Wordpress

First Episode Of WordPress Weekly

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The time has finally arrived where I will pop my podcasting cherry and produce the first episode of WordPress Weekly. WordPress Weekly will TRY to be a weekly oriented podcast that takes place every Friday evening at 9PM EST on Talkshoe.com. The easiest way I can explain the format of the show is by looking into the TwIT podcast by Leo Laporte. Twit otherwise known as This Week In Tech is a weekly podcast where Leo gathers other tech pundits from around the country to discuss technology news topics of the week.

WordPress Weekly however will be a show where I gather various bloggers who use WordPress as their cornerstone and discuss WordPress related news that took place during the week. Sometimes, the show may stray from the norm and we may cover a particular topic. Other times, we may open the mic and generally talk about anything blogging related. At the end of every show, every guest including the host (ME) gives out a blogging tip for the week. This tip can be a theme, a plugin, a hack, a blog you’ve come across, anything that would be of value to a WordPress user..

I am aiming for a relaxing atmosphere where WordPress Users can gather around for 1 hour every Friday evening and discuss the latest happenings with everything WordPress.

The first episode of WordPress weekly will cover why I and the guest hosts use WordPress. Why we chose WordPress over competing solutions. The floor will be opened on this show which means, we’re liable to discuss just about anything as it relates to WordPress or blogging.

These are the guests that are scheduled or tentatively scheduled to be on the show Friday. Ronald from the Readers Appreciation Project and Brad from Strangework.com. Steven Hodson of WinExtra.com might be able to make it but so far, he is still not 100% sure.

Listener Participation:

So how can you be a part of the show? Well, there are a number of ways. The easiest way is to create an account on Talkshoe.com. Then, download and install their client software. The Talkshoe software serves as a bridge of communication between the host, and his/her listeners. The software contains a chat room as well as phone number information to call into the show.

However, you do not need to install the software in order to listen to the show live. This Friday at 9PM EST, look on the front page of Talkshoe.com or click on the LIVE NOW button and look for the WordPress Weekly show. Instead of clicking on the JOIN IN button, click underneath where it says LISTEN ONLY. This will tune you into the live stream.

If you want to call in to the show via telephone, Skype, etc., use your phone to call 724-444-7444 and follow the audio instructions. *Note* In one of the recent updates to Talkshoe, anonymous calling is now supported. This means you can call in and participate without the need to create a Talkshoe account. However, if you have a Talkshoe account, your registered name will show up within the Talkshoe client letting others know who is speaking.

You can also use SIP clients such as ProjectGizmo or X-Lite. For example, when I use X-Lite to dial in, I type in 123@66.212.134.192 and then follow the audio directions.

Remember this information as it will be required when you want to dial into the show.

Talkcast Name: WordPress Weekly

Talkcast ID: 34224

Phone Number: 724-444-7444

Show Information:

I can not purchase a seperate domain for the show. So please look to this site for information regarding each and every episode. I’ll also be posting show notes on this blog after every show. Also, starting on Friday, I will be adding the TalkShoe Talkcast player widget to the sidebar of the blog. This allows you to listen to the show right from the front page of the blog. You can also keep tabs on the show and look through the archive if one is ever created by clicking here.

What To Expect:

I have no idea what to expect. I’ve never hosted my own show before so this might turn into a disaster. I’ve been a Talkshoe member for a very long time so it shouldn’t be too bad. I’ve seen other shows experience technical problems so I won’t be surprised if I go through some hardships through the first couple episodes. I’ve always wanted to tinker with this podcasting deal but I needed to find something I could talk about on a weekly basis and I wanted to do it with other people, not just by myself. The first show might be filled with a ton of bloopers, but hey, I’ll be there to have fun and to engage in some good conversations and I hope you’ll join us in one way or another.

WordPress Releases V 2.3.2

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With just under a month to go before the expected release of WordPress version 2.3, Automattic has released WordPress version 2.3.2 which contains what else, security fixes. This release fixes a bug that would allow your draft posts to be exposed to the public. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that would occur that could give away information related to your database structure. On top of all that, this fix stops information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations.

As a little bonus, 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.

For more detail on what’s new in 2.3.2, view the list of fixed bugs and see the changes between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.

Special thanks to Alex Concha for his help on this release.

As with any new version, please upgrade as soon as you can, preferably after a fresh backup. As of this time, this blog has successfully been upgraded to 2.3.2.

Series Of Updates

No Shortage Of Birthdays

The Birthday Boy

I’d like to start off this post by saying thank you to each and every one of you who stopped by to wish me a happy 24th birthday. I truly do appreciate it. As you can see from the image above, there was no shortage of birthday wishes to go around. What’s funny though is that, I receive happy birthday emails all year around. I only configure the correct birth date on forums or websites that I take seriously or that I know I will be able to be apart of. So during the year, each website or forum that I signed up to for one reason or another generates a happy birthday message on some of the most unusual days of the year. How many of you guys are reminded by your inbox that it’s your birthday?

