Pinoy WordPress Plugin: Comment Hilite
Show some comment love by highlighting notable comments on your blog posts with Comment Hilite. This WordPress plugin is 100% Pinoy and is made by Markku Seguerra.
Download Comment Hilite | Plugins by Markku Seguerra
Improve your WordPress search results page
Most of your visitors will probably arrive from search engines looking for something particular in mind. Make your blog as search-friendly as possible with this set of improvements from Pro Blog Design. Here’s one of the tips:
2 – Highlight the Search Terms in Results
When you search on Google or any other major search engine, the words you searched for are highlighted in the results to make it easier for you to scan. We can do the same with your search results page.
Little tweaks should go a long way!
Count your feed subscribers for blog contests
Let’s not ask why subscribing to one’s blog is a common criterion for all the blog contests out there; let’s be thankful Thaya Kareeson over at Weblog Tools Collection has written a helpful tutorial for keeping track of new subscribers to your RSS feed.
The technique involves adding a special contest code that appears only in the feed, which subscribers can use to indicate they are indeed subscribed:
A known solution to this problem is to include a special contest code into your RSS feed and not have this code visible on your website. That way each contestant will be forced to grab the code from your feed and submit the code via comments to verify that they have subscribed to the RSS feed.
Even if you’re uncomfortable with editing PHP, all you have to do is copy the code given in the article and you should be good to go. All in all, this is a smart technique that should help you out for your next blog contest!
7 popular features for a better WordPress theme
ForTheLose.org lists 7 useful “trends” that designers/developers might want to incorporate into their future WordPress themes:
- Tabbing System
- “Featured” Post Display
- Post Thumbnails
- Cross-Browser Transparency
- Animated Dropdown Menus
- Modal Boxes
- Theme Options Pages
The term “trend” doesn’t seem too descriptive in this case. Yes, these features are popular right now and any theme author could attract more users by incorporating them, but they’re popular for a reason, and that’s because they actually improve one’s experience while using the theme—whether as a blog reader or a webmaster.
Improve your WordPress installation with SQL hacks
Jean-Baptiste Jung shares how you can perform very useful tasks and tweaks for your WordPress blog with the use of database SQL queries. Database manipulation may be a bit advanced for the average WordPress user, but for those who are curious, this article is a great start as the tutorials are not really intimidating at all.
Here’s the shortlist:
- Creating a Backup of Your Database
- Batch Delete Post Revisions
- Erase 5000 Spam Comments in a Second
- Change the Post Attribution
- Manually Reset Your Password
- Change Your WordPress Domain Name
- Display the Number of SQL Queries on Your blog
- Restore Your WordPress Database
View other WordPress posts on Smashing Magazine here.
Tips on keeping your WordPress blog secure
Make Tech Easier shares 11 tips on keeping malicious parties from penetrating your WordPress-powered blog. Here’s a snippet:
7) Change your login name
The default username is admin. You can make it more difficult for the hacker to crack your login credential by changing the login name.
You can never be too careful about these things, so be sure to follow the tips mentioned in the article.
(Via)
Tip: create a blogging workflow
Chris Brogan writes that keeping up a steady blogging pace is no easy task, so you need to be ready with goals, tasks, tools that can help you out when that “blog drought” comes.
See what makes the front page of Digg.com (or your industry’s most likely haunt) – learning by emulating is an important blogging skill. Don’t be a clone, but if you pick up some tricks from writers you come to admire, all the better.
The article contains lots of excellent tips for those who still haven’t quite kept up with their blogging routines. It’s useful for amateur and professional bloggers alike.
Pinoy WordPress Theme: Midnight Makoy
Midnight Makoy is a dark, 3-column WordPress theme by Yan of FubarGenre.
Midnight Makoy started as an alternative design for the Himantayon Pro theme, which I created for Himantayon.com back in August. I used more or less the same design elements as in Himantayon Pro, but with an entirely different color scheme. Here’s hoping you’d like it.
It uses a blue and dark gray color scheme and supports the Gravatar and Pagenavi plugins. Download and preview the theme here.
Danny Arao: “Huwag kang mag-blog kung…”
UP MassComm professor and journalist Danilo Arao advises people not to blog if their only goal is to make money. This is an ever familiar subject for those who’ve been blogging for a while now. But it’s good to have a sound perspective from mass media and the academe.
Salamat sa kapitalismo, maraming mapanlikhang paraan para kumita sa blogosphere. Pero ang mga mapanlikhang paraang ito ay malinaw na tahasang panloloko sa mga online visitor. Dahil ang blogosphere ay bahagi ng public domain, kinakailangang maging responsable ang mga blogger sa pagbibigay ng tamang impormasyon sa publiko.
