[ad#podcastingdummies]
P2 Now In The Repository – Back in March, I let you know that P2 was on the horizon for self installed WordPress users and that it was already available for WordPress.com users. Fast forward to today and Prologue 2 is now on the WordPress.org theme repository. The theme features perks such as threaded comment display on the front page, in-line editing for posts and comments, real-time notifications and much more. http://www.wptavern.com/p2-officially-on-the-theme-repository

WordPress help Center – Alex King, who is most well known for his popular WordPress plugins and more recently, his Carrington theme framework, made a big announcement the other day regarding a project that his company Crowd Favorite has partnered with called the WordPress HelpCenter. he HelpCenter is not aimed at replacing forums, email, comment forms, or other means of support. Instead, you’ll be able to pick up the phone Mon-Fri between the hours of 9am-7pm Pacific time and give them a call to answer any WordPress questions you might have instead of waiting around on a forum for someone to reply. In fact, any phone call under 3 minutes is free. Check out my review of the helpcenter on WPCandy.com – http://wpcandy.com/articles/one-more-way-to-get-wordpress-help.html

Matt On TechCrunch –Matt Mullenweg was recently interviewed on TechCrunch.com in a video from the Amsterdam Next Web conference. In this interview, Matt explains why Twitter is not sucking the life out of blogging. He also chats about the acquisitions Automattic made in 2008 with a hint that more could be on the horizon. Lat but not least, Matt shares some details regarding the success of both WordPress.org and WordPress.com. – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/interview-with-automattics-matt-mullenweg-blogging-is-not-slowing-down/

Plugin Pick Of The Week – DiggBar Killer – DiggBar Killer adds a little snippet of Javascript to your WordPress website to remove any frames or iframes, such as the Digg Bar, which are surrounding it. DiggBar Killer also has a (100% optional) annoy feature. You can choose to annoy users coming from digg.com by showing an obnoxious message. The default “annoy” folder comes with some ugly animated GIFs and a MIDI file, but can be easily customized using plain-ole HTML & CSS (no PHP knowledge required). http://ibot.tv/2009/04/13/digg-bar-killer-wordpress-plugin/

If you’re looking for more information regarding WordPress or just want to be part of a community centered around WordPress, please head on over to WPTavern.com. The forum has received a new paint job, advertising options are now open on the site and much more. Remember, the drinks are always on the house.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

TalkPress On Its Way – Do you remember a little something called TalkPress? The idea was first mentioned in the public limelight back on January 1st, 2008 in a Houston Chronicle article where Dwight Silverman interviewed Matt Mullenweg. According to a blog post on the bbPress.org website, the software which will power TalkPress, TalkPress will be the WordPress.com of forums. Details are still sketchy at this point but it looks like at some capacity, WordPress.com users will be able to integrate a forum with their blog. – http://www.wptavern.com/talkpress-is-alive-and-well

WPSeek – This one is for you developer types out there or for those curious. Ever wish you could search for WordPress functions, template tags, function sources, user notes, etc all from one place? That is exactly what WPSeek.com allows you to do as it acts as a very slick WordPress centric search engine. WPSeek was originally used to be a gateway page for the WordPress Helper FireFox extension but the site has expanded into something much more. While the Codex is the official manual for WordPress, WPSeek.com provides an awesome way to tap into all of that information without all the crud surrounding it. – http://www.wptavern.com/wpseek-an-awesome-research-tool

WordPress Meetup – If you’re located in Ohio, more specifically the Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland areas, be sure to join me for the WordPress meetup that is taking place on April 23rd 2009 at 7PM EDT at a place called Office Space CoWorking located in Akron Ohio. The meetup is being conducted by myself along with Brian Layman of b5 media. The first meetup will be a meet and greet as well as a preview to the WordCamp Columbus event in May. While doing all this crazy new media blogging stuff is great behind the computer, nothing beats being around a group of similar passioned people where you can talk face to face.

Plugin Pick Of The Week – Blog Minder – The plugin allows your users to configure a reminder to be sent to them if they haven’t posted in the last ‘#‘ of days. Settings for the reminder range from no reminder to seven days. With everything that is taking place on the web, I can see a good reason to be sent a blogminder – http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/wordpress/pjw-blogminder/

If you’re looking for more information regarding WordPress or just want to be part of a community centered around WordPress, please head on over to WPTavern.com. The forum has received a new paint job, advertising options are now open on the site and much more. Remember, the drinks are always on the house.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Changing the Blog Herald WordPress News: Your Help Needed (blogherald.com)

Popularity: 5% [?]

