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WordPress Wednesday News: 4 WordCamps, WordPress 2.6.2, Bad Themes, Count Twitterers, Threaded Comments, and Sticky Posts
The Blog Herald
The Blog Herald

WordPress Wednesday News: 4 WordCamps, WordPress 2.6.2, Bad Themes, Count Twitterers, Threaded Comments, and Sticky Posts

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September 11, 2008

Four WordCamps and one WordPress Meetup all on September 27. It’s WordPress Day! WordPress 2.6.2 released. Update now. New Plugin released taking advantage of new features in 2.6.2. Comment threading and inline editing added to upcoming WordPress 2.7 release. More WordPress Themes found to be hazardous to your blog’s health. Count your Twitter follows on your WordPress blog. Lots of Plugin news, and WordPress.com bloggers get first look at new sticky post feature coming to all WordPress blogs soon.

WordPress News

WordPress 2.6.2 Upgrade Now: Many people are not taking the latest announcement about the WordPress 2.6.2 upgrade seriously. The security flaw this update repairs applies to all PHP applications, not just WordPress, and specifically targets those with open registration, which includes multiple blogger blogs and registration for comments. All are seriously recommended to has been released and WordPress users are required to download WordPress 2.6.2 and upgrade immediately. WordPress 2.6.2 was released with the fix five hours after the critical security flaw had been filed.

The upgrade also includes a good list of fixes including:

  • Control of user redirects during login
  • textpattern import
  • mysql version in version check query string included
  • get_posts not working properly
  • Insert image into post inserts full size rather than specific size
  • RSS widget link appearing when there isn’t one
  • get_post_meta fails to unserialize when $single=false
  • comment_max_links causes confusion when zero

There is a full changeset and list of changed files. blogs may also be at risk. Stay tuned for more information on that.

WordPress 2.6.2 Brings New WordPress Plugin: Peter of Peter’s Useful Crap released his Redirect WordPress Users Plugin with a new filter found in WordPress 2.6.2 which allows redirection of users to different locations after they log into a WordPress blog. For example, you can have a custom login “landing page” in the WordPress Administration Panels for editors with feeds and information they need to know. Authors and/or Contributors could be redirected to a page of assignments, reminders, or straight to the Write Post Panel, rather than the traiditonal WordPress dashboard panel. Expect to see more Plugins and uses of this new login redirection filter.

WordPress 2.7 Development News: The long awaited comment threading and inline editing have been added to the WordPress 2.7 development, making the next major release of WordPress very exciting with the new updated interface for the WordPress Administration Panels. Some news and information on the next version includes:

You’ve Been Warned About Downloading Free WordPress Themes From Any Old Place: Viper007Bond.com reminds us to be careful when reaching for the download link for the pretty WordPress Theme on an unvetted Theme site. It could just be loaded down with malicious code, hidden ad links, and a lot of very dangerous code. He found a rash of unhappy WordPress users on the recently suffering from diseased WordPress Themes.

Before You Publish Reminders: The Pre-Publish Reminders WordPress Plugin provides a list of “things to do” before you hit the Publish button so you won’t forget before your blog post goes public. This is an excellent Plugin for those with multiple bloggers and contributors, reminding them to include an image, tag and categorize the post, add custom field information, and other customized actions and reminders.

Increasing Your Count Options: TwitterCounter WordPress Plugin displays the number of followers you have on Twitter on your WordPress blog. Combined with the Liz Strauss Comment Counter by Ozh WordPress Plugin, you can show the world how social your blog and online experience really is.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 27: The National Floor League covered the death of the CAPTCHA, Martha Steward and the NFL on WordPress.com, WordPress 2.7 upcoming features, and more WordPress tips, Plugins, and Themes.

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: World WordCamps, WordPress 2.7 Dangers, Martha Stewart, WordPressMU Updated.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Events CalendarFive WordPress Events in One Day: September 27, 2008, should be designated WordPress or WordCamp Day. There are five known public events for WordPress fans on that date. WordCamp Utah in Provo, Utah, WordCamp Birmingham in Alabama, WordCamp Portland in Oregon, WordCamp Vancouver in Canada, and a WordPress Meetup in Dallas, Texas. Four WordCamps and one Meetup. That’s a lot of WordPress.

WordCamp Live Bloggers and Reporters Wanted: The WordCamp Report is looking for WordCamp event local bloggers to live blog and report on the WordCamp they are attending. It’s a fun way to share your WordCamp fun with others around the world. Interested? Contact them and volunteer.

