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Archive for the ‘wordpress’ Category

WordPress offers a fascinatingly wide range of options: thanks to the power and the creativity of the open source community, the world’s most popular CMS has developed from a “blog-only” product into a multifaceted platform. Hundreds of plugins are waiting to cater almost every web publisher’s needs. These days, two new plugins take WordPress to the next level by integrated elaborate social network features. BuddyPress is now available at version 1.2 which plays along well with standard WP-installations; the previous version required WP multiuser edition. And then there’s Mingle, a new brilliant extension by Blair Williams, author of the (genius!) PrettyLink plugin.

Even though both plugins offer similar functionalities, they take a completely different approach at turning WordPress into a social network. While BuddyPress aims at running a stand-alone social network site, Mingle extends the community capabilities of nay existing blog. I installed it here on datadirt yesterday. Curious for a test-drive? Just click the new link Profile in the main menu! In the following posting I’ll explain why extending a blog with social network features is generally a smart idea. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress 2.9 is still quite fresh, but today the team released a new version including some minor bug fixes. WordPress 2.9.1 fixes scheduling-errors which occurred on some hosts. The update can either be triggered via the admin or you can upload the files via ftp, no database update necessary this time.

But there’s another plugin-related issue: since the upgrade to 2.9, many WordPress bloggers miss Simple Tags: the tag management plugin just stopped to work, but worry not: it’s just a hard-coded version check, a simple hack makes the plugin work again. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, the organizers took us to a great traditional Romanian restaurant where I realized that one of my favorite non-beef foods, namely “Sarmale” (cabbage rolls filled with a special kind of cured meat), is a national dish here in Romania. We also got to watch a group of dancers and we even engaged actively in the action (poorly though, at least in my case :). Later that night we visited Planter’s club later. I must admit that getting up at 7 on Wednesday was quite tough, but as soon as the first session began, the fatigue vanished in an instant. Read the rest of this entry »

The first day of the World Blogging Forum 2009 was all about empowerment and influence: since 99% of the participants are bloggers it’s no surprise that we all agree on the total and complete deadness of old media – that’s just a question of the vanishing point. But how to harness the power of the web to strengthen the civil society in dictatorial states? This issue is far from easy to tackle! Read the rest of this entry »

This posting is also available in German.

Just before I took off to Andalusia I got mail from Mihaela, asking if I wanted to attend the World Blogging Forum 2009 in Romania as a VIP guest. Yes of course! Flight and hotel room are already booked and I’m looking forward to a conference a lot! The guest- and speaker-list contains a lot of popular bloggers who I’m glad to meet face to face, plus it’s the first time I’m going to visit Bucharest. The organizers have invited the most successful bloggers from 30 countries to Romania to discuss the “ideas for a better digital world”:

The most influential bloggers in the world: The event brings together some of the most influential persons in the online media all around the world, in conferences and workshops aiming to establish clear parameters of the development of the online media.

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Yesterday the WordPress Team released the official roadmap version 2.8, named after Jazz musician Chet Baker. Thanks to the update engine most webmasters should be able to do the update via CMS – but of course it’s always a good idea to start with a complete Backups. The Highlights of the new version are the improved widget- and template-interfaces, plus there’s syntax highlighting for editing templates via the backend. Read the rest of this entry »

Widget-enabled themes are a good thing, Martha Stewart would probably say – and rightfully so. Configuring one’s sidebar directly via CMS and drag-and-drop is doubtlessly a nifty feature we bloggers don’t want to miss. To kick things up a notch, WordPress allows for an infinite number of different Sidebars. This comes in very handy for putting different sidebar contents on the blog homepage, the single postings and the static pages. But most bloggers who start experimenting with multiple sidebars experience a major draw-back: most plugins can only be used in one sidebar exclusively. Read the rest of this entry »

One week ago, Automattic launched a brand-new WordPress-centered video site: WordPress.tv features various screen casts, presentations and tutorial videos on the world’s leading blog content management system. The available clips are bound to water the mouths of beginners and pros, as they range from basic explanations like “How to post a blog entry” to all the advanced presentations held during last year’s WordCamp. Read the rest of this entry »