Read the follow-up post here.
How to build a WordPress site in 5 hours
Max Limpag explains step-by-step how you can create a WordPress-powered site (not just a blog) from paper to the screen in no more than 5 hours. He also shares useful tools which aided in his process, such as the Yahoo! UI library, Aptana Studio, Bluefish, and FileZilla.
His proof of concept can be viewed at Tungkaran.com.
Speaking Our Native Tongue on the Web
When WordPress Philippines first launched, I left a comment saying we should try to write in our native language. We it owe it to all our heroes who died fighting for our right to be free. Language is one of the most important signs of sovereignty. And besides, if you’ll look at the sixth box of links at the footer, all those foreign WordPress sites are written in their own language!
It appears blog provider giant Blogger has translated its service to “Filipino” and this has got me thinking. Google owns Blogger. Google also provides localized versions for several other services for us Pinoys. Several other sites do, too. But what does a “local” version mean, really? Is it the Filipino language? Or is it Tagalog?
Filipino o Tagalog? Ano ba talaga, kuya?
Google Language Tools: When you select Filipino as the language of your choice in viewing Google Search, the abbreviation in the link is “tl”, which clearly stands for Tagalog.
Google Directory: When you click on the Filipino language under World Languages, it is actually linked to Tagalog.
Wikipedia: There is no Filipino language version of Wikipedia, only Tagalog, Bikolano, Cebuano, Chavacano, Ilokano, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Waray.
All of this is pretty ironic considering the page on the topic Filipino says:
Note: “Philippino” and “Philipino” are misspellings of this word and are not considered part of standard usage. Pilipino is used to describe the people of the Philippines. The term “Filipino” is commonly used when you are talking or writing in English or other foreign language. “Filipino” is the Philippines’ national, official and constitutional language (While the Filipino language is largely based on Tagalog, pure Tagalog has slight differences to Filipino).
This is the accepted definition of Filipino, as well as Filipino versus Tagalog, right? Then why do these websites—which are multi-million dollar companies no less—assume that in order to be a little more user-friendly to its Filipino visitors, it should create a custom language version in Tagalog instead of Filipino? What gives them the right to do so? As Filipinos, should we accept their bad judgment on something that affects no one else but ourselves?
Philippine-based wiki competitor WikiPilipinas has acknowledged this and created a Filipino language version of its wiki. But then there seems to be no Tagalog counterpart along with other provincial languages. So did they drop the Tagalog because it’s essentially Filipino anyway?
Ano ang problema?
I know I’m getting into a huge debate here, one that might never ever be resolved so long as our country remains an archipelago, so long as we have strong affinities for provincial languages, even foreign ones. After all, we are a nation of provinces and a nation of balikbayans. Our national language has never been that strong especially in the midst of the languages we’ve had to deal with.
But I am not asking you to be a little more patriotic (especially in the spirit of the EDSA Revolution, whose anniversary we commemorate on Monday) by choosing to write in our own language. I just want to underline what we may be overlooking:
On the web, is it correct to say that a Filipino speaks only Tagalog? Are these two terms interchangeable?
Should we be content that websites like Google consider Tagalog as the language of choice for Filipinos?
Should we be content that other Philippine languages from Cebuano to Waray are represented on some websites, but not the lesser known but equally Pinoy ones?
The Web is as liberating as speaking in one own’s tongue. Blogging, for example, lets you do exactly that. How lucky are we to find a new medium by which we can express ourselves as Filipinos? Other times, however, our identity as a people gets eroded just because a website assumes and restricts, despite the best of intentions. We accept it because we know technology still hasn’t found a way to seamlessly translate any language into another. Or is it because it just doesn’t matter anymore?
WordPress 3.0 Release Candidate 1
Quickly after WordPress turned 7 this May 27th, the first release candidate of WordPress 3.0 finally comes out.
Two of the biggest new features, custom menus and multi-site support, are in place, while as with the previous beta you’ll notice a much lighter admin area. Also visit this page to check out known issues, and report those others that aren’t on the list.
You can download WP 3.0 RC 1 here or automatically upgrade with the Beta Tester plugin.
Child Themes, Hooks, Actions, Filters simplified
Ready to take it to the next level with WordPress? Here’s a 5-minute guide on essential advanced features to WordPress theming: child themes, hooks, actions, and filters.
