I haven’t been inside the feed reader too much this week because of the redesign of this blog. But this week, we have a wide variety of news topics to cover, including the release of WordPress 2.3.3. Sony gives back to the community with two custom coded WordPress plugins, one for image rotation and the other for replying to comments. WP Candy explains how to separate trackbacks and comments to make the commenting section of your blog cleaner and easier to navigate. Ronald ignites a fire by asking if Trackback messages are still useful. Although we always seem to get into an argument over the subject of WordPress being a CMS, I figured I would cover a piece of news which highlights plugins that would give your WordPress installation some CMS oomph. All this and more on WordPress Weekly Episode 5. Hope to see you there!

Panel Members:

Ronald Huereca: Contributing editor for WeblogToolsCollection.com and raproject.com. Author of the WordPress Ajax Edit Comments plugin.

Catch his personal musings at Ronalfy.com

Andrew Rickmann: Long time user of WordPress who has molded themes, plugins and hacks within the WordPress code. Fun with WordPress is Andrew’s solution to putting all those thoughts in one place, and giving something back to the community.

Catch his work at FunWithWordPress

Kaspars Dambis - Author of the WordPress themes Morning Racer, Agneka Simple, Sans-serif Racer and Times Racer. Kaspars is also a WordPress plugin developer.

View his work at Konstrucktors

Rob White - Host of the weekly Talkcast on talkshoe called Podcast Training And Chat via Twobeams. Also a big fan of WordPress.

Check out all of the valuable podcasting information at Twobeams.com

Stories Discussed:

Turning WordPress Into A CMS Via Plugins – Josh Byers posted an article that highlighted various plugins that would give your WordPress installation the oomph that is provided by CMS solutions out of the box. Plugins such as Search Everything, One Click Installer, Clutter Free and Custom Admin Menu.

Content Theft And How Report It- Lorelle Van Fossen has written a detailed article that explains how you can report content theft on your WordPress.com or WordPress.org blog. This article contains a slew of great information and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what Jonathan Bailey has to add in his speech about this subject at WordCamp Dallas.

Rocky Mountain Voices Conducts Video Interview Of Matt Mullenweg – The folks of Rocky Mountain voices had a chance to interview Matt when he was in Utah. He covers the various revenue streams that WordPress has, the recent funding and what it means for Automattic, community involvement, and much more.

Trackbacks: Still Useful? – Ronald Huereca of WeblogToolsCollectionl.com asked a perplexing question to the community. Are trackbacks still useful? There has been quite a response from the community ranging from trackbacks are another form of spam to, trackbacks help keep track of a conversation as it spreads across the web. Don’t worry, this is one I think all of us can chip in on.

TrialSoftWarez Releases Post Randomizer – For those of you looking for a plugin that displays a random set of posts each time a page is loaded, you’re in luck. Post Randomizer displays a random set of posts per page visit. The plugin author recommends placing the plugin in the footer so the content is unobtrusive but that doesn’t mean you have to abide by that suggestion.

WordPress.org now in Kazakhstan – The free blog publishing software WordPress, which can be translated into any language in order to increase its accessibility, has been translated into Kazakh by Kazakh bloggers. The number of people blogging in Kazakh has grown significantly because there is a group on Google that explains how it works

WordPress 2.3.3 Released – Earlier this week, WordPress 2.3.3 was released as a security upgrade. This new releases fixes an XML-RPC implementation flaw that would enable a specially crafted request to enable a user to edit posts of other users on a blog. If you haven’t upgraded yet, don’t complain about your site if it ends up being attacked.

Separate Comments And Trackbacks - More and more blog readers/commenters are becoming annoyed with wading through the trackback/pingbacks that seem to clog up the commenting section of so many blogs, this one included. Chris Thomson has written a good article which describes what you need to do in order to separate the two without the need of a plugin. Thanks Chris!

