In this section we examine Facebook Comments for Wordress (plugin), Facebook Like Box (embed code) and Simple Facebook Connect (entire plugin framework).

If you want a simple commenting system check out our first option, if you want to build your fan page for your Facebook page try option two and if you want to integrate Facebook with your login platform, like boxes and other options check out the Simple Facebook Connect option.

In any case you’ll likely find a plugin or code base to serve your Facebook needs.

1. Facebook Comments for WordPress

This plugin is by far the most robust and easy to use option for WordPress users looking to upload a plugin, activate it and follow some easy instructions.

Once uploaded users have the ability to choose between two styles (Light and Dark), the dark option is used for websites with black backgrounds. The plugin also allows users to choose how many comments are displayed on each page.

For users who don’t want to or don’t know how to add code to their WordPress templates the Facebook Comments plugins allows for easy integration by giving users the ability to add the comments box to pages only, posts only or both.  If you do know how to place a simple PHP hook into your template you can turn off the auto insertion option and customize your site until your hearts content.

The program also allows comment counts to be reflected on pages and posts, while email notifications can be sent whenever a comment is posted.

2. Facebook Like Box

The Facebook Like box is the easiest way to display your websites Facebook fan page on your website with easy to customize options for better community outreach.

This customized friendly widget can be found at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/ and features several unique features.

First, width for the program can be chosen directly from Facebook’s website. Second, Facebook provides “light” and “dark” themes depending on the background and content area colors for your website, making it simple to customize your Facebook widget. Facebook also allows users to choose the widgets coloring based off hex codes such as #dddddd.

I also love the fact that the Facebook Like Box allows me to display the faces for Facebook users who have recently chosen to like my websites fan page, while I can also display the Facebook stream from my fan pages.

Finally, the box actually looks good on a pages sidebar or between posts. If you don’t want the “Find us on Facebook” header you can even remove it.

Finally, the embed code comes in three flavors iFrame, XFBML and HTML5. Given the popularity of HTML5 and the quick load times it offers it’s a no-brainer to choose this option.

It should be noted that Facebook does not offer a WordPress plugin directly however you can easily embed the provided code into your WordPress template.

3. Simple Facebook Connect

Simple Facebook Connect is by far the most robust of all WordPress based Facebook plugins. My favorite part about using this particular plugin is that I can allow users to sign up on my website using their Facebook credentials by placing a login button on all of my blogs pages.

Simple Facebook Connect also provides other useful Facebook integration options including the addition of Like and Share Buttons, the ability to send posts directly to a Facebook fan page and the ability to allow for Facebook commenting capabilities. SFC as it’s commonly known also allows users to integrate FB photo albums directly into their blog.

The best part about Simple Facebook connect is the fact that the program offers various widgets including the Facebook Fan box I wrote about above, the Facebook Like button, Facebook Recommendations which highlights a websites top recommended posts and more.

If you want connectivity with sharing capabilities this is the first and quite possible the last plugin you’ll ever need.

Since Simple Facebook Connect is a full system with a sub-set of systems it makes running a website with full Facebook integration a simple process that any user will enjoy.

The three plugins listed above offer their own customized options that will appeal to different users, one thing however is certain, each option features competent programming standards with ease of use that most users can figure out quickly and easily.

Vladimir Prelovac, serial plugin developer, has created WP Quick Deploy, a plugin which will soon become your favourite WordPress install assistant.

The plugin lets you browse a well curated selection of WordPress plugins which then can be installed all at once. Check the plugin page for more information.

Luckily not much is needed to make both editors compliant with the WordPress coding standards and in an entry over at Magp.ie Eoin Gallagher, Polldaddy developer, explains how to configure Coda – and TextWrangler – to meet the WordPress coding standards.

Discover how here.

The plugin offers integration with Paypal and WP eStore.

Check it out at Tips and Tricks HQ.

For a long time the search function of WordPress has been the achilles heel of the publication platform and numerous plugins extending the WordPress search have been created and uploaded to WordPress Extend.

The team of IOIX Ukraine have developed a new WordPress plugin, SearchPlugins in collaboration with Splashpress Media, owner of this blog, to power the search function of your site, WordPress blog. After months of hard work we now are taking applications to our (closed) Beta program and will slowly roll out the new plugin, while we add more features to the functionality.

