O:9:"MagpieRSS":19:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:50:{i:0;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:27:"Matt: Gravatar Anniversary.";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/gravatar-anniversary/";s:4:"link";s:42:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/gravatar-anniversary/";s:11:"description";s:485:"<p><a href="http://blog.gravatar.com/2008/10/11/gravatar-one-year-later/">It&#8217;s now been one year since Automattic acquired Gravatar</a>. &#8220;Gravatar now lives on about 20 servers. 2 Database servers, 1 File server, 2 Load balancers, 5 Caching servers, 9 Web servers, and 1 Development server.  That combination of servers is handling an average of 7,214 of your requests every second of every day.  That’s a whopping 623,293,056 requests daily!&#8221; <em>Wowza!</em></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:03:37 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:485:"<p><a href="http://blog.gravatar.com/2008/10/11/gravatar-one-year-later/">It&#8217;s now been one year since Automattic acquired Gravatar</a>. &#8220;Gravatar now lives on about 20 servers. 2 Database servers, 1 File server, 2 Load balancers, 5 Caching servers, 9 Web servers, and 1 Development server.  That combination of servers is handling an average of 7,214 of your requests every second of every day.  That’s a whopping 623,293,056 requests daily!&#8221; <em>Wowza!</em></p>";}i:1;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:34:"Gravatar: Gravatar, one year later";s:4:"guid";s:35:"http://gravatar.wordpress.com/?p=66";s:4:"link";s:60:"http://blog.gravatar.com/2008/10/11/gravatar-one-year-later/";s:11:"description";s:9525:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>Wow it&#8217;s really been 1 year since Gravatar joined the Automattic family.  Time sure flies when you&#8217;re having fun!</p>
<p>Gravatar has come a long way from the service that it was back in October 2007.  My wife likes to laugh at me because I&#8217;ll pick something up in one room, like a remote control, and move around the house fidgeting with it.  Then I&#8217;ll absentmindedly leave it in some random place like the bathroom, or the freezer.  One year ago we picked up a small avatar service with a great name and an awesome fan base.  Now, in an attempt not to leave it in a random location, we&#8217;re looking back on the last year (and letting you look with us.)</p>
<p>The service was running version 2.0, and set up on two rented (or collocated, I don&#8217;t honestly know) servers.  The servers were running at loads of around 20, and could spike to well over 100 (that&#8217;s a lot.)  It was obvious that we needed both some stop-gap fixes and a plan. The first thing we did was throw some caching servers in front of the service &#8212; a couple of varnish servers as I recall.  This dropped the workload of the two boxes considerably, and allowed us to look at Gravatar without bringing the service down.  Next we replicated the setup 1 for 1 to two of our own (more powerful) servers.  This gave us a bit more breathing room.  And we began to plan.</p>
<p>It was obvious, from the very beginning that the service was going to have to handle a constant torrent of requests from the internet.  Most of those requests would be for email addresses with no Gravatar and come from URLs that could be crafted in an unlimited number of ways.  On top of that we knew that we wanted to make all the paid features free, and expand the size a Gravatar could be from 80 pixels to 512 pixels.  So basically instead of our goals being to make the undertaking less daunting we we&#8217;re actively making it a more intense challenge than it could have been.  But that was OK with us, because our goals for Gravatar weren&#8217;t to make it easier but to make it better.  We wanted to make Gravatar the kind of free service that we could use, would want to use, and would be proud to share with the world.  I know that last bit sounds like marketing crap, but that&#8217;s really what we wanted to do and is really how we look at Gravatar.</p>
<p>Pretty much the next thing we did was port Gravatars code from RoR (Ruby on Rails) to PHP.  As I mentioned when we announced this change the reason for this wasn&#8217;t about Ruby or Rails.  Simply put we&#8217;re a PHP shop, and once rewritten in PHP we have many more great minds that we can easily throw at it than if it were still in RoR. Since we ported it *pretty much* directly from rails there are some left-over rails-isms in Gravatars code that you wont find in, say, WordPress. Shh&#8230;. Don&#8217;t tell Matt <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>In the rewriting we tried to tackle the largest scalability problems with the design of the service.  You can imagine that for an avatar serving service&#8230; storing, searching, and serving avatars is paramount.  Gravatar 2.0 (pre PHP) suffered from some pretty significant inefficiencies in this regard, and I think that a big part of that was limited resources (time and servers.)  Luckily we we&#8217;re now not significantly limited by either of those things.</p>
<p>&#8211; warning beginning technical details which may be safely skipped over if you don&#8217;t care &#8211;</p>
<p>The way that images were stored originally was: a complete image was made for all sizes between 1&#215;1 and 80&#215;80 pixels, a directory made for each rating, and a symlink placed from the rating to the appropriate image (either the users image or the default image in case the rating was too high.)  So that&#8217;s 80 images, 5 directories, and 240 symbolic links.  The reason for this, I believe, was to attempt to serve the avatar content without any database interaction whatever.  The files were then archived, uploaded to Amazon S3, and an entry added to Amazon SQS.  Finally the SQS entry was retrieved by the serving server, the file downloaded, extracted, and placed on the filesystem.  So this is why it took several minutes once you uploaded and cropped your image for you to be able to browse the rest of the site again.  You can imagine how many files Gravatar was comprised of by the time we got a hold of it!  We knew that this would simply NOT work for our new 512&#215;512px avatar sizes.  Lastly there were a couple of directories which had several hundred thousand entries (either files or other directories) which were nearly impossible to even get a listing inside of.  So we had a list of things NOT to do.  We just needed to figure out what TO do <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>So we decided that we would render all our avatars dynamically from the highest quality copy of the image we can manage&#8230; down.  We would only store one version of the image, though we would store it in multiple places (a local file server for speed, and S3 for redundancy.)  We would still rely heavily on caching.  And we would asynchronize as much of the workload as was possible, so that you don&#8217;t have to wait for things to happen after you finish cropping (to do this we employed various techniques and hacks best left for another day and another story.)</p>
<p>&#8211; ok this batch of details has been concluded &#8211;</p>
<p>So the problems were many, one year ago, and the challenges were fascinating.  I recall being overwhelmed by support requests for quite some time.  I would get 40 emails on a good day, more on a bad.  And believe it or not your emails very much shaped the future of Gravatar.  I would group them into specific problems, and always fix at least the largest problem (volume wise) each week.  Over time the service has grown quite stable, support requests have gone down to just a handful every day, and things are generally peppier than ever.</p>
<p>We had some some bumps tuning our caches&#8230; for a while there we accidentally told your web browsers never EVER to re-validate an image. But we got that handled in short order&#8230; and things are zipping along quite nicely.</p>
<p>Gravatar now lives on about 20 servers: 2 Database servers, 1 File server, 2 Load balancers, 5 Caching servers, 9 Web servers, and 1 Development server.  That combination of servers is handling an average of 7,214 of your requests every second of every day.  That&#8217;s a whopping 623,293,056 requests daily! 96% of all of those requests are served directly from cache.  These days we get around 5,000 uploaded images every day.  Even with this staggering increase in the number of requests we&#8217;ve been able to make Gravatar faster, and more reliable than it&#8217;s ever been.</p>
<p>So here we are, one year later, looking out over the vast frontier of the internet and contemplating the future of Gravatar.  There are a great many things that it could become.  We know that we don&#8217;t want to loose focus on the core of the project: Serving your avatars (that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s all about!)</p>
<p>We know that an avatar is &#8220;a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet,&#8221;  But it&#8217;s also &#8220;an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.&#8221;  And that is exactly where we are headed:  Making Gravatar a place where you can do more than just store an image, making it a place that can be your presence online.  So we&#8217;ll be rolling out more features in the near future to allow you to store more data inside Gravatar &#8212; and more importantly to allow you to use that information in other places on the internet through open standards.</p>
<p>We hope that you&#8217;ve had as awesome a time using your Gravatars as we&#8217;ve had making it all work.  And we look forward to the future &#8212; to when your identity doesn&#8217;t have to be cemented to a specific site, but is fluid and flexible, and persistent.  We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>Cheers!<br />
The Gravatar Team.</p>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.gravatar.com&blog=1886259&post=66&subd=gravatar&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:20:04 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"apokalyptik";}s:7:"summary";s:9525:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>Wow it&#8217;s really been 1 year since Gravatar joined the Automattic family.  Time sure flies when you&#8217;re having fun!</p>
<p>Gravatar has come a long way from the service that it was back in October 2007.  My wife likes to laugh at me because I&#8217;ll pick something up in one room, like a remote control, and move around the house fidgeting with it.  Then I&#8217;ll absentmindedly leave it in some random place like the bathroom, or the freezer.  One year ago we picked up a small avatar service with a great name and an awesome fan base.  Now, in an attempt not to leave it in a random location, we&#8217;re looking back on the last year (and letting you look with us.)</p>
<p>The service was running version 2.0, and set up on two rented (or collocated, I don&#8217;t honestly know) servers.  The servers were running at loads of around 20, and could spike to well over 100 (that&#8217;s a lot.)  It was obvious that we needed both some stop-gap fixes and a plan. The first thing we did was throw some caching servers in front of the service &#8212; a couple of varnish servers as I recall.  This dropped the workload of the two boxes considerably, and allowed us to look at Gravatar without bringing the service down.  Next we replicated the setup 1 for 1 to two of our own (more powerful) servers.  This gave us a bit more breathing room.  And we began to plan.</p>
<p>It was obvious, from the very beginning that the service was going to have to handle a constant torrent of requests from the internet.  Most of those requests would be for email addresses with no Gravatar and come from URLs that could be crafted in an unlimited number of ways.  On top of that we knew that we wanted to make all the paid features free, and expand the size a Gravatar could be from 80 pixels to 512 pixels.  So basically instead of our goals being to make the undertaking less daunting we we&#8217;re actively making it a more intense challenge than it could have been.  But that was OK with us, because our goals for Gravatar weren&#8217;t to make it easier but to make it better.  We wanted to make Gravatar the kind of free service that we could use, would want to use, and would be proud to share with the world.  I know that last bit sounds like marketing crap, but that&#8217;s really what we wanted to do and is really how we look at Gravatar.</p>
<p>Pretty much the next thing we did was port Gravatars code from RoR (Ruby on Rails) to PHP.  As I mentioned when we announced this change the reason for this wasn&#8217;t about Ruby or Rails.  Simply put we&#8217;re a PHP shop, and once rewritten in PHP we have many more great minds that we can easily throw at it than if it were still in RoR. Since we ported it *pretty much* directly from rails there are some left-over rails-isms in Gravatars code that you wont find in, say, WordPress. Shh&#8230;. Don&#8217;t tell Matt <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>In the rewriting we tried to tackle the largest scalability problems with the design of the service.  You can imagine that for an avatar serving service&#8230; storing, searching, and serving avatars is paramount.  Gravatar 2.0 (pre PHP) suffered from some pretty significant inefficiencies in this regard, and I think that a big part of that was limited resources (time and servers.)  Luckily we we&#8217;re now not significantly limited by either of those things.</p>
<p>&#8211; warning beginning technical details which may be safely skipped over if you don&#8217;t care &#8211;</p>
<p>The way that images were stored originally was: a complete image was made for all sizes between 1&#215;1 and 80&#215;80 pixels, a directory made for each rating, and a symlink placed from the rating to the appropriate image (either the users image or the default image in case the rating was too high.)  So that&#8217;s 80 images, 5 directories, and 240 symbolic links.  The reason for this, I believe, was to attempt to serve the avatar content without any database interaction whatever.  The files were then archived, uploaded to Amazon S3, and an entry added to Amazon SQS.  Finally the SQS entry was retrieved by the serving server, the file downloaded, extracted, and placed on the filesystem.  So this is why it took several minutes once you uploaded and cropped your image for you to be able to browse the rest of the site again.  You can imagine how many files Gravatar was comprised of by the time we got a hold of it!  We knew that this would simply NOT work for our new 512&#215;512px avatar sizes.  Lastly there were a couple of directories which had several hundred thousand entries (either files or other directories) which were nearly impossible to even get a listing inside of.  So we had a list of things NOT to do.  We just needed to figure out what TO do <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>So we decided that we would render all our avatars dynamically from the highest quality copy of the image we can manage&#8230; down.  We would only store one version of the image, though we would store it in multiple places (a local file server for speed, and S3 for redundancy.)  We would still rely heavily on caching.  And we would asynchronize as much of the workload as was possible, so that you don&#8217;t have to wait for things to happen after you finish cropping (to do this we employed various techniques and hacks best left for another day and another story.)</p>
<p>&#8211; ok this batch of details has been concluded &#8211;</p>
<p>So the problems were many, one year ago, and the challenges were fascinating.  I recall being overwhelmed by support requests for quite some time.  I would get 40 emails on a good day, more on a bad.  And believe it or not your emails very much shaped the future of Gravatar.  I would group them into specific problems, and always fix at least the largest problem (volume wise) each week.  Over time the service has grown quite stable, support requests have gone down to just a handful every day, and things are generally peppier than ever.</p>
<p>We had some some bumps tuning our caches&#8230; for a while there we accidentally told your web browsers never EVER to re-validate an image. But we got that handled in short order&#8230; and things are zipping along quite nicely.</p>
<p>Gravatar now lives on about 20 servers: 2 Database servers, 1 File server, 2 Load balancers, 5 Caching servers, 9 Web servers, and 1 Development server.  That combination of servers is handling an average of 7,214 of your requests every second of every day.  That&#8217;s a whopping 623,293,056 requests daily! 96% of all of those requests are served directly from cache.  These days we get around 5,000 uploaded images every day.  Even with this staggering increase in the number of requests we&#8217;ve been able to make Gravatar faster, and more reliable than it&#8217;s ever been.</p>
<p>So here we are, one year later, looking out over the vast frontier of the internet and contemplating the future of Gravatar.  There are a great many things that it could become.  We know that we don&#8217;t want to loose focus on the core of the project: Serving your avatars (that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s all about!)</p>
<p>We know that an avatar is &#8220;a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet,&#8221;  But it&#8217;s also &#8220;an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.&#8221;  And that is exactly where we are headed:  Making Gravatar a place where you can do more than just store an image, making it a place that can be your presence online.  So we&#8217;ll be rolling out more features in the near future to allow you to store more data inside Gravatar &#8212; and more importantly to allow you to use that information in other places on the internet through open standards.</p>
<p>We hope that you&#8217;ve had as awesome a time using your Gravatars as we&#8217;ve had making it all work.  And we look forward to the future &#8212; to when your identity doesn&#8217;t have to be cemented to a specific site, but is fluid and flexible, and persistent.  We hope to see you there!</p>
<p>Cheers!<br />
The Gravatar Team.</p>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/gravatar.wordpress.com/66/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.gravatar.com&blog=1886259&post=66&subd=gravatar&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";}i:2;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/10";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4329";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/10/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-1010/";s:11:"description";s:2749:"<h3>New Plugins</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/blog/2008/10/09/libdig-wordpress-plug-in/"><strong>LibDig</strong></a></p>
<p>Adds a Lib Dig box to WordPress posts and pages</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mattvarone.com/2008/10/scrnshots-plugin-for-wordpress/"><strong>scrnshotsRSS</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin for WordPress allows you to show Scrnshots.com captures on your sites</p>
<p><a href="http://quirm.net/2008/10/08/efiles-backup/"><strong>eFiles Backup</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin for Wordpress allows you to download backups of your Uploads, Themes and Plugin directories. It also allows you to download the entire wp-content directory. Not suitable for WPMU without alteration, or for large sites.</p>
<p><a href="https://wiki.geekyhabitat.com/tiki-index.php?page=WP-UDIF-Entrecard"><strong>WP-UDIF-Entrecard</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin enables a simple method of displaying an Entrecard Widget on your Blog and will also display a &#8220;U Drop I follow&#8221; Image below it for members of the <a href="http://leedoyle.com/u-drop-i-follow">U Drop I Follow Moment</a></p>
<h3>Updated Plugins</h3>
<p><a href="http://blog.avirtualhome.com/wordpress-plugins/avh-amazon/"><strong>AVH Amazon</strong></a></p>
<p>The avh-amazon WordPress plugin gives you the ability to add a widget which will display a random item from your Amazon wish list, baby registry and/or wedding registry.</p>
<p><a href="http://playground.ebiene.de/356/related-posts-by-category-wp-plugin-fur-verwandte-beitrage-einer-kategorie/"><strong>Related Posts by Category</strong></a></p>
<p>Display related posts based on their category. (Page in German)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dashboardzone.com/monitor-your-blog-goals-with-wordpress-plugin"><strong>DasboardZone</strong></a></p>
<p>Displays statistics about your posts and post frequency on the WordPress Dashboard</p>
<p><a href="http://wpcal.firetree.net/"><strong>Event Calendar 3</strong></a></p>
<p>Manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.technokinetics.com/plugins/alt-link-text/"><strong>Alt Link Text</strong></a></p>
<p>Alt Link Text adds &#8220;Alternative Link Text&#8221; and &#8220;Alternative Title Attribute&#8221; fields to the Write Page and Manage Page screens.</p>
<p><a href="http://wp-pods.googlecode.com/"><strong>Pods</strong></a></p>
<p>Pods is a Wordpress plugin that adds CMS abilities to blog posts.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/drain-hole/"><strong>Drain Hole</strong></a></p>
<p>Drain Hole is a centralized download manager with full monitoring, statistics, versioning, SVN support, and proper SEO download URLs</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:14:31 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:2749:"<h3>New Plugins</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/blog/2008/10/09/libdig-wordpress-plug-in/"><strong>LibDig</strong></a></p>
<p>Adds a Lib Dig box to WordPress posts and pages</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mattvarone.com/2008/10/scrnshots-plugin-for-wordpress/"><strong>scrnshotsRSS</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin for WordPress allows you to show Scrnshots.com captures on your sites</p>
<p><a href="http://quirm.net/2008/10/08/efiles-backup/"><strong>eFiles Backup</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin for Wordpress allows you to download backups of your Uploads, Themes and Plugin directories. It also allows you to download the entire wp-content directory. Not suitable for WPMU without alteration, or for large sites.</p>
<p><a href="https://wiki.geekyhabitat.com/tiki-index.php?page=WP-UDIF-Entrecard"><strong>WP-UDIF-Entrecard</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin enables a simple method of displaying an Entrecard Widget on your Blog and will also display a &#8220;U Drop I follow&#8221; Image below it for members of the <a href="http://leedoyle.com/u-drop-i-follow">U Drop I Follow Moment</a></p>
<h3>Updated Plugins</h3>
<p><a href="http://blog.avirtualhome.com/wordpress-plugins/avh-amazon/"><strong>AVH Amazon</strong></a></p>
<p>The avh-amazon WordPress plugin gives you the ability to add a widget which will display a random item from your Amazon wish list, baby registry and/or wedding registry.</p>
<p><a href="http://playground.ebiene.de/356/related-posts-by-category-wp-plugin-fur-verwandte-beitrage-einer-kategorie/"><strong>Related Posts by Category</strong></a></p>
<p>Display related posts based on their category. (Page in German)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dashboardzone.com/monitor-your-blog-goals-with-wordpress-plugin"><strong>DasboardZone</strong></a></p>
<p>Displays statistics about your posts and post frequency on the WordPress Dashboard</p>
<p><a href="http://wpcal.firetree.net/"><strong>Event Calendar 3</strong></a></p>
<p>Manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.technokinetics.com/plugins/alt-link-text/"><strong>Alt Link Text</strong></a></p>
<p>Alt Link Text adds &#8220;Alternative Link Text&#8221; and &#8220;Alternative Title Attribute&#8221; fields to the Write Page and Manage Page screens.</p>
<p><a href="http://wp-pods.googlecode.com/"><strong>Pods</strong></a></p>