The old, boring way is you open the theme files, starting from index.php, changing all <h2> tag to <h1>, then moving to the other files: archives.php, tag.php, category.php, doing the same thing over and over again, hoping you don’t miss anything.
Gah!
That is not clever because a) it’s too much work, and b) when the theme is updated, you’re screwed.
Wouldn’t it be better if you could just a) write the change once, have it applied globally, while b) at the same time not modifying the theme’s code?
Of course the answer is yes. Understanding how these four concepts in WordPress work is essential to building on a theme framework, creating plugins and widgets, and make developing with WordPress faster.
Wear WordPress bling with WP Jewels
Love WordPress and want to show it off on your body? You could buy a t-shirt or get tattooed, but how about some jewelry? WP Jewels is an independent store that peddles WordPress jewelry. Currently there are two products: dangling earrings and a pendant, both sporting the WP logo.
The online store policies are standard: free shipping to the USA, payment is via PayPal, and there’s a 30-day money back guarantee. Oddly enough this store doesn’t seem to be running on WordPress, which takes away from how “hardcore” of a WP fan the creator of the site really is.
But the question is, how much of a WP fan are you? Would you wear WordPress jewelry?
Tip: exclude posts with custom post types
Alex King shares a not-so-obvious fact about the upcoming custom post types feature for WordPress 3.0:
No, the real power of custom post types is more subtle – it removes those posts from default queries.
Right now it’s quite cumbersome to set up and get custom post types running on your WordPress blog, but once you get over that hurdle (there are a number of plugins that create a user interface for you) that tip is a great thing to remember. You might have a portfolio section you’d like to keep updated but don’t need to display in the “normal post stream”, or showcase your collection of favorite books, movies, songs you’ve been consuming. Put another way, “custom post types are really pages”…and more. They can be anything you want them to be.
WordPress 3.0 to drop blog importer and TinyMCE
There’s been a bit of a slowdown in the WordPress RC and final release schedule yet again, but here’s an important heads up from this week’s developer chat: In an effort to reduce server memory consumption and delays in the releases, WordPress 3.0 is dropping several core features. One is the WordPress Importer, which can then be installed as a plugin.
Another is the TinyMCE script, the most popular WYSIWYG editor out there. It’s not clear if eliminating it is a permanent move since a lot of people are dependent on creating properly formatted posts with it, but more details should follow when the new WP 3.0 releases come.
Read updates on the rest of the WordPress developer chat for 5-20-10 here.
50 traffic sources for your blog
QOT has a list of 50 websites that can help drive traffic to your own blog. They’re divided into the following categories:
- eBook directories
- Blog directories
- Social media
- News and aggregation sites
- Podcast directories
- Video marketing
- Article directories
- Guest posting
- Document sharing
- RSS feed submissions
- Ping submissions
- Blog communities and forums
A lot of these are common knowledge to those who have been blogging for a long time now, but it’s great to have a list of sites compiled in one place for you. The bottom line here is to get your content out there; you can’t just create a blog and rely solely on Google search results to bring traffic in. Be creative and find your niche.
Stricter guidelines for WordCamps
There are a lot of helpful tips for organizing a WordCamp that can be found at the official WordCamp how-to site, but what’s got people buzzing is the announcement of stricter guidelines about who can and can’t be associated with an event, from individuals to companies in various roles as organizers, speakers, and sponsors. This all depends on whether they comply with WordPress philosophies.
Lately there have been a number of WordCamps accepting speakers, sponsorships, door prizes, etc from people/companies acting in violation of the WordPress license (GPL v2) with regard to their themes/plugins. It is the official policy of WordCamp that WordCamps not provide publicity/a platform for such individuals/businesses. They are welcome to attend, but WordCamps may not have non-GPL-compliant people as organizers, sponsors, or speakers.
It’s only fair that WordPress stand its ground on matters relating to the GPL, WordCamps included. For participants who aren’t as familiar with the software, its community, and philosophy, WordCamp is the perfect venue to discuss those things.
I’m curious to see if any part of this controversy will affect the upcoming WordCamp Philippines 2010.
The complete list of guidelines can be found at WordCamp Central.
WordCamp Philippines 2010 venue announced; answer their survey
This week the WordCamp Philippines organizers have announced the venue for the conference to be held on October 2: it’s back to College of St. Benilde in Taft Ave., Manila in partnership with the Association of Information Management. It’s also been announced that Matt Mullenweg will be gracing the event, so better RSVP on the event page now.
You’re also invited to complete a short survey which covers your expectations for the event. Also note that the entrance fee will cover lunch, schwag, and a WordCamp Philippine shirt.