We are now taking applications to join the closed beta program and will on a regular basis add new Beta testers to the platform

To view results of the plugin just use the search functionality here at BloggingPro or check out the results for a search for blogging success here at BP.

How Does It Work?

Search Plugin by IOIX Ukraine can replace the WordPress standard search functionality with only one click. After activation of the plugin, you must enter your API key, which grants you access to the use of the proprietary search engine, and can then configure the plugin to replace the WordPress search functionality without having to make any design changes.

Once configured the search engine crawler will crawl the content of the sites you wish to include to your search results: you can add sites with use of the plugin or you can add sites you like to add related niche results. Best results are obtained if you install the plugin on all sites you wish to include in your search results.

Why Opt for Search Plugin by IOIX Ukraine?

Contrarily to most plugins, this search plugin is powered by an external, new search engine, with own algorithm, all while offering easy and seamless integration with your WordPress design. All you need to do is install the plugin, activate it and enter your API key.
In the plugin settings you can then replace the standard WordPress search with Search Plugin by IOIX Ukraine. You can even configure the plugin to automatically update whenever a new version is released.

Another main feature is that you can easily add several, owned or not owned, sites to the plugin’s search functionality, similarly to Google’s Custom Search Engine. Additionally you have the option to design the complete results page within the plugins settings and add your own (Adsense) ads or other content to the search results. Enjoy complete theming freedom

Complete Control of Search Results Display

While the search results will fall back on the main CSS rules of your theme you can also easily insert new CSS rules for the display of the search results and even control what elements are displayed. As can be seen in the screenshot from our example search for blogging success, you can opt to display the originating site, publication date and article author in the results and you can style everything easily thanks to the freedom and power of CSS.

Some Background Information

Upon installation of the plugin, a new page with links to all your published entries is created just for the ASM search engine crawlers. This allows us to restrict the search on every site you have installed the plugin to only the entries published and in a future version we can add several new elements to the plugin which could influence the way results are displayed/sorted. If the plugin is not installed on a site listed in your member area, the crawlers will index these sites the traditional way and follow every link they find.

Who is the Plugin Aimed At?

Although the plugin can be installed on every WordPress site, the plugin is mainly aimed at owners of several sites or publications, networks. With the plugin it becomes very simple to display results from several sites as you can see here in the search results on BloggingPro: a search for blogging books returns results from BloggingPro, The Blog Herald, Performancing and BusinessLogs.

Future Plans, Features

While we have only entered the closed Beta program and are aware that we still have to sort out several minor issues and make some tweaks, we would love to hear from you what features you would love to see from a search plugin for WordPress based sites.

Oops! We could not locate your form.

Join The Beta Program

You can read more about the Beta announcement at the Search Plugin blog.

Visit the Search Plugin by IOIX Ukraine website to sign up and join the Beta program.

While it’s true that one can easily pro blog upon Google’s favorite child, WordPress does offer BlogSpot devotees 4 incredible tools to aid their quest at becoming a blogging pro.

Although none of these tools require Blogger guru’s to embrace the WP brand, ignoring them could spell the difference between success and failure.

Intense Debate: Creating Order Out Of Chaos

Instead of having readers shout at each in the comment stream (i.e. “hey @ username, blah, blah, blah”) in a vain attempt to hold a conversation, you should instead embrace threaded conversations to help bring some order to your blog discussions.

Acquired by WordPress in 2008, Intense Debate can help discussions flourish by allowing readers to easily reply back to each other like civilized geeks, minus the shout backs.

As an additional bonus, Intense Debate allows your readers to comment using their Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as Open ID (the latter which Blogger only offers).

Last but not least you can easily moderate comments from the comfort of your inbox without the need of purchasing an iPhone app (or an iPhone for that matter).

Akismet: Your Local Spam Assassin

With CAPTCHA’s going the way of the dinosaur (thanks in part to smart spam bots and cheap human labor), you site is going to need a stronger defense against these minions.

Although you can not directly incorporate Akismet within your Blogger Blogs, you can install WordPress’s anti-spam vanguard via Intense Debate (or through a similar commenting system like Disqus).

Akismet is designed to help keep the evil spammers out while at the same time lowering the barrier for your readers to voice their opinions minus the silly quizes and word puzzles.

Gravatar: Profile Thy Threads

The difference between Gravatar (or comments with profile images) and non-Gravatar comment threads can be summed up in one word: personality.

