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WordPress News: WordPress Wins at Irish Blogger Awards, WordPress Events Everywhere, WordPress for PowerPoint, Flash Security Issue, Feedburner Deadline

WordPress News: WordPress Wins at Irish Blogger Awards, WordPress Events Everywhere, WordPress for PowerPoint, Flash Security Issue, Feedburner Deadline

March is WordPress month with more WordCamps and WordPress Meetups than ever. Will April beat it? Lester Chan makes a WordPress PowerPoint Template for presentations. WordPress wins the Best Irish Blogs Awards. FeedBurner transfer deadline is this weekend. Adobe Flash security vulnerability found, impacting many Plugins and WordPress blogs. And a lot more WordPress news coming your way.

WordPress News

The Best Bloggers in Ireland Use WordPress: Donncha O’Caoimh attended the Best Irish Blogs awards and reports that WordPress powers the best Irish blogs. Cathal Garvey created a comparison chart that found WordPress and WordPress.com represented 66% of the nominees, followed by Blogspot, then Movable Type. Has another country done similar comparisons?

WordPress PowerPoint Presentation Template: In anticipation of presenting a WordPress program at Blogout’09 in Singapore, Lester Chan went looking for a WordPress style template for Powerpoint. He couldn’t find one. So he created the WordPress PowerPoint Template that uses the official WordPress Logos and Graphics and looks very WordPress 2.7. He offers it free for anyone else searching as he did. Thanks, Lester!

FeedBurner Transfer to Google FeedBurner Deadline is Now: As reported by Weblog Tools Collection’s Mark Ghosh, FeedBurner has been taken over by Google and FeedBurner users are required to transfer their FeedBurner feeds, or check to ensure they have indeed been transferred, as he found out recently that his weren’t. Feed must be transferred as of February 28, this weekend, to the “new” version of Google FeedBurner.

WordPress 2.7.1 Released: WordPress 2.7.1, a maintenance release, is out. If you are using WordPress 2.7, take advantage of the automatic built-in upgrade. If you are not, then consider upgrading to WordPress 2.7. Sixty-five files were modified with 68 bug and feature fixes and improvements, and I covered more details about the release on my blog.

WordPress 2.8 News: Ryan Boren reports that development for WordPress 2.8 is underway. A lot of the work is focused on the script loading and improving database performance, as well as the WordPress Theme installer and WordPress Widgets Administration Panel. Custom tag taxonomies now have a built in Administation Panel, and support for PHP5 to permit proper timezone and Daylight Savings Time support.

Flash Security Vulnerability Warning: F-Secure reports there is a security vulnerability with Adobe Flash, specifically a Adobe Flash Player remote code execution vulnerability which impacts several versions. Many WordPress Plugins rely upon Flash, as do many WordPress blog. It is recommended you upgrade Adobe Flash accordingly.

Don’t Let WordPress in Your Domain Name: Do you use “wordpress” in your blog’s domain name, such as wordpresssomething.com or somethingwordpress.net? This is in violation of the WordPress trademark. If you find a site using WordPress in their domain name, remind them of the trademark rules so they won’t be asked later to remove it. And WordPress is spelled with a capital P.

Considering Hiring a WordPress Consultant? WPHacks had a guest post called “Using WordPress Consultants – What You Need To Know!” with good tips for hiring a WordPress consultant.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Are you just catching up now to our Blog Herald WordPress News? Check out the past news in last week’s WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searchable, iPhone App Tested, and More.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Events CalendarWordCamp News: WordCamp India and WordCamp Miami were last weekend and were resounding successes from all news reports. WordCamp Denver is this weekend. WordCamp Toronto is holding contests, and just announced the winner of their logo design contest. WordPress Meetups are everywhere, and March is turning out to have the largest collection of WordPress Meetup events ever!

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.