WordPress Plugin: Vote for Plugins
Vote for Plugins lets you help contribute to the WordPress.org plugin ratings without having to leave your admin panel.
The WordPress.org plugin directory has a neat rating system that lets users rate plugins both on overall quality and on compatibility with specific WP versions. However, its usefulness is stymied by poor integration with WordPress itself. To try to remedy that, I’ve created a plugin that lets you vote on plugins directly from your Dashboard.
Once installed you’ll be asked for your WP.org account details so your vote can be counted. Then at the plugins list, you can indicate whether a plugin you’re using works or is broken, and give it a rating from 0 to 5 stars.
Vote for Plugins is an easy candidate for canonical plugin or even a core feature, considering the useful information it can add to the community.
Mark Jaquith on WordPress and web hosting
WordPress lead developer Mark Jaquith sounds off on the state of web hosting companies and their lack of support for the publishing software. He emphasizes two of the biggest issues WordPress users have when it comes to maintaining their installs: caching and security.
People ask me for hosting recommendations all the time. I have a few decent hosts that I’ll recommend, but I don’t have any hosts about which I can say “use them, because they know how to host WordPress, and they’ll support you.” I’d like nothing better than to have a dozen such hosts to recommend by this time next year. WordPress is here to stay, and it’s time for web hosts to adapt!
This is just the first of many voices from WordPress community leaders cementing an initiative for better WP support, as mentioned in the State of the Word at WordCamp SF 2010. I think the greatest lesson here is never to settle with just any web host. With so many choices out there and your own site and brand on the line, choosing a proper, WordPress-friendly host should be top priority. You can’t afford not to.
As for the web hosting companies themselves, it’s a great opportunity to improve their game and offer specialized services that help with the upkeep of their respective client websites. A win-win for all.
Matt’s State of the Word at WordCamp SF 2010
If you missed the notes Matt’s keynote address at this year’s WordCamp San Francisco, here’s the full video finally posted at WordPress.tv and embedded above.
Look how far WordPress has come in the span of a year. We’re still awaiting the final release of WordPress 3.0 for the much-touted WordPress MU/Multi Site merge, but we’re also getting a bunch of other exciting, game-changing features such as custom post types, a new default WordPress theme every year, canonical plugins, security checks, and more.
Can’t wait to see what will be added to this keynote when WordCamp Philippines 2010 comes around in October.
Reasons you should and shouldn’t use WordPress
Killersites.com points out several advantages to using WordPress in building websites as opposed to purely static webpages:
If you haven’t guessed it already, using Wordpress in your day-to-day web work WILL have major economic advantages – in a nutshell, you will be able to provide a lot more for your clients for a lot less work! This will lead to you landing more web design contracts and making more cash because the extra Wordpress skills will allow you to charge more for your time.
On the other hand, WP Fun emphasizes its disadvantages in back-end maintenance, which is technically a whole other job outside of building websites, but is slowly merging with it anyway.
Which of these two win the argument? While I agree with WP Fun that you shouldn’t just go into a project hastily deciding to use WordPress, using static HTML files is not the only alternative solution, especially if a web designer’s concern with clients is ease of use. There is no interface to deal with in static webpages but you can use lighter and/or hosted CMS solutions too.
That’s just one factor to consider. Other factors like extensibility with plugins, security, support, community, etc. should definitely affect your decision to choose a publishing platform. WordPress tends to win out because of those.
Microsoft loves WordPress
While the culture of WordPress and open source software are closely tied with the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP stack, that doesn’t mean the publishing platform doesn’t accommodate other development stacks like Microsoft’s. And don’t forget that one of the most popular desktop blogging software is Windows Live Writer!
So MIX Online has opened a new website called WordPress on Microsoft, which aims to provide tips on running WP-powered sites with Windows Server, SQL Server, Windows Azure, and SQL Azure and useful tools like Incarnate.
Why are they doing this? The simple answer is love:
- Love of technology
- Love of web developers and web designers
- Smart business
If you’re running WordPress on a Windows Server or wondering how you can, head over to WP on MS for advice straight from experts. The Getting Started page is a great jump-off point.
The Jazz Musicians of WordPress
All the major WordPress releases are named after famous jazz musicians. For example, pictured above is Carmen McRae, who was celebrated in WordPress version 2.9. Want to know more about all the artists WordPress honored over time? WPMU.org has a great tip: music discovery engine Last.fm actually has a tag for that, called wordpress-release-jazz.