Although the standard links and name routine has worked fairly well in the age of “all things social,” enabling Gravatar’s can make your commenting threads appear more personal (or at least less geeky).

This might encourage lurkers to voice their opinions publicly (instead of merely reading your blog from the shadows), which could lead towards more vibrant discussions upon your blog posts.

Intense Debate (as well as similar commenting systems) do allow bloggers to implement Gravatar’s for their commenting sections, although you might want to consider creating one yourself (as there are other benefits to Gravatar aside from aesthetics).

After The Deadline: Your Virtual School Master

Although not as familiar as the previous WordPress tools mentioned above, After The Deadline can help keep the grammar police from flooding your comment section by spelling out why you’re and idiot for not framing your sentences correctly.

Even though Blogger already has a spell checker, Google’s favorite child lacks a decent grammar checker within its WYSIWYG suite enabling the grammar police to harass you (despite the fact that everything is spelled correctly).

Those of the BlogSpot faith can implement After The Deadline upon their blogs via a Google Chrome or Firefox extension (unfortunately there is no extension for IE or Opera fans).

What about _______?

Although there are other WordPress tools BlogSpot lovers can utilize (such as VideoPress or even PollDaddy), Blogger lovers may have little incentive to use them thanks in part to Google providing free alternatives like (YouTube and Blogger Polls).

Do you use Blogger? (or have you used Blogger in the past?) If so, what other tools (whether official or third party) would you recommend for your fellow BlogSpot lovers? Feel free to enlighten us in the comment section below.

However before Automattic (the company behind WordPress) releases the new iPhone app to the masses, they are seeking feedback from the WP community on what features they should add to improve their beloved mobile app.

We’re very close to releasing 2.5, which will include support for iOS 4 and addresses some long-standing issues including cut-and-paste on the iPad. We’ve also got a nifty new setup flow for WordPress.com users: If you’re creating a new blog the process has been simplified, and if you’ve got existing WordPress.com blogs we’ve made adding all of them a breeze.

Although I am grateful for their latest update for the iPhone, it became apparent that not all WordPress Apps were created equal, with some mobile platforms receiving extra attention in the “feature department” than one notable other.

Whether this has to do with the nature of the app stores themselves (i.e. Apple’s aristocracy vs Google libertarianism) is unknown, although here is a brief chart comparing the apps against each other, which may make a few geeks “iJealous.”

WordPress for Blackberry

Of all the WordPress apps on any mobile device, WordPress for Blackberry has the most features–not to mention the fact that it’s the only one that currently embraces VideoPress.

The fact that the Blackberry app also supports custom fields puts it ahead of its brethren, with the additional “more tag” (aka post expandable summary) rubbing salt into my iWound.

WordPress for Android

WordPress for Android is the only WP app thus far to support basic WYSIWYG (bold, italics, links–even block quoting!) and there are even future plans of adding WordPress stats as well as VideoPress support later on.

As far as I can tell there are currently no plans to add custom fields as well as the “more tag” within the upcoming app, although I would not be surprised to see these released down the road.

WordPress for iPhone

The only advantage WordPress for iPhone has over its younger brothers is the user interface (which looks like it was actually designed by a caring artist instead of an engineer).

Despite my suspicions that VideoPress will eventually migrate over to the app, I have given up hope that a decent WYSIWYG editor will ever appear within the app (as the link assistance feature can only go so far).

Conclusion

Currently the Blackberry app demolishes its rivals, although I suspect that over the next few weeks we will see the Android pull ahead as the stronger app of the three brethren.

As far as the iPhone WP app goes, I hate to say it but it looks like Apple (for the first time) has the weakest blogging app compared to its rivals–which might signal a shift away from Steve Job’s playground towards more open mobile fields.

While lovers of the iDevice can get around this by using BlogPress and CellSpin, the videos are hosted upon YouTube or CellSpin’s servers respectively, which may not appeal to many bloggers.

This all may change thanks to the release of Google’s Nexus One, not to mention WordPress’s upcoming Android app (which has been in the works since last October) in which WordPress may finally embrace mobile video blogging via VideoPress.

Although VideoPress is a premium service that would leave one $60 poorer, it may be a viable option for professional bloggers who do not want their videos reposted all over cyberspace (via YouTube) or inherit high bandwidth bills.

While Automattic has yet to reveal anything regarding their upcoming plans in the world of mobile, with more smartphones boasting video camera’s with higher resolution, we may finally see WordPress embrace video support later on in 2010.