WordPress 2.5 Progress – Westi provides us his weekly update as to what is going on with WordPress 2.5. Things that caught my eye:

• Removal of any old compatibility functions for PHP 4.2 and 4.3 (#5415).
• I18N updates for the new widgets interface (#5583).
• Changes to increase the memory limit for PHP (#3141).
• Comment feed fixes to ensure that we have got a post before we querying for the comments (#5185).
• Addition of the TinyMCE Fullscreen plugin (#5735).
• Fixes to future post publishing over xmlrpc (#5721).
• Update TinyMCE to v3.0 final (#5674).
• Changes to allow for multiple database connections (#2722).
• Introduction of a new template tag is_front() which is only true on the front page of a WordPress install (#3682).

Sony Releases Two WordPress Plugins – Sony published an article that not only showed their love for WordPress, but also highlighted two plugins that they have developed on their own to fill a need that a previous plugin couldn’t fill. The two plugins are as follows:

Comment Replies

Think of it as a threaded response-lite. We wanted our authors to be able to respond directly to comments, but not create a completely threaded conversation. That’s the purpose of Comment Replies. You also have the option to style the responses in a number of different ways. Full details/download.

Image Rotator

On the front page of this blog we have a graphic banner that rotates (at the top) to feature different items with a corresponding link. Initially, we created a simple manager on the backend, but we quickly ported it over to a WordPress plugin. Just like the Comment Replies plugin, you can customize how the plugins works. Full details/download.

WordPress Tips Of The Week:

Jeffro2pt0 – My tip this week featured the WordPress Codex. The Codex is a repository of information for WordPress.org. Inside the codex, you’ll find documentation for functions that are built into WordPress, instructions for how to perform certain tasks, and overall general tips on how to make your WordPress installation secure. An awesome source of info that should be looked into at the first sign of trouble.

Ronald Huereca - Ronald’s tip deals with theme authors. Include a template file for separating comments from trackbacks and allow an option in the admin panel to switch between the regular comments view or to have a separated view.

I for one support this tip and would greatly encourage theme authors to adopt this functionality into new themes.

Kaspars Dambis – A newcomer to WordPress Weekly, Kaspars gives us the lowdown on a new plugin he has been working on.

I wanted to let you know that I have created a new plugin which allows user to use other plugins which don’t provide widgets but only function hooks.

So with CFW it is possible to use, for example, the ‘Popularity Contest’ plugin without ever touching the theme files. Just drag a new ‘custom function’ widget into the sidebar, enter the name of the function as well as any arguments it may require and there’s the widget.

It is important that this plugin doesn’t use php eval function and users don’t have to write php code. They supply only the name of the function and the arguments.

There are a few other options worth mentioning and I have detailed them in this blog post:

http://konstruktors.com/blog/wordpress/101-wordpress-plugin-custom-function-widgets/

Rob White - Rob, also a new comer to the show suggested that everyone read Jeffro2pt0.com and to listen to the podcast. Hey, I think this may be the best WordPress Tip Of The Week that has ever been suggested. Rob, you’re ok in my book!

Andrew Rickmann – Andrew suggested that WordPress developers look into something called Aptana which is an open source code editor. As was discussed on a post made by Matt Mullenweg recently, Dreamweaver CS3 is not all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, that rhymes!

WPWeekly Meta:

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Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode5.mp3

Listen To Episode #5:

This week there is a ton of stuff to talk about. We have the bombshell that was dropped the other day noting that Matt and Toni of Automattic secured a Series B round of funding for $29.5 million dollars. That last part will actually be discussed on Episode 4. Then we have the improvements that have gone into the code for WordPress 2.5. We also dive into the conundrum of what makes a WordPress theme Premium. WordCamp Dallas is right around the corner and we give you the 411 about the event. Saving the best for last is our WordPress Tips of the week.

Panel Members:

Ronald Huereca: Contributing editor for WeblogToolsCollection.com and raproject.com. Author of the WordPress Ajax Edit Comments plugin.

Catch his personal musings at Ronalfy.com

Andrew Rickmann: Long time user of WordPress who has molded themes, plugins and hacks within the WordPress code. Fun with WordPress is Andrew’s solution to putting all those thoughts in one place, and giving something back to the community.

Catch his work at FunWithWordPress

David Peralty: Man who seemingly needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyways. David is a very busy man who has love/hate relationships with WordPress. He currently is the marketing guy for SplashPressMedia and has coded over 100 themes for WordPress.

