Now Reading
WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp, Sponsored Themes Out, 2 Billion Comment Spam, and More WordPress News

WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp, Sponsored Themes Out, 2 Billion Comment Spam, and More WordPress News

I’m getting ready to head to San Francisco for WordCamp. Aren’t you? WordPress.com has a few new fun features. WordPress 2.2.1 is a mandatory upgrade. Did you know how easy it is to move from WordPress.com to the full version of WordPress? Or another blogging program to WordPress? It is! The Sandbox Theme and WordPress Plugins competitions are generating great releases and enthusiasm. Akismet hits 2 billion comment spam. Sponsored Themes are out. But little else matters as we’re going to WordCamp!

WordPress News

WordCamp 2007 – July 21-22: Registration for is now closed still open for another day. Sign up now. You can’t have more fun in a single weekend anywhere for only $25. It will be July 21-22 in San Fransisco, California, registration is required. The WordCamp Schedule now features descriptions of the speaker’s topics. The speakers include I'm Attending WordCamp 2007 badge Dan Kuykendall, author of PodPress, John Dvorak and Om Malik, , Jeremy Wright, Lloyd Budd and Mark Jaquith, Robert Hoekman, Jr., Matt Cutts, Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg, Rashmi Sinha, Andy Skelton, Dave Winer, Liz Danzico, Michael Adams, and Ryan Boren. If you didn’t register in time, you are going to be missing something special.

There should be plenty of live blogging as well as photos, video, and who knows what else going on during the weekend so you can enjoy the fun from afar.

WordPress 2.2.1 Upgrade: The WordPress 2.2.1 release is mandatory. Mark Jaquith has the upgrade files with the list of the changed files and a zip file containing all of them to speed your upgrade process.

Two Billion Comment Spam: Matt Mullenweg reports on the Akismet blog that Akismet has caught two billion comment spams and gives the following amazing progression:

Spam is growing.
From 0 to 1,000,000: 70 days
From 1,000,000 to 100,000,000: 190 days
100,000,000 to 1,000,000,000: 257 days
1 billion to 2 billion: 108 days

WordPress is Great Because of Its Community: According to Redmonk – Tecosystems, WordPress wins because of its dedication to its community, and the community’s dedication to WordPress:

My bias is rather towards solutions that have the most vibrant communities behind them. Back when we chose Movable Type, in fact, I did consider WordPress and went instead with MT because at the time I felt it had the best community around it. I picked, in other words, community over open source. And honestly, I have very few regrets about that decision, despite our pending migration.

It was fascinating, in the context of this discussion, to hear WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg trace the arc of WordPress back at Startup Camp. From a small project competing against the 800 lb gorilla of the blogging platform market to one of the more popular open source projects around, WordPress’ growth has been phenomenal and is many respects a case study for how to build communities.

Because ultimately, that’s why we’re leaving MT. Not solely because of the problems we’ve had with Six Apart’s product – every application is going to run into issues – but because WordPress has done a far better job of growing their community. There are more themes, more plugins, and as a result more and more sites running WordPress.

WordPress Competitions: The Weblog Tools Collection called “WordPress Competition 2.0” continues through July 31 with great prizes for inspired WordPress Plugin development and creation. See the Plugin Competition Blog and the announcement for more information.

The Sandbox Designs Competition is also continuing with some great Themes based upon the Sandbox WordPress Theme. Engtech of Internet Duct Tape offers some tips on designing with the Sandbox WordPress Theme, and adds tips on creating 3D buttons for the Sandbox Theme, showing you the versatility of the Theme and the power of CSS. Alister Cameron offers Pure CSS Asides for the Sandbox Theme, showing off some of the versatility of the WordPress Theme.

Are You Involved With a WordPress Group? If you are involved with a WordPress group that meets regularly or as part of a special event, please let me know so I can promote the event here and elsewhere.If your group isn’t listed with Incoming.org or Meetup.com with WordPress as a keyword, I and others might not find you. Help us to help you promote your WordPress group.