February 2009

  • WordCamp Denver 2009 – February 28, 2009 (Facebook)
  • Dallas/Fort Worth WordPress Meetup – Dallas, Texas – February 28, 2009
  • Atlanta WordPress Users Group Meetup – Learning WordPress 2.7 – Atlanta, Georgia – February 28, 2009
  • The Chicago WordPress February Meetup – February 28, 2009

March 2009

  • Austin, Texas – Installing Full Version of WordPress – March 3, 2009
  • New Jersey – The New Jersey WordPress March Meetup – March 4, 2009
  • Mobile, Alabama – Gulf Coast WordPress/Blogger WordPress Meetup – March 5, 2009
  • Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – March 5, 2009
  • Los Angeles WordPress Users Group – March 8, 2009
  • Southern California WordPress Meetup – Long Beach – March 15, 2009
  • Ft Lauderdale – South Florida WordPress March Meetup User Group – March 11, 2009
  • Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – March 12, 2009
  • Austin, Texas – SXSW 2009 – March 13-22, 2009
  • Arizona – The Scottsdale WordPress March Meetup – March 15, 2009
  • Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – March 19, 2009
  • Atlanta, Georgia – Atlanta WordPress Users Group – March 24, 2009
  • New York City WordPress Meetup – The Wonderful World of Widgets – March 24, 2009
  • Seattle WordPress Meetup – March 24, 2009
  • Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – Thursday, March 26, 2009
  • Atlanta, Georgia – Atlanta WordPress Users Group Meetup – March 28, 2009
  • North Carolina – Greater Charlotte Area WordPress Group March Meetup – March 28, 2009
  • Alameda, California – The East Bay WordPress March Mash-up – March 29, 2009

April 2009

  • New Orleans, Louisiana – WordCamp NOLA – April 10-11, 2008 (Twitter)

May 2009

  • Chicago – Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) – May 1-5, 2009
  • WordCamp Toronto – May 8-10, 2009
  • Ohio – WordCamp Columbus – May 16, 2009
  • Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia – WordCamp Mid-Atlantic – May 16, 2009
  • Milan, Italy – WordCamp Milan 2009 – May 22-23, 2009
  • WordCamp San Francisco 2009 – May 30, 2009

June 2009

  • WordCamp Chicago – June 6-7, 2009
  • WordCamp Dallas 2009 – Dallas, Texas – June 27-28, 2009

July 2009

  • WordCamp UK – England, July 18-19, 2009

October 2009

  • WordCamp New York City 2009 – October 24, 2009

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

  • WordCamp Indy (Indianapolis)
  • WordCamp Augusta
  • WordCamp Seattle (WordCamp Seattle Twitter)
  • WordCamp Argentina
  • WordCamp Perú
  • WordCamp New Zealand
  • WordCamp Iowa

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News

WordCamp Denver News: WordCamp Denver is this weekend. According to Alex King, it is sold out and they are now offering “overflow tickets” to fit in some extra people. They are also looking for volunteers to record the sessions in HD.

WordCamp Toronto News: The Logo Design Contest Winner for WordCamp Toronto 2009 is Paul Morrison, a student at Seneca College Digital Media Arts student. Congrats.

WordCamp San Francisco 2009 News: WordCamp San Francisco 2009 is open for registration. Some hot speakers are already lined up for the May 30, 2009, event at the Mission Bay Conference Center, including Matt Cutts, Tim Ferris, Philip Greenspun, Douglas Hanna, Tara Hunt, Andy Peatling, and Steve Sounders. This often sells out so get your ticket and arrangements to attend the parent WordCamp event of the year now.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere

  • WordPress Meetup: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. 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 and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordPress”, as many track WordPress event announcements there.
  • WordCamp: 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. Get a Twitter account and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordCamp.
  • WordPress and WordCamp Event News: In addition to our weekly Blog Herald WordPress News, you can learn more about the various WordPress and WordCamp Events on the official WordCamp Central site, The WordCamp Report, Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events, and Upcoming: Public events tagged with “WordCamp”.

WordPress Fan Blogs and Podcasts

Weblog Tools Collection: Recent news, Plugin and Theme reviews, and helpful posts on Weblog Tools Collection include:

Recent posts by Weblog Tools Collection include:

  • Plugin Review: Post Avatar
  • WordPress Plugin Releases for 02/23
  • The manual Excerpt in WordPress. What, why, how, tips and plugins
  • WordPress Theme Releases for 24/02
  • WordPress Plugin Releases for 02/25
  • Branded Admin
  • Free WordPress Theme – Soho Serenity
  • New WordPress Wiki Plugin
  • Top 60 incredibly useful WordPress plugins to power up your blog
  • Updated Plugin: Custom Field Taxonomies
  • WordPress Themed PowerPoint Slides
  • WordPress Tips 2009

WordCast Podcast: Dave Moyer and the WordCast team take the week off due to illness, and preparation for WordCamp Denver, where Dave and Lorelle VanFossen will be entertaining the masses with live podcasts and video interviews. Dave Moyer will be presenting a program on podcasting with WordPress. In the last podcast with Lorelle on WordPress with Dave Moyer, WordCast 45: Is that WordPress on your wrist? reported live as the permanent WordPress logo tattoo was created on Ed Morita, talked about WordPress 2.7.1, interesting WordPress Plugins, new ideas for WordPress Widgets, Andy Skelton getting married, BuddyPress, choosing a WordPress consultant, Valdimir’s new WordPress Plugin book, celebrity WordPressers, Twestivals, and more WordPress news and tips.