<p>Pods is a Wordpress plugin that adds CMS abilities to blog posts.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/drain-hole/"><strong>Drain Hole</strong></a></p>
<p>Drain Hole is a centralized download manager with full monitoring, statistics, versioning, SVN support, and proper SEO download URLs</p>";}i:3;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 10/09";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4327";s:4:"link";s:87:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/09/wordpress-theme-releases-for-1009/";s:11:"description";s:2368:"<p><a href="http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/blue-grace-wordpress-theme-released"><strong>Blue Grace</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="bluegrace" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/bluegrace.png" border="0" alt="bluegrace" width="134" height="114" /></p>
<p>Blue Grace is a simple three column WordPress theme with a rotating header image</p>
<p><a href="http://www.azmoney.co.uk/wordpress-themes/fancy"><strong>Fancy</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="fancy" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/fancy.png" border="0" alt="fancy" width="152" height="114" /></p>
<p>Two column WordPress theme which really lets your blog stand out from the crowd. Make your blog unique by changing the main blog color (pink, yellow, green), background pattern (available over 20 background variations), banner etc through an options page. In addition you have the ability to choose the color of sidebar blocks (violet, yellow, green).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.acosmin.com/acosmin-v4-free-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Acosmin v4</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://acosminv4.acosmin.com/"><img title="acosminv4" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/acosminv4.jpg" border="0" alt="acosminv4" width="179" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, white and grey, gravatar theme with ad ready stops with psd files included</p>
<p><a href="http://jasonetics.com/hello-red-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Hello Red</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://jasonetics.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Hello%20Red"><img title="hellored" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/hellored.png" border="0" alt="hellored" width="200" height="107" /></a></p>
<p>Hello Red is a 2 column red, white, and black, widget ready WordPress theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogbuildingu.com/retrospective"><strong>Retrospective</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.blogbuildingu.com/index.php?wptheme=Retrospective"><img title="retrospective-screenshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/retrospectivescreenshot.jpg" border="0" alt="retrospective-screenshot" width="131" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Three column, widget ready, fast loading, search engine optimized theme</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On the subject of themes, Matt has a tutorial <a href="http://sivel.net/2008/10/wp-27-comment-separation/">Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:19:37 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:2368:"<p><a href="http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/blue-grace-wordpress-theme-released"><strong>Blue Grace</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="bluegrace" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/bluegrace.png" border="0" alt="bluegrace" width="134" height="114" /></p>
<p>Blue Grace is a simple three column WordPress theme with a rotating header image</p>
<p><a href="http://www.azmoney.co.uk/wordpress-themes/fancy"><strong>Fancy</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="fancy" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/fancy.png" border="0" alt="fancy" width="152" height="114" /></p>
<p>Two column WordPress theme which really lets your blog stand out from the crowd. Make your blog unique by changing the main blog color (pink, yellow, green), background pattern (available over 20 background variations), banner etc through an options page. In addition you have the ability to choose the color of sidebar blocks (violet, yellow, green).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.acosmin.com/acosmin-v4-free-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Acosmin v4</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://acosminv4.acosmin.com/"><img title="acosminv4" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/acosminv4.jpg" border="0" alt="acosminv4" width="179" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, white and grey, gravatar theme with ad ready stops with psd files included</p>
<p><a href="http://jasonetics.com/hello-red-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Hello Red</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://jasonetics.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Hello%20Red"><img title="hellored" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/hellored.png" border="0" alt="hellored" width="200" height="107" /></a></p>
<p>Hello Red is a 2 column red, white, and black, widget ready WordPress theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogbuildingu.com/retrospective"><strong>Retrospective</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.blogbuildingu.com/index.php?wptheme=Retrospective"><img title="retrospective-screenshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/retrospectivescreenshot.jpg" border="0" alt="retrospective-screenshot" width="131" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Three column, widget ready, fast loading, search engine optimized theme</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On the subject of themes, Matt has a tutorial <a href="http://sivel.net/2008/10/wp-27-comment-separation/">Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7</a>.</p>";}i:4;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:37:"bbPress: bbPress 1.0-alpha-2 released";s:4:"guid";s:25:"http://bbpress.org/?p=103";s:4:"link";s:60:"http://bbpress.org/blog/2008/10/bbpress-10-alpha-2-released/";s:11:"description";s:1479:"<p>The next installation in the bbPress 1.0 alpha series has been released. bbPress 1.0 alpha 2 introduces new features and fixes most of the issues raised by testers from the previous release.</p>
<p>A lot of the features were covered in a <a href="http://bbpress.org/blog/2008/09/bbpress-10-alpha-series-update/">previous post</a>. You can view the changes in bbPress between <a href="http://trac.bbpress.org/changeset?old_path=tags%2F1.0-alpha-1&#038;old=1636&#038;new_path=tags%2F1.0-alpha-2&#038;new=1788">1.0-alpha-1 and 1.0-alpha-2</a>, as well as the changes that have been made to BackPress between <a href="http://backpress.automattic.com/changeset?old_path=trunk&#038;old=109&#038;new_path=trunk&#038;new=161">revision 109 and 161</a>.</p>
<p>The XML-RPC functionality now built into bbPress 1.0 alpha has made possible a new plugin for WordPress called &#8220;<a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-live/">bbPress Live</a>&#8220;. Currently this plugin can grab a list of forums and latest topics for display on a WordPress blog. Two configurable widgets are provided to pop the information into sidebars. Future versions of the plugin will allow WordPress posts to be copied to a bbPress forum, much like the bbSync plugin does for earlier versions of bbPress. The difference is that bbPress Live does not require the bbPress and WordPress sites to be on the same server, as all interaction is via XML-RPC calls rather than direct database queries.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:36:39 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Sam Bauers";}s:7:"summary";s:1479:"<p>The next installation in the bbPress 1.0 alpha series has been released. bbPress 1.0 alpha 2 introduces new features and fixes most of the issues raised by testers from the previous release.</p>
<p>A lot of the features were covered in a <a href="http://bbpress.org/blog/2008/09/bbpress-10-alpha-series-update/">previous post</a>. You can view the changes in bbPress between <a href="http://trac.bbpress.org/changeset?old_path=tags%2F1.0-alpha-1&#038;old=1636&#038;new_path=tags%2F1.0-alpha-2&#038;new=1788">1.0-alpha-1 and 1.0-alpha-2</a>, as well as the changes that have been made to BackPress between <a href="http://backpress.automattic.com/changeset?old_path=trunk&#038;old=109&#038;new_path=trunk&#038;new=161">revision 109 and 161</a>.</p>
<p>The XML-RPC functionality now built into bbPress 1.0 alpha has made possible a new plugin for WordPress called &#8220;<a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-live/">bbPress Live</a>&#8220;. Currently this plugin can grab a list of forums and latest topics for display on a WordPress blog. Two configurable widgets are provided to pop the information into sidebars. Future versions of the plugin will allow WordPress posts to be copied to a bbPress forum, much like the bbSync plugin does for earlier versions of bbPress. The difference is that bbPress Live does not require the bbPress and WordPress sites to be on the same server, as all interaction is via XML-RPC calls rather than direct database queries.</p>";}i:5;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/08";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4317";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/08/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-1008/";s:11:"description";s:2598:"<p><a href="http://www.zen-dreams.com/en/zdmultilang/"><strong>ZdMultilang</strong></a></p>
<p>ZdMultilang is a Multilingual plugin for Wordpress allowing you to blog in more than one language. You can define multiple languages and translate posts/tags/categories using the interface that will be added to your blog’s administration panel.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.zen-dreams.com/en/2008/10/08/new-version-of-gravatar-recent-comment/"><strong>Gravatar Recent Comment</strong></a></p>
<p>Gravatar recent comments is a plugin allowing you to display recent comments using Gravatar instead of just the name of the user.</p>
<p><a href="http://calendarscripts.info/ovulation-predictor-wordpress-plugin.html"><strong>Ovulation Predictor</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin displays functional ovulation and due date predictor. It can be used from women to check their future fertile time and due date.</p>
<p><a href="http://sivel.net/2008/10/better-howdy/"><strong>Better Howdy</strong></a></p>
<p>Remove &#8216;Howdy&#8217; and restructure the &#8216;Howdy&#8217; line.</p>
<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/"><strong>WP Super Cache</strong></a></p>
<p>WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.darcynorman.net/wordpress/post-revision-display/"><strong>Post Revision Display</strong></a></p>
<p>Display the list of revisions for a post, without having to go through the admin interface</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nkuttler.de/nkthemeswitch/"><strong>nkthemeswitch</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin was written do allow usage of different themes for logged in users. It is intended for theme developers who want to test their themes on live sites without breaking things for visitors.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.alfredodehoces.com/wp2bb"><strong>Wp2BB</strong></a></p>
<p>Wp2BB integrates your WordPress blog and your phpBB forum. It automatically creates new topics in the forum for every new post in your blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cristianofino.net/post/Comment-toolbar-plugin-per-Wordpress.aspx"><strong>Comment Toolbar</strong></a></p>
<p>This plug-in adds up to six buttons at the end (or the top) of every comments to automatically insert Comments Navigation, Reply and Quote functions</p>
<p><a href="http://pancake.org/zina"><strong>Zina</strong></a></p>
<p>Zina is a graphical interface to your MP3 collection, a personal jukebox, an MP3 streamer.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:21:30 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:2598:"<p><a href="http://www.zen-dreams.com/en/zdmultilang/"><strong>ZdMultilang</strong></a></p>
<p>ZdMultilang is a Multilingual plugin for Wordpress allowing you to blog in more than one language. You can define multiple languages and translate posts/tags/categories using the interface that will be added to your blog’s administration panel.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.zen-dreams.com/en/2008/10/08/new-version-of-gravatar-recent-comment/"><strong>Gravatar Recent Comment</strong></a></p>
<p>Gravatar recent comments is a plugin allowing you to display recent comments using Gravatar instead of just the name of the user.</p>
<p><a href="http://calendarscripts.info/ovulation-predictor-wordpress-plugin.html"><strong>Ovulation Predictor</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin displays functional ovulation and due date predictor. It can be used from women to check their future fertile time and due date.</p>
<p><a href="http://sivel.net/2008/10/better-howdy/"><strong>Better Howdy</strong></a></p>
<p>Remove &#8216;Howdy&#8217; and restructure the &#8216;Howdy&#8217; line.</p>
<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/"><strong>WP Super Cache</strong></a></p>
<p>WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.darcynorman.net/wordpress/post-revision-display/"><strong>Post Revision Display</strong></a></p>
<p>Display the list of revisions for a post, without having to go through the admin interface</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nkuttler.de/nkthemeswitch/"><strong>nkthemeswitch</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin was written do allow usage of different themes for logged in users. It is intended for theme developers who want to test their themes on live sites without breaking things for visitors.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.alfredodehoces.com/wp2bb"><strong>Wp2BB</strong></a></p>
<p>Wp2BB integrates your WordPress blog and your phpBB forum. It automatically creates new topics in the forum for every new post in your blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cristianofino.net/post/Comment-toolbar-plugin-per-Wordpress.aspx"><strong>Comment Toolbar</strong></a></p>
<p>This plug-in adds up to six buttons at the end (or the top) of every comments to automatically insert Comments Navigation, Reply and Quote functions</p>
<p><a href="http://pancake.org/zina"><strong>Zina</strong></a></p>
<p>Zina is a graphical interface to your MP3 collection, a personal jukebox, an MP3 streamer.</p>";}i:6;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:42:"Donncha: WP Super Cache 0.8.3 “Speedy”";s:4:"guid";s:29:"http://ocaoimh.ie/?p=89494115";s:4:"link";s:55:"http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/10/08/wp-super-cache-083-speedy/";s:11:"description";s:2260:"<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache</a> version 0.8.3 is now <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/">available</a>. WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will significantly speed up your website.</p>
<h3>Double Caching</h3>
<p>This releases fixes a long standing compression bug. In older versions of the plugin, the cached page was compressed twice. Once to display to the current visitor, and once again for the cached files stored on the server. This has now been fixed and there&#8217;s a noticeable speed increase for anonymous visitors. Unfortunately as a side effect, it&#8217;s not possible to display the &#8220;super cache gz&#8221; html comment now. To verify that html pages are being served from the supercache directory you&#8217;ll have to add an error_log() somewhere and check that visits <em>aren&#8217;t</em> logged.<br />
The plugin now uses fopen() instead of gzopen() which according to <a href="http://ie2.php.net/manual/en/function.gzopen.php#85561">a comment</a> on the gzopen() manual page is unreliable under high load.</p>
<h3>IE7 Fixes</h3>
<p>Apparently IE7 has problems when gzipped files are served as &#8220;x-gzip&#8221; files, under certain circumstances. This is an obscure bug but this has been fixed. If you&#8217;re upgrading, either remove wp-content/cache/.htaccess and visit the admin page and that file will be regenerated, or edit that file and change &#8220;x-gzip&#8221; to &#8220;gzip&#8221;.</p>
<p>A number of smaller bugs were also fixed. Check the <a href="http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk/Changelog.txt">changelog</a> for further info.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/09/29/want-to-test-super-speed-caching/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Want to test super speed caching?">Want to test super speed caching?</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/03/13/wp-super-cache-06/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WP Super Cache 0.6">WP Super Cache 0.6</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/08/20/wp-super-cache-067/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WP Super Cache 0.6.7">WP Super Cache 0.6.7</a></li></ul></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:58:20 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:7:"Donncha";}s:7:"summary";s:2260:"<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache</a> version 0.8.3 is now <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/">available</a>. WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will significantly speed up your website.</p>
<h3>Double Caching</h3>
<p>This releases fixes a long standing compression bug. In older versions of the plugin, the cached page was compressed twice. Once to display to the current visitor, and once again for the cached files stored on the server. This has now been fixed and there&#8217;s a noticeable speed increase for anonymous visitors. Unfortunately as a side effect, it&#8217;s not possible to display the &#8220;super cache gz&#8221; html comment now. To verify that html pages are being served from the supercache directory you&#8217;ll have to add an error_log() somewhere and check that visits <em>aren&#8217;t</em> logged.<br />
The plugin now uses fopen() instead of gzopen() which according to <a href="http://ie2.php.net/manual/en/function.gzopen.php#85561">a comment</a> on the gzopen() manual page is unreliable under high load.</p>
<h3>IE7 Fixes</h3>
<p>Apparently IE7 has problems when gzipped files are served as &#8220;x-gzip&#8221; files, under certain circumstances. This is an obscure bug but this has been fixed. If you&#8217;re upgrading, either remove wp-content/cache/.htaccess and visit the admin page and that file will be regenerated, or edit that file and change &#8220;x-gzip&#8221; to &#8220;gzip&#8221;.</p>
<p>A number of smaller bugs were also fixed. Check the <a href="http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk/Changelog.txt">changelog</a> for further info.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/09/29/want-to-test-super-speed-caching/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Want to test super speed caching?">Want to test super speed caching?</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/03/13/wp-super-cache-06/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WP Super Cache 0.6">WP Super Cache 0.6</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/08/20/wp-super-cache-067/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WP Super Cache 0.6.7">WP Super Cache 0.6.7</a></li></ul></p>";}i:7;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:53:"Weblog Tools Collection: Where Is That Settings Page?";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4312";s:4:"link";s:81:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/08/where-is-that-settings-page/";s:11:"description";s:3697:"<p>One of the things I&#8217;ve noticed since using WordPress is that after you install a number of plugins, it becomes clear that there is no standard for where to place the plugin configuration link. Sometimes, the configuration link for a plugin shows up in the dashboard while other times, the link appears within the Manage panel. To top things off, many of the plugins provide links to their specific settings in the Settings panel. How much time do you think you have wasted so far by always searching for a particular plugins settings page?</p>
<p>Over the weekend, I happened to come across a post written by <a href="http://www.wp-fun.co.uk/2008/10/01/unobtrusive-config-for-fire-and-forget-plugins/" target="_blank">Andrew Rickmann</a> which showcased an idea to create a <strong>configure</strong> link next next to the usual <strong>Activate/Deactivate Edit</strong> links found within the Plugin Management panel.</p>
<p><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configurelink.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4313" title="configurelink" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configurelink.png" alt="" width="243" height="98" /></a></p>
<p>Andrew&#8217;s point of view is that, instead of adding top level menu items to the WordPress administration panels, it would be far easier to click on a configure link that would open up a sliding panel which would present anywhere from 1-5 configurable settings. Not only does this idea make configuring plugins faster, but it makes browsing the WordPress administration panel much easier as the top level navigation system is not filled with links. On top of that, the configure link makes complete sense to be located next to the Deactivate/Edit links. In doing so, configuration options are in a predictable location.</p>
<p><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configureinaction.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4314" title="configureinaction" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configureinaction.png" alt="" width="500" height="115" /></a></p>
<p>In my opinion, here are a couple of reasons why we are not seeing something like this already being used. Number one, WordPress is open source meaning anytime you try to implement anything close to a standard, it probably won&#8217;t work. People will come up with their own solutions to the problem which is one of the beauties of Open Source but can also be a contributing problem. Secondly, this was brought up over two years ago. You can see the <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/63824?replies=13" target="_blank">initial forum thread here</a> and the post on the <a href="http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2006-March/005247.html" target="_blank">WP-Hackers Mailing List from Owen here</a>. Considering we have gone two years without any move towards a solution such as the one Andrew suggested, perhaps we will always be at the mercy as to where plugin authors place their configuration links.</p>
<p>Plugin authors can bring up the fact that they provide directions within their readme files that indicate where to find the configuration page. While they may help in the short term, that doesn&#8217;t solve the root of the overall problem. Andrew&#8217;s idea is something that can be implemented by plugin authors right now. In terms of something like this being added to the core, according to Andrew, the process is so simple, it probably doesn&#8217;t need to be added.</p>
<p><strong>Where do you stand on this issue? Would you like to see more plugin authors implement Andrew&#8217;s idea into their own plugin or is there a better alternative? </strong></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:00:07 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";}s:7:"summary";s:3697:"<p>One of the things I&#8217;ve noticed since using WordPress is that after you install a number of plugins, it becomes clear that there is no standard for where to place the plugin configuration link. Sometimes, the configuration link for a plugin shows up in the dashboard while other times, the link appears within the Manage panel. To top things off, many of the plugins provide links to their specific settings in the Settings panel. How much time do you think you have wasted so far by always searching for a particular plugins settings page?</p>
