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WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7, WordCamp News, 2.6.1 Beta Released

WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7, WordCamp News, 2.6.1 Beta Released

WordPress 2.6.1 Beta released for testing. Rumors fly about WordPress 2.7. Go vote for your favorite in the WordPress Plugin Competition. Lots of news for WordPress.com members including iPhone access, tags, Theme updates, image captioning, and statistics. Tons of WordCamps and WordPress Meetups around the world announced. September will be a record breaker for WordCamps. WordCamp San Francisco features hot speakers and a scavenger hunt for charity.

WordPress News

WordPress Mailing List: For those on the WordPress Announcement Mailing List, Matt Mullenweg sent out an announcement about WordPress 2.6, WordPressMU’s latest update, WordPress for iPhone, the new WordPress Theme Directory, and WordCamp San Francisco, among other WordPress news.

Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition – VOTE NOW! Have you voted yet? Get your vote in for your favorite in the WordPress Plugin Competition. There are some top notch Plugins included, and Ozh has written his review of the entrants in the competition, giving you insights into which are the ones he likes and why.

WordPress 2.6.1 Beta 1 Released: The beta 1 version of WordPress 2.6.1 has been released with more than 50 fixes, including a fix for IE users for Press This. Testers are encouraged to put it through its paces as the goal is to release WordPress 2.6.1 in time for WordCamp 2008 on August 16. New features and fixes include allowing password disabling reset per user, WordPress authentication of the Atom API, the post_status now allows query functions for values separated by commas, and more security improvements.

WordPress 2.7 Talk: There have been a few posts offering “first looks” at WordPress 2.7 due to the publishing of the WordPress Codex page for WordPress 2.7 which lists a “want list” of features as well as features being developed for the next major version of WordPress. Hack WordPress, Weblog Tools Collection, Quick Online Tips, and many others jumped on the band wagon. The list will evolve over time, so stay tuned for more specifics from the WordPress development team.

WordPress 2.7 Real News: While there are a lot of rumors flying around about what features will be in WordPress 2.7, Jacob Santos shares some insights into the Plugin installer/uninstall methods now in the trunk of WordPress 2.7. The need to cleanly uninstall WordPress Plugins has been discussed a lot over the past year and hopefully that will be the version to embrace this feature. Also, work has started on the XML-RPC Comments API development.

WordPress Facebook: Fan of WordPress? Check out the WordPress on Facebook fan page and join the fun!

WordPress iPhone: The WordPress iPhone is now at version 1.1 with a lot of improvements and a couple bug fixes. You can learn more about it on the WordPress iPhone Development Blog and study the source code on the WordPress iPhone SVN.

WordPress 2.6 Released: WordPress 2.6 was released a couple weeks ago. Make sure you upgrade immediately as this version includes security improvements and great new features.

ATTENTION WordPress 2.5 Branch No Longer Supported: The announcement of the release of WordPress 2.6 came with the news that WordPress 2.5 will no longer be supported. It is nearly identical to the new version and has little impact on Themes and Plugins.

WordPress Theme Directory Submissions: Matt Mullenweg reports that more than 300 WordPress Themes have been added to the new WordPress Theme Directory in the first 6 days. Jeff Chandler of Performancing offers a guided tour of the new WordPress Theme Directory.

WordPressMU 2.6 Released: WordPressMU 2.6 has been released and Donncha offers details on the improvements, including bringing it up to WordPress 2.6 specs.

Having Trouble Publishing Code in Posts and Comment? If you publish code in your WordPress posts and comments, WordPress may think it is code. To prevent code acting like code, WordPress automatically filters it out of the posts and comments, as does many other blogging and CMS programs. To publish code as content, see Writing Code in Your WordPress Posts and Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts.

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 iPhone Upgraded, WordCamp San Francisco Registration, Simon Dickson Rocked the UK, WordPress Theme Directory, and 201,000 Blogs Using WordPress 2.6.

WordPress Podcasts

WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Podcast: Episode 44 includes news and information on the release of WordPress 2.6, the WordPress iPhone, XML-RPC controversy, and an exclusive interview with co-founders, Elie Khoury and Jad Younan and their Woopra WordPress Plugin.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 24: Non-blog Blog with Beth Skinner, Kym Huynh and Dave Moyer featured WordPress 2.7 news, tag clouds, WordPress.com 24/7 support, using WordPress as a CMS, what defines a blog, delicious, and more WordPress news, Plugins, and tips.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Events CalendarWordCamp San Francisco Next Weekend: WordCamp San Francisco has announced the line up of speakers for next weekend’s one-day event. Using Gravatar in a new way for the first time, Andy Peatling is putting your Gravatar on the WordCamp badges for all the attendees. There will also be a WordPress Genius Bar to get personal one-on-one WordPress help and advice, and a special fundraising charity event on Sunday called the WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt. There is still time to register for WordCamp 2008. Hope to see you there.

