Twitter Comes To WordPress.com –If you’re a user of WordPress.com as well as Twitter, you’ll be delighted to know that the folks at Automattic have added a Twitter widget that you can place on your sidebar. All the links that you post to Twitter remain clickable in the widget, and your @ replies link to user profiles. The widget went live on March 26th and is currently available to use.- http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/twitter-widget/

Vote For WordPress – At about this time every year, the folks over at Webware present their Webware 100 finalists on which to vote on to see who will take the crown in their respective category. In 2008, WordPress was the winner of the publishing category. This year, the category is called Social Networking and Publishing in which WordPress.com along with the WordPress Platform are among one of the choices to vote for. The poll is being conducted via PollDaddy and the results will be announced on April 19th.

3 Plugins To Speed Up WordPress – If you’re finding your WordPress powered site to be running a bit sluggishly, then consider the information presented within a blog post on ConnectedInternet.co.uk. The site features three different WordPress plugins which will help optimize your site. On top of that, the site also features a few tips to put into practice to ensure that your site is not bogged down over time.

Plugin Pick Of The Week – Twitter User – Twitter User is a simple plugin which adds an additional field to the authors profile in which they can add their twitter username. Single author blogs will find this plugin useful however Multi Author blogs should really love this plugin as it allows all authors of a blog to quickly and easily share their Twitter username with readers.

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 where the drinks, are always on the house.

Popularity: 7% [?]

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Plugin Development Book – Vladimir Prelovac who I consider to be a WordPress Rockstar in his own right has is very own book called WordPress Plug-In Development. Beginner’s guide. Vladimir is not only a plugin developer but also a good theme developer as well. The book goes into detail regarding the underpinnings of the software, plugin security, development, hooks, and much more. It’s currently available in either Paperback form or online via PDF for $39.99 http://www.wptavern.com/new-wordpress-book-for-plugin-development

IntenseDebate Gets Plugged In – IntenseDebate, the third party commenting service which Automattic acquired back on September 23rd, 2008 has announced that they will have their own plugin repository. So far, IntenseDebate has four plugins to choose from. PollDaddy for creating polls, Seesmic for creating video based comments, YouTube integration and Smileys. It will be interesting to see how far this plugin repository gets off the ground but I think its a great step in the right direction. – http://www.wptavern.com/intensedebate-is-getting-plugged-in

WordPress Store To Get Revamped – Remember the WordPress Shop? If you forgot about it, don’t worry as I did too considering I haven’t seen much news come out of the store for quite awhile. The site is undergoing a facelift to match the current WP site designs and also a new batch of new product is being produced. USB drives have been added this week with more items to follow. (By the way, the USB drives cost $15.00 and contain 4 GB worth of space. – http://www.wptavern.com/wordpress-store-to-get-a-revamp

Plugin Of The Week – WordPress Mobile Editions – With mobile device usage skyrocketing, it only makes sense to ensure that your blog can be read in a mobile format. WordPress Mobile Edition is a plugin that shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected, there is no configuration needed. – http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=wordpress-mobile-edition

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.

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• IntenseDebate Plugins: Blog Comments as a Platform (mashable.com)
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• IntenseDebate Add Plugin Support (blogherald.com)

Popularity: 8% [?]

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5 Years Of WordPress – Ozh who is a very active contributor in the WordPress community has published an awesome post which highlights the past five years of WordPress development. The article includes photos as well as short stories regarding each version from 0.7.1 to 2.7. A great way to look at how far WordPress has come.- http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/12/a-journey-through-five-years-of-wordpress-interface/

Updated Plugins – Lester Chan’s who is the developer behind some of the most popular plugins for WordPress recently announced that he has updated all 15 of his plugins to be compatible with WordPress 2.7. Lester was going to retire his stick post plugin thanks to stickies now being a default feature but because the demand was so high, Lester decided to keep the plugin around and update it. On top of all this, Lester also introduced a new plugin called WP-CommentNavi which basically adds pages to your comments similar to how his PageNavi plugin paginates posts.- http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/12/11/lester-chan-wordpress-plugins-december-2008-update/

BuddyPress Hits Beta -BuddyPress which is a project headed up by Andy Peatling and provides a social aspect to WordPressMU was released as a beta on December 15th. This release consisted of the BuddyPress components as well as both default themes. Keep in mind that in order to use BuddyPress, you’ll need to first install WordPress MU. -http://buddypress.org/blog/2008/12/buddypress-10b1-components/

Plugin Of The Week – Filosofo Comments Preview – Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them. After the plugin is installed and activated, end users will see a new button labeled PREVIEW next to the submit button. This allows visitors to preview their comments before publishing them. It’s also very quick to load. – http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/comments-preview/

Popularity: 15% [?]

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I have been using WordPress for some time now, and thought I would talk about just one of the plugins I use currently called PingpressFM. If you are familiar with the service called Ping.fm, and you use this service for microblogging updates to sites such as Twitter, Tumblr and others, and you also run a WordPress blog, then this is the plugin for you!

Now, if you use Ping.fm, you know you can go there and input up to 140 characters, including links, and it will send out to the various services that you are subscribed to, automatically. PingpressFM works the same way by accessing Ping.fm and sending your blog post title to each of the services you subscribe to along with the permalink to the blog post. In this way, you don’t have to make a separate post to Ping.fm or your other microblogging services as this plugin does it for you as soon as you publish your post.

You can download this plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pingpressfm/

Popularity: 10% [?]