<p>Over the weekend, I happened to come across a post written by <a href="http://www.wp-fun.co.uk/2008/10/01/unobtrusive-config-for-fire-and-forget-plugins/" target="_blank">Andrew Rickmann</a> which showcased an idea to create a <strong>configure</strong> link next next to the usual <strong>Activate/Deactivate Edit</strong> links found within the Plugin Management panel.</p>
<p><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configurelink.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4313" title="configurelink" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configurelink.png" alt="" width="243" height="98" /></a></p>
<p>Andrew&#8217;s point of view is that, instead of adding top level menu items to the WordPress administration panels, it would be far easier to click on a configure link that would open up a sliding panel which would present anywhere from 1-5 configurable settings. Not only does this idea make configuring plugins faster, but it makes browsing the WordPress administration panel much easier as the top level navigation system is not filled with links. On top of that, the configure link makes complete sense to be located next to the Deactivate/Edit links. In doing so, configuration options are in a predictable location.</p>
<p><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configureinaction.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4314" title="configureinaction" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/configureinaction.png" alt="" width="500" height="115" /></a></p>
<p>In my opinion, here are a couple of reasons why we are not seeing something like this already being used. Number one, WordPress is open source meaning anytime you try to implement anything close to a standard, it probably won&#8217;t work. People will come up with their own solutions to the problem which is one of the beauties of Open Source but can also be a contributing problem. Secondly, this was brought up over two years ago. You can see the <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/63824?replies=13" target="_blank">initial forum thread here</a> and the post on the <a href="http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2006-March/005247.html" target="_blank">WP-Hackers Mailing List from Owen here</a>. Considering we have gone two years without any move towards a solution such as the one Andrew suggested, perhaps we will always be at the mercy as to where plugin authors place their configuration links.</p>
<p>Plugin authors can bring up the fact that they provide directions within their readme files that indicate where to find the configuration page. While they may help in the short term, that doesn&#8217;t solve the root of the overall problem. Andrew&#8217;s idea is something that can be implemented by plugin authors right now. In terms of something like this being added to the core, according to Andrew, the process is so simple, it probably doesn&#8217;t need to be added.</p>
<p><strong>Where do you stand on this issue? Would you like to see more plugin authors implement Andrew&#8217;s idea into their own plugin or is there a better alternative? </strong></p>";}i:8;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:45:"Matt: Berlin WordPress / Web 2.0 Expo Drinkup";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7902";s:4:"link";s:35:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/berlin-meetup/";s:11:"description";s:1005:"<p>I&#8217;m in Germany for the first time and I&#8217;d love to meet some of the <a href="http://wordpress-deutschland.org/">WordPress community</a> here. With the help of <a href="http://kabai33.redbubble.com/">Yamile Yemoonyah</a> we have a venue and such for a get-together this Thursday. Since there&#8217;s an <a href="http://en.oreilly.com/webexberlin2008/public/content/home">upcoming Web 2.0 Expo right here in Berlin</a> we&#8217;re co-hosting with those folks to make the event extra-fun. Here are the deets:</p>
<p><strong>Thursday, Oct 9th at 7 p.m.<br />
&#8220;Dachkammer&#8221;<br />
Simon-Dach-Str. 39<br />
10245 Berlin<br />
030 2961673 </strong></p>
<p>If you have a German blog or Twitter please help spread the word! Hope to see you there.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Got a discount code from the conference, <a href="https://en.oreilly.com/webexberlin2008/public/register">if you register here</a> and enter the code <code>webeu08gr99</code> you&#8217;ll get a 35% discount.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:09:50 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:1005:"<p>I&#8217;m in Germany for the first time and I&#8217;d love to meet some of the <a href="http://wordpress-deutschland.org/">WordPress community</a> here. With the help of <a href="http://kabai33.redbubble.com/">Yamile Yemoonyah</a> we have a venue and such for a get-together this Thursday. Since there&#8217;s an <a href="http://en.oreilly.com/webexberlin2008/public/content/home">upcoming Web 2.0 Expo right here in Berlin</a> we&#8217;re co-hosting with those folks to make the event extra-fun. Here are the deets:</p>
<p><strong>Thursday, Oct 9th at 7 p.m.<br />
&#8220;Dachkammer&#8221;<br />
Simon-Dach-Str. 39<br />
10245 Berlin<br />
030 2961673 </strong></p>
<p>If you have a German blog or Twitter please help spread the word! Hope to see you there.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Got a discount code from the conference, <a href="https://en.oreilly.com/webexberlin2008/public/register">if you register here</a> and enter the code <code>webeu08gr99</code> you&#8217;ll get a 35% discount.</p>";}i:9;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:30:"Alex King: WordCamp Utah Recap";s:4:"guid";s:55:"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/10/06/wordcamp-utah-recap";s:4:"link";s:55:"http://alexking.org/blog/2008/10/06/wordcamp-utah-recap";s:11:"description";s:5042:"<p>(I had intended to get this posted early last week, but pushing all of the meetings, etc. from the week prior to WordCamp Utah to last week torpedoed that pretty effectively.)</p>
<p><a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/" rel="external">WordCamp Utah</a> was a great event - well organized by <a href="http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2008/09/29/wordcamp-utah-recap/#comments" rel="external">Joseph Scott</a> (thanks Joseph!), well attended and with some very <a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/schedule/" rel="external">good speakers</a>.</p>
<p>I gave a presentation about WordPress plugins. This was a challenging talk because of the vastness of the topic combined with the variety of the interest and technical background of the audience. Here are the slides.</p>
<div id="__ss_623887"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/alexkingorg/wordpress-plugins-wordcamp-utah-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah)">WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah)</a>



<div>View SlideShare <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/alexkingorg/wordpress-plugins-wordcamp-utah-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="View WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah) on SlideShare">presentation</a> or <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/carrington">carrington</a> <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/plugins">plugins</a>)</div>
</div>
<p><a href="http://twitter.com/humancell/statuses/937579413" rel="external">Some</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/tylerwhitaker/statuses/937580549" rel="external">folks</a> seemed upset that I didn&#8217;t give a technical demo of how to build a plugin. However, I chose to keep the talk at a high level based on the make-up of the audience.</p>
<p>Instead of getting into the code, I talked about techniques and approaches, and different kinds of plugins. My intent was to give people an idea of what they can do with plugins; and a little start on how to approach writing one. We may change this at <a href="http://denver.wordcamp.org" rel="external">WordCamp Denver</a> and have some technical presentations.</p>
<p>I also announced a couple of goodies at the end of the talk. We pulled an all-nighter on Friday getting everything ready for release. My presentation might have suffered a bit as a result. <img src="http://alexking.org/wp/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>We&#8217;ve released some <a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#tools">development tools</a> for other WordPress developers to use. These are things we&#8217;ve had to build over the years, and thought others could make good use of.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>WordPress Install (SVN Checkout) Script</strong> - a shell script will walk you through a checkout of multiple versions of WordPress from SVN and set up the requisite config file and database structure. This makes it easy to create a series of installs for testing purposes.</li>
<li><strong>WordPress Compatibility Plugin</strong> - sets some constants and some other little things that provide backward compatibility for older versions of WordPress.</li>
<li><strong>Quality Assurance (QA) Checklists</strong> - checklists to help guide plugin and theme testing. Includes considerations such as WordPress version, theme compatibility, browser type, WordPress settings, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>The biggest announcement - and the one I&#8217;m most excited about - was the <a href="http://carringtontheme.com">Carrington theme</a>, but I&#8217;ll have a follow-up post about that as there is just too much to cover here.</p>
<p>Thanks again to everyone who made WordCamp Utah a success.</p>
<p>UPDATE: Oh yeah, the presentation was recorded. (Thanks <a href="http://www.crawlspacemedia.com/blog/2008/10/06/carrington-theme/" rel="external">Jeremy</a>)</p>
<div><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" target="_blank">Live video by Ustream</a></div>
<p><a href="http://sharethis.com/item?&wp=2.2.3&amp;publisher=a1583af8-28eb-4210-97bd-2bb5c02bc265&amp;title=WordCamp+Utah+Recap&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Falexking.org%2Fblog%2F2008%2F10%2F06%2Fwordcamp-utah-recap">ShareThis</a></p>
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	-->";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:13:17 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Alex";}s:7:"summary";s:5042:"<p>(I had intended to get this posted early last week, but pushing all of the meetings, etc. from the week prior to WordCamp Utah to last week torpedoed that pretty effectively.)</p>
<p><a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/" rel="external">WordCamp Utah</a> was a great event - well organized by <a href="http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2008/09/29/wordcamp-utah-recap/#comments" rel="external">Joseph Scott</a> (thanks Joseph!), well attended and with some very <a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/schedule/" rel="external">good speakers</a>.</p>
<p>I gave a presentation about WordPress plugins. This was a challenging talk because of the vastness of the topic combined with the variety of the interest and technical background of the audience. Here are the slides.</p>
<div id="__ss_623887"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/alexkingorg/wordpress-plugins-wordcamp-utah-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah)">WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah)</a>



<div>View SlideShare <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/alexkingorg/wordpress-plugins-wordcamp-utah-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="View WordPress Plugins (WordCamp Utah) on SlideShare">presentation</a> or <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/carrington">carrington</a> <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/plugins">plugins</a>)</div>
</div>
<p><a href="http://twitter.com/humancell/statuses/937579413" rel="external">Some</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/tylerwhitaker/statuses/937580549" rel="external">folks</a> seemed upset that I didn&#8217;t give a technical demo of how to build a plugin. However, I chose to keep the talk at a high level based on the make-up of the audience.</p>
<p>Instead of getting into the code, I talked about techniques and approaches, and different kinds of plugins. My intent was to give people an idea of what they can do with plugins; and a little start on how to approach writing one. We may change this at <a href="http://denver.wordcamp.org" rel="external">WordCamp Denver</a> and have some technical presentations.</p>
<p>I also announced a couple of goodies at the end of the talk. We pulled an all-nighter on Friday getting everything ready for release. My presentation might have suffered a bit as a result. <img src="http://alexking.org/wp/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>
<p>We&#8217;ve released some <a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#tools">development tools</a> for other WordPress developers to use. These are things we&#8217;ve had to build over the years, and thought others could make good use of.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>WordPress Install (SVN Checkout) Script</strong> - a shell script will walk you through a checkout of multiple versions of WordPress from SVN and set up the requisite config file and database structure. This makes it easy to create a series of installs for testing purposes.</li>
<li><strong>WordPress Compatibility Plugin</strong> - sets some constants and some other little things that provide backward compatibility for older versions of WordPress.</li>
<li><strong>Quality Assurance (QA) Checklists</strong> - checklists to help guide plugin and theme testing. Includes considerations such as WordPress version, theme compatibility, browser type, WordPress settings, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>The biggest announcement - and the one I&#8217;m most excited about - was the <a href="http://carringtontheme.com">Carrington theme</a>, but I&#8217;ll have a follow-up post about that as there is just too much to cover here.</p>
<p>Thanks again to everyone who made WordCamp Utah a success.</p>
<p>UPDATE: Oh yeah, the presentation was recorded. (Thanks <a href="http://www.crawlspacemedia.com/blog/2008/10/06/carrington-theme/" rel="external">Jeremy</a>)</p>
<div><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" target="_blank">Live video by Ustream</a></div>
<p><a href="http://sharethis.com/item?&wp=2.2.3&amp;publisher=a1583af8-28eb-4210-97bd-2bb5c02bc265&amp;title=WordCamp+Utah+Recap&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Falexking.org%2Fblog%2F2008%2F10%2F06%2Fwordcamp-utah-recap">ShareThis</a></p>
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	-->";}i:10;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:28:"Matt: Absentee Ballot Voting";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7903";s:4:"link";s:44:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/absentee-ballot-voting/";s:11:"description";s:421:"<p>Because of travel and uncertainty with my schedule I&#8217;m going to vote absentee in this election. There seem to be two good sites with wizards that walk you through everything: <a href="http://www.govoteabsentee.org/">Go Vote Absentee</a> and <a href="http://www.longdistancevoter.org/">Long Distance Voter</a>. Going into polls and waiting in lines seems like an anachronism. Someday I hope I can vote online.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:00:52 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:421:"<p>Because of travel and uncertainty with my schedule I&#8217;m going to vote absentee in this election. There seem to be two good sites with wizards that walk you through everything: <a href="http://www.govoteabsentee.org/">Go Vote Absentee</a> and <a href="http://www.longdistancevoter.org/">Long Distance Voter</a>. Going into polls and waiting in lines seems like an anachronism. Someday I hope I can vote online.</p>";}i:11;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:19:"Matt: Broken Kindle";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7899";s:4:"link";s:35:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/broken-kindle/";s:11:"description";s:516:"<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photomatt/2910293336/">My Kindle is quite broken</a>, not sure how it happened, probably it got pressure in my bag or something? Since I&#8217;ve been <a href="http://mashable.com/2008/05/29/matt-mullenweg-interview/">professing my love of the Kindle to anyone who will listen</a> maybe Amazon will send a replacement, if not I&#8217;ll try to go through support when I get back to the states. In the meantime, back to reading dead trees (or more likely not much at all).</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:36:24 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:516:"<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photomatt/2910293336/">My Kindle is quite broken</a>, not sure how it happened, probably it got pressure in my bag or something? Since I&#8217;ve been <a href="http://mashable.com/2008/05/29/matt-mullenweg-interview/">professing my love of the Kindle to anyone who will listen</a> maybe Amazon will send a replacement, if not I&#8217;ll try to go through support when I get back to the states. In the meantime, back to reading dead trees (or more likely not much at all).</p>";}i:12;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:61:"Weblog Tools Collection: State of Wordpress from WordCamp NYC";s:4:"guid";s:90:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/06/state-of-wordpress-from-wordcamp-nyc/";s:4:"link";s:90:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/06/state-of-wordpress-from-wordcamp-nyc/";s:11:"description";s:473:"<p><a href="http://www.centernetworks.com/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-wordcamp">WordCamp NYC: Matt Mullenweg on the State of Wordpress</a>:CenterNetworks has posted a first row video of Matt&#8217;s State of the WordPress at the WordCamp NYC event this weekend. They will also be posting two other videos including a <a href="http://www.centernetworks.com/wordpress-27-demo">walkthrough of the 2.7 release</a> and one on the future of WordPress. Be sure to check them out.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:18:36 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Mark Ghosh";}s:7:"summary";s:473:"<p><a href="http://www.centernetworks.com/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-wordcamp">WordCamp NYC: Matt Mullenweg on the State of Wordpress</a>:CenterNetworks has posted a first row video of Matt&#8217;s State of the WordPress at the WordCamp NYC event this weekend. They will also be posting two other videos including a <a href="http://www.centernetworks.com/wordpress-27-demo">walkthrough of the 2.7 release</a> and one on the future of WordPress. Be sure to check them out.</p>";}i:13;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/06";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4306";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/06/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-1006/";s:11:"description";s:3185:"<p><a href="http://kahi.cz/wordpress/ravens-antispam-plugin/"><strong>Raven&#8217;s Antispam</strong></a></p>
<p>Raven&#8217;s antispam is a WordPress plugin, powerful and invisible fighter against comment spam.</p>
<p><a href="http://undeuxoutrois.de/cronjob_control.shtml"><strong>Cronjob Control</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin shows you all active WP cronjobs (scheduled tasks) of your weblog in the &#8220;Site Admin&#8221; area and if you want, you can stop the cronjob(s)</p>
<p><a href="http://undeuxoutrois.de/wp-db-backup-via-ftp.shtml"><strong>FTP Plugin for WP Database Backup Plugin</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin adds a fourth way to save the database backup files of the <a href="http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup">WP Database Backup</a> plugin. With the standard <a href="http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup">WP Database Backup</a> plugin you can save the database tables of your weblog a file. This backup file can stored on the server of your weblog, send to an email account or saved (manually) to your local hard disk.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-plugin-update-urls/"><strong>Update URLs</strong></a></p>
<p>When you move WordPress to a new domain or directory, the permalinks are not updated. This plugin updates all permalinks. In addition, it also gives the user the option to update any links within posts and pages.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.frank-verhoeven.com/wordpress-plugin-fv-community-news/"><strong>FV Community News</strong></a></p>
<p>Allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar or anywhere else. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/10/06/caption-disabler-wordpress-plugin-to-disable-and-remove-captions-functionality/"><strong>Caption Disabler</strong></a></p>
<p>Caption Disabler is a WordPress plugin that removes and disables captions feature in WordPress so that all caption shortcode is not been parsed or translated, and no  and  HTML entities are automatically added while editing or writing.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jquery-reply-to-comment/"><strong>jQuery Reply to Comment</strong></a></p>
<p>Add &#8220;reply&#8221; and &#8220;quote&#8221; features on each comment list.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/"><strong>Redirection</strong></a></p>
<p>Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.glockeasymail.com/wordpress-email-newsletter-plugin-for-double-opt-in-subscription/"><strong>WP Double Opt-In List Management</strong></a></p>
<p>This WordPress email list management plugin allows the visitors of your blog subscribe to your mailing list using a double opt-in method. The signup form (Email, Name and other fields) is placed on the WordPress blog sidebar. After a user fills in the form and clicks &#8220;Subscribe&#8221;, WP double opt-in plugin sends an email with the subscription confirmation link to the user.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:11:30 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:3185:"<p><a href="http://kahi.cz/wordpress/ravens-antispam-plugin/"><strong>Raven&#8217;s Antispam</strong></a></p>
<p>Raven&#8217;s antispam is a WordPress plugin, powerful and invisible fighter against comment spam.</p>
<p><a href="http://undeuxoutrois.de/cronjob_control.shtml"><strong>Cronjob Control</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin shows you all active WP cronjobs (scheduled tasks) of your weblog in the &#8220;Site Admin&#8221; area and if you want, you can stop the cronjob(s)</p>
<p><a href="http://undeuxoutrois.de/wp-db-backup-via-ftp.shtml"><strong>FTP Plugin for WP Database Backup Plugin</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin adds a fourth way to save the database backup files of the <a href="http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup">WP Database Backup</a> plugin. With the standard <a href="http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup">WP Database Backup</a> plugin you can save the database tables of your weblog a file. This backup file can stored on the server of your weblog, send to an email account or saved (manually) to your local hard disk.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-plugin-update-urls/"><strong>Update URLs</strong></a></p>
<p>When you move WordPress to a new domain or directory, the permalinks are not updated. This plugin updates all permalinks. In addition, it also gives the user the option to update any links within posts and pages.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.frank-verhoeven.com/wordpress-plugin-fv-community-news/"><strong>FV Community News</strong></a></p>