WordCamp Miami? WPCandy wants to start a WordCamp Miami and is looking for volunteers and enthusiasm.

WordCamp Portland New Logo: WordCamp Portland has a new logo for their WordPress event September 27, 2008.

WordCamp Philippines: Tech-hive has updates and information on last weekend’s WordCamp Philippines.

WordCamp Hawaii: Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii on Oct 24, 2008, is heating up with some great speakers, including Matt Mullenweg and Lorelle VanFossen. Might be time to pull out the bathing suit and surf boards and fly to the islands.

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:

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.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseWordPress Plugins Scavenger Hunt for Folders and Files: Nerdaphernalia offers “Hit a Moving Target in Your WordPress Plugin, a guide on recent changes to the WordPress code which allow you to customize folder and file locations for your WordPress installation. This makes life easier for complicated WordPress installations, but it can also make for a lot of confusion for WordPress Plugin authors. The answer is simple: Check to see if the constants for folder location are already defined. The article offers the code and explanation.

Duplicate Custom Field Issue with WordPress Plugins: Alex King found a duplicate custom field issue with one of his Plugins and realized that the issue was much bigger than just his Plugin. It’s one that impacts many Plugin Authors. It involves activity using the save_post hook and custom fields.

Woopra WordPress Plugin Updated: The Woopra WordPress Plugin for the popular web analytics program, which incorporates Woopra statistics into your WordPress blog, has been updated and is now in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Cache-Busting WordPress Theme Stylesheets: Alister Cameron has come up with a novel method of caching your WordPress Theme stylesheet using various options. It’s an interesting method to reduce bandwidth and loading times.

Post Control WordPress Plugin Revisited: Mark Jaquith’s Post Control WordPress Plugin has been taken over by WP-CMS and now includes features for post revisions, autosave, changing the default loader from Flash, and some other new features.

See Also
Apple Silicon Processor
Apple Delays Launch of New M3 Apple Silicon into 2024

New Guide for WordPress Widgets: If you want to learn more about WordPress Widgets, there is a new guide on the WordPress Codex for WordPress Widgets.

GNU GPL Compliance Guide: WordPress is licenced as GPL (General Public License) and a new GNU GPL Compliance Guide has been released. It’s a highly technical legal document which explains the philosophy and guide for using GPL, copyright issues, how to avoid compliance actions and more. If you are a WordPress Theme or Plugin Author releasing under GPL, this is an invaluable document.

PHP Principles: 10 Principles of the PHP Masters by Glen Stansberry is an indepth look at tips from PHP masters on using PHP. WordPress is built on the backbone of PHP and used in WordPress Themes and Plugins. This is a great guide and resource.

Still Using the Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin? John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog recommends you clean up your database after upgrading from WordPress 2.3 to the latest version if you were using the Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin. Upgrading is mandatory, but a lot of people so loved the Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin, they weren’t willing to make the change. The latest versions of WordPress now include tags built-in and UTW is no longer supported by the author and WordPress. If you are having trouble, follow John’s tips and clean out or delete the old UTW table in your WordPress database. And remember, the upgrades are also for security purposes. Don’t leave your blog vulnerable.

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

  • Insights WordPress Plugin helps you write your blog posts by allowing you to search from within the Write Post panel for posts on your blog and edit or insert links to them in the current post, easily insert Flickr, YouTube, Google Maps, and links to Wikipedia articles, and a lot more.
  • Wordbook WordPress Plugin integrates Facebook into your blog and your blog into Facebook.
  • Multiple Category Selection Widget creates dropdowns on parent categories and sub-categories lists.
  • More Fields WordPress Plugin uses the custom fields feature to add more fields to the Write Post or Page Panel in the WordPress Administration Panels.

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 uncovered:

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 FAQ Gets Screencasts: The WordPress.com FAQ now has screencasts on their guide posts helping WordPress.com users learn more about how to use specific WordPress.com features.

Sticky Posts for WordPress.com bloggers: WordPress.com announced sticky posts for its members. This is a new feature that will be in an upcoming version of WordPress and is currently undergoing testing on WordPress.com. It allows bloggers to select a specific post and mark it “sticky” – stuck to the front page of your WordPress blog. It will not move in traditional chronological fashion but stay at the top of the post queue. When you “release” it as a sticky post, it will drop back into chronological order. This is great for announcements, notices, alerts, or articles you want to stay on the front page of your blog. The option to set a post as sticky is found on the Write Post panel.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicThings 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

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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