- 1.0 Miles Davis
- 1.2 Charles Mingus
- 1.5 Billy Strayhorn
- 2.0 Duke Ellington
- 2.1 Ella Fitzgerald
- 2.2 Stan Getz
- 2.3 Dexter Gordon
- 2.5 Michael Brecker
- 2.6 McCoy Tyner
- 2.7 John Coltrane
- 2.8 Chet Baker
- 2.9 Carmen McRae
This means you can listen to these musicians’ songs, watch videos, and check out similar artists with on that site. It’s a great fusion of geekiness and music that the WordPress developers, especially Matt Mullenweg, established, and that aficionados of either or both can enjoy.
See the WordPress Roadmap for a complete list of the jazz musicians honored per release. I wonder whose music we’ll be enjoying when WordPress 3.0 drops.
WordPress 3.0 Beta 2
The second beta of WordPress 3.0 was released May 6. This is a little behind schedule as the Release Candidates should be out by now.
Following the successful post-WordCamp San Francisco code sprint, we are now ready to release the second beta of WordPress 3.0.
The update focuses on improvements to the menu interface and the WordPress importer/exporter. Everyone is encouraged become a beta tester with the help of the beta tester plugin.
Pinoy WordPress Theme: Baller Basic
Baller Basic by Jorge Cosgayon is a highly customizable 2-column theme that has 5 widget areas, 4 color schemes, 3 featured post options, and blog post layouts, and more.
One of the strengths of the theme is the powerful Features functionality, allowing you the ability to choose from one three ways to feature your posts via the FFN Carousel plugin: using a single category, using custom fields, or emulating a Magazine functionality.
The post boxes come from Derek Punsalan’s The Unstandard theme, while built-in support for other plugins include FFN Carousel and WP-PageNavi.
Time for these SEO myths to die
Unless you’re in the thick of the search marketing business instead of the fringes, it’s quite accurate to say that a lot of the practices are downright mythical. Search Engine Land wants to debunk 36 of those once and for all. Here’s #4:
Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings. I just heard this one from a fellow panelist in an SEO session at a conference I presented at within the last month (I won’t mention who, or which show.) This made me cringe, but I bit my lip rather than embarrass and contradict them in front of the audience. Should I have spoken up? Did I do the audience a disservice by leaving this myth unchallenged? I struggled with that. In any event, Google will use your sitemaps file for discovery and potentially as a canonicalization hint if you have duplicate content. It won’t give a URL any more “juice” just because you include it in your sitemaps.xml, even if you assign a high priority level to it.
Most of the items in the list apply to Google and may or may not work the same way for other search engines such as Yahoo. For example, meta tags do not carry weight for Google but for Yahoo, they do.
8 free BuddyPress themes
Looking for a good, free BuddyPress theme for your site? WPMU.org has compiled a list of the best ones out there. From dark to light to Facebook lookalikes, these free BP themes should get you started on social networking for free:
- Blogcaster
- Malleable
- Unplugged
- Cosmic Buddy
- Fishbook
- Jukt Micronics
- Jet Green Theme
- BP Nicey
The pool isn’t so large right now but as with WordPress, expect BP themes to blow up in the next few months and become a thriving business all the way into highly specialized and premium themes. This is only the beginning.
Google Living Stories for WordPress
Targeted mainly at news websites, Google Living Stories makes covering an on-going story more convenient and navigable. Old but still working examples are found at this Google Labs website, but now everyone can enjoy the same functionality on their own sites as a plugin and theme package for WordPress.
Here’s a list of features from the Labs site:
- “All in one place” – all the articles developing around a single story can be found on a single URL, and you can navigate around them much more quickly
- “Easy to explore” – browse either by timeline, themes, people involved, or multimedia
- “Smarter reading” – new additions to the story are highlighted while older news is summarized
Grab the code here. Take note that this isn’t just a fancy way of displaying developing stories, but a new content format which Google has open sourced.
Matt Mullenweg WordCamp SF keynote & Mashable interview
WP Tavern has posted notes from Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word at the 2010 WordCamp San Francisco. In it, Matt emphasizes the growth of WordPress into one of the most popular content management systems today: from the admin interface, to the number of plugins, to the upcoming features in WordPress 3.0: WordPress MU merge, menu navigation system, custom post types, and more.
Roughly 74% of WordPress sites are being used as blogs and content management systems. This is up from about 40% last year. It’s the fastest growing use case of the software. About 80% of people are making money from WordPress. 22% WordPress is their day job. 18% from custom development and hosting, 12%.
Other things to take from the talk:
- A new default WordPress theme will be created every year. This year’s Twenty Ten features custom post headers and backgrounds.