<p>Allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar or anywhere else. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/10/06/caption-disabler-wordpress-plugin-to-disable-and-remove-captions-functionality/"><strong>Caption Disabler</strong></a></p>
<p>Caption Disabler is a WordPress plugin that removes and disables captions feature in WordPress so that all caption shortcode is not been parsed or translated, and no  and  HTML entities are automatically added while editing or writing.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jquery-reply-to-comment/"><strong>jQuery Reply to Comment</strong></a></p>
<p>Add &#8220;reply&#8221; and &#8220;quote&#8221; features on each comment list.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/"><strong>Redirection</strong></a></p>
<p>Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.glockeasymail.com/wordpress-email-newsletter-plugin-for-double-opt-in-subscription/"><strong>WP Double Opt-In List Management</strong></a></p>
<p>This WordPress email list management plugin allows the visitors of your blog subscribe to your mailing list using a double opt-in method. The signup form (Email, Name and other fields) is placed on the WordPress blog sidebar. After a user fills in the form and clicks &#8220;Subscribe&#8221;, WP double opt-in plugin sends an email with the subscription confirmation link to the user.</p>";}i:14;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 10/05";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4304";s:4:"link";s:87:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/05/wordpress-theme-releases-for-1005/";s:11:"description";s:1348:"<p><a href="http://www.thekingcart.com/2008/10/02/crafty-cart-free-wordpress-ecommerce-plugin-theme/"><strong>Crafty Cart</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.billionstudio.com/?wptheme=Crafty%20Cart"><img title="crafty-cart-thumb" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/craftycartthumb.png" border="0" alt="crafty-cart-thumb" width="150" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Today we are proud to release our very first freebie Crafty Cart – a free theme for your WordPress e-Commerce store. It’s a fresh flavoured retro style for selling t-shirts and handmade items, designed to be a starting point for your online shop.</p>
<p><a href="http://pure-essence.net/2008/10/02/wordpress-theme-daffodil/"><strong>daffodil</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="daffodil" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/daffodil.png" border="0" alt="daffodil" width="142" height="114" /></p>
<p>Fixed width, three columns, widget ready green and yellow theme</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bestcmsthemes.com/details/desert-grass/wp"><strong>Desert Grass</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bestcmsthemes.com/preview/desert-grass/wp"><img title="desertgrass" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/desertgrass.png" border="0" alt="desertgrass" width="129" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, fixed width, widget ready theme</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:34:54 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:1348:"<p><a href="http://www.thekingcart.com/2008/10/02/crafty-cart-free-wordpress-ecommerce-plugin-theme/"><strong>Crafty Cart</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.billionstudio.com/?wptheme=Crafty%20Cart"><img title="crafty-cart-thumb" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/craftycartthumb.png" border="0" alt="crafty-cart-thumb" width="150" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Today we are proud to release our very first freebie Crafty Cart – a free theme for your WordPress e-Commerce store. It’s a fresh flavoured retro style for selling t-shirts and handmade items, designed to be a starting point for your online shop.</p>
<p><a href="http://pure-essence.net/2008/10/02/wordpress-theme-daffodil/"><strong>daffodil</strong></a></p>
<p><img title="daffodil" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/daffodil.png" border="0" alt="daffodil" width="142" height="114" /></p>
<p>Fixed width, three columns, widget ready green and yellow theme</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bestcmsthemes.com/details/desert-grass/wp"><strong>Desert Grass</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bestcmsthemes.com/preview/desert-grass/wp"><img title="desertgrass" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/desertgrass.png" border="0" alt="desertgrass" width="129" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, fixed width, widget ready theme</p>";}i:15;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:61:"Weblog Tools Collection: Ian Stewart On Child Themes - Part 2";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4276";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/05/ian-stewart-on-child-themes-part-2/";s:11:"description";s:7826:"<p>This is the second part of a 2 part interview with Ian Stewart on child themes. Enjoy.</p>
<p><strong>5. Speaking of child themes and theme frameworks, can you explain how one would upgrade a child theme when a theme framework is involved?</strong></p>
<p>From the end users perspective there&#8217;s really no change in how you use a Child Theme as opposed to a regular theme and there&#8217;s really no change in how you upgrade that theme. Even if a theme framework is involved.</p>
<p>But the process of upgrading that Child Theme can be improved on. One thing I do in the pre-designed Thematic Child Themes I release commercially is add in a function that looks for a &#8220;variant.css&#8221; file in the wp-content directory. That function lets you make minor changes like adding background images and changing colors within variant.css without touching the original Child Theme CSS, making it ready to be upgraded itself without headache or incident—just like the framework it&#8217;s building on top of.</p>
<p><strong> 6. How do you see theme frameworks and child themes affecting the premium theme market?</strong></p>
<p><em>Hugely</em>. I see theme frameworks affecting the commercial theming market hugely. Frankly, if you&#8217;re making money through WordPress themes, either by selling pre-designed themes or creating custom ones for individual clients, and you haven&#8217;t taken a good hard look at using Child Themes in your business you&#8217;re wasting your time.</p>
<p>Consider this scenario: your company, or Theme Club, or who-knows-what, releases a GPL Theme Framework through the WordPress Themes Directory that the whole community can enjoy. You create a WordPress Child Theme for an individual client that builds on top of that framework, or maybe release a pre-designed Child Theme for it commercially on a Theme Club site. And because you&#8217;re awesome, money rolls in.</p>
<p>Now, when WordPress eventually changes—for the better, of course—you&#8217;re going to have to update some of that theme code. But! you&#8217;re probably only going to have to update the code in your Parent Theme—just like I mentioned in the example earlier with ThemeShaper.com and Thematic. What does that mean for your business? Because you&#8217;ve released the framework through the Themes directory every one of your clients will receive automatic notification of the upgrade and—thanks to changes in WordPress 2.7—they can download and install the upgraded theme almost instantly with the click of a button in the WordPress admin. Now, if you&#8217;re cutting theme maintenance down you&#8217;re freeing up more time to work on other areas of your business. Like, designing more Child Themes and making more money.</p>
<p>And even if you&#8217;re not releasing your theme framework through the WordPress Themes Directory, frameworks and Child Themes are still going to make your life easier. As professional WordPress theme developer Darren Hoyt says, &#8220;anyone who builds a quantity of WordPress sites throughout the year would be crazy to not already have their own baseline theme&#8221; (<a href="http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/</a>). And the easiest way to make changes to that baseline theme, while <em>treating it</em> like a real framework, is by using a Child Theme.</p>
<p><strong>7. Do you think that if this trend becomes popular, would end users see a battle between the best theme frameworks via theme authors?</strong></p>
<p>Absolutely. Everyone that&#8217;s ever released a WordPress theme knows about the warm feeling you get from people—often a lot of people—actually using your work (that&#8217;s not facetiousness, it&#8217;s one of the main reasons I think people <em>keep on</em> releasing themes). But there&#8217;s also a whole host of other benefits like increased site traffic, link building and authority in the community that provide you opportunities for making money by releasing themes for free or commercially. Sometimes a lot of money. All those benefits start to compound when you start talking about releasing a theme framework. A popular theme framework has the potential to become a self-advertising, lead-generating, service-selling machine. I think theme authors are starting to realize what that can mean for them which means, in turn, that we&#8217;ll probably soon see a whole bunch of theme frameworks popping up.</p>
<p>But really, a theme framework is just a good WordPress theme. We should <em>hope</em> there&#8217;s a battle to create the best GPL theme framework. That&#8217;s a battle where <em>everybody</em> in the WordPress community wins.</p>
<p><strong>8. Would you care to share any other knowledge or information with our readers that you would like to cover with regards to this topic?</strong></p>
<p>There&#8217;s actually a fair bit of information out there now on how to work with Child Themes. I&#8217;ve compiled a quick list of links that should give you all the information you need to get started.</p>
<p>Any WordPress Theme Can Be a Blank Framework (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/wordpress-theme-blank-framework/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/wordpress-theme-blank-framework/</a>)</p>
<p>How I used a WordPress Child Theme To Redesign My Blog The Smart Way (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/functions-php-wordpress-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/functions-php-wordpress-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>A Revolution in Theming: WordPress Theme Frameworks (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/revolution-wordpress-theme-frameworks/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/revolution-wordpress-theme-frameworks/</a>)</p>
<p>How To Protect Your WordPress Theme Against Upgrades (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/how-to-protect-your-wordpress-theme-against-upgrades/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/how-to-protect-your-wordpress-theme-against-upgrades/</a>)</p>
<p>The WordPress Codex (<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Theme_Style_Sheet" target="_blank">http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Theme_Style_Sheet</a>)</p>
<p>Designing for The Sandbox (<a href="http://code.google.com/p/sandbox-theme/wiki/DesigningForSandbox" target="_blank">http://code.google.com/p/sandbox-theme/wiki/DesigningForSandbox</a>)</p>
<p>Creating WordPress Child Themes (<a href="http://wangenweb.com/2008/07/creating-wordpress-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://wangenweb.com/2008/07/creating-wordpress-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>Theme Inheritance (<a href="http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/" target="_blank">http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/</a>)</p>
<p>How to make a &#8220;child theme&#8221; for WordPress. A pictorial introduction for beginners (<a href="http://op111.net/p53" target="_blank">http://op111.net/p53</a>)</p>
<p>Exploring WordPress Frameworks and Child Themes (<a href="http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters, and Hooks? (<a href="http://wpcandy.com/articles/frameworks-child-themes-filters-and-hook.html" target="_blank">http://wpcandy.com/articles/frameworks-child-themes-filters-and-hook.html</a>)</p>
<p>Brainstorming the Ultimate WordPress Theming Framework (<a href="http://ptahdunbar.com/my-projects/brainstorming-a-wordpress-theming-framework/" target="_blank">http://ptahdunbar.com/my-projects/brainstorming-a-wordpress-theming-framework/</a>)</p>
<p>Carrington (<a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#themes">http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#themes</a>)</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:00:07 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";}s:7:"summary";s:7826:"<p>This is the second part of a 2 part interview with Ian Stewart on child themes. Enjoy.</p>
<p><strong>5. Speaking of child themes and theme frameworks, can you explain how one would upgrade a child theme when a theme framework is involved?</strong></p>
<p>From the end users perspective there&#8217;s really no change in how you use a Child Theme as opposed to a regular theme and there&#8217;s really no change in how you upgrade that theme. Even if a theme framework is involved.</p>
<p>But the process of upgrading that Child Theme can be improved on. One thing I do in the pre-designed Thematic Child Themes I release commercially is add in a function that looks for a &#8220;variant.css&#8221; file in the wp-content directory. That function lets you make minor changes like adding background images and changing colors within variant.css without touching the original Child Theme CSS, making it ready to be upgraded itself without headache or incident—just like the framework it&#8217;s building on top of.</p>
<p><strong> 6. How do you see theme frameworks and child themes affecting the premium theme market?</strong></p>
<p><em>Hugely</em>. I see theme frameworks affecting the commercial theming market hugely. Frankly, if you&#8217;re making money through WordPress themes, either by selling pre-designed themes or creating custom ones for individual clients, and you haven&#8217;t taken a good hard look at using Child Themes in your business you&#8217;re wasting your time.</p>
<p>Consider this scenario: your company, or Theme Club, or who-knows-what, releases a GPL Theme Framework through the WordPress Themes Directory that the whole community can enjoy. You create a WordPress Child Theme for an individual client that builds on top of that framework, or maybe release a pre-designed Child Theme for it commercially on a Theme Club site. And because you&#8217;re awesome, money rolls in.</p>
<p>Now, when WordPress eventually changes—for the better, of course—you&#8217;re going to have to update some of that theme code. But! you&#8217;re probably only going to have to update the code in your Parent Theme—just like I mentioned in the example earlier with ThemeShaper.com and Thematic. What does that mean for your business? Because you&#8217;ve released the framework through the Themes directory every one of your clients will receive automatic notification of the upgrade and—thanks to changes in WordPress 2.7—they can download and install the upgraded theme almost instantly with the click of a button in the WordPress admin. Now, if you&#8217;re cutting theme maintenance down you&#8217;re freeing up more time to work on other areas of your business. Like, designing more Child Themes and making more money.</p>
<p>And even if you&#8217;re not releasing your theme framework through the WordPress Themes Directory, frameworks and Child Themes are still going to make your life easier. As professional WordPress theme developer Darren Hoyt says, &#8220;anyone who builds a quantity of WordPress sites throughout the year would be crazy to not already have their own baseline theme&#8221; (<a href="http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/</a>). And the easiest way to make changes to that baseline theme, while <em>treating it</em> like a real framework, is by using a Child Theme.</p>
<p><strong>7. Do you think that if this trend becomes popular, would end users see a battle between the best theme frameworks via theme authors?</strong></p>
<p>Absolutely. Everyone that&#8217;s ever released a WordPress theme knows about the warm feeling you get from people—often a lot of people—actually using your work (that&#8217;s not facetiousness, it&#8217;s one of the main reasons I think people <em>keep on</em> releasing themes). But there&#8217;s also a whole host of other benefits like increased site traffic, link building and authority in the community that provide you opportunities for making money by releasing themes for free or commercially. Sometimes a lot of money. All those benefits start to compound when you start talking about releasing a theme framework. A popular theme framework has the potential to become a self-advertising, lead-generating, service-selling machine. I think theme authors are starting to realize what that can mean for them which means, in turn, that we&#8217;ll probably soon see a whole bunch of theme frameworks popping up.</p>
<p>But really, a theme framework is just a good WordPress theme. We should <em>hope</em> there&#8217;s a battle to create the best GPL theme framework. That&#8217;s a battle where <em>everybody</em> in the WordPress community wins.</p>
<p><strong>8. Would you care to share any other knowledge or information with our readers that you would like to cover with regards to this topic?</strong></p>
<p>There&#8217;s actually a fair bit of information out there now on how to work with Child Themes. I&#8217;ve compiled a quick list of links that should give you all the information you need to get started.</p>
<p>Any WordPress Theme Can Be a Blank Framework (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/wordpress-theme-blank-framework/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/wordpress-theme-blank-framework/</a>)</p>
<p>How I used a WordPress Child Theme To Redesign My Blog The Smart Way (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/functions-php-wordpress-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/functions-php-wordpress-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>A Revolution in Theming: WordPress Theme Frameworks (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/revolution-wordpress-theme-frameworks/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/revolution-wordpress-theme-frameworks/</a>)</p>
<p>How To Protect Your WordPress Theme Against Upgrades (<a href="http://themeshaper.com/how-to-protect-your-wordpress-theme-against-upgrades/" target="_blank">http://themeshaper.com/how-to-protect-your-wordpress-theme-against-upgrades/</a>)</p>
<p>The WordPress Codex (<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Theme_Style_Sheet" target="_blank">http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Theme_Style_Sheet</a>)</p>
<p>Designing for The Sandbox (<a href="http://code.google.com/p/sandbox-theme/wiki/DesigningForSandbox" target="_blank">http://code.google.com/p/sandbox-theme/wiki/DesigningForSandbox</a>)</p>
<p>Creating WordPress Child Themes (<a href="http://wangenweb.com/2008/07/creating-wordpress-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://wangenweb.com/2008/07/creating-wordpress-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>Theme Inheritance (<a href="http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/" target="_blank">http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/</a>)</p>
<p>How to make a &#8220;child theme&#8221; for WordPress. A pictorial introduction for beginners (<a href="http://op111.net/p53" target="_blank">http://op111.net/p53</a>)</p>
<p>Exploring WordPress Frameworks and Child Themes (<a href="http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/" target="_blank">http://www.darrenhoyt.com/2008/09/18/exploring-wordpress-frameworks-and-child-themes/</a>)</p>
<p>Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters, and Hooks? (<a href="http://wpcandy.com/articles/frameworks-child-themes-filters-and-hook.html" target="_blank">http://wpcandy.com/articles/frameworks-child-themes-filters-and-hook.html</a>)</p>
<p>Brainstorming the Ultimate WordPress Theming Framework (<a href="http://ptahdunbar.com/my-projects/brainstorming-a-wordpress-theming-framework/" target="_blank">http://ptahdunbar.com/my-projects/brainstorming-a-wordpress-theming-framework/</a>)</p>
<p>Carrington (<a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#themes">http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/#themes</a>)</p>";}i:16;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:61:"Lorelle on WP: WordCamp Portland: How WordPress Changes Lives";s:4:"guid";s:36:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=3072";s:4:"link";s:86:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/wordcamp-portland-how-wordpress-changes-lives/";s:11:"description";s:21960:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?s=wordpress+events" title="WordPress Events"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/wpevents.png" alt="WordPress Events" align="right" /></a>When I was asked to speak on how WordPress changes lives at <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland</a> in September of 2008, I was faced with a dilemma. While WordPress does change lives, blogging changes more lives. How do I connect the dots between WordPress and the life changing experience of blogging?</p>
<p><a href="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-sm.jpg"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-sm.jpg?w=156" alt="" title="The WordPress Fairy Blogmother in Portland, Oregon, at WordCamp Portland in her pajamas" width="156" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3073" /></a>I didn&#8217;t realize that the WordPress Community would give me the answers I needed to that question. Their inspirational answers led to the following video on how WordPress changes lives, and the creation of the WordPress Fairy Blogmother.</p>
<p>WordPress changes lives because of the community. Over and over again, people told me that WordPress changes their lives because of the people it brings into their lives. While it doesn&#8217;t really matter what blogging platform you may use, it&#8217;s the community that supports and encourages fellow WordPress users that makes the difference. Without the <a href="http://www.wordpress.org/support" title="WordPress Support Forums" rel="tag">WordPress Support Forums</a>, the incredible free WordPress Themes created by imaginative and altruistic fans, the powerful WordPress Plugins created and shared by those who saw a challenge and found a solution, and the support and willingness of WordPress users to educate others on how to use the program and make it work better - there would be no community.</p>
<p>WordPress has inspired many to learn about coding, design, web development, marketing, but also how to be a part of a community. WordPress fans are the definition of the social web. With the passion that comes with learning and sharing WordPress tips, tricks, and techniques, they&#8217;ve founded a grassroots community, which led to WordPress meetups and social gatherings, and now to WordCamps around the world. </p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/lizstrauss_glenda_lorelle_bwe.jpg" alt="" title="Liz Strauss, Glenda Watson Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas 2008" width="418" height="397" class="alignright size-full wp-image-3074" />When I attend the many business and professional conferences to speak and present programs, it&#8217;s fairly serious. I&#8217;m there for business. They are there for business. It&#8217;s serious stuff.</p>
<p>When I walk through the door of a WordCamp event, I&#8217;ve found family. We&#8217;re instantly friends. We all know each other, and if we don&#8217;t, we will within a few moments. We&#8217;re risk takers and yet communal spirits, sharing the risk together. When one person pushes WordPress, we all benefit from the results. </p>
