WordPress.com now supports Google Gears
WordPress.com announces they now officially supports offline access through Google Gears. This means a faster and more enjoyable blogging experience.
To enable this feature, simply hit “Turbo” in your dashboard.
After that Gears will download around 200 files and store them on your PC. It will also update them when needed automatically in the background, no other actions are required.
For users using self-hosted WordPress, this feature will be coming soon in WordPress 2.6.
WordPress 2.6 beta 2
WordPress 2.6 beta 2 is out. Ryan Boren posts the new features once more, also found at the WordPress Trac. Get it here.
Unofficial International WordPress Day on July 1
WordPress fans, it’s time to toast to our love of this awesome blogging CMS on Tuesday, July 1, 2008. The Unofficial International WordPress Day is hosted by WPCandy, and it will be one whole day of showing how much people adore WordPress.
How do you participate?
If you love WordPress as much as we do, then we invite you to blog about it with us on Tuesday, July 1. It doesn’t have to be too formal or anything, just make a simple (or incredibly long) post about WordPress. Here are some topics your post could cover:
- Why you use it and prefer it over other CMSs
- How it’s helped your business or blog
- A thank you letter to Automattic
- Your top-secret tips and tricks
There will be 20 prizes given away, including themes, banner ads, plugins, and more. Complete details found here.
WordPress 2.6 Beta 1
Excited about the next new release of WordPress? Try WP 2.6 Beta 1.
Ryan Boren lists the new features, which were mentioned previously here. Most notable ones are: post revisions, the “Press This” bookmarklet, offline access using Google Gears, theme preview, sortable galleries, etc.
Sneak peeks of WordPress 2.6 features
Although we’re still a few months away from the next major release of WordPress, we can’t help being curious and excited about what’s coming up, can we?
Milestone 2.6
WordPress 2.6 is set to come out on August 7, 2008, according to the WordPress Trac page. Progress is currently at 7%, clearly a long way from completion.
Curious about other releases? Here are the tickets for WP 2.5.2 and WP 2.7.
2.6 Test Run
A live installation of WP 2.6 is up at Chris Johnston’s demo site. Username is admin, password is demo. If you want to test them on your own server, check out the Nightly Builds through the WP testers mailing list.
WordPress 2.6 Features
Several bloggers have brought up some of the major improvements with WP 2.6:
Post revisions
Keep track of a blog post’s revision history.
Identicons, MonsterID, and Wavatar support
Generate special gravatar icons for commenters who have none.
Google Gears support
Add Google Gears functionality for offline blogging.
wp-config.php location can be moved one level higher than WP install
Add sorting to gallery items
Integrate the Reorder Gallery plugin to the 2.6 core.
SHIFT+Click checkbox selection
Select multiple rows of posts, categories, comments, tags, etc. Gmail-style.
Press This bookmarklet
Quick posting bookmarklet that disappeared in 2.5 and will return to 2.6.
Further Reading
More information can be found at the following websites: Quick Online Tips, WordPress Expert, planetOzh, The Blog Herald.
Also visit the Codex page for WordPress 2.6 for further updates.
5 Years of WordPress
On May 27, 2003, the first version of WordPress was announced. Today, after 5 years of releases, currently at milestone 2.5 going on 2.6, it’s arguably the most versatile and most popular blogging platform out there.
From b2 to WP
We all have our blog birthdays but how about celebrating our favorite blog software’s birthday? Here’s a little tidbit for those who aren’t familiar with how WordPress came to be:
WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product. We hope by focusing on user experience and web standards we can create a tool different from anything else out there.