Drupal to WordPress: Chris Garrett offers “Converting a Blog From Drupal to WordPress”, a good tutorial on moving and importing your Drupal blog to WordPress. For more information on importing to and from WordPress, see Importing Content on the WordPress Codex. And see more below on moving your WordPress.com blog to a full version WordPress blog.

Update Your Press-It Bookmarklet: Among the things that “never occurred to me” list, Chiperoni reminds us to update our Press-It Bookmarklet when we upgrade. Changes to how WordPress works can change how the Press-It Bookmarklet interacts with WordPress. If you are unfamiliar with this little gem, it’s a Javascript bookmarklet found on your Write Post panel. Click and drag it to your browser’s toolbar and with one click, it opens up a mini-Write Post panel so you can blockquote and link to whatever post you are reading, helping you to share interesting stories and blogs with your readers with one click. You just have to remember to update the bookmarklet when you upgrade! Thanks for the reminder!

Let Your WordPress Voice Be Heard: The section on WordPress is an open forum for you to have your say on the features you would like to see added or removed from WordPress. Have your say by rating the idea by clicking on the stars on the idea post and comment on the idea with your support, recommendation, or nay on the idea.

Here are some interesting ones to consider, vote, and have your say:

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoNew Toy on WordPress.com for Multiple Blogger Blogs: I’ve been waiting for an explanation about a new option in the Write Post Post Status window on WordPress.com blogs and now we have it.

WordPress.com new feature - pending review on blog postsIn addition to the Post Status options of Published, Draft, and Private, you now have another option which says Pending Review. This won’t mean much for lone bloggers, but for those with more than one blogger, or guest bloggers, selecting this option will notify the administrator so they can review the document before publishing. Mark Jaquith has more information on this new feature.

WordPress.com Feed Weirdness Answered: Andy Skelton reports on some feed oddities on WordPress.com explaining:

Some people noticed some blog feeds that were showing posts from other blogs. Thanks in part to their quickly blogging the issue, we located and resolved the problem. A few people concluded that their blog’s feed had been compromised. We just wanted to let you know that there was no hacking involved.

Moving To or From WordPress.com: Moving from one blogging system to WordPress.com is easy. So is moving from the free WordPress.com hosted service to your own full version of WordPress. For more information on moving your blog, see Importing Content, Improved WordPress to WordPress Importer, and Can I move my blog from here to another blog somewhere else … from the WordPress.com FAQ.

Honoring the Languages of WordPress.com Blogs and Bloggers: Last week I announced that I was going to honor the international nature of WordPress.com bloggers and will be featuring the top ten blog posts from a specific language group on WordPress.com.

This week, it’s Italiano. To translate these into another language, you can use Google’s Translate Tools by copying and pasting in the link into the “translate web page” option.

Among the various Italian top blogs, I found the tagline for O.S. Revolution most enchanting: “Software is like sex, better when it’s free (Linus Torvalds)”.

  1. pollycoke :)
  2. AntonioGenna.net Blog
  3. chissenefrega… who cares?
  4. O.S. Revolution
  5. Divilinux Lost Blog
  6. www.ubuntista.it
  7. Mac Blog
  8. iLLusion bloG
  9. P@ssioneMobile
  10. NoCensura!

Give the Gift of WordPress.com Credits? Show your appreciation for a WordPress.com blogger and buy them WordPress.com Credits. You can send any amount of credit to a fellow WordPress.com blogger or even someone without a WordPress.com account. To give a gift of WordPress.com Credit, go to Upgrades > Gifts. WordPress Credit can be used to add storage space, add the CSS Extra allowing the blogger to customize their WordPress.com blog’s design, purchase and/or map a domain name, add an unlimited number of private blogs, and do much more with new upgrades and bonus features coming out all the time. This is a great way to say thank you, you are appreciated, or I love you to a WordPress.com blogger.