<p>As I interviewed people and asked the WordPress Community for help in discovering how WordPress changes lives, I knew I had to put faces on the many people who&#8217;ve had their lives transformed by their involvement in WordPress. In the first half of the video, I honor those whom I&#8217;ve known for several years since early in the development of WordPress, as well as a few new friends. Many of these people have gone from interested enthusiasts to friends of WordPress to employees of <a href="http://www.automattic.com/" title="Automattic - parent company of WordPress, WordPress.com, Akismet, BuddyPress, and more" rel="tag">Automattic</a>, the parent company of WordPress. By using WordPress and being involved in the community, they&#8217;ve built their businesses and reputation as WordPress experts, and in turn, powerful forces on the web.<br />
<span id="more-3072"></span><br />
Sure, any blogging platform can do that, but there is something about Matt Mullenweg and his vision for WordPress and blogging in general that brings people together to achieve more than they could alone. This is what changes people&#8217;s lives. Together, we&#8217;re stronger with WordPress than without.</p>
<p>Enjoy all the inspirational reasons WordPress fans offered for how and why WordPress changed their lives. And don&#8217;t forget to check out <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/" title="How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily">Glenda Watson Hyatt: How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily</a>, the video made especially for the finale of my presentation.</p>
<h4>Video of How WordPress Changes Lives</h4>
<p>There are two versions of the video. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9HN81XSNYU" title="YouTube version of How WordPress Changes Lives">YouTube version</a> is low resolution and a smaller file size. The <a href="http://www.viddler.com/explore/Lorelle/videos/1/" title="Viddler version of How WordPress Changes Lives">Viddler version</a> is higher resolution and 138.5 meg file size. The video is ten minutes long. The transcription of the video is below.</p>
<p><strong>YouTube Version of How WordPress Changes Lives by Lorelle VanFossen</strong></p>
<p><span><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/wordcamp-portland-how-wordpress-changes-lives/"><img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/J9HN81XSNYU/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span></p>
<p><strong>Viddler Version of How WordPress Changes Lives by Lorelle VanFossen</strong></p>
<p></p>
<h4>Transcription of How WordPress Changes Lives</h4>
<p>I haven&#8217;t found an easy way to add subtitles or captions to this Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v9 program. Any help would be appreciated. Until then, this is the transcript of the video.</p>
<p><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Hey, is this thing on. Hey. Is this on?<br />
Is it working? It&#8217;s not working.<br />
Bang! Bang! Hello, are you working.<br />
Ah, there we go.</em></p>
<p><strong><em>* Instrumental Music &#8220;When you wish upon a star&#8221; from Pinocchio *</em></strong></p>
<p>&#8220;When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are.<br />
Anything your heart desires will come to you.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.<br />
&#8220;When you wish upon a star, as dreamers do.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Fate is kind. She brings to those who love<br />
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through.<br />
&#8220;When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.&#8221;<br />
<em><strong><br />
Featured WordPress Community Members:</strong></em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://ma.tt/" title="Matt Mullenweg">Matt Mullenweg</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland Attendees</a></li>
<li><a href="http://barry.wordpress.com/" title="Barry on WordPress">Barry Abrahamson</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.bobulate.com/" title="Bobulate">Liz Danzico</a></li>
<li><a href="http://andy.wordpress.com/" title="Andy Skelton">Andy Skelton</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dvorak.org/" title="General interest observations and true web-log.">John Dvorak</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.problogger.net" title="Problogger" rel="tag">Darren Rowse</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/" title="Holy Shmoly!">Donncha O&#8217;Caoimh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/" title="Lolcats and funny pictures">Ben Huh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.successful-blog.com/" title="Liz Strauss - Successful and Outstanding Bloggers" rel="tag">Liz Strauss</a></li>
<li><a href="http://teensintech.com/" title="Teens in Tech">Daniel Brusilovsky</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.weblogtoolscollection.com/" title="Weblog Tools Collection" rel="tag">Mark Ghosh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogwaffe.com/" title="blogwaffe">Michael D. Adams</a></li>
<li><a href="http://onemansblog.com/2008/08/25/chuck-lewis-the-seo-rapper-at-wordcamp-sanfrancisco/" title="Chuck Lewis - The SEO Rapper at WordCamp SanFrancisco - One Mans Blog">Chuck Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="http://tantek.com/" title="Tantek's Thoughts">Tantek Çelik</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wordcamp.info/" title="The WordCamp Report">Patrick Havens</a></li>
<li>Trisha Miller</li>
<li><a href="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/" title="Mark on WordPress">Mark Jaquith</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/" title="Plagiarism Today">Jonathan and Crystal Bailey</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.jeffro2pt0.com/" title="Jeffro2pt0">Jeff Chandler</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/" title="SparkPlugging">Wendy Piersall</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nathanrice.net/" title="Nathan Rice">Nathan Rice</a></li>
<li><a href="http://technosailor.com/" title="Technology, Business and New Media">Aaron Brazell</a></li>
<li><a href="http://alexfrison.com/notaniche/" title="Not a Niche">Alex Frison</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jane.wordpress.com/" title="jane for short">Jane Wells</a></li>
</ul>
<p><em>*Music*</em></p>
<p><em>*Static*</em></p>
<div id="attachment_3079" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wordcampportlandinstreetsm.jpg" alt="WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother" title="WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother" width="728" height="363" class="size-full wp-image-3079" /><p class="wp-caption-text">WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother</p></div>
<p><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Hello! Is this working?<br />
It&#8217;s stop working again, dang it.<br />
What&#8217;s going on here? Okay, wait, wait.<br />
Bang! Bang! Ah, there.</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wiredPRworks.com/" title="WiredPRWorks">Barbara Rozgonyi</a>:</strong> Hello, my name is Barbara Rozgonyi with wiredPRworks.com, and Lorelle, thank you for interviewing me in the bathroom. How has WordPress changed my life? I can&#8217;t tell you everything in 15 seconds but I can tell you that it&#8217;s really made me into the person I&#8217;ve always wanted to be. Now, I can be an author, I can be a person who really influences lives. And boy, it&#8217;s so interesting to see what readers have to say. To see them take just a little piece of information and take it and make it huge that will help so many people. And I get to hang out with cool people like Lorelle in the ladies&#8217; room.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.johnhawkinsunrated.com/" title="John Hawkins Unrated">John Hawkins</a>:</strong> Hi, this is John Hawkins from johnhawkinsunrated.com. WordPress. WordPress changed my life how. Let&#8217;s see. I&#8217;d say I&#8217;ve met some amazing people through WordPress. I Twitter and I answer people&#8217;s questions, and you would be amazed at the amount of people who are just dying to connect with you through WordPress. Go WordPress!<br />
Hey, come to WordCamp Las Vegas on the January 10-11, 2009. See you there!</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.aceinternetmarketing.com/" title="Ace Internet Marketing">Stace Baris</a>:</strong><br />
My name is Stace Baris with aceinternetmarketing.com. And WordPress has changed my life because it is open source, lots of great Plugins for doing SEO getting my content out there, lots of widgets I can use and also made affiliate marketing really easy with great Amazon Plugins and all sorts of things. If you are serious about blogging, WordPress is the way to go and Lorelle is the person to get your info from. She&#8217;s great.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/marketing/" title="Susan Patton the Marketing Eggspert">Susan Patton</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Susan Patton the Marketing Eggspert from Sparkplugging.com/marketing. How WordPress has changed my life? Besides getting me interviewed in the bathroom at Blog World Expo, the height of  experiences, it makes it really easy. I have some tech experience but I love the creative side. So I don&#8217;t want to deal with the hard stuff. WordPress makes it easy to do what I want to do. There are Widgets for everything. There are template for everything. It&#8217;s easy. And I can worry about everything else and not my blog.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/" title="Kim Woodbridge">Kim Woodbridge</a>:</strong> WordPress has changed my life by giving me confidence in my abilities and helping me earn money. I&#8217;ve found that I love<br />
working on it. Plus, I&#8217;ve met so many interesting and talented people online.</p>
<p>This sounded so much better in my head but it didn&#8217;t come out quite right <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":-)" class="wp-smiley" />  Well, I hope it gives you the idea. Thanks! Kim Woodbridge kimwoodbridge.com [Via email]</p>
<p><strong>Naked Bones:</strong> I would say WordPress has changed my life, and it has made it easier. It gave me the room to empty my mind of the everyday stuff we all go through. [Via blog comment]</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/" title="SparkPlugging">Wendy Piersall</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Wendy Piersall. I&#8217;m CEO of the SparkPlugging.com. Looking back I was remembering when I first started my brand. I kicked it off with WordPress. WordPress made it absolutely easy for me with little-to-know tech experience whatsoever to create a powerful brand that is now rocking the blogosphere. I tell everybody now to just start with WordPress. It&#8217;s brain dead easy and it&#8217;s extremely just brilliant and I don&#8217;t know how we could function with out it. We owe a lot to you WordPress. We love you.</p>
<p><strong>Owen Cutajar:</strong> [from Twitter] WP means I can build a great new website, secure and loaded with functionality, all b4 breakfast. Good Luck at #wordcampdx.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.heather-rasley.com/" title="heather rasley">Heather Rasley</a>:</strong> Hi, my name is Heather Rasley, the deputy at Automattic. I made the switch to WordPress after discovering that all my favorite awesome bloggers use it. I&#8217;m very happy to be working for Automattic and making other people happy, too. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://jane.wordpress.com/" title="jane for short">Jane Wells</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Jane Wells and I&#8217;m the user experience person with Automattic. WordPress has changed my life by exposing me to a kick ass community of open source developers and allowing me to work with the best guys in the world.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.contentrobot.com/" title="Content Robot">Karen Jackie and Dana Rockel</a>:</strong> I&#8217;m Karen Jackie partner of Content Robot and Dana Rockel from Content Robot. WordPress has changed our lives because it has actually given us an entrepreneurial spirit and we produce WordPress blogs for clients all over the world. WordPress is a great platform. We started out as a blogging company and moved to WordPress and we don&#8217;t do any other platforms right now. WordPress is it.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.mollermarketing.com/" title="Nate Moller of Moller Marketing">Nathan Moller</a>:</strong> My name is Nate Moeller from MollerMarketing.com. Without WordPress I don&#8217;t know where I would be in the blogging community. What else is there. Blogging is WordPress.</p>
<p><a href="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-close.jpg"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-close.jpg?w=300" alt="" title="WordPress Fairy Blogmother (Lorelle VanFossen) on the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon" width="300" height="223" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3081" /></a><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Oh, no. Not again.<br />
They must be redesigning the interface. Sigh.<br />
Can&#8217;t they leave anything alone. They keep messing with things.<br />
It was just fine the way it was. Why do they have to keep changing things?<br />
ARGH!</em></p>
<p>At WordCamp Portland, I surprised the audience from behind, wearing my WordPress Fairy Blogmother outfit. I spoke about the points mentioned at the beginning of this article, and asked the audience to come forward with their &#8220;testimonies&#8221; on how WordPress changed their lives. I was stunned at the number of people wanting to share their stories, nearly bringing the audience, and myself, to tears. </p>
<p>You can see the video of part of the <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/744252" title="Dale Chumbley - WordCamp Portland - Lorelle VanFossen as the WordPress Fairy Blogmother">presentation by Dale Chumbley streamed live</a> from Cubespace in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>The end of the program featured <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/" title="How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily">Glenda Watson Hyatt: How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily</a>, a video on how this woman uses WordPress to blog only with her left thumb. Because WordPress continues to be the most accessible and disabled-user friendly blogging platform around, she has opened up her sphere of influence and network of relationships around the world as her blog allows her to &#8220;speak out&#8221; when her body won&#8217;t. </p>
<p>As we design and develop WordPress Themes, Plugins, and code, the WordPress Community needs to remember that Glenda is an important representative of our users.</p>
<p>Thank you again to everyone who helped me put this together, everyone whose lives have been touched my WordPress, and everyone who has helped changed my life with WordPress.</p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif" alt="" /><br />
<hr />
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Posted in WordPress News&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3072&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:38:10 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:17:"Lorelle VanFossen";}s:7:"summary";s:21960:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?s=wordpress+events" title="WordPress Events"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/wpevents.png" alt="WordPress Events" align="right" /></a>When I was asked to speak on how WordPress changes lives at <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland</a> in September of 2008, I was faced with a dilemma. While WordPress does change lives, blogging changes more lives. How do I connect the dots between WordPress and the life changing experience of blogging?</p>
<p><a href="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-sm.jpg"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-sm.jpg?w=156" alt="" title="The WordPress Fairy Blogmother in Portland, Oregon, at WordCamp Portland in her pajamas" width="156" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3073" /></a>I didn&#8217;t realize that the WordPress Community would give me the answers I needed to that question. Their inspirational answers led to the following video on how WordPress changes lives, and the creation of the WordPress Fairy Blogmother.</p>
<p>WordPress changes lives because of the community. Over and over again, people told me that WordPress changes their lives because of the people it brings into their lives. While it doesn&#8217;t really matter what blogging platform you may use, it&#8217;s the community that supports and encourages fellow WordPress users that makes the difference. Without the <a href="http://www.wordpress.org/support" title="WordPress Support Forums" rel="tag">WordPress Support Forums</a>, the incredible free WordPress Themes created by imaginative and altruistic fans, the powerful WordPress Plugins created and shared by those who saw a challenge and found a solution, and the support and willingness of WordPress users to educate others on how to use the program and make it work better - there would be no community.</p>
<p>WordPress has inspired many to learn about coding, design, web development, marketing, but also how to be a part of a community. WordPress fans are the definition of the social web. With the passion that comes with learning and sharing WordPress tips, tricks, and techniques, they&#8217;ve founded a grassroots community, which led to WordPress meetups and social gatherings, and now to WordCamps around the world. </p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/lizstrauss_glenda_lorelle_bwe.jpg" alt="" title="Liz Strauss, Glenda Watson Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas 2008" width="418" height="397" class="alignright size-full wp-image-3074" />When I attend the many business and professional conferences to speak and present programs, it&#8217;s fairly serious. I&#8217;m there for business. They are there for business. It&#8217;s serious stuff.</p>
<p>When I walk through the door of a WordCamp event, I&#8217;ve found family. We&#8217;re instantly friends. We all know each other, and if we don&#8217;t, we will within a few moments. We&#8217;re risk takers and yet communal spirits, sharing the risk together. When one person pushes WordPress, we all benefit from the results. </p>
<p>As I interviewed people and asked the WordPress Community for help in discovering how WordPress changes lives, I knew I had to put faces on the many people who&#8217;ve had their lives transformed by their involvement in WordPress. In the first half of the video, I honor those whom I&#8217;ve known for several years since early in the development of WordPress, as well as a few new friends. Many of these people have gone from interested enthusiasts to friends of WordPress to employees of <a href="http://www.automattic.com/" title="Automattic - parent company of WordPress, WordPress.com, Akismet, BuddyPress, and more" rel="tag">Automattic</a>, the parent company of WordPress. By using WordPress and being involved in the community, they&#8217;ve built their businesses and reputation as WordPress experts, and in turn, powerful forces on the web.<br />
<span id="more-3072"></span><br />
Sure, any blogging platform can do that, but there is something about Matt Mullenweg and his vision for WordPress and blogging in general that brings people together to achieve more than they could alone. This is what changes people&#8217;s lives. Together, we&#8217;re stronger with WordPress than without.</p>
<p>Enjoy all the inspirational reasons WordPress fans offered for how and why WordPress changed their lives. And don&#8217;t forget to check out <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/" title="How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily">Glenda Watson Hyatt: How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily</a>, the video made especially for the finale of my presentation.</p>
<h4>Video of How WordPress Changes Lives</h4>
<p>There are two versions of the video. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9HN81XSNYU" title="YouTube version of How WordPress Changes Lives">YouTube version</a> is low resolution and a smaller file size. The <a href="http://www.viddler.com/explore/Lorelle/videos/1/" title="Viddler version of How WordPress Changes Lives">Viddler version</a> is higher resolution and 138.5 meg file size. The video is ten minutes long. The transcription of the video is below.</p>
<p><strong>YouTube Version of How WordPress Changes Lives by Lorelle VanFossen</strong></p>
<p><span><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/wordcamp-portland-how-wordpress-changes-lives/"><img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/J9HN81XSNYU/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span></p>
<p><strong>Viddler Version of How WordPress Changes Lives by Lorelle VanFossen</strong></p>
<p></p>
<h4>Transcription of How WordPress Changes Lives</h4>
<p>I haven&#8217;t found an easy way to add subtitles or captions to this Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v9 program. Any help would be appreciated. Until then, this is the transcript of the video.</p>
<p><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Hey, is this thing on. Hey. Is this on?<br />
Is it working? It&#8217;s not working.<br />
Bang! Bang! Hello, are you working.<br />
Ah, there we go.</em></p>
<p><strong><em>* Instrumental Music &#8220;When you wish upon a star&#8221; from Pinocchio *</em></strong></p>
<p>&#8220;When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are.<br />
Anything your heart desires will come to you.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.<br />
&#8220;When you wish upon a star, as dreamers do.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Fate is kind. She brings to those who love<br />
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through.<br />
&#8220;When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.&#8221;<br />
<em><strong><br />
Featured WordPress Community Members:</strong></em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://ma.tt/" title="Matt Mullenweg">Matt Mullenweg</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland Attendees</a></li>
<li><a href="http://barry.wordpress.com/" title="Barry on WordPress">Barry Abrahamson</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.bobulate.com/" title="Bobulate">Liz Danzico</a></li>
<li><a href="http://andy.wordpress.com/" title="Andy Skelton">Andy Skelton</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.dvorak.org/" title="General interest observations and true web-log.">John Dvorak</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.problogger.net" title="Problogger" rel="tag">Darren Rowse</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/" title="Holy Shmoly!">Donncha O&#8217;Caoimh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/" title="Lolcats and funny pictures">Ben Huh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.successful-blog.com/" title="Liz Strauss - Successful and Outstanding Bloggers" rel="tag">Liz Strauss</a></li>
<li><a href="http://teensintech.com/" title="Teens in Tech">Daniel Brusilovsky</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.weblogtoolscollection.com/" title="Weblog Tools Collection" rel="tag">Mark Ghosh</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blogwaffe.com/" title="blogwaffe">Michael D. Adams</a></li>
<li><a href="http://onemansblog.com/2008/08/25/chuck-lewis-the-seo-rapper-at-wordcamp-sanfrancisco/" title="Chuck Lewis - The SEO Rapper at WordCamp SanFrancisco - One Mans Blog">Chuck Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="http://tantek.com/" title="Tantek's Thoughts">Tantek Çelik</a></li>
<li><a href="http://wordcamp.info/" title="The WordCamp Report">Patrick Havens</a></li>
<li>Trisha Miller</li>