To know more about this plugin you can watch the video below from WordPress.TV which gives a basic introduction of what the application can do.

The app supports both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress and is currently in version 2.0. Best of all, it’s free!

You can grab it on the AppStore by clicking here.

This is the main reason why most people are afraid to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. Thank God WordPress is always on the lookout for better ways of making things easier for its community. Alas, comes the birth of the Plugin Compatibility Beta.

Compatibility Check

If you would drop by the WordPress Plugin Directory you would notice that there is a new section titled “Compatibility” found on the right sidebar of every plugin homepage . This is a new feature that aims to help inform people on whether a version of a plugin is compatible on a particular version of WordPress based on the votes casted by those who have already tested it.

So if you’re not sure whether you should upgrade, just check out the Plugin compatibility consensus of the plugins your using. Though it doesn’t tell us exactly what made the plugin incompatible, at least it gives us a good overview on whether we should continue the upgrade or not.

Powered by the WordPress Community

Of course, this feature would not work without the input of the community as it is mainly powered by votes. If you do happen to experience any problems with your plugins, then please take the time to inform everyone else! All you have to do is to go to the Plugin’s page and log in to vote.

The voting process is simple. Just specify the version of WordPress and the plugin and click on whether it is “broken” or if it “works”. After that, WordPress would automatically log your vote and it will be added to the “consensus” along with the votes of other users.

WordPress warns users, however, that this feature should not be used to report any minor issues with the plugin. You should only vote “Broken” if the plugin is indeed broken to the point that it is unusable or causes problems with your blog. Otherwise, it might give an inaccurate consensus.

More power to WordPress and its community!

What do you think about this new feature? Do you have any other suggestions that could make it better?

Jeff Chandler has gone ahead and done up a screencast showing the basic tools available so far in the release. He does note that this might not be the final way the tools are set up, but it does give you some idea of what is being worked on for the next release with regards to image editing.

I fired up my local server today and installed the latest version of WordPress 2.9 and was surprised to see the basic image editing tools already available in the media library. I decided that the best way to display them in action was through video which also gave me another reason to open up CamtasiaStudio. In the video, I show off each individual tool as well as provide feedback on the crop tool as at this stage, does not appear to be user friendly. But, it’s very early in the development stage so it will most likely be better once it hits the public’s hands. Check out the video.

If you want to check out that screencast, head on over to WPTavern.com.

Today I’m bringing you a bunch of WordPress resources. As I’m sure your aware, WordPress is my tool of choice. The wonderful thing about WordPress, is you can do just about anything with it. So I’ve compiled this list in hopes of showing you some cool things you can do with your WordPress site that you might not have known. This list includes general resources, inspiration, quality themes, along with a bunch of tips & tricks (from beginner to more advanced) Enjoy!

If you are just getting into WordPress, or you are thinking about it, this list has a great number of resources that I check out nearly daily, making it perfect for any level of WordPress user or fan.

While many of you that read this blog will probably know nearly all of these sites, hopefully there will be a few that catch your eye that you haven’t frequented because the best way to learn something new about WordPress is to find those hidden gem blogs.

Most of them are in PDF form, so you’ve been warned. If your computer chokes on PDF’s, you might want to look elsewhere, but these files are worth having. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up the same piece of code in the Codex, only to run and do a Google search regarding the function.

If you need a WordPress quick reference sheet, check out those listed on 1st Webdesigner’s list.

If you’re doing much in the way of freelance blogging, or just want some ideas of how you might better organize your own projects using WordPress as a management tool, I highly suggest checking them out.

They each focus on a very specific set of needs and how WordPress might fill those needs (and at times suggests better options), so it’s pretty easy to mix and match a solution that could work for just about anyone.

Here’s a tidbit from the “project management” article to get things rolling…

After checking out all these options Iʼve found the “WordPress-as-Project-Management-System” experience to be extremely lacking. The options are either simple enough that they could be replaced with Google Docs or a simple notebook or so complex that trying to use them is nearly impossible. There simply is no killer project management plugin for WordPress… yet.

I think it is worth noting that the best replacement Iʼve found for Basecamp is an open source project called Project Pier which does almost everything Basecamp does. Itʼs even themeable and they have some pretty slick options. If you want a self-hosted project management solution, Project Pier is definitely the way to go.

Check out WPCandy.com for the original articles, and a pile of other fun stuff.

