version seems to perform well although several people seem to have found some compatibility issues with a few of the quality plugins. Hopefully this will work itself out. I have noticed a number of plugin upgrades so it is nice to see the authors are maintaining them alongside the upgraded versions of WP. I know plugin authors work hard, so if you do consistently use them, be sure to give them due credit and/or give them a little something for their hard work as what they do makes our lives easier.
Wordpress 2.6 Offers The Following Improvements:
Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits: This goes along with the auto-save feature already on 2.5 which allows you to view who made what changes when to any post or page through a super-easy interface.
Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web: This one is pretty cool because it allows you to post from your Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flicker account and it automatically embeds the codes or images.
Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging: Gears is an open source browser extension project which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds. You need to download and install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer for it to work.
Theme Previews: See it before your audience does: This is great because it allows you to choose a theme without immediately making it live and active on your site. Once you choose the theme a new window pops up to show you what it looks like first.
Some of the additional changes made:
* Word count
* Image captions
* Bulk management of plugins.
* A WYSIWYG image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing.
* Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
* Plugin update notification bubble.
* Customizable default avatars.
* Ability to upload media when in full-screen mode. **There have been reports of issues here.
* Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default.
* Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
* You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
* Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
* Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
* You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
* A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
* Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
* Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
Here is a short video describing all the latest features.
To download the newest version you can grab it here. To make life simple you can just use the Automatic Upgrade plugin and have the newest version installed in just minutes.
So, you would like to add an outside RSS feed to your blog?
RSS feeds add content to your site from another site related to or potentially unrelated to your blog. Adding an RSS feed can make an impact on your content both good and bad, so its best to evaluate it to see if could work for you. One of the biggest negatives comes from the fact that they don’t contain orginial content you can control. The information comes in from outside feeds (that you can choose) and populate a page in your blog.
So, while the saying more is better.. in this case, there might be more content but is it quality? And is it proving something of value to your readers?
Now, I do have to say that on some blogs using an outside RSS feed to supplement their website’s content- can work out ok. I think it depends on the niche and the expectations for the blog. It also depends on your desire to control the content.
For a “news” or “events” type of blog, it can work well as I believe the more content there the better. It would be hard for 1 person to maintain all the information and still make it quality.
Overall, I still think the best type of content is your own. And even if you add a second or third page with RSS feeds then I feel you should still maintain the main page with your own original content otherwise your blog will just be a compilation of other peoples content and provides very little value to your readers.
So what is the easiest way to Add an RSS feed to a page on your blog?
It makes adding an RSS feed to a second page a piece of cake. You just add the code for the feed that you want and it populates with the freshest articles and info. On occasion it will bring in scrapes and spam so good just to monitor it.
So, where exactly can you find quality content from RSS feeds that is acceptable? Go Article Submit is a terrific resource to pull quality information and articles from. They are free and provide easy RSS feeds ready to use.
