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WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Soon, Security Upgrade, PodCamp-WordCamp Hawaii, PollDaddy, and More

WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Soon, Security Upgrade, PodCamp-WordCamp Hawaii, PollDaddy, and More

Work on WordPress 2.7 is rocking, but a security upgrade also announced for WordPress 2.6.3. Podcamp/WordCamp Hawaii success! Hot WordCamps coming up in Israel, DC, Charlotte, Australia, and more. PollDaddy WordPress Plugin and now on WordPress.com. Akismet gets stats. Gravatars required. And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

Security Upgrade Announced: WordPress 2.6.3 has been released covering a Snoopy class vulnerability. This is a mandatory security upgrade and involves replacing two files. Download WordPress 2.6.3 now to protect your blog.

WordPress 2.7 Development: The WordPress 2.7 development team is working overtime to help educate and prepare the WordPress Community for WordPress 2.7 and its new interface. They have been testing the final version with some users and getting input from all over the world on how the program is working for them. The official release is due November 10, and testing will continue right up until the release. Your feedback and input is critical, so be sure and report in to the Alpha/Beta sections on the and the mailing lists. So far, the reaction from most has been exceptionally positive and most are eager for the new version. Articles are coming out with news and information on the new version all around the web and include:

WordPressMU Updated: With the recent announcement of WordPress 2.6.3 security update, WordPress MU 2.6.3 is out with the security protected upgrade.

PollDaddy: With the recent acquisition of PollDaddy by Automattic, WordPress.com users can now use PollDaddy on their blogs to offer polls and surveys to their users to gather more information and provide interaction. There is also a PollDaddy WordPress Plugin available for full version users.

Akismet Stats: The latest version of Akismet 2.2.1 now comes with stats to track your comment metrics including missed spam and false positives, among other stats. At WordCamps around the world, Matt Mullenweg is warning people to take care when pulling a comment out of comment spam. Some may look legit but aren’t. Comment spammers are getting smarter, but as a community supported tool, Akismet has 99.925% accuracy for capturing comment spam. Better than email at 95% accuracy.

Why Commenters and Publishers Need Gravatars: Devlounge explains “Gravatars: Why Both Commenters and Publishers Should Use It” in a great post on the benefits of using the popular Gravatars, avatars used with blogs and forums around the world to create an avatar, an image of yourself or logo, which appears when you leave comments. The new Gravatar Importer for Google Contacts imports Gravatars and syncs them with your Google contacts using Gravatars so you see their image in your Gmail account.

WordPress in Your Language: Peter Westwood reminds everyone that WordPress is available in many languages and offers some tips for WordPress in your language.

Anatomy of a Denial of Service Attack: Running servers is a complicated task, especially when fighting off enemies. In “Anatomy of a Denial of Service Attack,” WordPress.com server guru Barry Abrahamson outlines a recent Distributed Denial of Service Attack, offering an inside look into how this works and what is being done to stop them and protect WordPress.com bloggers.

Compliance with the WordPress Trademark: Recently, in compliance with the WordPress trademark and respect for the organization, Hack WordPress has rebranded as WPHacks.com with a new Theme and mission to bring even more WordPress hacks to your WordPress blog.

Feedburner Not Working? Go WordPress Feed: Many are becoming disatified with Feedburner to funnel all their WordPress blog feeds and are returning back to the native WordPress feed. Headsetoptions is disabling Feedburner feeds due to excessive abuse and scrapping of their feeds. Are you considering switching back?

The WordPress Podcast: Last week’s Episode 45 with the Matt Mullenweg Interview covered, Automattic acquisition of Intense Debate, how Automattic works, WordPress security issues, blog statistics and marketshare, GPL, the future of WordPress, WordCamps, and more. This week, Episode 46: WordPress 2.7 preview, Automattic aquires PollDaddy, Podcasting for Dummies and Practical Web Design Magazine is out and includes a new blog design, Amazon S3 WordPress Plugin Simple Storage Service, MobilePress, WordCamps, and WordPress Plugins, Themes and tips.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 33: Thanks for the Memories featured Daniel Brusilovsky of Teens in Tech and Apple Universe covering WordPress, Small Potatoes and his Theme site, and the need for Dave Moyer to figure out how podcasting works before the next episode. Last week’s episode, WordCast 32: Is this Jeopardy question?, was a fun filled podcast on WordPress covering running a WordCamp, Gravatars, and even screaming babies on blogs.

WordPress Weekly Podcast: Configure This is the latest podcast from Jeff Chandler on and covers the WordPress news of the week, WordPress 2.7, inline documentation, Microsoft Web Platform Installer, and more.

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 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).

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

WordPress Theme Program in New York: The New York City WordPress Meetup Group is offering a WordPress Theme creation workshop on November 18, 2008 for USD $5 a person.

South Florida WordPress Meetup Group: If you are living in Pompano Beach, Florida, or nearby, check out the new South Florida WordPress Users Meetup on November 11, 2008, for a discussion on WordPress as a CMS.