WordPress Weekly Podcast: Episode 42 – How Could WordPress Die? covered a look at the future, and demise, of WordPress, WordPress Tips, Themes, and trivia. Next week the WordPress Weekly podcast team will be off and it will resume February 27th. WordPress Weekly covered David Peralty is joining as co-host of the WordPress Weekly podcast with Jeff Chandler. The WordPress Weekly is sponsored by Weblog Tools Collection and hosted on TalkShoe.

Talking WordPress Plugins: The most recent episode of the The WordPress Plugins Podcast was Plugins 008 – WP-DB-Backup Plugin covering the popular WP-DB-Backup WordPress Plugin and offering tips on how to backup your WordPress blog.

WP Engineer: WP Engineer has tips and techniques for using WordPress, including:

  • rel=”canonical” – URL for WordPress Theme

WPRecipes: The WPRecipes site offers tips and techniques for using WordPress, and recent posts include:

  • How to: Disable the “please update now” message in WP dashboard
  • How to: Get the first image from the post and display it

WPTavern: The recent news from the WPTavern blog and forum includes:

See Also
Google search

  • 140+ WordPress Theme Showcase
  • 50 Plus WordPress Tutorials
  • An Idea For WordPress Ideas
  • Changing Feeds In The WordPress Dashboard
  • Cliff Note Version Of WordCamp Germany
  • WP AJax Edit Comments Needs New Dev
  • WPDesigner Breathes And Then Dies

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseGetting WordPress Widgets Out of the Sidebar: New Name: Justin Tadlock is talking to the WordPress development community about breaking WordPress Widgets out of the sidebar by either renaming the sidebar.php or coming up with a new name for labeling WordPress Widgets based upon usage and location.

Localizing WordPress Plugins: In “echo __(’I Hate Localizing My Plugins. How About Something Different?’);,” Ozh makes light then gets serious about how time consuming the process of localizing WordPress Plugins for translation and makes some recommendations on creating and updating .pot template files. Localization applies to Themes as well, so if you are WordPress Plugin or Theme author, you might want in on the conversation.

Pasting a Lot of Code? Just like tiny, shortcut URLs are now the fad, did you know you could do the same with code? If you are posting a lot of code on your WordPress blog, on the WordPress forums, or elsewhere, you can use a code paste bin such as Paste Bin to store your code for free and just link to it. It’s a must resource for the WordPresss support forums, so why not try it with social media?

WordPress 2.8 News and Development: Articles worth noting on WordPress 2.8 development include:

  • Optimizing Script Loading
  • Optimizing script loading part 2
  • Optimizing script loading, implementation
  • Preparing for WordPress 2.8: Using JavaScript in WordPress Plugins
  • Change your WordPress Theme on …
  • WordPress 2.8 body_class, automatic_feed_links
  • What a body!

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

  • Image List From Custom Fields WordPress Plugin displays images from recent posts with links to the posts. Images are pulled from the custom fields not from the post itself.
  • WordPress Flag Comments WordPress Plugin gives readers the power to flag WordPress comments as inappropriate, alerting the blog administrator to respond to the comment.
  • JavaScript Logic: WordPress Plugin
  • Media Library Gallery creates a gallery with post with image attachments.

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 Jobs: WordPress Jobs is a WordPress Job service hosted by Weblog Tools Collection. If you are looking for a WordPress-related job to hire or for hire, you can look there and check out the Automattic WordPress Consultants List and the WP-Pro mailing list.

  • Upgrade WordPress install, migrate to new Plugins
  • Project Designer (approx 10-20 hours)
  • Setup/Consultant
  • Web Designer/Producer at GasPedal and the Blog Council
  • Company Website Theme Refresh and CMS implementation
  • WordPress Blogger
  • Tweetbacks Plugin Tweak
  • BuddyPress Project
  • Custom WordPress Plugin
  • Custom WordPress Theme Needed for Baby Product Company
  • Looking for a custom WP E-commerce website to be designed

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoComment Threading on WordPress.com: WordPress.com announced comment threading and other cool comment features for their free blog hosting service. All WordPress Themes are now set up to enable threaded comments (Settings > Discussion > Other Comment Settings), breaking comments into pages, and changing the comment order from the oldest comments on top to the newest comments at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom of the list. Comment threads are allowed up to ten levels.

