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WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News

WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News

WordPress blogs continue to be attacked by hackers. Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition entries announced. BuddyPress makes WordPress social. Pithy WordPress sayings wanted by the WordPress Podcast, along with your favorite WordPress Plugins. The All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin will no longer be supported. WordPress Theme designers: why not make the Administration Panels match your WordPress Theme? It’s easy!

WordPress News

WordPress Blogs Hacked: Again, many WordPress users did not heed the call to upgrade their WordPress blogs with the mandatory security releases and some were hacked. Donncha tackles the issue of hacked WordPress blogs and how to know if your blog has been targeted by these redirected hits from Google techniques and older ones. The article includes a lot of helpful code and techniques for uncovering the attacks. Peter’s Useful Crap also published information to change notification of WordPress blogs on Linux to avoid being exploited and prevent future exploits by hackers. I covered a lot of issues on how to find out if your block has been hacked in WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares. Remember, the best protection is prevention. Update now.

WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ is on and they’ve now opened the Plugin Competition Blog and updated their competition prizes listing for the winners. If you haven’t entered your WordPress Plugin entry yet, get it done now as it will be ending soon. For the rest of us, we just love seeing all the new entrants coming in. Current entries include:

WordPress banned and blocked: Recently, I wrote How to Access Banned WordPress.com Blogs and How Do You Know If Your Blog is Banned or Blocked? which covers how to find out if your WordPress or other blog or site is banned or blocked by IP blocks or filters, and how to bypass those blocks. WordPress.com continues to have problems with country-wide blocks as well as blocks and bans from firewall filtering programs through corporations and educational institutions, as do many other blogs. If you fear your blog maybe blocked, there are options to get it unblocked.

BuddyPress and WordPress: Mani Karthik of DailySEOblog discusses using BuddyPress with WordPress, describing the seamless integration of the two to create a social networking blog. BuddyPress features friend and social networking integration, private messaging, picture albums, groups, extended profiles, and member activities in a CMS format.

WordPress 2.5.1 Mandatory Security Release: WordPress 2.5.1 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 2.5.2 is due out soon.

Pithy WordPress Sayings: Charles Stricklin of the WordPress Podcast is looking for pithy WordPress sayings for the t-shirts he will be wearing at the New Media Expo. Some of the suggestions are brilliant, like “I could talk about WordPress all day long” and “Friends don’t let friends use Movable Type” (my favorite), and he’s looking for more suggestions.

WordPress Podcast: Episode 42: Our favorite Plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design is out from the WordPress Podcast and features a new segment by Matt Mullenweg answering questions about WordPress news and issues, discussion of new WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, WordPress Themes, and more on their favorite WordPress Plugins. They are also seeing your top ten favorite WordPress Plugins for an upcoming episode.

WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Episode 19 with Jeffro included discussions about how much would you pay to have WordPress installed, creating dynamic sidebars in WordPress, can you tell if a site is run with WordPress or not, Automattic Stats Plugin for Movable Type, and more WordPress news and information.

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 at 50, WordPress Tweeters, Tracking WordPress 2.6, WordPress.com Stats, and Hot WordPress Plugins.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Events CalendarWordPress 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: If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup or WordCamp, just finding 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, and contact the new WordCamp Central to add your WordCamp event to their list.

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.

WordCamp 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.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseCode for Deactivating Plugins when Uninstalling: A few months ago, there was a lot of talk about the problems associated with turning off WordPress Plugins that aren’t really gone. They still live in your Plugins folder on your blog and their data may exist in your blog database. Weblog Tools Collection presents “Plugin Deactivation Issues Solved With Actions and Filters” covering techniques to prevent deactivation issues for WordPress Plugins and Theme authors. It is the responsibility of the WordPress Theme designer and Plugin author to ensure Plugins play nice.

All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin Dead: The popular and much ballyhooed All in ONe SEO Pack WordPress Plugin states that it is no longer going to be supported or maintained on its official WordPress Plugins Directory page. It currently works with the most recent versions of WordPress but may not work with future versions. Currently, there is no information on whether or not the Plugin will be taken over by someone else.

Admin Bar WordPress Plugin Totally Redone: Viper007Bond has totally recoded the Admin Bar WordPress Plugin from scratch for WordPress 2.5x blogs, with a strong recommendation to add bundle custom Administration Panel color and look options to their WordPress Themes, making the two complement each other.