- WordPress should be as accessible as possible: the Post By Email feature will be turned into a canonical plugin.
- WordPress.org will be redesigned.
- Release cycles will go from 3 per year to 2.
- On security issues: Automattic will work with web hosting companies to help protect its WordPress users, via a mailing list, security checks, and a list of best practices.
Mashable also conducted an interview with him, which covers pretty much the same things discussed at WordCamp. Watch it below:
Optimize WordPress loading time by 75%
So we’ve confirmed Google is factoring in site speed into their search ranking algorithms, but what exactly can you do to your WordPress site to make it load faster? David Kadavy shares his own website optimization story by doing the following:
- Move from a shared hosting service (in this case Dreamhost) to VPS (virtual private server) hosting
- Install the W3 Total Cache plugin
- Use a CDN (content delivery network) such as Amazon Cloudfront: this works well with W3 Total Cache, which is why he recommends it over other WP caching plugins
- Optimize with CSS sprites, inline styles and scripts, Gzip, and other recommendations from Yahoo.
WordPress 3.0 news roundup
WordCast has compiled a list of all the WordPress 3.0 articles and and videos they can find. From the official Codex page to video walkthroughs and reviews of the latest features, there’s no longer any reason not to be informed before the final release ships.
Also watch out for their upcoming podcast episode where experts discuss the future of WordPress. For now, the links and videos in the said post will prepare you for that conversation.
wp-config.php code snippets for autosave, post revisions, trash settings
These are useful lines of code modifying the default settings on post revisions and autosave intervals, which you can insert in your WordPress site’s wp-config.php file at the root folder.
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 160 );
Explanation: Set the length between autosaves to 160 seconds.
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );
Explanation: Disable post revisions completely.
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);
Explanation: Limit the number of post revisions to 3. (Tip: install Revision Diet so you don’t need to do this manually, and you can also delete excess revisions created beforehand.)
define('EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 0 );
Explanation: Disable the Trash functionality completely.
define('EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 30 );
Explanation: Set the number of days between the contents of the WordPress Trash bin are completely deleted—posts, pages, comments, etc. This will be done automatically and without confirmation.
Even more snippets can be found at the Codex. Though I hope that in the future, WordPress can integrate these as configurable settings in the admin interface.
Akismet on the State of Web Spam
The Akismet blog posts a 9-point summary of their findings over the last 5 years they’ve spent combating web spam. It’s a fascinating peek into the different types of spam out there, which has established itself as a highly organized and thriving business in various parts of the world.
Abe Olandres of YugaTech speculates that the first point on the list about human-posted spam, which is reportedly rampant in Southeast Asia, may very well be coming from the Philippines:
They didn’t really mention the Philippines but we all know that among the countries in South-East Asia, the Philippines is the top English-speaking country.
Another interesting discussion is on trackbacks and pingbacks, which are prone to the most abuse by both spammers and unwitting but legitimate bloggers that it’s not a feature anymore, but a nuisance.
WordPress 3.0 release dates pushed back
Per the updated project schedule at the WordPress Development Updates blog, the last couple of release dates for WordPress 3.0, both the release candidates and final versions, have been pushed back by several weeks:
- May 1: Begin RC
- May 15: Launch WordPress 3.0
Since we have a beta version already out, the extended wait doesn’t seem so long now. That also means more time to get WordPress plugins and themes ready for the big update.
Pinoy WordPress Plugin: Facebook Like Button Widget
The Facebook Like Button Widget plugin lets your readers use the Like functionality from Facebook right on your blog and display it instantly in your FB activity stream.
Plugin author AJ Batac made this soon after Facebook’s announcement about opening up its platform via the Open Graph protocol, the Graph API, and Social plugins. The Like Button is the first of these. Although you can install the feature manually from this page, using the WP plugin is certainly more convenient.
1) Download the “Facebook-Like-Button-Widget.zip” file
2) Extract and upload `facebook-like-widget.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
3) Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4) That’s it!
Download Facebook Like Button Widget
(Via JaypeeOnline)
8 WordPress “did you know?” features
Dave Refern uncovers 8 WordPress features that you may not know about. He refers to the under-the-hood behavior of the publishing software that aren’t so common knowledge unless you’ve been tinkering with it long enough. Find out how you can automatically empty the new Trash feature in a specified number of days, load the hidden advanced options page, show the full WYSIWYG editor, and more.
My personal favorite is the fact that renamed permalinks don’t turn up a 404 not found error but redirect themselves to the new ones. Very considerate, WordPress!
