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WordPress News: One Million WordPress 2.7 Downloads Coming, Matt Mullenweg Resolutions, bbPress Releases, WordCamp Las Vegas, and More
The Blog Herald
The Blog Herald

WordPress News: One Million WordPress 2.7 Downloads Coming, Matt Mullenweg Resolutions, bbPress Releases, WordCamp Las Vegas, and More

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January 7, 2009

WordPress 2.7 downloads now passing 970,000. Want to predict when it will hit one million? Matt Mullenweg asks for input on his New Year’s resolutions. Tips for optimizing WordPress Plugins to accommodate new AJAX abilities in WordPress 2.7. Two new versions of bbPress released. WordCamp Las Vegas is this weekend. WordCamp Indonesia coming up fast, along with WordCamp Whistler in Canada. And Ed Morita wants to know where to put his new permanent WordPress logo tattoo and wants your input.

WordPress News

WordPress Tattoo: Ed Morita wants a permanent tattoo. His WordPress blog has changed his life and he wants to honor the expertise with a WordPress tattoo. In “Where Should I Put My WordPress Tattoo?” he asks for input on where to put his new WordPress logo tattoo on his body. The deadline is January 30, and he will get the tattoo on his birthday, February 10th.

Matt Mullenweg’s New Year’s Resolutions: In an interesting open source style twist to making New Year’s resolutions, Matt Mullenweg offers “Open Sourcing Resolutions,” asking people to tell him what his resolutions should be for the new year. It’s an interesting list of what other people think he should be doing, as well as ideas for the WordPress Community and WordPress development. Want your say?

WordPress Unique Sites: planetOzh showcased some interesting sites using WordPress. They are Twitdom, Wingee and Free Shipping. If you know of any interesting sites using WordPress, let us know.

WordPress Men Called to Marathon for Breast Cancer: Brian Gardner is calling on Chicago/Midwest WordPress male fans to join him August 7-9, 2009, for the 60-mile marathon for the Chicago Breast Cancer event. He claims it will be a great journey talking WordPress and blogging non-stop.

Problems with WordPress 2.7 XML-RPC: Joseph Scott reports on problems with libxml2 For WordPress XML-RPC users that he’s been finding on the and elsewhere. The problem is not WordPress specific, but the PHP XML extension using the new versions of libxml2 which leaves off angle brackets. The solution so far is to use old versions of libxml2 known to work or build the PHP XML model against the expat parser instead of libsml2. Check the forums and his post for updated information, as well as the Trac ticket on the issue.

One Million Downloads of WordPress 2.7: Three weeks ago, there were 500,000 WordPress 2.7 Downloads and Miroslav Glavic caught the rollover of the counter. As I write this, there are now over 800,000 downloads, moving fast for 1 million. Bets are on Twitter as to when one million downloads will be counted on the counter. There is now the WordPress Download Counter which adds a counter to your blog’s sidebar featuring the number of official WordPress version downloads from the WordPress Download Counter for WordPress fan blogs.

Two bbPress Releases: Two versions of bbPress, the free forum software by Automattic that integrates into WordPress blogs, have been released, bbPress 0.9 and bbPress 1.0-alpha. The first is a security fix and the second contains the fix, but also an improved fix for WordPress integration to synchronize user roles.

Haven’t You Upgraded to WordPress 2.7 Yet? For information on upgrading to WordPress 2.7, see WordPress 2.7 Release News and Links. If you are worried about whether or not WordPress 2.7 will work with your server, Themes or Plugins, see:

Social Media Tools Warnings: While not WordPress specific, a lot of WordPress bloggers use social media tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. Recently, SecurityFocus reported on malware security problems with Twitter and LinkedIn. The Blog Herald recently covered the news, too. Take extreme care when responding to email, blog comments, and other social media messages that look even the slightest bit suspicious.

Don’t Let WordPress in Your Domain Name: Do you use “wordpress” in your blog’s domain name? 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.

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 News: Weblog Tools Collection Scholarship Fund, WordPress at the Supreme Court, Top Plugin Authors, XML-RPC Trouble, and More.

WordPress Fan Blogs and Podcasts

The WordPress Podcast: Episode 49: WordPress 2.7 released, Oxite, Blog World Expo and New Media Expo to merge, Pownce closes includes David Peralty and covers WordPress 2.7, Microsoft’s new open source blogware, Oxite, Blog World Expo and New Media Expo merging, WordPress Theme Directory cleaning out WordPress Themes, Pownce shut down, WordCamp news, and more WordPress news and tips.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 41: Cats in boxes – best blog theme ever is the latest episode and features discussions on malicious WordPress Themes, WPTavern.com, the history of the WordPress interface, Top 10 Plugin developers, Weblog Tools Collection scholarships, WordPress 2.7 one million downloads getting close, and a lot more WordPress and WordCamp news.

WordPress Weekly Podcast: Maximum WordPress Security is the latest Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Weekly Podcast featuring Mark E, Plugin author of the Maximum Security WordPress Plugin, another security Plugin that tests your WordPress blog to ensure its security. They also discussed WordPress news, events, and tips.

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.

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News

WordCamp Las Vegas on a Roll: WordCamp Las Vegas News: WordCamp Las Vegas 2009 is this weekend, January 10-11, 2009, and the schedule is filling up with top notch speakers and events. Niran Amir from Picapp, Jim Turner of OneByOne Media, Ethan Gahng from Psolenoid, and Chris Brogan have been added to the list recently. There are still some tickets available, so get registered now. Also check out the WordCamp after party for any WordPress fans in the area at Jack’s Irish Pub inside of Palace Station. RSVP for the after party event on Facebook.

