WordPress News: BuddyPress News, WordPress 2.8 News, WordCamp Toronto & Virginia, WordPress.tv Feeds, and More

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WordPress 2.8 News: The final stages of development, testing, and patching is underway for the release of WordPress 2.8. The latest news on the next version of WordPress includes: [Read more…]

Glenda Watson Hyatt: Is Your Blog Disabled?

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Glenda Watson Hyatt presenting web accessibility at SOBCon09At the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) this weekend in Chicago, the famous Left Thumb Blogger, of the Do It Myself Blog rocked the attendees world with her powerful How POUR is Your Blog presentation, reminding us that if our blogs don’t meet web standards for accessibility, it could be disabled.

Glenda’s powerful presentation wasn’t the typical dry stuff of web accessibility. Dry? Boring? That’s not possible with Glenda around. She has a wicked sense of humor and used it in her PowerPoint presentation, accompanied by her voice program, Kate, which read her presentation out loud. I’ve never laughed so hard over such a serious subject as web accessibility.

Glenda has cerebral palsy. It restricts her movement and speech but it doesn’t impact her intelligence, though many have labeled her otherwise in the past. In her book, I’ll Do It Myself, she shared the trials and tribulations as well as the challenges of being a highly intellectual woman trapped in a body that just can’t keep up. I highlighted Glenda in How WordPress Changes Lives, showcasing how WordPress changed her life by giving her a voice that connects with people around the world through her blog.

One of the great points she made was on how to justify using ALT attributes in your blog images: [Read more…]

Exploring Social Media: What’s in Your Bio?

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeIn “Five Tips for Composing a More Effective Social Networking Bio” by Maria Langer of Maria’s Guides, she asks if your social media bio is really saying what you want it to say and makes a good point:

Your bio is your primary way to tell people who don’t know you what you’re all about. If they’re heard about you from someone else or stumbled upon one of your Twitter tweets or Facebook wall posts, they might be interested in learning more. They might even want to become your . . . wait for it . . . friend.

…Think of your bio as bait on a fishing line. Who will it attract? But, at the same time, how many people will ultimately be disappointed by the mismatch between what your bio says about you and who you really are?

She includes some basic tips for creating a virtual biography such as be brief, accurate, meaningful, careful with word choice, and avoiding really personal and private information, but let’s take the picture you paint of yourself online in these various sharing outlets a step farther.

What is most important for you to share publicly? [Read more…]

TalkPress: The Forum Revisited and Revitalized

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Recently, Sam Bauer announced TalkPress, the of .

With the power of the WordPress Community behind it, could TalkPress ignite the fire under forums?

WordPress.com has been an incredible success with millions of bloggers registering millions of blogs and having their chance to blog free, or for a small fee for some services. Blog topics range from personal and private to politics and raising social consciousness. Some WordPress.com blogs have become popular and even famous, such as Robert Scoble and icanhascheezburger.

As a hosting company, WordPress.com hosts some of the largest websites and blogs in the world including icanhascheezburger, CNN news sites including Political Ticker, the Dow Jones’ All Things D, GretaWire, Time’s The Page, People Magazine’s Style Watch, and more. These companies provide the revenue to keep the free blog hosting services rocking and prove that WordPress has the strength and capabilities to support serious demands from users and servers. [Read more…]

Exploring Social Media: Twisasters

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Exploring Social Media article series badgeWith the recent fears of a pandemic with the Mexico Swine Flu and an earthquake today in Mexico City, there is a lot to be nervous about. Add to it the continued spread of the conflickr/downadup virus online…with all the manmade and natural disasters and our obsessive interest in them, you would think that there would be an easy way to find out what there is to be worried about in the world.

Oh, wait. There is. Meet Twisaster. [Read more…]

WordPress News: WordPressMU Updated, WordPress 2.8 News, WP.com, WordPress Events

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Some Administration Panel Redesigns in WordPress 2.8: While WordPress committed to no changes in the WordPress Administration Panels interface, there will be a few minor tweaks. In “Design Tweaks: Who’s In? (An idea in three acts),” Jane Wells explains that your help is wanted to redesign the header area of the interface. UX and design guidelines have been posted and you are welcome to have your input until Tuesday, April 27, 2009. The submissions will be offered for voting for only one day due to the pressure to get WordPress 2.8 released.

WordPress 2.8 News: The final stages of development, testing, and patching is underway for the release of WordPress 2.8. The latest news on the next version of WordPress includes: [Read more…]

Year of Original Content: Make Money From Copyright Thieves

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Ask First Copyright badge - by Lorelle VanFossenI and Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today have long been advocates of copyright protections and education, leading the way with projects such as “Ask First,” the “Year of Original Content,” “5 Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False,” and “The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft.”

It seems that the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that stolen content is big business. Within the past two years, there are a variety of services you can use to track where your online content has gone, report and stop it. A new project is underway called the Fair Syndication Consortium that might put a dollar amount on that stolen content, paying you for others abusing your content. [Read more…]

Blog Design: What You Don’t Know About Your Blog Audience Can Hurt

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blog design timeline iconI had an interesting discussion with a client last week about when and how to implement a new blog design. She wanted to warn her readers that a change was coming, and take a few months to implement the changes step by step.

We talked about the process and created a timeline for the slow unveiling of the site design, a smart decision for those with a large audience, especially when making dramatic changes to the site’s navigation and content handling. Some audiences can handle it, and love design changes, but some can’t. They just don’t respond well to change.

We talked a little more about her readership, covering some basic web analytics such as where her readers come from, how they access the site (through the front page, single pages, tags and categories, or through aggregators, email or feeds), and I stumbled upon some stunning facts that shifted the entire game plan.

While her site gets a steady stream of visitors, several thousand a day, only 10% return. Of those, only three percent return to the blog at least once week. Honestly, that’s about 9 people a week.

This changes everything. [Read more…]

WordPress News: 2.8 Patch Marathon, TalkPress, and Commercializing WordPress Plugins

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WordPress 2.8 Has-Patch Marathon: Jane Wells announced The Super-Awesome WordPress 24-Hour Has-Patch Marathon to attack 500 active tickets on WordPress 2.8. The invitation included developers, hackers, and coders to dig into the code of WordPress and fix all kinds of things and test them from April 16-17. We’re awaiting results of the marathon.

TalkPress: Imagine combining the architecture behind with . The end result is . In a recent announcement on the bbPress blog, Sam Bauers explained that TalkPress is going to be a hosted forum service using bbPress with the HyperDB extension for WordPress to create a style network of bbPress forums. It is currently being tested by corporations such as Time’s Health.com site. [Read more…]

What Changes Your Mind About Leaving a Blog Comment? Some Criteria

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In my article, “What Changes Your Mind About Leaving a Blog Comment,” I talked about some of the issues around debating where and when to leave a blog comment on a blog that hosts information or opinions you don’t support, or is filled with blog clutter, a clue that something isn’t right. About how your comment may be seen to support the blog, and impact your reputation by association.

As I wrote that post, I looked back over all the WTF Blog Clutter articles in the series and realized that many of these issues are ones that impact my willingness to comment on a blog. Sure, they impact my ability to even read the blog, let alone return and tell others, but they also impact my willingness to endorse a blog with a comment.

I started thinking about all the blatant, subjective, and even unconscious reasons that prevent me from leaving a comment on a blog. Here are some of my self-discoveries, most of them associated with various aspects of blog clutter. I’m sure you have more you can add, but these are big clues that this is a blog that doesn’t deserve my participation. [Read more…]