Archive for the ‘WordPress News’ Category
by Darnell Clayton on April 29th, 2011
After celebrating over 100,000 downloads of their JetPack plugin, Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) is teasing WordPress bloggers with hints regarding a future update that may “wow” self hosted fans.
Beyond the recent bug fix releases, we’re investigating WordPress.com’s most popular features and how to engineer them to work inside Jetpack. I can’t say more, but it’s fair to say version 1.2 is likely to contain something impressive – something no ordinary plugin can currently do. (Official JetPack Blog)
Note: Emphasis mine.
While Automattic isn’t providing many hints regarding their update, they are open to suggestions about which WP.com features they should include along side their surprise.
Unfortunately their comment section isn’t open for suggestions (note: perhaps it was accidently turned off?), although here are a few suggestions from yours truly. Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress, WordPress Plugins
by Darnell Clayton on April 27th, 2011
In a bid to help WordPress users get beyond the blank screen and inspire them to create content, Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) has released a new tool to help bloggers combat writers block.
Dubbed Writing Helper, WP.com’s new tool seeks to use the power of man and machine in order to help bloggers create spectacular posts. Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress, wordpress.com
by Darnell Clayton on April 22nd, 2011
For those of you obsessed with all things SEO (at least from Google’s vantage point), the search engine giant has released a new plugin to help make it easier to verify your self hosted WordPress blog with Webmaster Tools.
For webmasters with self-hosted Wordpress [sic] blogs, there’s now a Webmaster Tools site verifcation plugin for WordPress [sic] that completely automates our verification process! [...]
With verified ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools, you can receive specific statistics and information (e.g. relevant search queries, malware notices) about your site directly from Google. (Google Webmaster Central Blog) Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: google, wordpress, WordPress Plugins
by Darnell Clayton on April 19th, 2011
Android lovers will be pleased to hear that their beloved WordPress app has finally added features long enjoyed by your iOS and Blackberry brethren.
You can now easily set the publish date and time in the app when creating a post or page. The date can be set to the future which will set the post status to ‘Scheduled’ and publish on your blog when the time arrives. [...]
At the bottom of the post editor we’ve added a Post Password field to help protect your content. Simply enter a password here and the post will require that the password be entered for viewing on the blog when published. (WordPress for Android)
The Android app also supports HTTP Authentication for self hosted blogs, which means WordPress fans no longer have to choose between mobile blogging an tighter security via select plugins.
Unfortunately for those of you who have installed the app from Amazon’s App store, this update is not yet available (it’s awaiting approval from Amazon’s app tribunal).
However fans of Amazon’s app store can always install a fresh copy from Android Market (which might be wiser in the future, especially if WordPress releases a security update).
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: Android, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on April 13th, 2011
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) was unfortunately targeted by hackers recently and suffered a breach upon their servers.
Tough note to communicate today: Automattic had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.
We have been diligently reviewing logs and records about the break-in to determine the extent of the information exposed, and re-securing avenues used to gain access. We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited. (Official WordPress Blog)
To their credit Automattic alerted the community regarding the breach, a habit I wish was emulated within other industries (who often inform users days if not weeks later).
Automattic is still investigating the hack although there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of any passwords compromised, however the company is recommending that users change their passwords.
It’s also a good idea for self hosted blogs using WordPress.com services (like VaultPress) to change their WP.com passwords as well.
Note: For those of you who are extra paranoid, you can also change your username as well by visiting your Global Dashboard, then clicking on “Personal Settings” in the sidebar, then scrolling down to the “Account Details” section and clicking on the “Change” link next to your user name.
Although this breach indirectly affects self hosted WordPress fans, it might be wise to verify your hosting companies security defenses, as well as install a few plugins (like Login Lockdown) upon your site.
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: Security, wordpress.com
by Darnell Clayton on April 5th, 2011
After releasing numerous bug fixes and redesigning the interface, WordPress iOS developers are about to add some extra life to the bare bones app.
The most important to-do in the 2.8 road map is Localization. WordPress for iOS will now become much more accessible for many users. 2.8 will also introduce a Stats view (finally!), a Quick Photo button, as well as a few more nifty improvements. (WordPress for iOS)
WordPress Stats is a feature that every other smartphone platform (even Nokia!) has long enjoyed save iOS fans, who had to rely upon a third party app to receive their WP stats fix.
While the next update will finally bake in stats, WordPress is still looking for a few more good ideas on how to improve the app further (probably beyond what has already been discussed).
One suggestion that has yet to be widely discussed would be for the iOS app to embrace post layouts for Tumbl themes using status, quotes, asides, links, etc., similar to what Express App does (minus the hacking or WooThemes requirement).