<li><a href="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/" title="Mark on WordPress">Mark Jaquith</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/" title="Plagiarism Today">Jonathan and Crystal Bailey</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.jeffro2pt0.com/" title="Jeffro2pt0">Jeff Chandler</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/" title="SparkPlugging">Wendy Piersall</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.nathanrice.net/" title="Nathan Rice">Nathan Rice</a></li>
<li><a href="http://technosailor.com/" title="Technology, Business and New Media">Aaron Brazell</a></li>
<li><a href="http://alexfrison.com/notaniche/" title="Not a Niche">Alex Frison</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jane.wordpress.com/" title="jane for short">Jane Wells</a></li>
</ul>
<p><em>*Music*</em></p>
<p><em>*Static*</em></p>
<div id="attachment_3079" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wordcampportlandinstreetsm.jpg" alt="WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother" title="WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother" width="728" height="363" class="size-full wp-image-3079" /><p class="wp-caption-text">WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother</p></div>
<p><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Hello! Is this working?<br />
It&#8217;s stop working again, dang it.<br />
What&#8217;s going on here? Okay, wait, wait.<br />
Bang! Bang! Ah, there.</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wiredPRworks.com/" title="WiredPRWorks">Barbara Rozgonyi</a>:</strong> Hello, my name is Barbara Rozgonyi with wiredPRworks.com, and Lorelle, thank you for interviewing me in the bathroom. How has WordPress changed my life? I can&#8217;t tell you everything in 15 seconds but I can tell you that it&#8217;s really made me into the person I&#8217;ve always wanted to be. Now, I can be an author, I can be a person who really influences lives. And boy, it&#8217;s so interesting to see what readers have to say. To see them take just a little piece of information and take it and make it huge that will help so many people. And I get to hang out with cool people like Lorelle in the ladies&#8217; room.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.johnhawkinsunrated.com/" title="John Hawkins Unrated">John Hawkins</a>:</strong> Hi, this is John Hawkins from johnhawkinsunrated.com. WordPress. WordPress changed my life how. Let&#8217;s see. I&#8217;d say I&#8217;ve met some amazing people through WordPress. I Twitter and I answer people&#8217;s questions, and you would be amazed at the amount of people who are just dying to connect with you through WordPress. Go WordPress!<br />
Hey, come to WordCamp Las Vegas on the January 10-11, 2009. See you there!</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.aceinternetmarketing.com/" title="Ace Internet Marketing">Stace Baris</a>:</strong><br />
My name is Stace Baris with aceinternetmarketing.com. And WordPress has changed my life because it is open source, lots of great Plugins for doing SEO getting my content out there, lots of widgets I can use and also made affiliate marketing really easy with great Amazon Plugins and all sorts of things. If you are serious about blogging, WordPress is the way to go and Lorelle is the person to get your info from. She&#8217;s great.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/marketing/" title="Susan Patton the Marketing Eggspert">Susan Patton</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Susan Patton the Marketing Eggspert from Sparkplugging.com/marketing. How WordPress has changed my life? Besides getting me interviewed in the bathroom at Blog World Expo, the height of  experiences, it makes it really easy. I have some tech experience but I love the creative side. So I don&#8217;t want to deal with the hard stuff. WordPress makes it easy to do what I want to do. There are Widgets for everything. There are template for everything. It&#8217;s easy. And I can worry about everything else and not my blog.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/" title="Kim Woodbridge">Kim Woodbridge</a>:</strong> WordPress has changed my life by giving me confidence in my abilities and helping me earn money. I&#8217;ve found that I love<br />
working on it. Plus, I&#8217;ve met so many interesting and talented people online.</p>
<p>This sounded so much better in my head but it didn&#8217;t come out quite right <img src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":-)" class="wp-smiley" />  Well, I hope it gives you the idea. Thanks! Kim Woodbridge kimwoodbridge.com [Via email]</p>
<p><strong>Naked Bones:</strong> I would say WordPress has changed my life, and it has made it easier. It gave me the room to empty my mind of the everyday stuff we all go through. [Via blog comment]</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/" title="SparkPlugging">Wendy Piersall</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Wendy Piersall. I&#8217;m CEO of the SparkPlugging.com. Looking back I was remembering when I first started my brand. I kicked it off with WordPress. WordPress made it absolutely easy for me with little-to-know tech experience whatsoever to create a powerful brand that is now rocking the blogosphere. I tell everybody now to just start with WordPress. It&#8217;s brain dead easy and it&#8217;s extremely just brilliant and I don&#8217;t know how we could function with out it. We owe a lot to you WordPress. We love you.</p>
<p><strong>Owen Cutajar:</strong> [from Twitter] WP means I can build a great new website, secure and loaded with functionality, all b4 breakfast. Good Luck at #wordcampdx.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.heather-rasley.com/" title="heather rasley">Heather Rasley</a>:</strong> Hi, my name is Heather Rasley, the deputy at Automattic. I made the switch to WordPress after discovering that all my favorite awesome bloggers use it. I&#8217;m very happy to be working for Automattic and making other people happy, too. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://jane.wordpress.com/" title="jane for short">Jane Wells</a>:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Jane Wells and I&#8217;m the user experience person with Automattic. WordPress has changed my life by exposing me to a kick ass community of open source developers and allowing me to work with the best guys in the world.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.contentrobot.com/" title="Content Robot">Karen Jackie and Dana Rockel</a>:</strong> I&#8217;m Karen Jackie partner of Content Robot and Dana Rockel from Content Robot. WordPress has changed our lives because it has actually given us an entrepreneurial spirit and we produce WordPress blogs for clients all over the world. WordPress is a great platform. We started out as a blogging company and moved to WordPress and we don&#8217;t do any other platforms right now. WordPress is it.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.mollermarketing.com/" title="Nate Moller of Moller Marketing">Nathan Moller</a>:</strong> My name is Nate Moeller from MollerMarketing.com. Without WordPress I don&#8217;t know where I would be in the blogging community. What else is there. Blogging is WordPress.</p>
<p><a href="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-close.jpg"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/fairyblogmother-close.jpg?w=300" alt="" title="WordPress Fairy Blogmother (Lorelle VanFossen) on the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon" width="300" height="223" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3081" /></a><strong>Fairy Blogmother:</strong> <em>Oh, no. Not again.<br />
They must be redesigning the interface. Sigh.<br />
Can&#8217;t they leave anything alone. They keep messing with things.<br />
It was just fine the way it was. Why do they have to keep changing things?<br />
ARGH!</em></p>
<p>At WordCamp Portland, I surprised the audience from behind, wearing my WordPress Fairy Blogmother outfit. I spoke about the points mentioned at the beginning of this article, and asked the audience to come forward with their &#8220;testimonies&#8221; on how WordPress changed their lives. I was stunned at the number of people wanting to share their stories, nearly bringing the audience, and myself, to tears. </p>
<p>You can see the video of part of the <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/744252" title="Dale Chumbley - WordCamp Portland - Lorelle VanFossen as the WordPress Fairy Blogmother">presentation by Dale Chumbley streamed live</a> from Cubespace in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>The end of the program featured <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/" title="How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily">Glenda Watson Hyatt: How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily</a>, a video on how this woman uses WordPress to blog only with her left thumb. Because WordPress continues to be the most accessible and disabled-user friendly blogging platform around, she has opened up her sphere of influence and network of relationships around the world as her blog allows her to &#8220;speak out&#8221; when her body won&#8217;t. </p>
<p>As we design and develop WordPress Themes, Plugins, and code, the WordPress Community needs to remember that Glenda is an important representative of our users.</p>
<p>Thank you again to everyone who helped me put this together, everyone whose lives have been touched my WordPress, and everyone who has helped changed my life with WordPress.</p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif" alt="" /><br />
<hr />
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<p><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/rss.png" alt="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress" /></a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress">Subscribe</a>  <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/LorelleOnWordPress" title="Feedburner Lorelle on WordPress Feed"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/feedburnericon.gif" alt="Feedburner icon" />Via Feedburner</a>  <a href="http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=182399" title="Lorelle on WordPress - full site feed email subscription"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/email.gif" alt="" />Subscribe by Email</a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/" title="Visit Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/pointer.gif" alt="" />Visit</a><br /><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/about/" title="Copyright Protected by Brent and Lorelle VanFossen">Copyright Lorelle VanFossen</a>, the author of <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/books/blogging-tips/" title="Blogging Tips Book By Lorelle VanFossen"><em>Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging</em></a>.</font></p>
Posted in WordPress News&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3072/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3072&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";}i:17;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:61:"Weblog Tools Collection: Ian Stewart On Child Themes - Part 1";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4273";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/04/ian-stewart-on-child-themes-part-1/";s:11:"description";s:9955:"<p>Child themes are a trend which appears to be gaining traction everywhere you look. Theme authors such as Ian Stewart, Justin Tadlock and Darren Hoyt are just a few of the influential people pushing this concept. In order to try and grasp an understanding of child themes, I interviewed Ian Stewart of <a href="http://themeshaper.com/" target="_blank">Themeshaper.com</a>. His responses were so long, this interview will end up being published in two parts. Here is part 1.</p>
<p><strong>1. First off, could you please explain what Child themes are in the simplest way possible?</strong></p>
<p>A Child Theme is a WordPress theme that installs and activates just like any other WordPress theme—with 2 crucial differences. Firstly, it requires no PHP template files of it&#8217;s own to work. That&#8217;s because it uses the template files of a defined Parent Theme. The Parent Theme must be installed—but not activated—in your blog&#8217;s themes directory for the Child Theme to work.</p>
<p>Secondly, as of WordPress 2.7, template files located in your Child Theme folder will be used instead of the template file in your Parent Theme folder. Don&#8217;t like how the header is coded up for a particular theme you want to edit? Copy the header.php file from your Parent theme into your Child Theme folder and make the change there. WordPress, as of 2.7, will look for header.php (or any possible template file) in the Child Theme first and use the Child Theme template file instead. This new feature in WordPress 2.7 makes custom theming really exciting and even easier.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s really very simple to make your own Child Theme. So simple, I can tell you and your readers how to do it right here in four ridiculously easy steps. It&#8217;ll help you get your head around using a Child Theme if you follow along (<em>with a test blog</em>—this&#8217;ll be easy but our test theme isn&#8217;t going to be pretty).</p>
<p>1. Make a folder in your blog themes directory called &#8220;achildthemetest&#8221;.</p>
<p>2. Create a &#8220;style.css&#8221; file in that folder with the following code copy-pasted into that &#8220;style.css&#8221; file.</p>
<pre>/*
Theme Name: A Child Theme Test
Theme URI:
Description: Trying out a Child Theme with the classic theme
Author:
Author URI:
Template: classic
Version:
*/

/*
For the sake of simplicity we're going to import
the classic stylesheet and override the styles.
You don't have to do this though. You can just
start fresh with new CSS or copy over large chunks of
the original styles and edit them here.
*/
@import url(../classic/style.css);

/*
Now, for a demonstration, let's make all the anchors red.
*/
a {
color:red;
}</pre>
<p>3. Refresh your blog&#8217;s theme directory in the WordPress admin. You should see a theme called &#8220;A Child Theme Test&#8221;. It&#8217;s using the classic theme as a Parent Theme. If you look at the code  above you should see a line that starts with &#8220;Template&#8221; it&#8217;s there that we defined that Parent Theme as &#8220;classic&#8221;, the folder name of our Parent Theme (which could be any installed theme).</p>
<p>4. Activate your new Child Theme and check out your blog. Are all the links in the main content area red? Congratulations. You just made a WordPress Child Theme. You can now edit your WordPress theme of choice—in this instance, the Classic theme—through CSS alone without having to modify any of the original template files. (If you&#8217;re a more advanced WordPress developer you can also include a functions.php file in your Child Theme that lets you interact with WordPress and your themes just like a plugin. But that&#8217;s another story altogether.)</p>
<p><strong> 2. What are some of the benefits that child themes offer versus stand alone themes?</strong></p>
<p>There&#8217;s 2 main benefits for the end user when it comes to using a Child Theme versus editing a theme directly: Simplicity and Upgrade-readiness. To explain, I&#8217;ll tell you why I use a Child Theme of my own theme, <a title="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" href="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" target="_blank">Thematic</a>,<a href="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" target="_blank"></a> on ThemeShaper.com. That&#8217;s right, I&#8217;m not even editing my own theme directly on my own WordPress Theme blog.</p>
<p>Firstly, it really is just simpler. I currently have only 2 files in my Child Theme folder: style.css and functions.php. Everything else is coming from the same Thematic template files anyone can download and use. When I want to change the look of my theme, I do it in style.css. If I want to get really serious with theme changes, like, plugin-serious, I write some simple code in functions.php. I don&#8217;t think about my Parent Theme and, excepting the XHTML it eventually outputs and displays in my browser, I don&#8217;t even look at it. Except! Except when it comes time to upgrade.</p>
<p>When I need to upgrade Thematic, my Parent Theme, I can do so without worries. That&#8217;s because I haven&#8217;t touched the original template files. I haven&#8217;t edited the header. I haven&#8217;t edited the footer. I haven&#8217;t edited single.php. Or index.php. All my theme edits have been made in the stylesheet and functions file of my Child Theme.</p>
<p>Look at it this way: I have another blog I manage with a really fresh and distinctive design that I get compliments on all the time. Unfortunately, I made that design by hacking up and heavily modifying The Sandbox <em>version 0.6</em>. If I wanted to upgrade to a newer version of The Sandbox I&#8217;d have to recreate that design. That means I&#8217;d have to pull the theme apart, find all my changes, and reintegrate it with a newer version of the theme. If I&#8217;d made the modifications in a Child Theme upgrading would mean uploading a newer version of The Sandbox and, well, that&#8217;s it really. How long does it take to upload a theme? 10 seconds? When you&#8217;re using a Child Theme, upgrading turns from a day long affair into a 10 second chore that can be done while you&#8217;re reading weblogtoolscollection.com.</p>
<p><strong> 3. Based on what I&#8217;ve seen, the child theme trend is really starting to gain traction thanks in large part to you and other theme designers. How long has the ability to develop child themes been available for WordPress? If it&#8217;s been available to develop for some time now, why is it that we are only now starting to see heavy development in this area?</strong></p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Child Themes have been available since version 2.1. But I first heard about Child Themes when I entered the Sandbox Designs Competition (<a href="http://sndbx.org/" target="_blank">http://sndbx.org/</a>). Every entry there is a Child Theme that defines The Sandbox as it&#8217;s Parent Theme and modifies the theme with CSS alone. Consequently, I think a lot of the credit for popularizing Child Themes needs to go to Scott Wallick (<a href="http://www.plaintxt.org/" target="_blank">http://www.plaintxt.org/</a>), co-creator of The Sandbox and organizer of the Sandbox Designs Competition.</p>
<p>But that brings us to why I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s been much talk about Child Themes: I think there&#8217;s sort of a lack of faith amongst theme authors and users when it comes to what you can actually do with CSS. WordPress developer and theme author Ben Eastaugh thinks that &#8220;one reason it hasn&#8217;t been more widely publicized is that [modifying Parent Themes with CSS] wasn&#8217;t, as it stood, terribly useful&#8221; (<a href="http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/" target="_blank">http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/</a>). I&#8217;d disagree with that in principle but that sort of sums up the feeling of theme authors that have been ignoring this feature.</p>
<p>And, by the way, if you don&#8217;t think Child Themes can really do anything with CSS alone make sure you check out the winning entries in The Sandbox Designs competition (<a href="http://sndbx.org/results/" target="_blank">http://sndbx.org/results/</a>) or the oft-mentioned and linked to CSS Zen Garden (<a href="http://www.csszengarden.com/" target="_blank">http://www.csszengarden.com/</a>).</p>
<p>But regardless of what you think you can do with CSS alone, now that WordPress 2.7 let&#8217;s you overwrite Parent template files from your Child Theme I expect we&#8217;ll be seeing more and more people using them.</p>
<p>Plus, there&#8217;s a few other WordPress developments in the works that&#8217;ll likely further popularize this method of theme modifying. Namely, the WordPress.com Themes Marketplace and allowing GPL Child Themes to be released through the WordPress Theme Directory.</p>
<p><strong>4. Before we move on, could you explain what a theme framework is? Perhaps providing a few examples for the readers.</strong></p>
<p>In my mind, a Theme Framework would be a theme that, at the very least, was made with clear intentions of being used to develop further themes. A starting point theme if you will.  I think a <em>good</em> Theme Framework also shows consideration of, or planning for, what can be done with Child Themes, now and in WordPress 2.7+. And that&#8217;s because, really, you shouldn&#8217;t be touching a framework if you can help it.</p>
<p>Think of WordPress as a framework where the contents of the database are output in a controlled fashion by your theme. We don&#8217;t go in and tinker with the WordPress core in order to make our themes work better (well, some people do but that&#8217;s another story again). The same thing with a theme framework. We can modify the theme framework with our Child Themes and leave the framework pristine for easy, safe upgrades.</p>
<p><strong>This concludes part 1 of the interview. Stay tuned for Part 2 which will be arriving shortly.</strong></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:30:05 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";}s:7:"summary";s:9955:"<p>Child themes are a trend which appears to be gaining traction everywhere you look. Theme authors such as Ian Stewart, Justin Tadlock and Darren Hoyt are just a few of the influential people pushing this concept. In order to try and grasp an understanding of child themes, I interviewed Ian Stewart of <a href="http://themeshaper.com/" target="_blank">Themeshaper.com</a>. His responses were so long, this interview will end up being published in two parts. Here is part 1.</p>
<p><strong>1. First off, could you please explain what Child themes are in the simplest way possible?</strong></p>
<p>A Child Theme is a WordPress theme that installs and activates just like any other WordPress theme—with 2 crucial differences. Firstly, it requires no PHP template files of it&#8217;s own to work. That&#8217;s because it uses the template files of a defined Parent Theme. The Parent Theme must be installed—but not activated—in your blog&#8217;s themes directory for the Child Theme to work.</p>
<p>Secondly, as of WordPress 2.7, template files located in your Child Theme folder will be used instead of the template file in your Parent Theme folder. Don&#8217;t like how the header is coded up for a particular theme you want to edit? Copy the header.php file from your Parent theme into your Child Theme folder and make the change there. WordPress, as of 2.7, will look for header.php (or any possible template file) in the Child Theme first and use the Child Theme template file instead. This new feature in WordPress 2.7 makes custom theming really exciting and even easier.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s really very simple to make your own Child Theme. So simple, I can tell you and your readers how to do it right here in four ridiculously easy steps. It&#8217;ll help you get your head around using a Child Theme if you follow along (<em>with a test blog</em>—this&#8217;ll be easy but our test theme isn&#8217;t going to be pretty).</p>
<p>1. Make a folder in your blog themes directory called &#8220;achildthemetest&#8221;.</p>
<p>2. Create a &#8220;style.css&#8221; file in that folder with the following code copy-pasted into that &#8220;style.css&#8221; file.</p>
<pre>/*
Theme Name: A Child Theme Test
Theme URI:
Description: Trying out a Child Theme with the classic theme
Author:
Author URI:
Template: classic
Version:
*/

/*
For the sake of simplicity we're going to import
the classic stylesheet and override the styles.
You don't have to do this though. You can just
start fresh with new CSS or copy over large chunks of
the original styles and edit them here.
*/
@import url(../classic/style.css);

/*
Now, for a demonstration, let's make all the anchors red.