“Surprise Me” on WordPress.com
WordPress.com users can now enjoy a mystery feature called “Surprise Me”, which can be activated under the Personal Settings page under Global Dashboard > Profile. The announcement won’t reveal what it will actually do, but both the New York Times and BusinessWeek write about it.
They described their creation as an “emotional plug-in,” a virtual artwork to celebrate the “sacred act of publishing,” which the Web has transformed as fundamentally as Gutenberg did and which is, in turn, transforming society.
“Surprise Me” is the result of a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and artist Evan Roth and was first presented at the 7 on 7 event, which brought together artists and technologists to create a project in under 24 hours.
Marghil Macuha on SEO at iBlog 6
Missed iBlog 6? You’ll be happy to know that both Carlo Ople and Marghil Macuha himself blogged about his SEO talk at the 2-day event. New Media Philippines posted a summary of basic SEO practices while Macuha.com posted links to SEO e-books you can download for free.
The first most important rule is to SEO keywords that are actually being searched for. There’s no point in going through the grueling process of link building if they keyword you’re targeting isn’t even worth the effort. Marhgil explained that a good tactic is to make posts that provide solutions and answers, something that I already tackled in a previous post.
Download Marghil’s slides here. Hope the other speakers can also post their presentations online!
WordPress Plugin: Import from Ning
With hosted social network service Ning announcing that it will no longer support free accounts, people are scurrying to find a suitable alternative, and WordPress / BuddyPress is one such example. Seems like a good opportunity to capture that market.
Should you decide to go that route, Import from Ning makes the transition that much easier.
Allows users to import the users of a Ning community into a WordPress installation. When BuddyPress is installed, the plugin also gives the option of importing additional profile data into BuddyPress profiles.
More on the Automattic Theme Team
More details emerge about the newly-formed Automattic Theme Team, led by Ian Stewart. In his newest post at ThemeShaper, now the home of all things A-theme-team-related, he explains their goals for themselves and the WordPress community. Here’s one of six:
Every WordPress.com user should feel like there’s a theme that fits them perfectly, that is exactly how they want to present themselves to the world, that they’re excited to show to their friends.
The team would also like to encourage the best coding practices and reinforce the spirit of giving back to the whole community, helping WordPress theme authors (premium or 100% free) and WordPress theme users alike.
WP e-Commerce crash course
WordPress has been used for any type of site out there, including e-commerce websites, and one of the biggest reasons for that is the WP e-Commerce plugin. If you’re thinking of trying it out but have no idea where to start, this crash course by 1st Web Designer should help.
If you have not ever created an e-commerce website before, then this crash course is best-suited for you. I am considering that you are totally an idiot when it comes to e-commerce websites. At the end we will also talk about how a developer can integrate e-commerce features in his WordPress theme. So I will say this tutorial will take you from beginner level and at the end you can continue with creating e-commerce websites with WordPress as a developer.
It can also give you a good idea of the plugin’s capabilities and limitations—no use trying to force it into submission when there are specialized shopping cart systems that can do the job in a less hacky way.
Still, let’s hope WordPress provides more functionalities that can push it in the direction of creating ideal WordPress-powered online shops in the same way BuddyPress paved the way for a WordPress-powered social network.
Check your web host file permissions first!
WordPress security issues come and go, and while some stay because it’s tough to get the crud out, other times it’s because site owners overlook an important part of keeping their hosts protected: file permissions.
A properly configured web server will not allow users to access the files of another user, regardless of file permissions. The web server is the responsibility of the hosting provider. The methods for doing this (suexec, et al) have been around for 5+ years.
Matt Mullenweg warns against web hosts and other security announcements that place the blame on the WordPress software without first checking if proper file permissions are in place.
Devlounge has an old but still applicable article on protecting your wp-config.php files, for starters. This article on WP Tavern also tackles the issue above and shares more file permission advice especially on shared hosting accounts.
Pinoy Blogfest 1.0 on April 17
Gadgets Magazine, together with several other commercial sponsors, is holding its own blogging event this weekend called Pinoy_Blogfest 1.0 at the Richmonde Hotel in Ortigas.
Should bloggers observe journalistic ethics? Can Bloggers make money from their web presence? Is there a blog copyright? These are the issues that Pinoy_Blogfest 1.0 will seek to address.