You can catch all of David’s blogging related material here BloggingPro

Stories Discussed:

WP-Forum SQL Injection Vulnerability – Earlier this week, the websec security team has discovered a vulnerability within this plugin that can be exploited by malicious users to conduct SQL injection attacks

WordPress.com Winners Of The Crunchies - Techcrunch held their little get together called the Crunchies and WordPress.com ended up taking two of the nominated categories. WordPress for Most Likely to Succeed and Toni Schneider for a well-deserved Best Startup CEO.

WordPress.com Storage Goes From 50mb to 3,000mb – Matt Mullenweg announced that because of the optimizations that have taken place in the backend of WordPress.com, they are now able to offer all WordPress.com users 3 gigs of space. Matt also said that those who purchased a 1GB upgrade will automatically be bumped up to 5GB at no additional charge.

WordPress Weekly Digest For January 14th – January 20th – In the latest round of updates to be included in WordPress 2.5 there are a few things that caught my eye.

• Updates to get_sidebar() to allow for multiple named sidebars (#5615).
• Initial migration to TinyMCE v3.0 RC1 (#5674).
• New functionality to allow for editing of post slugs within there permalink context (#5679).
• Changes to the APP implementation to ensure that timestamps can be updated on already published posts (#5680).

Matt Cutts Offers Tips To Secure WordPress – Matt has published an article which highlights three different ways to secure your WordPress installation. The first tip involves locking down your Admin directory. Matt configures his .hatccess file so that only his IP address is allowed to access the WP-Admin directory. For the second tip, you should create a blank index.html file to place into your wp-content/plugins directory. Not doing so allows your plugin folder to be wide open, giving nosy people an idea as to what plugins you have installed.

Matt’s third and final tip involves subscribing to the official WordPress development blog – http://wordpress.org/development/feed/ As we should all know by now, this is the best way to stay up to date.

Matt also offers a bonus tip where he suggests removing the line of code within your header.php file that publishes your WordPress version. This is to prevent your WordPress version number from being publicly viewable.

WordPress.com Still Growing According To Compete.com – Compete.com released a list of the fastest growing and declining sites of 2007. These stats are made up of the top 1,000 domains in between December of 2006 and December of 2007. However, WordPress.com appears to have grown by 523% with 24,393,457 visits. Great news for WordPress.com despite Compete being the one to show case these statistics.

WordPress/Automattic Blog By Team Members – is (going to be) written by various team members at Automattic and their goal is to help all publishers get the most out of WordPress. They will cover features that are often overlooked, highlight plugins that extend WordPress functionality and showcase interesting sites being built with WordPress. They are looking for publishers working on innovative projects using WordPress and would like to field questions from users. From the comment that Raanan left on PressedWords, it would appear that they want to focus on large WordPress installations that are doing lots of custom work and help publishers find the proper resources.

What Makes A WordPress Theme Premium? – Ronald Hureca asked this question back on January 12 and boy did he get a response. Answers ranged from premium meaning PAID FOR to better support with more features than your average theme.

Dean’s Migration Plugin Vulnerability – According to an advisory released by Packetstorm, a fellow by the name of g30rg3_x has discovered two bugs within Dean’s Permalinks Migration Plugin version 1.0. The first bug relates to XSRF and can allow an attacker to force a user to perform an unsolicited action that when combined with an XSS bug that has also been discovered, allows the attacker to gain valid credentials.

WordPress Tips Of The Week:

Jeffro2pt0 - Add Buttons To Text Editor – WP Candy published an awesome tutorial which highlights how to add custom buttons/functions to your visual text editor. For instance, I’ve managed to add a H1 and H2 button to my visual text editor so I no longer need to access the dropdown menu.

Ronald – His tip this week is for plugin and theme authors. An effective way of demonstrating your plugin and/or theme is through a screencast. For Mac users, there is a great program (for $30) that makes great screencasts called Screenflick

I added that I have sometimes used a program from TechSmith called Camtasia Studio It’s not cheap but it works, $299.00 If you know of a better solution for Windows user’s and screen capture software, let us know in the comments.