WordCamp Israel: WordCamp Israel (english) reports that over 250 people have registered as of last week and Raanan Bar-Cohen will be attending representing WordPress and Automattic. The event is still a couple weeks away and enthusiasm is very high.

WordPress in Wales: Peter Westwood presented Talking WordPress in Wales, a workshop on WordPress for open source software and social media enthusiasms in North Wales. He’s shared the slides of his program so everyone can learn.

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News

WordCamp Charlotte: WordCamp Charlotte has a new logo and t-shirt which reflects the “Queen City” image.

WordCamp Israel News: WordCamp Israel is November 16, 2008, in Tel Aviv and registration is open.

WordCamp Australia News: will be a speaker at WordCamp Australia in Sydney on November 29-30, 2008. Registration is open and the speakers are lining up to speak. It is expected to be a rockin’ WordCamp event.

WordCampED News: WordCamp Ed(ucation) is set for November 22, 2008, near Washington, D.C., at George Mason University Center for History and New Media. Registration is open and will include unconference style sessions. The event is free and they will be accepting donations to offset expenses. If you are an educator, edublogger, or work in education, this could be a very exciting WordPress event for you.

Past WordCamp Events

Podcamp/WordCamp Hawaii Next Weekend: Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii on Oct 24, 2008, was a resounding success with the hashtag #pch08 making it to number two under “Halloween” on Twitter and other social media sites. It was a fabulous ending to the successful Hawaii Geek Week. I posted some articles here on the about the week and will do recap in the next few days.

WordCamp China: There were two WordCamps in China, one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai WordCamp China in Beijing and Shanghai. Matt Mullenweg shared his images of Shanghai WordCamp recently.

See Also
Apple Silicon Processor

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. Also, check out the latest WordCamp news from The WordCamp Report.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseWP Super Cache Garbage Collecting Upgrade: WP Super Cache has been upgraded with the garbage collector feature which cleans up expired cache files on a regular basis instead of after a specific number of hits.

WordPress Template Tag References and Resources: I recently highlighted a few WordPress Template Tag references and resources, including filters and hooks. planetOzh found another one: Template Tag reference to join the rest:

WordPress Helper WordPress Plugin: WPHacks recommends a new FireFox Extension called WordPress Helper which adds WordPress-related features to your right-click contextual menu, helping you use WordPress even better in your browser.

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

There are now 3,198 plugins, 14,224,019 downloads, and counting in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Have you played with any new Plugins lately? Here are some goodies I found.

  • Most Comments WordPress Plugin displays a list of the posts with the most comments and is customizable.
  • WP-RTL WordPress Plugin adds two buttons to your TinyMCE editor to allow those writing in LTR and RTL languages to switch directions. Great for Arabic, Hebrew, and other RTL languages.
  • Events WordPress Plugin creates an event calendar to track events and appointments and future projects and display them on your site.
  • MobilePress WordPress Plugin assists your blog display on mobile handsets and includes customizes Themes and works across a wide spectrum of mobile browsers and devices.
  • Cronjob Control WordPress Plugin shows you active WordPress cronjobs in the Administration Panels and allows you to stop the cronjobs.

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 found as I explore the web looking for WordPress resources:

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 Comment Reply Via Email Beta Testing Project: WordPress.com announced a beta test of the new Comment Reply Via Email feature coming in WordPress 2.7. Instead of visiting the WordPress Administration Panels to respond to comments, you can get email notification and reply directly from the emails to your comments, making the process efficient and easier.

WordPress 2.7 Implementation: Already is using some of the new features in WordPress 2.7, and testing of some features continues. Expect to see some more inclusion of features over the next couple weeks, but Matt Mullenweg says that WordPress 2.7 in full will be on WordPress.com near to the release of the full version to the public. They are working on the full version of WordPress development and need to adjust a few features before launching it on the free blog hosting service. Be prepared for some exciting improvements to your WordPress interface.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicWordPress Logos: The official WordPress logos are available on as are WordPress fan art featuring variations on the WordPress logo and artwork.

Things You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:

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 (4)
  • Phew, for a week or so, I thought this series was gone but glad to be proved wrong. I was having WordPress Wednesday withdrawals!

    One item struck me in that, what is the difference between switching from using Feedburner to the native RSS feed? If scraping is the reason, isn’t that something that happens whether it is a FeedBurner feed or not?

    • That’s what I thought at first. I think in the end you are right, but if feedburner scraping is being specifically targeted, switching will make a difference, but only temporarily. We’ll have to ask Jonathan Bailey to chime in on the specifics of this and do a little research. :D Any change will stop any action for a while, which makes many believe that switching feeds, adding CAPTCHAs and comment torture tests, and such work. They do for a while, but only because the right bot that knows how to bypass them hasn’t shown up yet. Give them a minute or two and they will knock. :D

  • We’re all eagerly waiting for the release of WordPress 2.7. With the cool new features we’ve been reading about 2.7 here at BloggingPro, our final sigh of relief would probably be this cool new way WordPress communicates its 2.7 development “so far”.

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