The programme is as follows:
08.00 am Registration
09.00 am Opening of Exhibits / Networking Opportunities
09.30 am Welcome Remarks / Keynote Speech “Ethical & Social Responsibility of New Media” / Light Snack
10.00 am Plenary Panel / “Optimizing the Economic Potential of your Blog” (Abe Olandres) / “Bloggers as Media Practitioners” (Ira Panganiban) / “Creating a Bloggers’ Code of Ethics” (Yvonne Chua)
12.00 nn Lunch / Luncheon Speaker (Coca-Cola CSR)
01.30 pm Breakout Session I / A. Technology & Trends / B. Photography / C. Home: Digital Living
03.00 pm COKE Break
03.30 pm Breakout Session II / D. Mobile Networking / E. Gaming / F. Food & Travel, Health & Fitness
05.00 pm Networking Opportunities
05.30 pm Cocktails / Announcement of Blog Competition Criteria & Entry Guidelines
06.30 pm Entertainment / Raffle
07.30 pm Closing
Fifty to sixty free tickets will be raffled off but the regular rate is Php2,500, inclusive of meals. Ask for a registration for by emailing gadgetsmag.events@gmail.com. Call 332-4005 for more information.
Google factors site speed into search rankings
The search marketing and blogging circles have been buzzing about this for a few months now but Google put out the official word on site speed as a new factor in search result rankings just a few days ago. Webmaster Tools lets you measure the speed of your enrolled sites under Site Performance. The blog post also links to other tools like Page Speed.
It’s interesting to note, however, that Google itself says less than 1% of search queries will be affected by this new site speed signal. In any case, faster is usually better both for your visitors and for your site maintenance costs, not just your pagerank. Matt Cutts puts it nicely:
I know that there will be a lot of discussion about this change, and some people won’t like it. But I’m glad that Google is making this step, both for the sake of transparency (letting webmasters know more about how to do better in Google) and because I think this change will make the web better. My takeaway messages would be three-fold: first, this is actually a relatively small-impact change, so you don’t need to panic. Second, speeding up your website is a great thing to do in general. Visitors to your site will be happier (and might convert more or use your site more), and a faster web will be better for all. Third, this change highlights that there are very constructive things that can directly improve your website’s user experience. Instead of wasting time on keyword meta tags, you can focus on some very easy, straightforward, small steps that can really improve how users perceive your site.
Looks like some site spring cleaning is in order!
Premium theme frameworks reviewed
Technosailor reviews in depth the four most popular premium theme frameworks: Thesis, Headway, Genesis, Builder. Criteria range from pricing to performance to compatibility with various WordPress (even BuddyPress) features.
[...] based on the stress test and criteria I outlined earlier, the best framework is Genesis with an 84%. Thesis comes in with a 76%. Builder garners a 74%. Headway needs the most improvement and only gets a 55%.
It’s a long read, but if you’re a serious website developer, a good theme framework can make a big difference in getting things done. My only wish is for a matrix comparison of all the themes, not just the conclusion above, so it’s easy to figure out who’s strong in which area.
15 snippets for functions.php
You don’t need to buy the book Digging Into WordPress to get a hold of this essential list of custom functions for your functions.php file. There are a ton of things you can do with a tricked out functions.php, letting you forgo plugins and completely avoid hacking the backend code. From controlling excerpt lengths to loading scripts to customizing the admin, everything’s practically in there.
Perhaps one important thing to remember here is that the functions.php is located in the currently active theme folder, so if you like changing up your blog’s look quite often, don’t forget to bring the custom functions along. You can download the complete functions.php file at the end of the post.
10 things about social media
Juned Sonido writes 10 personal observations and lessons about social media. Here’s the second item on the list:
It is not just the number of posts or messages delivered. It is the message snd the ties – human ties – ties that binds people together. Social Media are social networks, blogs, forums, and a number things. Social Media is everywhere digital and non-digital.
A lot of the points boil down reinforce the idea that it’s less about the new technology and more about one’s own actions. They are just tools, and they do not give you the right to spam and mislead people. Be respectful, be useful to the people you are reaching out to.
Make your WordPress site iPad ready
WPLover has a straightforward guide on getting your WordPress-powered site optimized for the Apple iPad. It basically says you don’t have to do anything since like the iPhone it comes with the Safari mobile web browser, but there are a few tips and links if you’re concerned about an iPad-specific experience.
Biggest thing to remember: the iPad does not support Flash. If you can manage to do so, provide an alternative video source using the HTML5 <video> element.
Another helpful site is iPad Peek, which loads your website as it would on an iPad—both landscape and portrait modes. You can very quickly check any quirks without having to run out and get one.
No word yet on whether Automattic is releasing an official WordPress iPad app, but it would be interesting to see how much more you can do on a larger resolution mobile device now.