Another Tag Manager: Techie-buzz has released the Better Tags Manager WordPress Plugin for the most recent versions of WordPress which will allow tag editing from the Manage Post panel without visiting the post individually. It also includes filtering out specific posts with and without tags, bulk editing, and adding tags to multiple posts.

Eric Meyer’s WordPress Plugins: Among the early adopters and WordPress Plugin authors was Eric Meyers of CSS, Web Standards, and Happy Cogs fame. While quiet on the WordPress development front for a while, he’s released two new Plugins for WordPress users. MW Adminimize WordPress Plugin changes the look of the WordPress Administration Panels and allows for customization. The MW Latest Tweet WordPress Plugin displays your latest Twitter tweet on your WordPress blog.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: With the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Contest underway, combined with the many Plugin authors updating their Plugins to work with the latest versions of WordPress, a lot of Plugins have been announced and updated. Here are some I stumbled on recently:

  • FeedOnly WordPress Plugin allows inclusion of content in your WordPress blog post that will only appear within your blog’s feeds, not on your blog. In addition to using this for copyright notices and warnings, it can be used to give feed subscribers extra benefits, encouraging them to subscribe.
  • PingPress.fm WordPress Plugin works with the ping.fm service to ping more than 10 social networks when you publish a post on your blog, adding to the built-in Ping-o-matic.
  • Top Level Categories WordPress Plugin removes the /category/ from your pretty permalinks once activated, without extra effort by the user.
  • Recent Posts Embed WordPress Plugin allows custom lists of recent posts anywhere within your WordPress blog.
  • Twitterdoodle WordPress Plugin allows the user to create posts and categories based upon Twitter keywords searches. Alert: Sponsored by the Lessnau Lounge, it includes sponsored links to that site.

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

Incorporating WordPress Blog Feeds into Blackboard: In RSS and Blackboard, the UTTC Course Development shows how the popular college and university program, Blackboard, can be used to generate feeds from a WordPress blog and integrate them into Blackboard, bringing blog content into the program for educators to use in their courses.

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

See Also
Amazon AI Project

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 Community News

WordPress Community graphicGive 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.

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.

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 along with t-shirts and hoodies.

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.

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).

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.

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 (11)
  • Hi Lorelle – an excellent post. We’re promoting our first book, 101 Blogging Essentials – and all through our research, WordPress figured way above the rest of the options. We really believe that developer collaboration in WP can lead to a fantastic blogging platform – several notches higher than what it is right now.

    This article is a great read for anyone who is starting out. Highly recommended!

    Good Luck!
    Roy

  • The hacked wordpress blogs really have been hitting the news hard lately, all over it’s to be read about. Luckily I’m totally up to date and so far have never been hacked yet in the past 2 years.

    Great entry :).

  • Suggestion: Don’t mention “WordPress 2.5.2 is due out soon.” when you remind people about the mandatory 2.5.1 security/bug fix release of WordPress. It’ll make people think “I’ll just wait for 2.5.2 instead of going ahead and upgrading to 2.5.1.”

  • @Stef Levolger:

    Good for you for being up-to-date with the most current releases. Actually, there are fewer security announcements lately, relatively speaking. With the increasing number of people and companies using WordPress, when a single event happens, a thousand people mention it, making it seem like a thousand events. Big blogger mouths and all. :D

    Since the beginning, I’ve been so impressed at the responsiveness of the WordPress team to uncover and stomp out security vulnerabilities. Wish all software and online programs were that diligent.

  • Good for you for being up-to-date with the most current releases. Actually, there are fewer security announcements lately, relatively speaking. With the increasing number of people and companies using WordPress, when a single event happens, a thousand people mention it, making it seem like a thousand events. Big blogger mouths and all. :D

    Since the beginning, I’ve been so impressed at the responsiveness of the WordPress team to uncover and stomp out security vulnerabilities. Wish all software and online programs were that diligent.

  • Hi Lorelle – an excellent post. We’re promoting our first book, 101 Blogging Essentials – and all through our research, WordPress figured way above the rest of the options. We really believe that developer collaboration in WP can lead to a fantastic blogging platform – several notches higher than what it is right now.

  • Good for you for being up-to-date with the most current releases. Actually, there are fewer security announcements lately, relatively speaking. With the increasing number of people and companies using WordPress, when a single event happens, a thousand people mention it, making it seem like a thousand events. Big blogger mouths and all. :D

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