New PC Build

Speaking of birthdays, I happen to receive two gifts that will make there presence known in the new computer I will be building for myself. So far, here are my thoughts as to what I’ll be building:

On my birthday, my girlfriend purchased me a Creative X-FI Audigy Gamer card from BestBuy for about 100$. Then, I picked up a 700 Watt, RocketFish power supply via the giftcards I received. Now that those two items are out of the way, here is what I need.

Case – Thinking about getting the CM Stacker case. This thing is big, roomy, not meant for LAN parties and also has a bit of style. 2 Huge 120mm fans for cooling and plenty of bays for expansion.

Ram – I’ve made the choice to purchase DDR2 ram instead of DDR3. Apparently, DDR 3 gives you high clock speeds but with higher latency. DDR3 is also pretty expensive.

SATA Hard Drive – This one won’t be too hard to find. A low storage SATA drive on New Egg. Don’t care who makes it.

Video Card – Still undecided on this one. But it will be an Nvidia based GFX card and I will most likely not be going in the direction of SLI.

Motherboard and CPU – Not sure on this one either except that I’ll be going Intel instead of AMD. Going the AMD route would be like throwing money in the garbage.

If you have any suggestions as to which route I should take as far as single graphics card solutions, motherboards, Ram, and Intel CPUs, I’d be willing to hear them.

Ongoing Forum Discussions

Not to be forgotten, we do have a forum attached to this blog for discussions YOU want to begin. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a few of the discussions that are currently ongoing:

What happens…? – Mark Lima, a brand new user to Forum2pt0 has brought up the question, “What Happens When Jeffro2pt0 Goes 2.1?

Got Some New Toys – This thread is for my PC Building project. Again, suggestions wanted.

True Life MMO Messes up family – I posted a link to a YouTube video where you can hear a child being scolded at by his parents for being obsessed with his computer. It was funny to me, but you have to wonder how many families are actually struggling with this issue of their children being obsessed with MMORPGS.

My Apologies

I have to take this time to apologize for leaving the blog go post less for a number of days. Apparently I, like so many others, have succumb to the holiday season. I’ve been busy spending time with family members as well as reading books and generally, just doing things other than blogging. I plan to get back on track before the new year. I’m also hoping that I can prepare a new years gift that I really look forward to hearing your feedback on.

Also, I’ve written two posts so far on WeblogToolsCollection which have bother garnered a good amount of positive feedback. I do have a few more posts in mind for WeblogToolsCollection that I hope produces the same amount of feedback, but we’ll have to see.

Conclusion

I’m reading, writing, and coming up with ideas behind the scenes. With the beginning of 2008 around the corner, I am trying to develop a timeline or series of goals that I would like to accomplish in the blogging world for the new year. I started this blog back in May and I can’t believe that at the end of 2007, I have the opportunity to write for one of the biggest blogs pertaining to WordPress.

I wanted to take this time to thank YOU, the people who have subscribed to the blog, the people who visit this site on a daily basis, those who contribute, either by sending me a link via my contact form or by leaving a message in the shoutbox, all the way to those who post messages on the forum. I really appreciate the sense of community you guys and gals provide at this particular blog. I love being around like minded individuals who contribute to conversations. Differences of opinion are welcomed here as well.

I hope each and every one of you had a happy holiday season. I hope you’ll be here with me as we progress through the year of 2008. What will happen to Jeffro2pt0 during 2008? I don’t know, but it sure will be interesting to find out.

Jeffro2pt0 Invading Your WordPress Dashboard

Weblogtoolscollectionlogo

For those wondering, if you were wondering at all, I am the same Jeffro2pt0 that wrote the post, “Technorati Lacks Authority” which is published on the WeblogToolsCollection Website. This website is one of the premiere WordPress material related blogs that show up in a WordPress user’s administration panel. We are talking about a big audience here.

Let me say that, writing this first post on WLTC has been an eye opening experience. I’ve already learned that first, since it’s not my blog I’m publishing on, it’s Mark Ghosh’s, I have to ensure that the post I write makes complete sense and is backed up by factual statements or statistics. Secondly, dealing with a big audience is a task all of it’s own. When I wrote the post, I tried to make it come across as the way I was thinking about it. Undoubtedly, it didn’t come across with the same meaning to everyone. Some people took the post one way, while others took it in another. I’ve had to go in and correct things in the article and I’ve also had to defend or re-explain my stance on the issue. As you know, I’m one of those people who has to respond back to just about everyone who comments. Unlike many other blog authors, I can’t let the conversation die, I have to keep it going!