Andrew - Firstly I want to encourage WordPress users that are maybe comfortable with modifying their own theme to just get stuck in and produce their own plugin; just for their own personal use. Not every plugin needs to be a a fully featured, released, plugin with admin pages and customizable options. Learning how to put together something really quick and basic, perhaps with a single hook and a single function can let you do some really interesting things.

Secondly I really want to make a point of how useful a good knowledge of the wordpress.org codex can be. In particular it helps to understand how to find things; for example, I regularly just search for functions from the wordpress.org home page because I know that will generally give me the functions reference page. The more of the codex you read the more you start to understand the mindset behind some things such as templates.

I mentioned that, while it is possible to display category specific content using conditional tags, the template system will actually look for a category, and now a tag, specific template page as the first step in the template hierarchy. There is more information on that at http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy

David - Dave lets us know of a blog metrics plugin that is especially useful for multi-author blogs. This plugin gives you at a glance information such as author contributions and conversation rates. A good plugin to have to monitor who is doing what.

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Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 19 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode3.mp3

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The first ever episode of WordPress Weekly is now complete and it went off without a hitch. I want to give a special thanks to Brad of Strangework.com and Ronald from the ReadersAppreciationProject for coming on the show as panel members. Based on the comments I’ve received thus far on the first episode, these two individuals were well liked. I’ve spoken to both Brad and Ronald and they have agreed to show up on future episodes. (PHEW) I also want to thank each and every one of you who managed to get into the Talkshoe client and participate by way of chat. For my first episode, I had a decent turn out of people and that was awesome. I hope the seed that was planted with this first episode grows into something special.

WordPress 2.3.2 is released and contains numerous bug fixes with a few of them being security bugs. We talked about the upgrade and discussed the upgrade process in general.

2.4 Skipped 2.5 Is Next Earlier this week, it was announced that version 2.4 of WordPress would be skipped in favor of 2.5. We go over the reasons behind the change and discuss the release cycle in general.

Telligent Lacks Intelligents Charles Stricklin published an article that shows off Grafiti essentially slamming WordPress. According to Charles, Telligent has purchased the keyword WordPressPodcast from Google Adwords. Upon clicking on the promotional landing page, you discover that the Grafiti CMS is THE alternative for WordPress. We discuss why this isn’t the case.

Install WordPress Locally Part 1 Install WordPress Locally – Part 2 Of 2 I go over some of the details that made this article tough to write. We discuss our experiences with local installs and why it would be benficial to you to have a local install of your WordPress site. Ronald also informs me of two WP_Config entries that you can add to your WP-Config file which would replace the need to edit any tables within an imported database. They are:

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.madisonbiblechurch.org’);
define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://www.madisonbiblechurch.org’);
Well, they say since WP 2.2.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php

WP_SITEURL
WP_HOME

9 WordPress Admin Themes Earlier this week, Mark Ghosh published a posts that highlighted 9 different WordPress administration themes. We cover why there is a lack of administration themes available and go into a little more detail in regards to the WordPress admin panel redesign.

WordPress Tips Of The Week:

Jeffro2pt0 – Give WP-Admin a Custom Favicon

John Kolbert has a simple guide on how to give your WordPress Administration area it’s own default favicon. This is really useful when you have more than a few tabs open in FireFox and you have no idea which one is your admin panel.

Ronald – WordPress Automatic Update plugin: An easyto use plugin which aides in updating your WordPress install. Anything to make it easier is a winner in my book.

Ronald also mentioned the WP Plugin Generator from WP-Fun: this plugin helps you generate a functional framework for a WordPress plugin. The framework is the building block of your plugin, so you would do well to start the plugin off write with a good base.

Brad – WordPress Database Backup Plugin Brad let us know of this awesome plugin that creates a backup of your WordPress database and then emails you the backup file. Both Brad and Ronald use this plugin and have it configured in this way. Good for those who are not to keen on keeping up with making backups.

WPWeekly Meta:

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Length Of Episode: 1 Hour

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode1.mp3

Listen To Episode #1: