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WordPress 2.8 “Baker” is Now Available as a Full Release

Jun 11, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) MyTestBox News

WordPress 2.8 ‘Baker‘ is now available as a full release. It has a whole bunch of new features and improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. And over 790 bugs have been fixed. Now you can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click right from your WordPress dashboard.

It also features the new CodePress editor which gives syntax highlighting, allowing you to make minor edits to themes or plugins from your dashboard. With the redesigned widgets interface, you can edit widgets easily, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings.

The highlights of WordPress 2.8 include,

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API.
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors.
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin with one click.
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns.
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options.
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment.
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation.

You might want to go through the full list of over 180 new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the WordPress Codex.

Our upgrade went well, without a hitch (using the automatic update). But DO backup your database and files before upgrading, just in case.

Source: WordPress Development Blog

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Tags: blog system, mysql, open-source, php, software, wordpress

WordPress.com Introduces VideoPress for WordPress.com users

May 14, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) New Releases

WordPress.com, one of the popular web hosts, which recently added the Post by Email feature has now introduced VideoPress to its users.

VideoPress is a one-click WordPress.com upgrade that allows you to create streaming high definition videos on your blog or anywhere on the web. You can even create an instant video podcast right from your blog feed.

[ Source: WordPress.TV ]

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Tags: high definition, video, video sharing, videopress, wordpress

WordPress.com, makes it even easier to publish onto your blog – Post by Email

May 12, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) MyTestBox News

WordPress.com, one of the most used blog host, now allows users to post text and images by email. If you are at work with Outlook or on the move with a BlackBerry and wanted to publish at quick post, this feature can be extremely useful.

Post by Email, is simple to use.

From the new ‘My Blogs’ menu you can generate special email addresses. You can create as many email addresses as you need, one for each blog you have access to.

You can send email from any email client, whether in a browser, on your desktop, or from your cell phone and as much formatting will be retained as possible.

Your images will be included and automatically converted into thumbnails. If you include multiple images, they’ll be converted into a gallery.

If you’ve purchased the Space Upgrade then MP3 attachments will be displayed using our audio player. If you’ve purchased the VideoPress upgrade then you can also include videos.

Post by Email Features:

• Transcoding of any video files supported by the WordPress video player (mp4, mov, wmv, avi, mpg, and m4v).
• Add your email addresses directly into your address book using downloadable vCards. (You don’t even need to remember the address)
• Automatic notification of a published email post.
• Automatic removal of standard signature blocks, with support for manual removal of other signatures.
• Conversion of YouTube URLs into embedded videos.

You might want to read more about it on ReadWriteWeb and WordPress.com News.

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Tags: blog, images, platform, post by email, software, video, wordpress

8 Photo/Image Gallery Plugins for WordPress

May 11, 2009 by Srikanth ADcloseAuthor: Srikanth AD Name: Srikanth AD
Email: adsrikanth@gmail.com
Site: http://www.firefoxninjas.com/
About: Srikanth is 20-years old and pursuing his Bachelors in Technology in India. He’s passionate about the web, in fact he’s addicted to it: Search Engine Technologies, Web Designing and Technology Blogging in specific. You can see his blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Linkedin for more information.See Authors Posts (12) Tips and Tricks

WordPress, one of the top open source blogging platforms and which we have reviewed here, holds a vast directory of plugins and widgets to enhance your blog functionality and performance. Here we are presenting few handy WordPress plugins  for images and graphics.

Picasna

Picasna lets you create professional fullscreen flash galleries from your Picasaweb account. You can upload images directly to Picasa Web Albums and they will appear on your blog or web page in no time. You can even adjust the image and album cover sizes. This plugin is platform independent and requires a browser with Flash 7 or higher.

Features

• Fullscreen browsing.
• Show albums from your Picasaweb Account.
• Adjust thumbnail and album cover sizes.
• Next image preloading.
• UTF-8 Unicode. Now supports all languages
• Light and dark color schemes.
• Browser and platform independent. Requires a browser with Flash 7 (or higher) installed.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: blog, flickr, highslide, image gallery, images, nextgen, open-source, pageflip, photo gallery, photosmash, picasa, Picasna, plugins, rss images, superslider, web gallery, widgets, wordpress

BuddyPress – build a social network on top of Wordpress MU (Multi-User) blog installation

Apr 30, 2009 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

After months and months in development under Automattic umbrella (yes, the Wordpress guys) Buddypress is, finally and officially, at version 1.0.