*/
a {
color:red;
}</pre>
<p>3. Refresh your blog&#8217;s theme directory in the WordPress admin. You should see a theme called &#8220;A Child Theme Test&#8221;. It&#8217;s using the classic theme as a Parent Theme. If you look at the code  above you should see a line that starts with &#8220;Template&#8221; it&#8217;s there that we defined that Parent Theme as &#8220;classic&#8221;, the folder name of our Parent Theme (which could be any installed theme).</p>
<p>4. Activate your new Child Theme and check out your blog. Are all the links in the main content area red? Congratulations. You just made a WordPress Child Theme. You can now edit your WordPress theme of choice—in this instance, the Classic theme—through CSS alone without having to modify any of the original template files. (If you&#8217;re a more advanced WordPress developer you can also include a functions.php file in your Child Theme that lets you interact with WordPress and your themes just like a plugin. But that&#8217;s another story altogether.)</p>
<p><strong> 2. What are some of the benefits that child themes offer versus stand alone themes?</strong></p>
<p>There&#8217;s 2 main benefits for the end user when it comes to using a Child Theme versus editing a theme directly: Simplicity and Upgrade-readiness. To explain, I&#8217;ll tell you why I use a Child Theme of my own theme, <a title="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" href="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" target="_blank">Thematic</a>,<a href="http://themeshaper.com/thematic-for-wordpress/" target="_blank"></a> on ThemeShaper.com. That&#8217;s right, I&#8217;m not even editing my own theme directly on my own WordPress Theme blog.</p>
<p>Firstly, it really is just simpler. I currently have only 2 files in my Child Theme folder: style.css and functions.php. Everything else is coming from the same Thematic template files anyone can download and use. When I want to change the look of my theme, I do it in style.css. If I want to get really serious with theme changes, like, plugin-serious, I write some simple code in functions.php. I don&#8217;t think about my Parent Theme and, excepting the XHTML it eventually outputs and displays in my browser, I don&#8217;t even look at it. Except! Except when it comes time to upgrade.</p>
<p>When I need to upgrade Thematic, my Parent Theme, I can do so without worries. That&#8217;s because I haven&#8217;t touched the original template files. I haven&#8217;t edited the header. I haven&#8217;t edited the footer. I haven&#8217;t edited single.php. Or index.php. All my theme edits have been made in the stylesheet and functions file of my Child Theme.</p>
<p>Look at it this way: I have another blog I manage with a really fresh and distinctive design that I get compliments on all the time. Unfortunately, I made that design by hacking up and heavily modifying The Sandbox <em>version 0.6</em>. If I wanted to upgrade to a newer version of The Sandbox I&#8217;d have to recreate that design. That means I&#8217;d have to pull the theme apart, find all my changes, and reintegrate it with a newer version of the theme. If I&#8217;d made the modifications in a Child Theme upgrading would mean uploading a newer version of The Sandbox and, well, that&#8217;s it really. How long does it take to upload a theme? 10 seconds? When you&#8217;re using a Child Theme, upgrading turns from a day long affair into a 10 second chore that can be done while you&#8217;re reading weblogtoolscollection.com.</p>
<p><strong> 3. Based on what I&#8217;ve seen, the child theme trend is really starting to gain traction thanks in large part to you and other theme designers. How long has the ability to develop child themes been available for WordPress? If it&#8217;s been available to develop for some time now, why is it that we are only now starting to see heavy development in this area?</strong></p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Child Themes have been available since version 2.1. But I first heard about Child Themes when I entered the Sandbox Designs Competition (<a href="http://sndbx.org/" target="_blank">http://sndbx.org/</a>). Every entry there is a Child Theme that defines The Sandbox as it&#8217;s Parent Theme and modifies the theme with CSS alone. Consequently, I think a lot of the credit for popularizing Child Themes needs to go to Scott Wallick (<a href="http://www.plaintxt.org/" target="_blank">http://www.plaintxt.org/</a>), co-creator of The Sandbox and organizer of the Sandbox Designs Competition.</p>
<p>But that brings us to why I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s been much talk about Child Themes: I think there&#8217;s sort of a lack of faith amongst theme authors and users when it comes to what you can actually do with CSS. WordPress developer and theme author Ben Eastaugh thinks that &#8220;one reason it hasn&#8217;t been more widely publicized is that [modifying Parent Themes with CSS] wasn&#8217;t, as it stood, terribly useful&#8221; (<a href="http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/" target="_blank">http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/</a>). I&#8217;d disagree with that in principle but that sort of sums up the feeling of theme authors that have been ignoring this feature.</p>
<p>And, by the way, if you don&#8217;t think Child Themes can really do anything with CSS alone make sure you check out the winning entries in The Sandbox Designs competition (<a href="http://sndbx.org/results/" target="_blank">http://sndbx.org/results/</a>) or the oft-mentioned and linked to CSS Zen Garden (<a href="http://www.csszengarden.com/" target="_blank">http://www.csszengarden.com/</a>).</p>
<p>But regardless of what you think you can do with CSS alone, now that WordPress 2.7 let&#8217;s you overwrite Parent template files from your Child Theme I expect we&#8217;ll be seeing more and more people using them.</p>
<p>Plus, there&#8217;s a few other WordPress developments in the works that&#8217;ll likely further popularize this method of theme modifying. Namely, the WordPress.com Themes Marketplace and allowing GPL Child Themes to be released through the WordPress Theme Directory.</p>
<p><strong>4. Before we move on, could you explain what a theme framework is? Perhaps providing a few examples for the readers.</strong></p>
<p>In my mind, a Theme Framework would be a theme that, at the very least, was made with clear intentions of being used to develop further themes. A starting point theme if you will.  I think a <em>good</em> Theme Framework also shows consideration of, or planning for, what can be done with Child Themes, now and in WordPress 2.7+. And that&#8217;s because, really, you shouldn&#8217;t be touching a framework if you can help it.</p>
<p>Think of WordPress as a framework where the contents of the database are output in a controlled fashion by your theme. We don&#8217;t go in and tinker with the WordPress core in order to make our themes work better (well, some people do but that&#8217;s another story again). The same thing with a theme framework. We can modify the theme framework with our Child Themes and leave the framework pristine for easy, safe upgrades.</p>
<p><strong>This concludes part 1 of the interview. Stay tuned for Part 2 which will be arriving shortly.</strong></p>";}i:18;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/04";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4294";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/04/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-1004/";s:11:"description";s:2102:"<p><a href="http://businessdirectory.squarecompass.com/"><strong>Business Directory for WordPress</strong></a></p>
<p>Business Directory for Wordpress is an easy way to host a free directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members. Invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing for themselves on your blog</p>
<h5><a href="http://www.rutschmann.biz/php-mysql-javascript-und-ajax/multibox-wordpress-plugin"><strong>Wordpress Multibox Plugin</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin brings the great Multibox from phatfusion to your blog images.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recentcomments/"><strong>WP-RecentComments</strong></a></h5>
<p>Display recent comments in your blog sidebar.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woopra/"><strong>Woopra Analytics Plugin</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin adds Woopra&#8217;s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/collapsing-categories/"><strong>Collapsing Categories</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin uses Javascript to dynamically expand or collapsable the set of posts for each category.</p>
<h5><a href="http://brimosoft.nl/lazyest/"><strong>Lazyest Gallery</strong></a></h5>
<p>Lazyest Gallery is an integrated image gallery with automatic thumb and slide creation</p>
<p><a href="http://bueltge.de/wordpress-admin-theme-adminimize/674/"><strong>Adminimize</strong></a></p>
<p>Visually compresses the administratrive header so that more admin page content can be initially seen.</p>
<h5><strong><a href="http://www.commentluv.com/download/ajax-commentluv-installation/">CommentLuv</a></strong></h5>
<p>Appends a titled link using AJAX to the authors last blog post on their comment giving back some luv to the people that join your discussion.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/"><strong>HeadSpace2</strong></a></p>
<p>HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:30:07 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:2102:"<p><a href="http://businessdirectory.squarecompass.com/"><strong>Business Directory for WordPress</strong></a></p>
<p>Business Directory for Wordpress is an easy way to host a free directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members. Invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing for themselves on your blog</p>
<h5><a href="http://www.rutschmann.biz/php-mysql-javascript-und-ajax/multibox-wordpress-plugin"><strong>Wordpress Multibox Plugin</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin brings the great Multibox from phatfusion to your blog images.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recentcomments/"><strong>WP-RecentComments</strong></a></h5>
<p>Display recent comments in your blog sidebar.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woopra/"><strong>Woopra Analytics Plugin</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin adds Woopra&#8217;s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings.</p>
<h5><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/collapsing-categories/"><strong>Collapsing Categories</strong></a></h5>
<p>This plugin uses Javascript to dynamically expand or collapsable the set of posts for each category.</p>
<h5><a href="http://brimosoft.nl/lazyest/"><strong>Lazyest Gallery</strong></a></h5>
<p>Lazyest Gallery is an integrated image gallery with automatic thumb and slide creation</p>
<p><a href="http://bueltge.de/wordpress-admin-theme-adminimize/674/"><strong>Adminimize</strong></a></p>
<p>Visually compresses the administratrive header so that more admin page content can be initially seen.</p>
<h5><strong><a href="http://www.commentluv.com/download/ajax-commentluv-installation/">CommentLuv</a></strong></h5>
<p>Appends a titled link using AJAX to the authors last blog post on their comment giving back some luv to the people that join your discussion.</p>
<p><a href="http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/"><strong>HeadSpace2</strong></a></p>
<p>HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks.</p>";}i:19;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:52:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Weekly Episode 23";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4287";s:4:"link";s:81:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/04/wordpress-weekly-episode-23/";s:11:"description";s:3689:"<p><img src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/newwwpweeklylogo.png" align="right" /> Episode 23 of WordPress Weekly is now ready for your consumption. In this episode, Keith and I discuss the IntenseDebate acquisition and what that means for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org while also discussing the business aspects of the deal. We also give our thoughts on the developmental version of WordPress 2.7 thus far. We highlight the fact that there has been at least two differen UI surveys available to the public highlighting the increased awareness as well as end user participation into the final product. There is a major difference between the way the UI is being handled in terms of end user feedback between WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.7. Last but not least, Keith and I give you our plugin picks up the week. </p>
<h2>Stories Discussed On The Show:</h2>
<p><b><a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/intense-debate-goes-automattic/" target="_blank">Automattic acquires IntenseDebate</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/02/first-look-at-wordpress-27/" target="_blank">Wordpress 2.7</a> - </b><b>Tentatively Scheduled For Release On November 10th</b></p>
<p><b>WordPress Usability Surveys</b>: / <b><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-27-navigation-options-survey/" target="_blank">Navigation Options</a></b> / <b><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-2-7-survey-no2/" target="_blank">Where To Put That Search Box</a></b>&#160;</p>
<p><b><a href="http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/" target="_blank">WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements</a></b> </p>
<p>Didn&#8217;t get the chance to mention this on the show but I wanted to pass along a happy birthday to <a href="http://www.wpcandy.com" target="_blank">WPCandy.com</a> as they have turned 1 year old.</p>
<h2>Plugins Of The Week:</h2>
<p><b>Jeff - </b><a href="http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/insights" target="_blank">Insights by Vladimir Prelovac</a></p>
<p><b>Keith - </b><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/progressive-license/" target="_blank">Progressive License v1.0 (Alex King / Crowd Favorite)</a></p>
<h2>Announcements:</h2>
<p> Hallsofmontezuma otherwise known as Michael Torbert will be appearing on the first half hour of <strong>WordPress Weekly episode 24 Friday October 10th, 2008 at 8 P.M. EST</strong>. During this interview, we&#8217;ll be covering what it takes to write plugins for WordPress, what it&#8217;s like to maintain a plugin used by plenty of WordPress users and much more. If you have questions for this plugin author, be sure to show up during the live stream and ask them in the chatroom or, you can ask them here in the comments.</p>
<p>Also, pay attention to the podcast feed as later this week, you&#8217;ll receive a dose of extra content that is not directly related to the podcast.</p>
<p>Thanks to Ryan Mccue, we now have an IRC room setup for the show for those who are technically savvy and who don&#8217;t enjoy the Talkshoe interface. Once I receive the IRC information, I&#8217;ll pass it along.</p>
<h2>WPWeekly Meta:</h2>
<p><strong>Next Episode:</strong> Friday October 10th, 2008 8P.M. EST</p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: </strong><a href="itpc://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss34224.xml" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Length Of Episode:</strong> 1 Hour 3 Minutes</p>
<p><strong>Download The Show:</strong> <a href="http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-34224/TS-147937.mp3" target="_blank">WordPressWeeklyEpisode23.mp3</a></p>
<p><strong>Listen To Episode #23:</strong><br />
</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:02:30 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";}s:7:"summary";s:3689:"<p><img src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/newwwpweeklylogo.png" align="right" /> Episode 23 of WordPress Weekly is now ready for your consumption. In this episode, Keith and I discuss the IntenseDebate acquisition and what that means for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org while also discussing the business aspects of the deal. We also give our thoughts on the developmental version of WordPress 2.7 thus far. We highlight the fact that there has been at least two differen UI surveys available to the public highlighting the increased awareness as well as end user participation into the final product. There is a major difference between the way the UI is being handled in terms of end user feedback between WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.7. Last but not least, Keith and I give you our plugin picks up the week. </p>
<h2>Stories Discussed On The Show:</h2>
<p><b><a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/intense-debate-goes-automattic/" target="_blank">Automattic acquires IntenseDebate</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/02/first-look-at-wordpress-27/" target="_blank">Wordpress 2.7</a> - </b><b>Tentatively Scheduled For Release On November 10th</b></p>
<p><b>WordPress Usability Surveys</b>: / <b><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-27-navigation-options-survey/" target="_blank">Navigation Options</a></b> / <b><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-2-7-survey-no2/" target="_blank">Where To Put That Search Box</a></b>&#160;</p>
<p><b><a href="http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/" target="_blank">WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements</a></b> </p>
<p>Didn&#8217;t get the chance to mention this on the show but I wanted to pass along a happy birthday to <a href="http://www.wpcandy.com" target="_blank">WPCandy.com</a> as they have turned 1 year old.</p>
<h2>Plugins Of The Week:</h2>
<p><b>Jeff - </b><a href="http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/insights" target="_blank">Insights by Vladimir Prelovac</a></p>
<p><b>Keith - </b><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/progressive-license/" target="_blank">Progressive License v1.0 (Alex King / Crowd Favorite)</a></p>
<h2>Announcements:</h2>
<p> Hallsofmontezuma otherwise known as Michael Torbert will be appearing on the first half hour of <strong>WordPress Weekly episode 24 Friday October 10th, 2008 at 8 P.M. EST</strong>. During this interview, we&#8217;ll be covering what it takes to write plugins for WordPress, what it&#8217;s like to maintain a plugin used by plenty of WordPress users and much more. If you have questions for this plugin author, be sure to show up during the live stream and ask them in the chatroom or, you can ask them here in the comments.</p>
<p>Also, pay attention to the podcast feed as later this week, you&#8217;ll receive a dose of extra content that is not directly related to the podcast.</p>
<p>Thanks to Ryan Mccue, we now have an IRC room setup for the show for those who are technically savvy and who don&#8217;t enjoy the Talkshoe interface. Once I receive the IRC information, I&#8217;ll pass it along.</p>
<h2>WPWeekly Meta:</h2>
<p><strong>Next Episode:</strong> Friday October 10th, 2008 8P.M. EST</p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: </strong><a href="itpc://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss34224.xml" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Length Of Episode:</strong> 1 Hour 3 Minutes</p>
<p><strong>Download The Show:</strong> <a href="http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-34224/TS-147937.mp3" target="_blank">WordPressWeeklyEpisode23.mp3</a></p>
<p><strong>Listen To Episode #23:</strong><br />
</p>";}i:20;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 10/03";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4285";s:4:"link";s:87:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/03/wordpress-theme-releases-for-1003/";s:11:"description";s:1936:"<p><a href="http://dirtybluemedia.com/portfolio/desk-space-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Desk Space</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://dirtybluemedia.com/themes/deskspace"><img title="wood-bg-dark-150x150" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/woodbgdark150x150.jpg" border="0" alt="wood-bg-dark-150x150" width="114" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Desk Space is a premium free and feature rich WordPress theme. It comes with a robust set of built in features and plugins, including the ability to switch out the background wood finish color to one you like.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.divitodesign.com/2008/10/wordpress-theme-spicy-typography/"><strong>Spicy Typography</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.divitodesign.com/themes-demo/index.php?wptheme=spicy-typography"><img title="spicy-typography-screenshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/spicytypographyscreenshot.jpg" border="0" alt="spicy-typography-screenshot" width="160" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, widget ready, fast loading theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.onewaylinks.co.uk/under-water-free-wordpress-themes/"><strong>Under Water</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.onewaylinks.co.uk/Free-WP-Themes/index.php?wptheme=under-water"><img title="underwater" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/underwater.png" border="0" alt="underwater" width="155" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, Blue, White, Purple, Grey and Black widget, ready fixed width theme</p>
<p><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/01/simply-ornate-a-free-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Simply Ornate</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://honker.evaneckard.com/"><img title="simplyornate" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/simplyornate.jpg" border="0" alt="simplyornate" width="190" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column theme designed with the main focus being on patterns and typography and comes in 5 flavours.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:03:20 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:1936:"<p><a href="http://dirtybluemedia.com/portfolio/desk-space-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Desk Space</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://dirtybluemedia.com/themes/deskspace"><img title="wood-bg-dark-150x150" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/woodbgdark150x150.jpg" border="0" alt="wood-bg-dark-150x150" width="114" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Desk Space is a premium free and feature rich WordPress theme. It comes with a robust set of built in features and plugins, including the ability to switch out the background wood finish color to one you like.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.divitodesign.com/2008/10/wordpress-theme-spicy-typography/"><strong>Spicy Typography</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.divitodesign.com/themes-demo/index.php?wptheme=spicy-typography"><img title="spicy-typography-screenshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/spicytypographyscreenshot.jpg" border="0" alt="spicy-typography-screenshot" width="160" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, widget ready, fast loading theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.onewaylinks.co.uk/under-water-free-wordpress-themes/"><strong>Under Water</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.onewaylinks.co.uk/Free-WP-Themes/index.php?wptheme=under-water"><img title="underwater" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/underwater.png" border="0" alt="underwater" width="155" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, Blue, White, Purple, Grey and Black widget, ready fixed width theme</p>
<p><a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/01/simply-ornate-a-free-wordpress-theme/"><strong>Simply Ornate</strong></a></p>
<p><a href="http://honker.evaneckard.com/"><img title="simplyornate" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/10/simplyornate.jpg" border="0" alt="simplyornate" width="190" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column theme designed with the main focus being on patterns and typography and comes in 5 flavours.</p>";}i:21;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:67:"Lorelle on WP: Comcast Now Restricts Bandwidth Data Transfer Levels";s:4:"guid";s:36:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=3069";s:4:"link";s:93:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/comcast-now-restricts-bandwidth-data-transfer-levels/";s:11:"description";s:9449:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>If you haven&#8217;t reviewed the <a href="http://gigaom.com/2008/09/30/gigaom-white-paper-the-facts-fiction-of-bandwidth-caps/" title="The Facts &amp; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps">GigaOM White Paper: The Facts &amp; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps</a>, do it now. </p>
<p>As of Wednesday this week, Comcast, the largest provider of broadband and DSL for Internet access in the United States is going to be restricting your data transfer levels to 250 gigabytes a month. According to Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote><p>With this move, the cable company will become the symbol of a new Internet era, one that is both monitored and metered. It is an era that threatens to limit innovation and to a large extent, the possibilities for new startups.</p></blockquote>
<p>Many bloggers are part of online businesses and startups as well as suppliers of video, podcasts, and downloadable and uploaded files across the web. As web designs and WordPress Themes become more graphic and code dependent, increasing our bandwidth access levels, these limits impinge upon that grown and that access.</p>
<p>While WordPress Themes, Plugins, and Widgets account for very small levels of data transfer, what about a new WordPress user who wants to download and experiment with a lot of Themes and Plugins? Downloading more than a gig or two of WordPress stuff is rare, but if you add that to their other file downloads, like software, instant messaging, IRC, email, flickr, YouTube, podcasts, music, news, television, VoIP, and all the information and data that enters our world through our computers - those numbers add up fast.</p>
<p>I just moved from a satellite connection with a 17 gig limit. We hit the limit all the time and we weren&#8217;t downloading music or shows. I didn&#8217;t even download podcasts until I went on a trip. There were three of us using the web for our work. Download a few software programs, update your computer&#8217;s operating system, test out some Plugins, and it all adds up fast.</p>
<p>According to the White Paper, &#8220;today&#8217;s power users are tomorrow&#8217;s average users&#8221; with a predication that by 2012 we will be paying about $215 a month for Internet data access. Malik and others are fighting back with words in hopes of changing this &#8220;walled garden&#8221; limitation. I hope you join us in spreading the word.</p>