I’m not a journalist, I’m not a reporter, I don’t know how you would classify citizen journalism or citizen media but if someone asks, I tell them that I’m just a blogger. I write things how I see them. If I’m wrong, I’m hoping that someone will step up and correct me in the form of a polite comment. That way I learn what I did wrong, and the article is that much more accurate.

At any rate, the post on WeblogToolsCollection.com is one of what I think might be many posts, depending upon how many fires I start. I have to thank Mark Ghosh for giving me the opportunity to blog in front of a WIDE audience. I’d appreciate it if you guys would send me an email sometime or leave a comment letting me know what you think of the articles I write over there. I don’t know how you would feel in my position, but I look at it as an honor to write for an established site such as WeblogToolsCollection.com You just don’t get those sort of opportunities every day.

SideBlog – Home Grown Twitter For WordPress

As you know, I’m a fan of the WinExtra.com blog, authored by Steven Hodson and on his blog, I’ve noticed an area of his sidebar called Misc. Thoughts. For whatever reason, I always find myself going down the sidebar, reading these mini posts which looks familiar to the type of content you would find on Twitter. Instead of actually being on Twitter, Steven can posts these short snippets or thoughts and keep them local to his own blog. I asked Steve some time ago which plugin he was using to generate this part of his blog and he told me it was something called SideBlog.

Steves SideBlog

SideBlog which is now up to version 4.4 was written by Katesgasis and is compatible with WordPress 2.3. SideBlog is one way of implementing “Asides” or “a series of short posts 1-2 sentences in length”. Sideblog4.4 is widget enabled which means it will be easy to place on your site if you use a widget enabled theme. Also worthy of noting is that, multiple categories can be published in the sidebar.

After you install and activate the plugin, you’ll need to create a new category which will be the category for this plugin. In my case, I created a new category called Random Thoughts. Once you create your new category, go into your OPTIONS area and click on SideBlog. A list of all the available categories will be presented. Check mark the box for the category you want to be displayed in the sideblog. In my case, I selected my newly created Random Thoughts category. Also on this same line, you can choose how many entries will show up in this sideblog as well as whether or not the content should be excluded from RSS Feeds. I chose 5 entries and disabled the content from being included with my feeds.

SideBlogConfiguration

After you assign a category to the plugin, you’ll be able to see it in the Widgets area within the Presentation options. Drag the widget to a sidebar of your choice and apply the changes. Now, anytime you want a post to show up in this sideblog, make you select the appropriate category when you’re writing a 1-2 sentence post.

This plugin is great if you need to post some thoughts off the top of your head but don’t want to dedicated an entire blog post towards it. This is also a good substitute for Twitter if you’re not into that sort of thing. I will say though, the benefit of Twitter is that when you post your thoughts, you’re publishing them to a very wide audience. Using Sideblog, your limiting your thoughts from being seen by only those who are visiting your blog. But if you’re fine with that, SideBlog makes an excellent thought dumper.

Yahoo Must Love WordPress

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By now, you’ve probably heard or seen the mention of the new WordPress exclusive, Yahoo! Shortcuts. Yahoo shortcuts is a WordPress plugin that provides shortcuts to relevant material as you compose your blog post. Simply speaking, the Yahoo Shortcuts is an easy way to tap into the numerous sources of data that make up the Yahoo! network of websites.

There are two ways to display shortcuts to your readers. The first way shows readers certain blue dotted, underlined, terms that show the related content once the mouse cursor is hovered over them. The second way is to present the relevant content as a badge or image embedded into the actual post.

As A Link Or As A Badge

Looking at the way the relevant content is displayed reminds me a lot of how Kontera works. Kontera is a form of in text advertising. As far as I know, Yahoo is not making any money from any of the products that might be displayed on your blog.

One of the negative things about this plugin is it’s size. The plugin folder is comprised of 110 files. I suppose the reason for so many files is so the plugin can support the various shortcuts provided by Yahoo.

In concept, I think the idea works. But it’s my own opinion that these relevant images, text, financial quotes, products, ect do a good job of distracting the reader from your content. I’m one of those individuals that when I see something cool, I click on it. I keep clicking on things until I realize, how off track I’ve become. Then I go back to where I started except now, I’ve lost an hour of time. Don’t you just hate that?

One last thing I wanted to mention about the Yahoo Shortcuts. The shortcuts keep in tact the attribution information for things such as Flickr photos and you will automatically be given credit as the author of the image if it’s used inside of a blog post. If the blog author messes with the shortcut and deletes that attribution, they are actually breaking the Yahoo ShortCuts Terms Of Service and you should report them to Yahoo.

If you would like to see how the plugin works, check out this demo video that Yahoo! created. If you want to download the plugin and give it a try, download it from here.