Prologue 2 Released – During WordCamp Germany, Matt Mullenweg mentioned something called Prologue 2. This new version of the Prologue theme introduces Ajax like real-time commenting meaning, if I place a comment on the blog and someone else is staring at the site, they will see that comment appear before them as it happens. Heather over at the WordPress.com blog sheds some light on the project, including a video showcasing the new theme. Heather mentions that P2 is already available for WordPress.com users but to look for it on the WordPress.org theme repository in the coming days. – http://www.wptavern.com/prologue-2-sees-the-light-of-day

WordPress 2.8 Delayed Until April – WordPress 2.8 which was originally scheduled to be released in March has now been delayed until sometime in April. The roadmap currently has 2.8 scheduled to be released on April first but just think that it will probably be released at some point during the month, not really the first.

Multi Use Widgets In WordPress 2.8 – Earlier this week, it was announced by the developers that a new Multi Widget class has been added to WordPress 2.8? What does this mean? It simply means that in WordPress 2.8, all of the default widgets as well as widgets that are recoded with the new class will be able to be used multiple times instead of only once. We had a similar feature back in WordPress 2.3 so it’s great to see this one making a return.

If you’re looking for more information regarding WordPress or just want to be part of a community centered around WordPress, please head on over to WPTavern.com. The site contains news, reviews, editorials and much more on not only WordPress, but all projects under the Automattic umbrella. We also have a forum which has been rocking as of late so stop on by and join the party. The drinks at the tavern are always on the house.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Automattic Turns on WordPress TV (readwriteweb.com)
• Recapping WordCamp Denver (lijit.com)

Popularity: 7% [?]

[ad#rssannouncer]

WordPress MU 2.7 Released – Donncha states that this release is mostly a code sync release but it also contains quite a few bug fixes. The most notable change in WordPress MU is the addition of Viper007bond’s admin bar. Upgrading to the latest release should be as simple as overwriting the old files with the new ones. However, always make a backup copy first before doing anything! – http://ocaoimh.ie/2009/01/28/wordpress-mu-27/

BuddyPress 1.0 Beta 2 Released – Hot on the heels of the recently released WordPress MU 2.7, BuddyPress 1.0 Beta 2 has been released to the public. Andy states that the release fixes hundreds of bugs since Beta 1 with most of those being fixed by the community. Andy states that the project is three days later than expected with this beta. WordPress MU 2.7 was just released and it made much more sense to sync up the release schedules to ensure there were no compatibility problems. The 1.0 release will now be February 12th, exactly two weeks from today. – http://buddypress.org/blog/2009/01/1-0-beta-2/

Thank A Plugin Developer Day – It’s only fitting that WordPress has it’s own series of holidays. After all, just about everyone and (everything) else has holidays. January 28th has officially been declared by Matt Mullenweg “Thank A Plugin Developer Day”. Asides from paying homeage to plugin authors, Matt also lets us know that the plugin repository is called home by over 4,000 different plugins. Another little tidbit is that the average number of plugins installed per self hosted blog is five! – http://wordpress.org/development/2009/01/thank-a-plugin-developer-day/

Plugin Of The Week – Revision Control – Revision Control is a plugin for WordPress which gives the user more control over the Post/Page Revisions.
The plugin allows the user to set a blog-global setting for pages/posts to enable/disable/limit the number of revisions which are saved for the page/post. The user may change this setting on a per-page/post basis from the Revisions Meta box which is displayed within the Post Editor
The plugin also allows the deletion of specific revisions via the Revisions post metabox. – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/revision-control/

If you’re looking for more information regarding WordPress or just want to be part of a community centered around WordPress, please head on over to WPTavern.com. The site contains news, reviews, editorials and much more on not only WordPress, but all projects under the Automattic umbrella. We also have a forum which has been rocking as of late so stop on by and join the party. The drinks at the tavern are always on the house.

Popularity: 15% [?]

WordPress MU 2.7 Beta Released – Donncha the lead developer of WordPress MU announced today the release of WordPress MU 2.7 beta. The announcement states that this version is pretty stable but it’s not the final version which will be released to the public as it still needs some testing. – http://ocaoimh.ie/2009/01/22/wordpress-mu-27-beta/

Visual Coverage Of WordPress – On January 16th a new community oriented blog headed up by Automattic employee Michael Pick opened to the public. The site is called WordPress.tv with the goal of providing up-to-date WordPress themed content. This could be WordCamp videos, plugin reviews, tutorials. Right now, the site boasts quite a bit of visual content from recent wordcamp events as well as WordPress.com material. However, the site plans on featuring user created videos within the near future. – http://blog.wordpress.tv/2009/01/16/welcome-to-wordpresstv/

The WordPress Handbook – During the recent WordCamp Las Vegas event, Matt Mullenweg announced something he calls the WordPress Handbook documentation project. This project will be a free online manual for WordPress users that will contain updated information. Right now, the details of the project state that the online manual will be versioned, edited, and compiled much like the way development for the WordPress project takes place. – http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/wordpress-handbook-project/

Plugin Of The Week – WP Greet Box – This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer URL.
For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-greet-box/

If you’re looking for more information regarding WordPress or just want to be part of a community centered around WordPress, please head on over to WPTavern.com which will soon be opening to the public. Until that happens, you can register an account and participate in the forum which is already buzzing with new forum posts being created every day.