Here’s a little preview…

With the recent news coming out of WordCamp San Fransisco, and even the buzz from WordCamp RDU, interest is high in WordPressMU, the multi-blog version of single WordPress. We don’t know when, exactly, the merge of the two will be rolled into one package and released, but more code is being blended almost every day.

In case you haven’t checked out WordPressMU, not only is it the software that powers wordpress.com, and has a much talked about plugin suite called BuddyPress, it is flexible enough to power multiple blogs on separate domains.

She goes on to explain some of the benefits of using WordPress MU (and soon, just WordPress in general), which is actually a longer list of interesting features you might expect. Well worth checking out if you run multiple WordPress sites.

It seems like there are also big UI changes in the works for a future update, and they sound pretty nice.

When we started the project, I knew it was going to be large in the number of pages and whatnot it used, but we decided to go with WordPress because it was a platform we knew well. Installing the blog, getting some plugins set up, and having a designer make it all look pretty was easy, actually using WordPress on a day to day basis has had some drawbacks.

Managing Pages

When you have hundreds of pages and posts, set up in WordPress it can become annoying to manage. Slowly wading through the pages, or trying to search out what you want can be frustrating. The page management feels incomplete. Also, moving many pages from being a sub-page set in one area to being a sub-page set in another area feels awkward.

I have tried out numerous page management plugins, but they have either caused errors, or left something to be desired.

Listing out Sub Pages

As I created more and more pages, I needed to list them out, and doing the xhtml link for each page I added was a pain. I had to install Exec-PHP to allow me to add some PHP to the pages, and using built-in WordPress functions, I was able to automate the process.

The code I used to list out child pages:

< ?php
global $id;
wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=$id&show_date=modified
&date_format=$date_format&sort_column=post_title"); ?>

Blog Posts are Less Important

Blog posts are only a small piece of the site. We knew we wanted to have a blog section, and that it was really going to be used to drive traffic and links, more than comments and community, but we left comments open and moved the blog section to the College Crunch Gazette. This left us able to use the front page for a variety of things.

We highlighted the blog posts pretty heavily on the front page, though only a percentage of our visitors come from the front page anyways.

Post Images

Each one of our blog posts have an image attached to them so that on the front page we can use the Post Image plugin to highlight posts in an effective way. The posts that don’t have an image automatically show a graduation cap image on the front page. This has been great at drawing attention, but looks bad if the trend is to not include an image, as I am bad for not doing.

Search

I am not a fan of WordPress’ built-in search, and even after taking some ideas from Joost de Valk’s make search suck less post, I am still not happy with the type of results it gives. I might push for us to switch to Google’s Custom Search, and integrate it as best as we can into the design of the site.

Conclusion

WordPress is very malleable, which is great, but it doesn’t come with very many, or very well thought out CMS features and that has been more than a little frustrating.

Sure, we could have gone with another platform to run the site, but that would have meant a learning curve, and learning curves slow down site development and launching. I really hope that more people take the time and energy to develop plugins for WordPress that will allow it to act more like a CMS, and that College Crunch will be able to continue without too much frustration until they exist.

This encourages your visitor to leave more comments because there’s automatic link love given to your commenters. So, in a sense, everyone wins: you will get more comments (which improves your Google standings) and your visitors will get link love and it will definitely increase clickthroughs for them and (if you use the DoFollow Plugin) their pagerank would also improve.

CommentLuv is available for WordPress and WordPress MU, and is compatible for WordPress versions 2.6 and up.

To install CommentLuv, you have to first download it from here, then unzip it. Open up your favorite FTP client and upload CommentLuv to wp-content/plugins. Once the upload is done, you need to go to your plugins page and activate it.

Once it’s activated, you’ll be able to go to the settings page and if you wish, change some settings of the plugin. The plugin will auto-configure for your comment form. If you have a nonstandard comment form or a plugin type comment form, you will need to enter the name or ID values for the author, url and comment fields.

When you’ve finished doing those steps, you visitors would be able to automatically leave the latest posts of their blogs on your blog. CommentLuv also comes in a Drupal version as well, for you non WordPress users.

Download CommentLuv for WordPress here.

If you think that Akismet is all just a “stop the spam” tool for our blogs, think again. Akismet has recently release version 2.2.1 that adds a few metrics/measurements to keep you informed of “stop stats” it has as it blocks unwanted comments from your blogs.

