Archive for the ‘General’ Category
by David Peralty on July 10th, 2009
With the release of WordPress 2.8.1 finally here, WordPress.com is already looking ahead to the development of 2.9. Check out the post on the WordPress.com blog.
The main focus of WordPress 2.9 will be on it’s media features, and they are looking for input on what the community thinks are the most important things they need to be working on via a survey that you can take right here.
There are 11 features listed in the poll, which are…
# Photostream
# Post Thumbnails
# Media Metadata
# Additional Media Filters
# Basic Image Editing
# Easier Embeds
# Revised Media UI
# Better Media Settings
# Bulk Media Import API
# Media Albums
# Custom Image Sizes
So if you have a minute to spare, and an interest in seeing any of those features pushed hard in WordPress 2.9, take a moment to take the survey.
Categories: General
Tags: survey, wordpress, WordPress 2.8.1, WordPress 2.9, WordPress development, wordpress.com
by David Peralty on July 9th, 2009
It’s finally here for real. Check out the WordPress dev blog for full details, and you can download 2.8.1 from WordPress.org.
Here’s just a sample of changes since 2.8.0…
# Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
# The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
# A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
# Upload error messages are now correctly reported.
# Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed.
# Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed.
You can also view ALL of the changes here on their trac system, and it’s a pretty long list.
Categories: General
Tags: WordPress 2.8.1
by David Peralty on July 8th, 2009
Found this great video of John Lilly (CEO of Mozilla) giving a talk at WordCamp San Francisco via WordPress.tv. It’s packed with great stuff about community, and open-source, and all that fun stuff.
Check it out below or at WordPress.tv
Categories: General
Tags: john lilly, mozilla, talk, wordcamp, wordcamp san francisco, wordpress, wordpress.tv
by David Peralty on July 7th, 2009
If you want to get your site loaded for your readers as fast as possible, yoast.com has a great article about using a CDN with WordPress (though any site can benefit from it).
The article includes a bunch of information about CDN’s (including the definition you’re about to read, so don’t worry if you’re lost), and why you should probably be using one if you don’t hate your readers.
Here’s a tidbit from the post to get you started…
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network. Basically, it’s a bunch of highly optimized servers all across the world, with a bit of unique logic worked into them: you’ll always hit the server that’s closest to you. This leads to huge performance improvements for sites that have visitors from all across the world, like this one.
My images were coming from the US, which was better for like 50% of my readers but pretty slow for a lot of my European readers (about 35% of my readers are European). Now, for them, these images can come from the CDNs servers in London, Amsterdam or Frankfurt, whichever is closest to them.
If you’ve got readers from all over the place, a CDN is likely a very good idea if you can afford it (it’s surprisingly affordable usually). Yoast.com is claiming a 3x (or more) increase in load speeds for most readers, and that adds up pretty fast if the site gets a lot of traffic.
Definitely something that every budding blogger should look into.
Categories: General
Tags: blogging, cdn, content delivery network, yoast.com
by David Peralty on July 7th, 2009
Just a quick note that WordPress 2.8.1 RC 1 is out. Damn close to a final release at this point, and it’s looking pretty shiny.
Take a look at all the fixes in 2.8.1 (warning: it’s a list of closed tickets in Trac, viewing this list may put your sanity at risk, but it’s worth it if you’re into the nitty-gritty of how WordPress works).
Categories: General
Tags: wordpress, WordPress 2.8.1
by David Peralty on July 6th, 2009
The third guest blogging contest coming from jobmob.co.il is open, and the prizes this time around are pretty cool, in that they are cold, hard cash.
I’ll let them give you all the details on the contest page, but here’s a little taste to get you intrigued (hopefully)…
1) The grand prize winner will win:
* US$150, sponsored by Jacob Share and JobMob.
2) The second grand prize winner will win:
* US$50, sponsored by Jacob Share and JobMob.
The grand prizes will go to the author(s) of the 2 guest posts that attracted the most visitors during the contest. Details below on how to do just that.
3) An early-bird winner will win:
* US$50, sponsored by Jacob Share and JobMob.
Anyone who submits a guest post before 1 pm on July 21st 2009 will be eligible for the early-bird prize. The winner will be chosen at random from among those people and announced on August 3rd when the first guest post appears on JobMob.
Read more: http://jobmob.co.il/blog/2009-guest-blogging-contest/#ixzz0KWSczx0C&C
This time around the theme of the contest is “job search”, so at the very least, there will likely be some great job hunting related content coming out of this, and that’s always a good thing.