Popularity: 16% [?]

[ad#rssannouncer]
WordPress 2.7 Hits 1 Million Downloads – For the past two weeks, people have been keeping tabs on the WordPress download counter to see when it would hit 1 million downloads. Well, the wait is over and WordPress 2.7 hit 1 million downloads on January 9th. I imagine that once the majority of users end up with WordPress 2.7 or higher which contains the automattic core upgrade function, 1 million downloads will be reached at a record pace.- http://www.miroslavglavic.ca/blog/wordpress/1000000-wp

A Smaller Number – Matt Mullenweg has announced a small but noticeable change on WordPress.com. The stats counter used to show the total number of blogs on WordPress.com as well as how many new posts and words for the day. With the recent change, the total number of blogs hosted on WordPress.com has been changed to show the total number of active bloggers. This number is an average over the last few days and provides a more accurate statistic with regards to the activity taking place on the domain. – http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/a-smaller-number/

Subscribe To Comments – Subscribe to comments which is a popular plugin used on the self hosted version of WordPress has found it’s way onto WordPress.com. Subscribe to comments provides a checkbox in the comments form that when checked, will notify the end user when a new comment has been published keeping everyone in the loop. The feature is enabled by default meaning there is nothing to configure.- http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/subscribe-to-comments/

Plugin Of The Week – Maintenance Mode – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. When the maintenance mode is activated, a custom defined message is show to site visitors – http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/

I invite you to head on over to WPTavern.com and bookmark the site. WPTavern will be a WordPress centric site containing news, reviews, videos, and my WordPress Weekly podcast as well as a forum. Hope to see you there when the site launches in public beta next month.

Related articles by Zemanta

• WordPress.com Hits 5 Million Blogs
• Automattic acquires Polldaddy to blend blogs with online polls
• Matt Mullenweg: WordPress Evangelist/Rock Star

Popularity: 100% [?]

[ad#rssannouncer]
Keyboard Shortcuts in WordPress 2.7 – The WordPress Publisher blog has published a list of keyword shortcuts that are available for use in WordPress 2.7. If your site receives dozens of comments these shortcuts can really increase the speed of moderating comments in the moderation queue. – http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2008/12/29/wordpress-moderating-comments-keyboard-shortcuts/

Display The Most Commented Posts of 2008 – WPRecipes has published a short but concise article that explains how you can display a list of your 10 most commented posts from 2008 either in your sidebar or anywhere within your theme. This is a cool technique to use either for your visitors to see or for your own curiosity. – http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-display-the-most-commented-posts-of-2008

Top 10 Plugin Developers – In what I consider to be a unique use of the WordPress.org API. W-shadow.com has published the top 10 WordPress Plugin developers based on the number of downloads the plugin has received. The top three should be no surprise as they are Michael Torbert author of the All in one SEO plugin, Matt Mullenweg author of Akismet and Lester ‘Gamerz’ Chen author of the WP-Polls plugin. Shadow goes into detail regarding other statistics revolving around the plugin repository so be sure to give that a read as his findings are rather interesting.-http://w-shadow.com/blog/2008/12/28/top-10-wordpress-plugin-developers/

Plugin Of The Week – Comment Luv – Comments are a wonderful thing to receive on your blog, adding the dofollow plugin is one way to reward but why not place a link to their last post under their comment, with CommentLuv, you can do that automatically! This is an excellent way to promote comments from your readers. The CommentLuv WordPress Plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and attempt to scrape the last post they made and display it under their comment, this way you can encourage people to join in the discussion of your posts and give something back straight away. WordPress. – http://www.fiddyp.co.uk/commentluv-wordpress-plugin/

Related articles by Zemanta

• WordPress News: 650,000 WP 2.7 Downloads, BuddyPress, Theme Threat, Schwag, and More
• Automattic Nabs PollDaddy, Releases WordPress Plugin
• 10 Awesome WordPress Plugin Authors

Popularity: 15% [?]