More Plugin Updates

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There have recently been a number of updated plugins released for WordPress. The plugins in question are as follows:

Akismet – Akistmet version 2.1.1 has been released. Some of the new features in this version include the ability to sort by comment type. This means you can search by ALL comments, Comments, or Pingbacks. There is also a new hook thats been added so other plugins can add tabs to the sub navigational scheme.

Later on, after I wrote this post, a newer version of Akismet has been released. Version 2.1.2 Fixes two small bugs, if you have 2.1.2 all errors (headers sent, etc) should be fixed.

Subscribe To Comments – Subscribe To Comments has released version 2.1.2 This update include a fix to a bug that was discovered by Donncha where bad notification emails would sometimes be sent out. The code within the plugin has been cleaned up and the author has moved to using proper WP escaping functions.

WP AJAX Edit Comments – Ronald has updated this plugin to 1.1.2.5 This update adds page detection for incompatibility issues with the Navigation List plugin.

LunarPages Hosts WordPress Theme Contest

LunarTics WordPress Theme Contest

The other day, I was notified of a WordPress Theme contest that is taking place over at the LunarPages blog. All it takes to win the contest is to come up with the coolest, most unique WordPress theme. Then, upload the theme to LunarPages to give yourself a chance to win. Here are what the prizes look like:

First Prize is $1,000 cash and 5 years free hosting on our Basic Plan

Second Prize is 3 years free hosting + $300 cash

Third Prize is 1 year free hosting + $100 cash

The best part is that it’s easy to enter – simply give us some contact info (like your name and email so we can tell you when you’ve won) and upload your WordPress Themes directly to our site, where they’ll be posted for the community to vote on.

Each week starting December 10th, we’ll highlight our top 5 favorites and give our community the chance to vote via a poll on the blog for a favorite theme of the week.

The winner of the weekly poll is guaranteed a position in the final 12. There will be 6 weekly polls.

Lunarpages staff will choose an additional 6 themes for inclusion in the final 12. Contest entries close on January 22nd and the final 12 will be announced on January 23rd, so everybody has a chance to win! A new poll with the final 12 (6 from weekly polls and 6 of Lunarpages choice) will be posted on January 23rd and voting will run for 2 weeks, closing on February 13th.

Winners will be announced on Feb 24th, 2008. The winners will be highlighted on their blog as well as their newsletter. For more information and to enter the contest, click here.

I Need Your Feedback

Jeffro2pt0 Dark Banner

Its that time again where I have to ask you, the readers, what is it you would like me to write about on this blog? So far, it looks like the majority of you enjoy posts that highlight new icon packs. Even the posts that deal with vector based graphics or logos appear to be a hit. I’ve also noticed that you folks seem to enjoy WordPress related material as well.

What would you like me to write about? Do you want more WordPress news? How about more WordPress plugin or theme reviews? Do you think I should not change anything and keep writing about the stuff I already cover? Should I continue to review web 2.0 sites and services, or should I review other things such as actual software? Do you enjoy the short articles, or the in depth longer ones? If I started a WordPress based podcast, would you tune in and listen? Do you enjoy the interviews I have posted and would like to continue to see me publish interviews?

These are just some of the questions that are on the top of my mind right now. I know this is a blog about stuff, but I’d really like to know what you 150 or so RSS subscribers and regular visitors would like to see more of on this blog. As the year comes to a close, I’d like to start off the new year with at least a little more of a focus on what I should be blogging about. Of course, I’ll still blog about personal experiences, the jokes, comics, and what have you, but I’m interested in what sort of content you’re interested in.

Your feedback is incredibly valuable to me.

WordPress Theme Viewer Updates

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There was a streak of news that came out of the WordPress theme viewer RSS feed today.

Just wanted to do a quick update for those wondering when you’ll be able to add new themes or update existing ones here in the directory. We’ve been working very hard on a new Subversion-backed database for themes that will allow you to upload themes as you did before, as a plain ZIP file, and we’re transparently check it into SVN so changes can be tracked just like we do for WordPress development.

There will also be moderation and review so that we can scan themes for XSS problems, malicious code, spam links, and other ways that people have been distributing malware themes. I’m sorry this has taken longer than I thought it would, but the problems involved with doing things “right” are non-trivial. Most importantly we want to ensure that once the re-launch is done you’ll have easy, fast, and stable access to the best and brightest in the theme world, and you’ll never have to think twice about the code you’re downloading.

According to Lorelle, the theme viewer has been offline for more than 5 months and theme authors are really starting to get upset. There are a ton of themes within the theme viewer that can be downloaded and used on new WordPress blogs today, but a lot of those themes are incompatible with 2.3. If you take into consideration that WordPress 2.4 is scheduled to be released in January, this may further compound problems.

Hopefully, they can get the work on the theme viewer finished before the release of 2.4 or at the very least, soon after. If WP 2.4 causes even more themes to be incompatible, we may be looking at a big mess that will take some time to clean up.