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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: Which Bookmarklet, WordPress 2.5.1 Mandatory Upgrade, WordPress Plugin Contest, WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco, and WordPress Mugs

Which bookmarklet do you use to post to your WordPress blog? WordPress 2.5.1 is a mandatory upgrade with security patches. Are you ready for WordPress 2008 in San Francisco in August? Weblog Tools Collection hosts a WordPress Plugins contest this month. Get your WordPress Secret Key to secure your WordPress blog. Greasemonkey doesn’t automatically upgrade, so manually upgrade to continue using Auntie Akismet and Comment Ninja Greasemonkey Scripts for WordPress. Discounts for WordPress fans to Event Apart events. Get your WordPress mug now! And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

How Do You Post via Bookmarklet to Your WordPress Blog? Matt Mullenweg asks what is your favorite posting bookmarklet on his blog as an informal poll to determine how people post to their WordPress blog and how WordPress can help them do that more efficiently.

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.

WordPress 2.5 Secret Key: WordPress 2.5 now makes cookies more secure and protected from attacks with a new user-definable constant called SECRET_KEY. Ryan Boren talks more about this issue in depth, and you can get your unique secret key for your WordPress 2.5x blog to improve your blog’s security.

WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collection has announced a new WordPress Plugin Competition specifically for WordPress 2.5. It will begin May 10 and end July 10, giving us 30 days of non-stop fabulous Plugins!

WordPress on a Windows Home Server: Install We Got Served offers tips for installing WordPress on the new Windows Home Server.

WordPress Community Discounts: An Event Apart Discount for their events is now available for WordPress users, resulting in a discount up to USD $200 for any Event Apart events.

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.

WordPress Podcast: WordPress Podcast Episode 40 with Charles Stricklin and Jonathan Bailey covers WordPress and Technorati issues, WordCamp Dallas, Woopra, Weblog Tools Collection Videos, Apple bundling WordPress into iPhone, and more WordPress Themes and news about WordPress.

WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Live Show Episode 15 featured David Peralty, Blog Herald, BloggingPro.com and SplashPress Media and discussions on the business of blogging.

Do You Want to Help with WordPress Development and Community? If you would like to help with the , 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: WordPress 2.5.1 Released, WordPress 2008 in August, Plugins Contest, 3 Million, WordPress.com Responds to Brail Court Ban, and More.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Events CalendarWordCamp 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.

New WordCamp Site for WordCamps: The new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, and includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp.

News From WordCamp Paris? I was looking for news about WordCamp Paris and I haven’t found much. Please let me know so I can share the fun here on the WordPress Wednesday Weekly news.

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):

WordPress Security News

WordPress SecurityIs WordPress Safe? With a lot of rumors, over-reactions, and scares going around about security issues and WordPress, I addressed some of this in WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares. The best recommendation to protect your blog from hackers? Update.

How Do I Know if My WordPress Blog is Vulnerable and Has Been Attacked? Your WordPress blog is vulnerable if it is not versions 2.5, 2.3.3, 2.1.3, or 2.0.11. Upgrade now. See the WordPress Release Archive for past versions. For more information, see a past issue of the WordPress Wednesday News.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseWordPress Plugin Error Management: Weblog Tools Collection offers “Error Management for WordPress Plugins”, tips for improving how a WordPress Plugin handles and responds to errors using the WP_Error.

Tips for Creating Your Own Administration Panels Color Scheme: Weblog Tools Collection offers tips to create your own Administration Panels color scheme to customize the interface for your own WordPress blog.

Let the Reader Decide: Mark Jaquith explains why he let’s the reader decide in his new version of Subscribe to Comments by leaving the subscribe to comments checkbox unchecked by default. This brought a round of cheers by many frustrated with finding themselves subscribed to comments on a blog that they did not intend to do so. By giving the control back to the reader and commenter, those who want to subscribe are there by choice, a much more powerful stance. Great work, Mark! Let’s hope it sets a standard for all similar WordPress Plugins.

Where is PodPress? Weblog Tools Collection and others have been asking what happened to The popular PodPress WordPress Plugin since there was a glitch with the site and not much news lately. Well, it seems that a new version of PodPress is almost ready for release and includes a lot more customization features and will be branching out to include Joomla and Drupal as well as WordPress. Stay tuned for more news.

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: The following are some interesting WordPress Plugins I’ve uncovered over the past few weeks:

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 Techniques and Tips

Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

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 W logoComparing Blogger to WordPress.com: My Internet Stuff has a comparison of Google Blogger and WordPress.com Blogs with a chart that lists some of the pros and cons of which service to use. It’s worth exploring if you are considering switching. I know which one wins. :D

April Numbers: WordPress.com April Wrap-up covers the numbers and enthusiasm over the new Monotone WordPress Theme. WordPress.com reached 3 million registered blogs with 240,494 blogs created, 281,729 new users joined, 2,533,704 file uploads, about 740 gigabytes of new files, 3,258,032 posts and 1,330,355 new pages, and 5,775,721 comments. WordPress.com broke a billion total pageviews across all the blogs for the first time. Some other interesting numbers included 30% of pageviews are to blogs in non-English languages with Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian the most popular. Visitors from outside the United States accounted for 63% and 93% of pageviews were by people not logged into WordPress.com, which means WordPress.com blogs get the majority of visitors from outside the WordPress.com community.

WordPress.com Admin Bar New Design: Giving up on the distinctive blue colored bar, the WordPress.com Admin Bar has a new look: Gray. This change is to better match the new WordPress 2.5 interface and improve the contrast between the Admin Bar and the WordPress Theme design colors.

See Also
Mobile Report Tools

Control Avatars on Your WordPress.com Blog: WordPress.com offers Default Avatar Options now in the Settings > Discussion panel. You can turn avatars on or off on your WordPress.com blog, choose a rating to keep only “safe” or “anything goes” rated avatars displayed on your blog, and choose a default other than a blank avatar in case the commenter doesn’t have an avatar registered with their email address. The options are courtesy of Viper007bond, a long time developer and contributor to WordPress.

WordPress.com Gets Sphere Possibly Related Links: Some thought these were neat. Many don’t like them. They are Possibly Related Posts, a new feature announced this week by WordPress.com in conjunction with Sphere. The goal of the feature is to bring in more links to your blog and connect the diverse blog community together on WordPress.com. WordPress.com promises an increase of 5-10% increase in traffic from this new feature, but many have turned it off as they want more control over their outgoing links and the links often do not relate nor are appropriate. The feature can be turned on or off through the Design > Extras panel. Matt Mullenweg promises that soon you will have more control over which blogs these links will link to, though we’re still waiting to see what that means. Check out the WordPress.com Forums for more discussions on this issue and to have your say.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicUnderstanding the Power of the WordPress Community: Jacobs Santos talks about the WordPress Community in a loving but honest way saying:

I’ve learned more during the 8 months while on the WordPress Hackers mailing list, than I have during 2 years of self motivated development.

It is interesting however, you get more out of WordPress becoming a member of the community, whether on the forums, blogosphere, or on one of the mailing lists. I can see why Lorelle holds each member in such high regards. These people are a small percentage of what makes WordPress what it is, but they do a lot more to gain the trust of others.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The 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 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.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list 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.

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 and . 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 , the online manual for WordPress Users.

Shop WordPress: You can now buy t-shirts, hoodies or mugs with the WordPress logo on them in the WordPress Shop.

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the 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 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

View Comments (2)
  • Great stuff! Thanks for sharing, one fresh idea and you can change the world, keep up the great work.

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