What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:

  1. CNN Political Ticker
  2. I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
  3. Scobleizer
  4. GigaOM
  5. pollycoke :)
  6. The Rabies Blog
  7. POPSEOUL! entertainment, style and beauty in seoul
  8. Bahçelievler Kumport I.lkög(retim Okulu
  9. The Wages of Wins Journal
  10. strange maps

The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:

  1. No price drop for Xbox 360
  2. Why hasn’t the Bakari Sagna signing been announced?
  3. ‘Hott 4 Hill’ counters ‘Obama Girl’
  4. Facebook vs MySpace: The Tale of the Tape
  5. Movies in a box, any box
  6. Sagna, Eboue, Gallas, Ljungberg and Martins – discuss
  7. Zillow goes crowdsourcing
  8. College Fight Reveals Life Long Questions About Shotguns and Dairy Queens
  9. Is The Glass Half Empty Or Half Full?
  10. Caption this: Lee Jun Ki & Nam Sang-mi

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseNo Sponsored WordPress Themes: With his own position solid, and after listening to a lot of feedback, combined with a powerful stand by Mark Ghosh on Weblog Tools Collection declaring that he would no longer feature sponsored WordPress Themes, Matt Mullenweg has made the WordPress policy on sponsored WordPress Themes official:

Before WordCamp all sponsored themes should be removed from http://themes.wordpress.net.

Pick Your WordPress Posts For Inclusion: A while ago, I posted a list of WordPress Plugins that I wanted that hadn’t been developed yet. Some of these requests have now been met, and another one, Previous Post Picker WordPress Plugin, has arrived which lists previous blog posts in the Write Post panel sidebar for you to choose from for inclusion as an intrasite link in the blog post you are writing to. I’m always referring back to posts I’ve written, so this is a simple and easy way to get to those posts without opening a new tab with your blog in it and searching around. Wonderful!

Interesting WordPress Plugins: I’m hunting for reviews of WordPress Plugins and will post them here. If you have used and reviewed a WordPress Plugin, please let me know so I can add them here. Until then, here are a few new and interesting WordPress Plugins – try them to see if they will work for you and your blog.

See Also
Google search

WordPress Plugin Directory: The new WordPress Plugin Directory is has a ton of new WordPress Plugins. Some interesting new additions and updates include:

More WordPress Plugins can be found on the WordPress Plugins Database.

Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer features 3,780 Themes and 5,439,603 Themes downloads. The list of the top ten most downloaded WordPress Themes are:

  1. Amadeus
  2. RedAtom 1.0
  3. Red Secret 0.1
  4. Auto 1.1
  5. Wii-ish
  6. Colors theme 1
  7. Talian 1.0
  8. Silver Light 0.1
  9. Listen 1.0
  10. Simplicity 2.0

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some featured articles from around the WordPress the , the online manual for WordPress Users, the source you need to turn to first for your WordPress help.

NOTE: If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicAkismet and Salesforce Unite: Scott Hemmeter worked with Akismet and Salesforce to put together a comment spam protection for Salesforce web forms.

WordPress Community Podcast: Episode 27: WordPress 2.2.1 and WordCamp Schedule is out with some interesting topics on WordCamp and WordPress 2.2.1, as well as some reviews and announcements of some interesting WordPress Plugins.

Comparing Six Apart with Automattic: Read/WriteWeb did a comparison between Automattic and Six Apart and their products and services. Which one do you think came out the winner?

WordPress Installed For Free: If you have problems installing the full version of WordPress, visit Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress). This free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? Do you want a custom WordPress blog? Want to convert your website into a WordPress blog or use WordPress as a CMS? If you are looking for an expert in WordPress Themes, WordPress development, WordPress Plugins, or other WordPress-related expertise, check out the list of WordPress Consultants on , the parent company of WordPress, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Events

The following are upcoming WordPress group meetings and meetups, and a few special blogging events you may want to attend. If you know of any I’ve missed, please post them or contact me on my WordPress Events Page or via email.

For a WordPress Meetup near you and other blogging events, check out the WordPress Meetup Group List.

Extra Tip of the Week

Flickr Fans: You can incorporate Flickr images easily into your WordPress blog. Instructions can be found on Using Images on WordPress article in the , the online manual for WordPress Users. Also check out Geek to Live’s Advanced User Fuide for Flickr Users for more tips and tricks on using Flickr.

Even More WordPress News?

For more news on WordPress, see:


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 (2)
  • Love the article and thankyou for your advice and examples, shall be back for more advice again for sure as WordPress seems to becoming more popular than ever.

Scroll To Top