For those of you who enjoy blogging on the go, what extra features would you like to see integrated within the WordPress app?
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: iPad, iphone, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on March 25th, 2011
WordPress fans sporting a Palm Pre 2 will be pleased to hear that we may see an app courting webOS in the not so distant future!
Upon visiting webOS.wordpress.org, WordPress fans are greeted with this message:
The blog http://webos.wordpress.org was marked private by its owner. If you were invited to view this blog, please log in below. For more information about blog privacy settings, please visit our support site.
This is the nearly the same message that appeared when WordPress was working upon Windows Phone 7, Nokia and Android before launching them to the public.
Although there are blogging apps upon webOS, most (if not all) of them are from third party developers as the mobile OS has been ignored by all of the major blogging platforms until now.
By courting webOS, WordPress will extend its influence upon every major mobile OS save Bada (from Samsung), helping to strengthen their position as the dominant mobile platform (at least when it comes to blogging upon a smartphone).
WordPress has yet to reveal any details regarding their webOS app, although for those of you sporting the Palm Pre 2 what features would you like to see included within the app?
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: Palm Pre, webOS, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on March 18th, 2011
Core developers are gearing up for the next release of WordPress, with promises that version 3.2 will arrive to the public without a lengthy delay (although truth be told version 3.1 was worth the wait).
While WordPress will also be working on optimizing the software in order to improve loading speeds, it will also boast an interesting feature that may make it easier for bloggers to write posts as well.
Distraction Free Writing. This is our headline “ooh, shiny†user feature. Replace our current fullscreen implementation with something more beautiful, more useful (in terms of line-length and font size), and simpler (only limited RTE functionality). Look at WriteRoom, OmmWriter, http://www.quietwrite.com/ for inspiration. Koop is investigating this, and may crank out a quick plugin to jump-start development efforts (WordPress Development Updates)
Simplifying the interface could make it easier for new bloggers to create posts within WordPress without being distracted by all the bells and whistles of the software.
The upcoming version of WordPress will require PHP 5.2.4 as well as MySQL 5 (note: make sure your web host is aware of these changes), and will also be transitioning away from IE6.
WordPress has not yet released a time frame for when they expect version 3.2 to be available to the public, although those of you on the bleeding edge can install the Beta Tester plugin to experiment with 3.2 (preferably upon a test site).
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on March 17th, 2011
WordPress has released a new update to their universal iOS app which sports not only a slicker layout, but also seems to have resolved most of the bugs from the previous version.
Simply select the icons along the bottom of the post editor to edit post settings, view attachments and add media. You can also now upload multiple media objects at once!
‘Pull to refresh’ has been added to the list views of the app. To refresh the list, simply pull down until the arrow flips around and then release[.] (WordPress for iOS)
One of my favorite features is the ability to email commenters from within the app, which makes it easier to reply to readers privately without having to log into your blog via mobile Safari.
As a bonus WordPress has “magically” (to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs) reduced the amount of time uploading videos to a blog, and has even made it easy to cancel videos uploading midway by tapping upon the clip.
Note: Bug resolved. See update below.
The only “critical” bug I discovered while using the app was the fact that WordPress seems to enjoy silencing my music (even upon third party apps like Pandora) whenever I launch WordPress for iOS. 
Music silencing aside, the latest update should resolve most of the issues for WordPress fans (especially those using “unlimited hosting” plans), and is available for free upon the app store.
Update: Apparently the bug (which was also replicated within other apps ironically) dissappeared after syncing my iPhone with iTunes.
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: iPad, iphone, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on March 9th, 2011
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) has released a plugin for self hosted WordPress fans that will make it easier for them to receive some of the features from WP.com without having to scour the WP directory for a plugin.
Today we’re launching the first version of what’s been a dream of mine for several years now, really since my State of the Word presentation in 2009: a way to provide feature parity between WordPress.com and WordPress.org for everybody. [...]
For launch we’ve brought eight of the most-requested features into Jetpack as one easy bundle: Hovercards, Stats, After the Deadline, Twitter widget, shortcodes, shortlinks, easy Facebook/Twitter/WordPress sharing buttons (Sharedaddy), and for our fellow math nerds, 
. We’re excited about this initial set of features, but we’re even more excited for what’s coming down the road. (Jetpack News)
Automattic is partnering with a number of hosts (including GoDaddy and DreamHost) in order to have Jetpack pre-installed with new WordPress users. Current WordPress fans can install the Jetpack plugin manually from the directory.
Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress, WordPress Plugins
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