Blog Design Contest on WordPress.com: The first blogging design contest has been announced for WordPress.com called “I <3 Blogging Design Contest” co-produced by Infectious. This isn’t a blog web design or WordPress Theme contest. It is a graphic design contest. Design a “why I love blogging and WordPress” graphic design and if yours wins, it could be printed and sold on laptop and iPhone skins around the world through the Infectious store. Let your creative self loose and show the world how you would design what blogging and WordPress mean to you.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Videos from WordPress.tv: WordPress.tv has screencasting tips and resources to help you create WordPress screencasts for possible inclusion on the new WordPress resource site. Some recent WordPress tips and WordCamp videos include:

  • WordCamp NY 2008: Jeremy Clarke – Running a Blog Network Part Three
  • Wordcamp Utah 2008: Matt Mullenweg on the Year of Themes
  • WordCamp SF 2008 – Stephen O’ Grady: Open Source Business Models
  • Creating an image gallery
  • The WordPress.com dashboard – introduction
  • WordPress 2.7 Coltrane
  • The Calendar and Archives widgets – making navigating your blog easier
  • The Links widget – displaying your links from the sidebar

WordPress Tips and Techniques: Here are a few more WordPress tips from around the WordPress Community:

  • One MySQL Configuration Tip That Can Dramatically Improve MySQL Performance
  • Create a Simple Calendar Using PHP
  • How to Display Page Children on the Parent Page
  • Fun with WordPress 2.7: Adding Asides without Hacking the Loop
  • How You Can Use WordPress Functions to Run a Smarter Blog 92
  • Do-It-Yourself WordPress Hover Menu (Pop-Up)

WordPress Tips on Twitter: I’ve started sharing WordPress Tips and Plugin suggestions I’ve collected over the past couple years on Twitter at @lorelleonwp. I’ll be posting one WordPress tip and one WordPress Plugin link every morning (PST) covering recent versions of WordPress and WordPress usages and features.

Want Your WordPress Tip Shared Here? The WordPress Community generates some of the best WordPress tips, techniques, and resources. 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 [email protected].

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicThings You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:

  • Help Installing WordPress: Installing WordPress for Free
  • Finding WordPress Plugins: WordPress Plugin Directory
  • Finding WordPress Themes: WordPress Themes Directory
  • WordPress Logos: The official WordPress logos are available for use on your blogs or WordPress event promotions. Please start with the official logos even if you wish to redesign them.
  • WordPress Experts Found: Automattic WordPress Consultants List, WordPress Jobs, and the WP-Pro mailing list
  • WordPress Facebook Community: WordPress on Facebook
  • WordPress Bugs: Reporting Bugs in WordPress
  • Online WordPress Manual: WordPress Codex
  • Have Your Say: WordPress Ideas
  • WordPress is Trademarked: You are not allowed to use WordPress in your domain name.
  • WordPress is WordPress: It’s spelled “WordPress” not “WordPress” and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).
  • WordPress Schwag for Sale: WordPress Shop

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

  • WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searcable, iPhone App Tested, and More
  • WordPress News: Release Week News, WordPress 2.7.1, BuddyPress, WordPress MU, and More Releases
  • WordPress News: Logogate, WordCamps Everywhere, WordPress.tv, BuddyPress, WordPressMU, WordPress Plugin Podcast, and More
  • WordPress News: WordPress.tv, WordCamp Whistler, WordPress Logo, City Saves Money, and More
  • WordPress News: Buddy Press Almost Ready, WordCamp Las Vegas Success, Plugin Author Tips, WordPress Tattoo

WordPress News Sources

  • WordPress Planet
  • WordPress Development Blog
  • WordPress.com Blog
  • Weblog Tools Collection
  • The WordPress Podcast
  • Lorelle on WordPress
  • Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
  • WordPress Publisher Blog
  • Planet WordPress Canada
  • The WordCamp Report
  • WordCast
  • WordPress Jobs
  • Weblog Tools Collection General WordPress News
  • PressItFor.me
  • Weblog Tools Collection Videos
  • WordPress Weekly Podcast

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 week, the Blog Herald features WordPress News, a weekly column by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact her at this special email address: [email protected]

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