What is Buddypress?

It’s a set of plugins and themes (each adding a distinct new feature) developed originally by Andy Peatling allowing a Wordpress MU (Multi-User)  blog installation to become a social network also.
All of the plugins could be used to create a complete social network from scratch, or you could use specific plugins to add desirable features to your existing blog network.

Later on, Buddypress was acquired by Automattic, the makers of Wodpress MU and Wordpress blog software, and the author joined to their team.

The features Budypress has are:
* Extended Profiles
* Private Messaging
* Friends
* Groups
* The Wire
* Activity Streams
* Blog Tracking
* Forums

Some upcoming features in 2009 are:
* Status Updates (Mid 2009)
* Photo Albums (Late 2009)

To have Budypress running on your server you need to have the following:
* A working installation of WordPress MU, version 2.7.1 or greater
* PHP version 4.3 or greater
* MySQL 4.0 or greater
* The mod_rewrite Apache module enabled

Budypress might not be a contender now for Social Engine, DZOIC Handshakes, WebNetwork, Boonex Dolphin, Alstrasoft E-friends, Elgg, PHPfox, PHPizabi but in the near future it could be as new features will be added and, especially, because it can reach a good chunk of the market thanks to many Wordpress MU installations which are already there.

Download Buddypress here  and don’t forget the installation instructions!

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Tags: auttomatic, blog software, buddypress, dolphin, dzoic, e-friends, elgg, multi-user, mysql, php, phpfox, phpizabi, plugins, social engine, social network, webnetwork, wordpress, wordpress MU

Manage your Woodpress advertising with Advertising Manager plugin from OpenX

Mar 17, 2009 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) Tips and Tricks

OpenX, famous for the free ad server management software, recently launched a Wordpress plugin named Advertising Manager. With this plugin you are able to manage the advertising from Google Adsense and other networks.

The plugin allows you to easily place the ads either within your Wordpress blog posts, or within your Wordpress theme (manage the ad networks ads inside the Wordpress admin console, without the need for consistently modifying HTML, or managing a separate application, when you need to change those ads).

The plugin is in public beta phase now and, of course, it’s free (like everything which comes from OpenX).

More on their blog and on the Advertising Manager plugin page.

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Tags: ad management, ad server, advertising, manager, open-source, openads, openx, plugin, wordpress

New blogging and content management software from Microsoft: Oxite

Dec 9, 2008 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

Today Microsoft entered in competition with Wordpress (or, at least, that what it seems).
Wordpress  is a blogging software and is considered also a content management system (especially with the help of various plugins). It is very used in the blogging world (another competitor is Movable Type) and not only.

Now Microsoft wants a piece of this market (is there a market Microsoft doesn’t want a piece? Rumours has it that it also wants a piece from the smart mobile terminals where the iPhone is king).Microsoft released today a blogging and content management software called Oxite. It is, yes, open source and in alpha version (according to ReadWriteWeb).

Oxite has some features other blogging software has:

# RSS feeds
# Anonymous and authenticated commenting along with optional moderation
# Pingbacks, trackbacks
# Gravatar support (global avatars)
# Web Admin Panel
# Supports Open Search format
# Search friendly URLs
# Supports the MetaWebLog API
# Create any number of web pages for any purpose
# Create sub-pages off a main page
# Localization

Because it is still in alpha version it’s not for begginers but merely for developers who wants to mess with the code. The code is, of course, based on ASP.NET Model View Controller which could limit its spreading (many standard hosts are running Linux and ASP.NET is not running on it, unless a special software comes to help, like The Mono Project  – which not many hosting companies are using on production servers).

Microsoft’s Channel 9  on MSDN has an interview with the developers where they describe some of Oxite features (you have to install Silverlight to watch the interview).

Let’s see how and where this goes.