Categories: General
Tags: blogging contest, guest post, job search, jobmob
by David Peralty on July 3rd, 2009
For all you WordPress for iPhone users out there, version 1.3 of the app is live. Seems like it pretty much just fixes some compatibility issues, but it should help with stability if nothing else.
Also, just fyi, there’s a strange version numbering problem with this release. Here’s how the WordPress for iPhone blog explains it…
Please note: Due to a strange glitch when submitting the app, the About page of the “1.3″ version will say version “1.21.1″. If you see that, you are running the correct version. We are working with Apple to understand why it would not accept “1.3″ as a valid version, yet displays that version in the iTunes store just fine.
Categories: General
Tags: WordPress for iPhone
by David Peralty on July 2nd, 2009
According to a post on the WordPress Development blog today, there are finally some concrete GPL related answers regarding some fuzziness in the communities (and WordPress’s) understanding of exactly how themes fit into the GPL framework.
Long story short, the php (or at least the parts related to hooking into WordPress) of themes ARE required to be GPL compliant. The tricky bit is, the images and css are NOT. Meaning a theme could be partially GPL and still retain copyright of the artwork/design to some degree.
Here’s a snippet for you…
The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.
If you want more details, head over to the post on the Dev blog for the full situation, including some more fun legalese type stuff.
Categories: General
by Mark on June 30th, 2009
Starting a business online may be an exciting idea but are you ready for the challenges ahead? Putting up a website is not the start and end of it because you have to ensure that you sustain your traffic and sales once you begin. Deciding on your own may not be sufficient but with a mentor to guide through every step of the way, you can be sure to build your confidence going forward.
The Winners Circle membership site is one training program you can count on. I strongly recommend this especially to start up entrepreneurs. It’s easy to use and requires only a small amount from your pocket but the wealth of knowledge you can gain is more than your money’s worth.
The training program provided by the Winners Circle is not like any other because it makes use of case studies and actual experiences of internet experts. No other mentoring site has shared real case studies of businesses that have achieved success in the field of ecommerce. SEO specialist Gyutae Park, the man behind this membership program, made sure to share vital materials with those who care to sign up and take their business to the next level. Park is no ordinary internet expert because he has had vast experience working as a consultant in the past assisting major international companies including Nokia in their SEO campaign.
For those who take part in the Winners Circle training program, great features await you. Signing up is quick and easy and once you’ve logged in, you’re ready to take advantage of the truly valuable information available exclusively to members.
- Case studies. Each week, a new case study is featured on the members area. But other than the new one, you can access all the previous case studies for your reference. These materials not only present the business models but go in depth in analyzing their strategies pertaining to market research and monetization of sites. With these detailed information, it’s easy to understand the ways that work to help push your business ahead than the others.
- Interviews. Two interviews are featured every month. These involve successful internet marketers, bloggers and business oriented people who earn a living online. Wouldn’t it be great to hear the experts share their stories and learn from their lessons? It’s one opportunity that should not be missed.
- Forum. What better way to connect and learn from other entrepreneurs but to interact on an online forum. Whether you have concerns or you want to share tips, the Winners Circle forum is the perfect avenue to exchange ideas and get the right support from like-minded people.
- Bonus. For every person who signs up, you get a bonus from Gyutae Park. It’s a free copy of his Guide to Finding the Perfect Niche for your Online Business. This is particularly helpful to the newbies in the online business because choosing the right category is crucial to being easily located by your target audience.
What all these means is that for every successful online business, learning the ropes from the experts on a consistent basis is the right step to take. Join the Winners Circle then if you want to be a winner yourself.
Categories: General
by David Peralty on June 26th, 2009
If you don’t find using the default post editor in WordPress very efficient, or for whatever reason just want to be able to post to your WordPress blog without going to the admin panel, starting a new post, and going through the somewhat lengthy process of getting everything ready to go, then they are quite a few alternative methods to getting something posted.
Bloggerdesign.com currently has a great list describing many of them, including a fairly good list of desktop applications or browser addons.
Here’s a taste from one of the methods they discuss…
Press This is a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser. When you find something you want to blog about, select it and click the Press This bookmarklet. It’ll then open a small WordPress post window that is auto-populated with the selected text and allow you to put the finishing touches on the post.
Out of all the different ways I’ve tried in the past, that I like ScribeFire the best, but it really comes down to personal choice, and what you want to do with it. There are certainly enough other options that if you wanted to you could avoid the default editor forever and no one would be the wiser for it.
Are they any methods that people are using that weren’t included in the list? Let me know what you’re using in the comments. It’s always interesting to hear about how people are using the different tools available (or creating their own).
Categories: General
Tags: alternative, bloggerdesign.com, post editor, wordpress
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