Spam and Ham measurements, that’s how Akismet’s blog calls it. It measures all the spam, false positives and the true blue comments that’s hitting your web property.

 

 

Check it out and see if it works for you.  If you’re in need of reports regarding your site’s comments, this is the tool to have.  

And as of this writing, Akismet has the following stats to share about all blogs that already have Akismet installed:

8,153,362,917 spams caught so far

1,987,758 so far today

86% of all comments are spam

 

Cool eh?

 

 

Automattic has recently acquired Poll Daddy. The world’s market-leading poll and survey service. What once was an independent marvel is now attached to WordPress.com blogs for ease of use. With a few mouse clicks you’re set to discover a new dimension of “audience interactivity”.

If you’ve been a PollDaddy user for quite some time now, you’d probably be thankful as me to note that there will be super improvements in poll performances. First, polls will load and work faster now that it’s hosted on Automattic servers. Second, well from a 2-person development and support team we now potentially have 30 support team members as the Automattic team lends their hands on the PollDaddy team. Third, with a button inclusion in WordPress.com’s toolbars, building a poll will literally take “over a minute”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeZxRYXZ154#t=0m39s

Can you see the “#t=0m39s” ?  That stands for “start the video on the 39th second time frame”.  Now if it was a minute and 39 then it would read “#t=1m39s”.  And so on.

A question was posted if there was any button on the YouTube video that will allow you to tag it with the right time URL.  For now, there is none.  You have to manually time it.  But I’m sure YouTube will be putting that in real soon, as it will make things easier for the user.

 

 

Today WordPress.com announced a new feature called “Tabular Stats“.  It’s an easy and immediate way to find out how your blog is performing, what visitors want and what you need to make a follow-up blog post on. While there are tons of stat widgets and plugins available, and while Google Analytics alone provide a complete solution to your blog stat needs, I appreciate this plugin because it keeps me inside the WordPress admin interface.  And it’s simple.

After you download and install the plugin (you’d need your API key, by the way) , you can use it pronto.  It’s just beside the “dashboard” tab.

Once it’s running it’ll begin collecting information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard which allows you to see all your stats on a single page. Less is more.

Will we ever need Google Analytics, after this?  That is the question!

I think the WordPress team has seen too much of the urchin code splattered across WordPress installs in wordpress.com and the user installed versions.  Is this WordPress’ way of locking us in?  Or a way to protect its code forest?  If you’ve got a popular blog, would it slow it down?  Your guess is as good as mine.

 

 

 

Just a play of words… the Lijit Wijit is your not-so-usual search wijit… er… widget.  A search function that basically works like a small community network.  The basic idea is if someone visits your blog and say searches for the word “vacation”, the usual search widget will only produce results that are found in your blog.  The Lijit search widget will do more… it will look for “vacation” in your friends blogs or links that you’ve “linking-out to” as part of your trusted sites.  Very clever, isn’t it.

Because it’s a WordPress widget, it will easily install on versions 2.3-2.6.xx .  

Another Lijit feature I really like is search stats.  You now will be able to know what your readers are searching for (!) what a way to prepare for the next blog post.  This is uber cool.

Like most WordPress plugins you can get your copy at the plugin directory or here.

When your readers search for information in real life, their first step is to typically seek out a friend for the answer. If their friend doesn’t have the answer they need, someone in that friend’s social network may. Eventually, they get an answer they trust, because it came from a source they trust. Your readers can now have that same experience on the web and it all starts with the source they trust. That source is you, the blog publisher.

The Lijit search ‘wijit’ allows your visitors to search through not only your blog content, but also your extended social network. You can combine a number of your social networking accounts(delicious, facebook, mybloglog, etc.). When you install the widget on your blog, all of these accounts are indexed and searchable through the widget.

 

WordPress has recently released an open source app for managing WordPress-powered blogs via the iPhone. Dubbed WordPress for iPhone, the application can manage both WordPress.com blogs and self-hosted WP blogs.

Introducing the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

I don’t have an iPhone, so I cannot check it out for myself, though. Has anyone tried this new app? I use a Nokia E51 running Symbian Series 60 version 3. While there are various standalone applications that I can use to manage my WordPress-powered blogs, I usually prefer to just open the admin panel using the built-in browser. Somehow I feel it’s faster that way. I wonder which gives the better user experience in managing blogs–the WP app, or the iPhone’s built in Safari browser.