WordCamp Las Vegas

WordCamp Indonesia News: WordCamp Indonesia 2009 is January 17-18, 2009 at Erasmus Huis, Kuningan, Jakarta, Indonesia. The event features Romi Satria Wahono, Agus Setiawan Basuni, , Nukman Luthfie, and Nanda Ivens.

Portland WordPress Meetup: The first Portland WordPress User Group will meet on January 15, 2009, at CubeSpace in downtown Portland, Oregon, to talk WordPress and work on the next WordCamp Portland.

WordPress Meetup in Berkeley, California: A fun install WordPress event called WordPress Installfest will be at Berkeley Coworking at Berkeley Coworking on January 15, 2009, to help those who need help installing WordPress 2.7.

WordCamp Whistler News: WordCamp Whistler 2009 in Whistler, BC, Canada, on January 24, 2009, has a ton of updates and news. Early Bird tickets are still available, but will be gone soon, so get your registration in now. Group reservations at the Fairmont Hotel are only on hold until Friday, January 9, then you have to pay the higher rates and take your chances. They have a ton of new sponsors including Rope Tow, RideBooker.com, ShopWatchBuy.com, and more. They’ve just put up a picture of the new ski hat for attendees, a WordCamp schwag first. New speakers have been announced including Quentin Muhlert of 6S Marketing, and there is now a WordCamp Whistler Podcast featuring the news and information of the upcoming event.

WordCamp Whistler Swag

Learn the Lessons of Content Publishing: New York WordPress Meetup Group will meetin on January 20, 2009, with the meeting topic to be “WordPress as a CMS: The Strategy of Content Publishing.”

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic News: WordCamp Mid-Atlantic covers Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia, and will be May 16, 2009, at the University of Baltimore Thumel Business Center. Featured speakers will be Matt Mullenweg, Anil Dash of SixApart, There are two tracks to the day’s events, a basic “Essentials” and advanced “Hackery” track. Tickets are $25.99 and going fast. Sponsorships are available, but limited, so get involved as soon as possible.

Chicago WordPress Meetup: The Chicago WordPress January Meetup on January 24, 2009, will feature a Q&A session on “Who uses WordPress” with everyone invited to share why they use WordPress.

WordCamp Italy News: WordCamp Italy 2009, aka WordCamp Milan, in Milan City, Italy, has been announced for May 22-23, 2009, and registration is open. Matt Mullenweg will be speaking.

Attention WordPress Lovers in New Jersey: The new The New Jersey WordPress Meetup Group will be meeting January 7, 2009, in Belmar, New Jersey, at 7PM at the WebDevStudios.com office. Get help with WordPress, upgrading to WordPress 2.7, and learn about exciting WordPress Plugins and what’s going on in Jersey with WordPress.

WordCampED: WordCamp Education Vancouver 2009 is scheduled in Vancouver, BC, for February 19, 2009, on the UBC Main Campus in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. They are currently looking for speakers and those interested in attending this educational based WordPress event.

WordCamp Columbus, Ohio: WordCamp Columbus is set for May 16, 2009. The Twitter account is @WordCampColumbus. WordCamp Columbus has announced that since WordCamp Mid-Atlantic is scheduled for the same date, and Matt Mullenweg will be speaking there, his keynote will be streamed to attendees of WordCamp Columbus so no one will miss the “state of the word” by the founder of WordPress. Noel Jackson, designer of the Monotone WordPress Theme, and Nick Momrick, speaking about WordPress.com, will be noted speakers at the event. Registration is $20 and will be open soon.

See Also
YouTube features for Content Creators
YouTube Plans to Sunset Stories: What’s Next for Content Creators?

WordCamp Iowa: Tom Altman wants to host a WordCamp Iowa and is looking for volunteers.

WordCamp San Francisco 2009 Announced: Matt Mullenweg has announced the date for WordCamp San Francisco 2009 for May 30, 2009, at the Mission Bay Conference Center. There is also a Upcoming Event page set up.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseWordPress Plugins API: If you develop WordPress Plugins, check out Documentation for WordPress Plugins API, then step into a copy of a better guide from the WP Hackers Mailing List post for WordPress.org Plugin Information API Docs. It’s a must-bookmark post to help WordPress Plugin authors.

Optimize All Those Scripts in WordPress 2.7 Themes and Plugins: Ozz’s article, “Optimizing Script Loading,” on the WordPress Development Blog has a second edition in Optimizing script loading, part II covering the tips you need to know for dealing with AJAX in WordPress 2.7 Plugins and Themes.

AutoSuggest Search WordPress Plugin: AutoSuggest Searches for WordPress is a WordPress Plugin by Elie Khoury of . Inspired by Google’s AutoSuggest feature, it replaces your WordPress blog search with an AJAX search option that “suggests” blog posts based upon the keywords you type in. You can still run a search, but this might speed up the process for your readers. It offers a variety of customizations and options.

Check WordPress Theme and Plugin Compatibility with WordPress 2.7: If you are a WordPress Plugin or Theme author, and your Theme or Plugin will work with the new version, there are two things you must do NOW:

  1. Check to see if it is listed in the on WordPress 2.7 Plugin Compatibility and WordPress 2.7 Theme Compatibility. Users will check there before upgrading, so make sure you are on the list.
  2. Go to the WordPress Plugin Directory and other services and sites hosting your Plugin and update the information to show that it is compatible with WordPress 2.7, or not.

Installing WordPressMU EBook: Andrea Rennick of WPMU Tutorials has just published Installing WordPressMU – The E-Book, a guide to helping you install the popular multi-blog version of WordPress called . The book is available in PDF form for free download.

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

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.com News

WordPress.com W logoWordPress.com 2009 Year Wrap-Up: Check out 2008 Year-End Wrap-Up for the latest news on WordPress.com blogs.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

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? 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 graphicThings You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

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Each week, the features WordPress News, a weekly column by 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: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

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