Timeline
It’s been a long road from the early days of WordPress starting out as a fork in b2/cafelog’s development. Here’s a rundown of WordPress highlights over the years:
2003
May: WordPress announced as official b2 branch
May: WordPress 0.7 (first release)
2004
Jan: WordPress 1.0
Jan: WordPress 1.0.1 “Miles”
Mar: WordPress 1.0.2 “Blakey”
Apr: Ping-o-Matic
May: WordPress 1.2 “Mingus”
Dec: bbPress
2005
Feb: WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn”
Feb: Kubrick
Aug: Automattic
Oct: Akismet
Dec: WordPress 2.0 “Duke”
2006
Jan: WordPress 2.0.1
Mar: WordPress Widgets
Jul: WordCamp San Francisco
Aug: WordPress.com
Oct: WordPress MU 1.0
Oct: WordPress 2.0.5 “Ronan”
2007
Jan: WordPress 2.1 “Ella”
May: WordPress 2.2 “Getz”
Sep: WordPress 2.3 “Dexter”
2008
Mar: WordPress 2.5 “Brecker” (2.4 skipped)
Sep: WordCamp Philippines!
More Reminiscing
And now for more posts that stroll down the memory lane of WordPress achievements:
- History of WordPress Series: Part 1: Detailed summary of what each WordPress version accomplished.
- Happy 5th Birthday WordPress!: All those “remember when?”s show how far WP has come along.
- WordPress 0.7 five years ago: Text is in Israeli but the pictures say enough.
Here’s to even more success: happy birthday, WordPress! So who else is having a party?
Looking for WordPress Jobs?
Isn’t it that time of year where fresh grads troop to job expos in hopes of jumpstarting their careers? But whether you’re a newbie in the rat race, a seasoned veteran (read: constantly unemployed), or just looking to earn spare change, why not get paid to do something you’re good at if you truly live and breathe WordPress?
jobs.wordpress.net
Arguably the most popular resource for WordPress-related gigs since it’s hosted on an official WordPress site and backed by Automattic. Positions are grouped into WordPress bloggers, designers, programmers. And yes, it runs on WordPress!
wordpressJob
Not a job board per se, but a job postings aggregator. It gathers classifieds from several websites like ScriptLance, GetAFreelancer, RentACoder, and jobs.wordpress.net. It also runs on WordPress.
Other Jobs Boards
With “wordpress” as search query:
General job boards:
Job boards for blogging:
Jobs for Filipinos:
Note that some of these sites charge for posting and/or reading the listings.
You can also visit our forum to post a job or look for one, completely free.
StayPress is a WordPress-powered Booking System
Here’s another neat use of WordPress to add to the list. StayPress is a “property management and bookings system” that can run on either WordPress or WordPress MU.
Of course when I say Property, I actually mean any bookable resource of which there is a finite availability. So the StayPress system will be able to manage property rentals, hotel room rentals, conference rooms and centres, B and B’s, training rooms, bands, etc…
This is a really helpful tool especially for the Philippine real estate and resort companies out there. You’re running out of reasons to not use WordPress!
WordPress 2.5.1 Released, But You Can’t Reset Passwords and 2.5.2 is Close Behind; Will You Update?
Just as Filipino bloggers trooped to U.P. Diliman for the 4th iBlog Summit, WordPress 2.5.1 was released. It has over 70 security fixes and enhancements, including a SECRET_KEY in the wp-config.php file explained in-depth by Ryan Boren.
Now it seems people are debating whether one should hold off for the next WordPress version for several reasons. First, there’s a bug that can potentially lock people out of their blogs should they wish to reset their passwords. This can be fixed by manually editing the password through phpMyAdmin, and there’s a patch for the WordPress update itself.
Second, there’s talk that WordPress 2.5.2 will soon be out. This could frustrate a lot of bloggers who aren’t really comfortable with updating WordPress.
So will you upgrade to 2.5.1 immediately, or wait until 2.5.2 comes out? I’d say it has a lot to do with how confident you are in the blog security of your current installation.
Technorati’s Ultimatum: Upgrade WordPress to 2.5 Now or Your Blog Will NOT Be Indexed
Now this comes as a surprise. Technorati has actually given an ultimatum to vulnerable WordPress blogs, saying that unless they upgrade to the latest, most secure version, 2.5, they will not be indexed.
Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible. These links are still seen by crawlers such as Technorati’s, Google’s and Yahoo’s.
Technorati also mentions that blogs hosted on WordPress.com should not have this vulnerability.
I know Filipino bloggers are big fans of Technorati, so here’s yet another reason for you to upgrade to WordPress 2.5. Don’t worry, it’s not scary at all!