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Tags: asp.net, blog software, cms, content management system, microsoft, Movable Type, oxite, wordpress

WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1 Roll Out

Dec 3, 2008 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

After numerous changesets since Beta 3, the development team of the hugely popular WordPress blog software announced on December 1 the release of WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1 or RC1.

WordPress fans and critics alike have avidly awaited the release, considering this as the close-to-final version of WordPress 2.7 before its final release, originally targeted last November 10. The 280 commits have polished the new admin UI and finally solved many blocker bug problems. The new UI now includes the menu icons created by Ben Dunkle and Verena Segert, the winners of Project Icon, WordPress’ icon-making contest.

The RC1 roll out is a significant milestone for the WordPress team because this means they have finally moved to the last leg of development before the final release of WordPress 2.7. This comes after a series of beta releases that attempted to solve a series of showstopper bugs.

RC1 is ready for use in production, and WordPress encourages users to help evaluate the said release with the end-goal of improving the final release version 2.7.

WordPress 2.7, by the way, is touted to be packed with better graphics and functionalities, taking the simple task of blogging into a higher level.

You can download the RC1 here.

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Tags: blog, blog software, new release, open-source, plugins, themes, wordpress

The new Wordpress blog software 2.7 Beta 1 is out for testing

Nov 4, 2008 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

Wordpress blog software evolves steadily and now it reached the version 2.7. This is the first beta 1 release to the public.What it brings new?

According to ther blog  it brings a new visual design mainly.

But also it features new additions like:
- the posibility to respond to comments from the admin area,
- automatic upgrade,
- plugin/browser installer,
- drag and drop dashboard,
- navigation expand/colaps,
- comment threading and paging,
- quick inline editing,
- add media without creating post,
- XMLRPC comments API,
- HTTPOnly Cookies,
- upgrades and installs over secure FTP,
- bulk editing of posts
- others

The most popular changes seem to be the new design/layout (looks good indeed), the automatic upgrade (pretty handy feature) and the revised dashboard (according to their poll).

This Beta version works well with Firefox and Safari although it’s not yet finished but the team is working also on making IE and Opera compatible.

The final release was intended to be unleashed into the wild on 10th of November but it seems that is not possible so the team is pushing the date with two weeks.
In the meantime, they’ll release a RC candidate (release candidate) which will be pretty much good for production use.

Go and try out the new Wordpress blog software! Dowload Wordpress 2.7 Beta 1 here.

Another announcement the company did is the launch of Wordpress Showcase, a display of some of the best and brightest WordPress users, who are using it to do a whole lot more than blog.
You can make a suggestion and the team will check that out and put it on Showcase if they think the site deserves it.

We have reviewed Wordpress in the past. Take a look at it.

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Tags: beta, blog software, review, showcase, version, wordpress

Security update from Wordpress: version 2.6.2

Sep 9, 2008 by Mircea GoiacloseAuthor: Mircea Goia Name: Mircea Goia
Email: mtb@mytestbox.com
Site: http://www.mytestbox.com
About: Mircea Goia was born in Romania and imigrated to USA in 2005. He lives in Phoenix, AZ and works as web developer. Aside, he works also on several entrepreneurial Web projects. He shows a keen interest in commercial Web development such as social networks, viral marketing, online video. His artistic hobby is filmmaking with special interest in directing.See Authors Posts (73) MyTestBox News

If you have a blog and allow open registration, then you definitely need to upgrade to this version!

There’s a security hole in the actual version of Wordpress which allows an attacker to randomly change passwords of other registered users (done by crafting an username). The passwords won’t be revealed to the attacker himself, but it is annoying for users to have their passwords changed suddenly. This attack, coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand(), could be used to predict the randomly-generated password (which is not something you want).

Stefan Esser brought the attack to the attention of the Wordpress team, which also helped them fix another problem (SQL Column truncation danger  and weakness of mt_rand() ).

The new version of Wordpress also has a handful of bug fixes (checkout the forum). See the full changeset and list of changed files.

To keep up with Wordpress development, checkout their blog.

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Tags: blog, blog software, open-source, security, version, wordpress