WordCamp Utah: WordCamp Utah is now open for registration for the September 27, 2008, event. The speaker schedule is still being developed, and so far includes Matt Mullenweg, Richard Miller, Cameron Moll, Thom Allen, Ash Buckles and Alex King. The rest of the WordPress pros will be at WordCamp Portland the same weekend. :D Okay, I’ll be at WordCamp Portland.

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).

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. 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. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find 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.

WordPress Security News

WordPress SecurityAskApache WordPress Hardening Plugin: BlogSecurity covered the new AskApache WordPress Hardening Plugin, a Plugin not for the average user but someone serious about keeping their WordPress blog protected from the server level up.

WP Downloads Manager Security Vulnerability: BlogSecurity also reported that the WP Downloads Manager WordPress Plugin has a security vulnerability and should be discontinued until a fix is published.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseCreating a WordPress Theme from Scratch With Help: Max Limpag has published an interesting tutorial on creating a WordPress Theme from scratch with Yahoo UI and Aptana to create the lovely and unusual web design at Tugkaran.com. This is an example of how you can build your own Theme from the ground up, with a little help from some powerful tools. Why reinvent the wheel?

Don’t Like the WordPress Theme Preview? Viper007bond has created the Disable Theme Preview WordPress Plugin so you can turn off the new feature in your WordPress 2.6+ Administration Panels.

Nathan Rice’s News WordPress Theme: Nathan Rice has written released the Proximity News Theme, premium Theme with some very innovative features to create a news style blog. He has put hundreds of hours into this design with interesting customization features like a “smart” home page, highly customizable sidebar, custom author Page templates, story thumbnails, clean search results Page, breadcrumb navigation, good category archives Pages, built-in Feedburner option, ability to exclude Pages from the blog navigation, post by category without duplication, easily embedded video code capability, ad space, and more. Premium Themes are starting to earn their “premium” qualification as designers like Rice push the boundaries of WordPress as a CMS.

Inline Documentation for WordPress: Peter Westwood has created the WordPress Inline Documentation site with PHPdocumentor which outlines all the classes, functions, and more in WordPress. This is excellent for Theme and Plugin authors. This joins the ranks of other core programming functions and resources such as the WordPress Codex Function Reference. Peter Westwood also has a good guide on how to track deprecated functions for WordPress coders and extenders.

Using Classes in WordPress Plugins: Stephen Rider of Nerdaphernalia wrote about how to use classes in your WordPress Plugins to improve code portability and minimize name conflicts within the code. He discusses the pros and cons and highly recommends you wrap your Plugins’ functions in a PHP class to future proof your Plugins.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I found recently:

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 interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

See Also
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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 logoWordPress.com Members Invited to WordCamp San Francisco: Matt Mullenweg made a invitation to all WordPress.com members to join other WordPress fans at WordCamp San Francisco 2008 on August 16 and for the WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt.

July Stats and Features Report: The July Wrap-Up Stats for WordPress.com were announced and include over 271,000 new members, 3,110,479 file uploads, 1,379,346,821 pageviews, and 1,102,039 active blogs, the highest number ever of active blogs on WordPress.com! The new WordPress for iPhone also works with WordPress.com blogs, which means members can now blog from their iPhones. Most WordPress.com Themes have been updated to handle tags and categories. Remember, the tags link to ALL WordPress.com blog posts with that same tag, not just the posts on your blog. A new caption feature has been added to images, too, along with image alignment CSS classes to match the styles in WordPress 2.6 new image and gallery feature.

WordPress.com Now 24/7 Support: WordPress.com announced full-time 24-7 member support. You got a problem, they are there for you, no matter what time zone or time. Response time is about 24 hours, though usually it is less than that. The WordPress.com Forums continues to provide help and support for members by members and staff, and is also a great place to meet fellow WordPress.com members.

iPhone Updated for WordPress.com Themes: The new iPhone WordPress application has been updated to work with the Prologue and Mdot WordPress Themes on . The mobile interface has been updated, which can be reached at m.wordpress.com. They are working on improving the look, but for now, you can post to your blog, check stats, add a bookmark, and other goodies to your WordPress blog from your iPhone.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicLooking Back Into the History of WordPress: Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Collection shares “Evolution of WordPress: B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0”, a history lesson on how WordPress grew out of B2/Cafelog in the early days.

Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug. Go get yours at the along with t-shirts and hoodies. Don’t want to buy one? Enter the WordCast Mugshot Contest and you could win one, alone with some other fun schwag. A lot of blogs are offering WordPress mugs for prizes. Why not you?

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.

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 , 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.

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.

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

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

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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 (4)
  • It seems I was wrong, WordPress 2.7 will be getting Auto Upgrade of the WordPress versions. So it will seem it will come out soon enough to upgrade all of my Work Blogs to that version. It is also early enough to test and work out many of the bugs before it hits the mainstream.

    Of course, there will be problems and bugs when it is released to the mainstream, but hopefully they will be fixed when 2.7.1 comes out.

    It is also not a good time to be on Trunk. I’m keeping my blog at a revision before all of the said changes where committed. I’m not upgrading until the features are stable. Only testers and people who want to lose their blogs should test the auto upgrader. That said, the more that test it, the more stable it will be when it is released.

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