<h3>The Web Must Be Free</h3>
<p>The timing of this announcement comes the same time as the announcement of the new <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/" title="World Wide Web Foundation" rel="tag">World Wide Web Foundation</a> was <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/donations/knight2008/press-release" title="World Wide Web Foundation announced press release">announced</a>. In the <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/news/2008/09/welcome-to-the-world-wide-web-foundation.html" title="Welcome to the World Wide Web Foundation">welcome statement</a>, the founders, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>The World Wide Web Foundation seeks to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand the Web&#8217;s capability and robustness, and to extend the Web&#8217;s benefits to all people on the planet. The Web Foundation brings together business leaders, technology innovators, academia, government, NGOs, and experts in many fields to tackle challenges that, like the Web, are global in scale.</p>
<p>One of the focuses of the World Wide Web foundation is to investigate, in its Web for Society program, how to lower the barriers of accessing the Web for people who are not able, today, to find accessible and usable information.</p></blockquote>
<p>While I&#8217;m totally in favor and support breaking down communication and language barriers, as well as all social, cultural, and technological barriers, the biggest barrier we have to fight is greed. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s getting harder and harder to find free access to the web. Someone has to pay. With belts tightening around the world, will Internet access be only for the rich?</p>
<p>The Internet was originally started and built on lines abandoned by the phone companies, the same companies who struggled to find ways of charging for that access after they realized they were missing out on the financial possibilities of connecting via the Internet and web. They have been looking under every rock to find ways of making money off this &#8220;web thing&#8221; ever since. </p>
<p>Yes, we must pay for the continued growth and access to the web, but restricting bandwidth and data transfer hurts an economy already showing the flashing red danger signal. </p>
<p>Be warned, be aware, and let Comcast and others know that you do not want this. Fight back with your voice. Spread the word. </p>
<p>I remember when Arthur C. Clarke predicted that long distance telephone calls would be free by the end of the century. I thought it odd since he was a very intelligent man and he lived in the same world that I did, one where corporate greed controls everything. I couldn&#8217;t see such a thing as being possible, but with the web, it became possible. Will that freedom continue or will corporate greed continue to slip into our pockets?</p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif" alt="" /><br />
<hr />
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<p><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/rss.png" alt="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress" /></a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress">Subscribe</a>  <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/LorelleOnWordPress" title="Feedburner Lorelle on WordPress Feed"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/feedburnericon.gif" alt="Feedburner icon" />Via Feedburner</a>  <a href="http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=182399" title="Lorelle on WordPress - full site feed email subscription"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/email.gif" alt="" />Subscribe by Email</a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/" title="Visit Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/pointer.gif" alt="" />Visit</a><br /><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/about/" title="Copyright Protected by Brent and Lorelle VanFossen">Copyright Lorelle VanFossen</a>, the author of <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/books/blogging-tips/" title="Blogging Tips Book By Lorelle VanFossen"><em>Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging</em></a>.</font></p>
Posted in Web Wise, WordPress News&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3069&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:04:58 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:17:"Lorelle VanFossen";}s:7:"summary";s:9449:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>If you haven&#8217;t reviewed the <a href="http://gigaom.com/2008/09/30/gigaom-white-paper-the-facts-fiction-of-bandwidth-caps/" title="The Facts &amp; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps">GigaOM White Paper: The Facts &amp; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps</a>, do it now. </p>
<p>As of Wednesday this week, Comcast, the largest provider of broadband and DSL for Internet access in the United States is going to be restricting your data transfer levels to 250 gigabytes a month. According to Om Malik:</p>
<blockquote><p>With this move, the cable company will become the symbol of a new Internet era, one that is both monitored and metered. It is an era that threatens to limit innovation and to a large extent, the possibilities for new startups.</p></blockquote>
<p>Many bloggers are part of online businesses and startups as well as suppliers of video, podcasts, and downloadable and uploaded files across the web. As web designs and WordPress Themes become more graphic and code dependent, increasing our bandwidth access levels, these limits impinge upon that grown and that access.</p>
<p>While WordPress Themes, Plugins, and Widgets account for very small levels of data transfer, what about a new WordPress user who wants to download and experiment with a lot of Themes and Plugins? Downloading more than a gig or two of WordPress stuff is rare, but if you add that to their other file downloads, like software, instant messaging, IRC, email, flickr, YouTube, podcasts, music, news, television, VoIP, and all the information and data that enters our world through our computers - those numbers add up fast.</p>
<p>I just moved from a satellite connection with a 17 gig limit. We hit the limit all the time and we weren&#8217;t downloading music or shows. I didn&#8217;t even download podcasts until I went on a trip. There were three of us using the web for our work. Download a few software programs, update your computer&#8217;s operating system, test out some Plugins, and it all adds up fast.</p>
<p>According to the White Paper, &#8220;today&#8217;s power users are tomorrow&#8217;s average users&#8221; with a predication that by 2012 we will be paying about $215 a month for Internet data access. Malik and others are fighting back with words in hopes of changing this &#8220;walled garden&#8221; limitation. I hope you join us in spreading the word.</p>
<h3>The Web Must Be Free</h3>
<p>The timing of this announcement comes the same time as the announcement of the new <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/" title="World Wide Web Foundation" rel="tag">World Wide Web Foundation</a> was <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/donations/knight2008/press-release" title="World Wide Web Foundation announced press release">announced</a>. In the <a href="http://www.webfoundation.org/news/2008/09/welcome-to-the-world-wide-web-foundation.html" title="Welcome to the World Wide Web Foundation">welcome statement</a>, the founders, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>The World Wide Web Foundation seeks to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand the Web&#8217;s capability and robustness, and to extend the Web&#8217;s benefits to all people on the planet. The Web Foundation brings together business leaders, technology innovators, academia, government, NGOs, and experts in many fields to tackle challenges that, like the Web, are global in scale.</p>
<p>One of the focuses of the World Wide Web foundation is to investigate, in its Web for Society program, how to lower the barriers of accessing the Web for people who are not able, today, to find accessible and usable information.</p></blockquote>
<p>While I&#8217;m totally in favor and support breaking down communication and language barriers, as well as all social, cultural, and technological barriers, the biggest barrier we have to fight is greed. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s getting harder and harder to find free access to the web. Someone has to pay. With belts tightening around the world, will Internet access be only for the rich?</p>
<p>The Internet was originally started and built on lines abandoned by the phone companies, the same companies who struggled to find ways of charging for that access after they realized they were missing out on the financial possibilities of connecting via the Internet and web. They have been looking under every rock to find ways of making money off this &#8220;web thing&#8221; ever since. </p>
<p>Yes, we must pay for the continued growth and access to the web, but restricting bandwidth and data transfer hurts an economy already showing the flashing red danger signal. </p>
<p>Be warned, be aware, and let Comcast and others know that you do not want this. Fight back with your voice. Spread the word. </p>
<p>I remember when Arthur C. Clarke predicted that long distance telephone calls would be free by the end of the century. I thought it odd since he was a very intelligent man and he lived in the same world that I did, one where corporate greed controls everything. I couldn&#8217;t see such a thing as being possible, but with the web, it became possible. Will that freedom continue or will corporate greed continue to slip into our pockets?</p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif" alt="" /><br />
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Posted in Web Wise, WordPress News&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3069/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3069&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";}i:22;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:15:"Matt: In Berlin";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7897";s:4:"link";s:31:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/in-berlin/";s:11:"description";s:222:"<p>If there are any WordPress users that will be in Berlin next week drop me an email - matt at my last name dot com. <img src="http://ma.tt/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:04:14 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:222:"<p>If there are any WordPress users that will be in Berlin next week drop me an email - matt at my last name dot com. <img src="http://ma.tt/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /></p>";}i:23;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:72:"Lorelle on WP: Glenda Watson Hyatt: How WordPress Changes Her Life Daily";s:4:"guid";s:36:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?p=3060";s:4:"link";s:97:"http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/";s:11:"description";s:7330:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>I was so thrilled when <a href="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/" title="Do It Myself Blog - Glenda Watson Hyatt">Glenda Watson Hyatt of the Do It Myself Blog</a> volunteered her story of how WordPress changed her life for my <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland</a> keynote presentation. I&#8217;ll be sharing the videos and pictures of the program in the next few days, but I wanted to share with you Glenda&#8217;s personal story.</p>
<p><span><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/"><img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/ajqq9bHomn8/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span></p>
<p>As you design and develop WordPress Themes and Plugins, and even WordPress itself, remember that you are serving thousands, maybe even millions of people just like Glenda. Creative, energetic members of society determined to give back to their community, yet unable to communicate in person or easily interact with a computer. They are reliant upon those of us who make the web possible, and social, to communicate with others by maintaining web accessibility standards.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/ill-do-it-myself-the-book/" title="I'll Do It Myself - The book by Glenda Watson Hyatt"><img src="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/glenda-cover_sml.jpg" class="alignleft" alt="I’ll Do It Myself by Glenda Watson Hyatt" width="150" height="210" /></a>Glenda tells her story in her book, &#8220;I&#8217;ll Do It Myself.&#8221; Imagine being unable to communicate but having a lot to say. With the help of determined friends, family, and an off-and-on-again support community, made her way through high school and then into college, and eventually into her own consulting business without much ability to talk &#8220;normally.&#8221; </p>
<p><div id="attachment_3064" class="wp-caption alignright"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/glendadarrellrellesm.jpg?w=350&#038;h=385" alt="Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo" title="Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo" width="350" height="385" class="size-full wp-image-3064" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo</p></div>When she started blogging, she discovered that she could leave behind all the years of &#8220;I don&#8217;t understand you&#8221; and &#8220;What are you trying to say?&#8221; and people thinking she was retarded or a vegetable. She could express herself. She could communicate with others with no barriers. A whole world opened up to her.</p>
<p>I was extremely lucky to spend time with Glenda and her wonderful husband, Darrell, at <a href="http://www.blogworldexpo.com/" title="Blog World Expo">Blog World Expo</a> in Las Vegas. We had a great time visiting and both were extremely excited about being included in the WordCamp Portland event through video. I&#8217;m lucky to have found two wonderful new friends and I look forward to visiting them soon in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area. </p>
<p>If you have a social media or web technology conference in the Pacific Northwest - or anywhere for that matter - and you want an incredible inspirational blogger to speak to you, get Glenda. She will change your life with her smile and attitude.</p>
<p>Thanks, Glenda!</p>
<p><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/sig.gif" alt="" /><br />
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<p><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/rss.png" alt="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress" /></a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/" title="Feed on Lorelle on WordPress">Subscribe</a>  <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/LorelleOnWordPress" title="Feedburner Lorelle on WordPress Feed"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/feedburnericon.gif" alt="Feedburner icon" />Via Feedburner</a>  <a href="http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=182399" title="Lorelle on WordPress - full site feed email subscription"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/email.gif" alt="" />Subscribe by Email</a> <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/" title="Visit Lorelle on WordPress"><img class="wp-smiley" src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/pointer.gif" alt="" />Visit</a><br /><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/about/" title="Copyright Protected by Brent and Lorelle VanFossen">Copyright Lorelle VanFossen</a>, the author of <a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/books/blogging-tips/" title="Blogging Tips Book By Lorelle VanFossen"><em>Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging</em></a>.</font></p>
Posted in Web Design, WordPress News, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3060&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:43:25 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:17:"Lorelle VanFossen";}s:7:"summary";s:7330:"<div class="snap_preview"><br /><p>I was so thrilled when <a href="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/" title="Do It Myself Blog - Glenda Watson Hyatt">Glenda Watson Hyatt of the Do It Myself Blog</a> volunteered her story of how WordPress changed her life for my <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/" title="WordCamp Portland">WordCamp Portland</a> keynote presentation. I&#8217;ll be sharing the videos and pictures of the program in the next few days, but I wanted to share with you Glenda&#8217;s personal story.</p>
<p><span><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/glenda-watson-hyatt-how-wordpress-changes-her-life-daily/"><img src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/ajqq9bHomn8/2.jpg" alt="" /></a></span></p>
<p>As you design and develop WordPress Themes and Plugins, and even WordPress itself, remember that you are serving thousands, maybe even millions of people just like Glenda. Creative, energetic members of society determined to give back to their community, yet unable to communicate in person or easily interact with a computer. They are reliant upon those of us who make the web possible, and social, to communicate with others by maintaining web accessibility standards.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/ill-do-it-myself-the-book/" title="I'll Do It Myself - The book by Glenda Watson Hyatt"><img src="http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/glenda-cover_sml.jpg" class="alignleft" alt="I’ll Do It Myself by Glenda Watson Hyatt" width="150" height="210" /></a>Glenda tells her story in her book, &#8220;I&#8217;ll Do It Myself.&#8221; Imagine being unable to communicate but having a lot to say. With the help of determined friends, family, and an off-and-on-again support community, made her way through high school and then into college, and eventually into her own consulting business without much ability to talk &#8220;normally.&#8221; </p>
<p><div id="attachment_3064" class="wp-caption alignright"><img src="http://lorelle.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/glendadarrellrellesm.jpg?w=350&#038;h=385" alt="Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo" title="Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo" width="350" height="385" class="size-full wp-image-3064" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Glenda Watson Hyatt, Darrell Hyatt, and Lorelle VanFossen at Blog World Expo</p></div>When she started blogging, she discovered that she could leave behind all the years of &#8220;I don&#8217;t understand you&#8221; and &#8220;What are you trying to say?&#8221; and people thinking she was retarded or a vegetable. She could express herself. She could communicate with others with no barriers. A whole world opened up to her.</p>
<p>I was extremely lucky to spend time with Glenda and her wonderful husband, Darrell, at <a href="http://www.blogworldexpo.com/" title="Blog World Expo">Blog World Expo</a> in Las Vegas. We had a great time visiting and both were extremely excited about being included in the WordCamp Portland event through video. I&#8217;m lucky to have found two wonderful new friends and I look forward to visiting them soon in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area. </p>
<p>If you have a social media or web technology conference in the Pacific Northwest - or anywhere for that matter - and you want an incredible inspirational blogger to speak to you, get Glenda. She will change your life with her smile and attitude.</p>
<p>Thanks, Glenda!</p>
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Posted in Web Design, WordPress News, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/lorelle.wordpress.com/3060/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=lorelle.wordpress.com&blog=72&post=3060&subd=lorelle&ref=&feed=1" /></div>";}i:24;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:34:"Dev Blog: WordPress 2.7 Wireframes";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=333";s:4:"link";s:65:"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/10/wordpress-27-wireframes/";s:11:"description";s:3970:"<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wf-dashboard_v002_093008jw.pdf"><img src="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/2-7-wf-badgenew3.gif" align="left" /></a>For those of you who have been downloading the nightly builds or contributing code to 2.7, you&#8217;ve noticed how quickly features are being added, small layout changes are gradually being implemented, and the application is morphing before your very eyes. For the most part, the response has been extremely positive, but even the people who love 2.7 have been wondering what it&#8217;s going to end up looking like. Though 2.7 is still a work in progress, we&#8217;ve put together <a href="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wf-dashboard_v002_093008jw.pdf">a set of wireframes</a> to illustrate how we think it will all turn out, so you can take a look under the hood of the design process, so to speak.</p>
<p>The PDF attached to this post outlines the navigation model, header elements, and important screens such as the dashboard, the new post screen, and list screens for posts, comments, and media.</p>
<p>Some things to bear in mind if you&#8217;re not used to looking at wireframes:</p>
<p>1. These are a guide, not a dictate. Changes may be made by developers and designers as needed for technical, aesthetic and/or usability reasons. When you have a team of superfast developers like we do, sometimes wireframes can become out of date quickly. In the two hours since these wireframes were approved, for example, already there are a few things that have moved and a menu change or two. Tweaks will continue to be made over the next week or two before freeze. This is Alpha software, not Beta, and it&#8217;s not static. That&#8217;s part of what makes it exciting, that every time it&#8217;s updated there&#8217;s something new.</p>
<p>2. These are all black/grey/white. That&#8217;s because we have a designer hard at work on visual styles for the new admin panel, including color palette, fonts, graphic elements, etc. When we have a new look to show off, we will. For now, the wireframes are &#8220;lookless&#8221; on purpose.</p>
<p>3. Not every screen is wireframed. We focused on creating wireframes for those screens that are undergoing the most change. For screens retaining largely the same functionality and layout, we have not included wireframes. In some cases, we&#8217;ll be updating screens but haven&#8217;t decided how to do it yet, so those aren&#8217;t included either.</p>
<p>4. Some elements apply directly to wordpress.com or wordpress.org, so don&#8217;t be alarmed if you see something that doesn&#8217;t seem to apply (like multiple dashboards).</p>
<p>One of the things I love best about WordPress is the vibrant community full of talented developers and designers who care about the application and want it to be the best it can be. Despite the overwhelmingly positive response we&#8217;ve gotten when showing 2.7 at WordCamps and from the majority of the community, there will always be people who would prefer it to be structured another way, which is why we love plugins! The decisions that went into 2.7 were based on a combination of usability testing results from 2.5 and Crazyhorse (both including laser eye tracking, official report to be released soon, but <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/edanzico/riding-the-crazyhorse-future-generation-wordpress-presentation">slides from WordCamp SF</a> available in meantime), community feedback, personal and professional opinions, and some thinking about where the next couple of versions will be going in terms of new features, so that we will have a design that scales to accommodate some the features we hope to incorporate in the future.</p>
<p>So, I hope you enjoy getting an inside look at how we&#8217;ve been organizing our thoughts around 2.7, and that when the community feedback starts flowing everyone remembers that we all want the same thing: the best WordPress possible.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:52:44 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"jane";}s:7:"summary";s:3970:"<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wf-dashboard_v002_093008jw.pdf"><img src="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/2-7-wf-badgenew3.gif" align="left" /></a>For those of you who have been downloading the nightly builds or contributing code to 2.7, you&#8217;ve noticed how quickly features are being added, small layout changes are gradually being implemented, and the application is morphing before your very eyes. For the most part, the response has been extremely positive, but even the people who love 2.7 have been wondering what it&#8217;s going to end up looking like. Though 2.7 is still a work in progress, we&#8217;ve put together <a href="http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wf-dashboard_v002_093008jw.pdf">a set of wireframes</a> to illustrate how we think it will all turn out, so you can take a look under the hood of the design process, so to speak.</p>
<p>The PDF attached to this post outlines the navigation model, header elements, and important screens such as the dashboard, the new post screen, and list screens for posts, comments, and media.</p>
<p>Some things to bear in mind if you&#8217;re not used to looking at wireframes:</p>
<p>1. These are a guide, not a dictate. Changes may be made by developers and designers as needed for technical, aesthetic and/or usability reasons. When you have a team of superfast developers like we do, sometimes wireframes can become out of date quickly. In the two hours since these wireframes were approved, for example, already there are a few things that have moved and a menu change or two. Tweaks will continue to be made over the next week or two before freeze. This is Alpha software, not Beta, and it&#8217;s not static. That&#8217;s part of what makes it exciting, that every time it&#8217;s updated there&#8217;s something new.</p>
<p>2. These are all black/grey/white. That&#8217;s because we have a designer hard at work on visual styles for the new admin panel, including color palette, fonts, graphic elements, etc. When we have a new look to show off, we will. For now, the wireframes are &#8220;lookless&#8221; on purpose.</p>
<p>3. Not every screen is wireframed. We focused on creating wireframes for those screens that are undergoing the most change. For screens retaining largely the same functionality and layout, we have not included wireframes. In some cases, we&#8217;ll be updating screens but haven&#8217;t decided how to do it yet, so those aren&#8217;t included either.</p>
<p>4. Some elements apply directly to wordpress.com or wordpress.org, so don&#8217;t be alarmed if you see something that doesn&#8217;t seem to apply (like multiple dashboards).</p>
<p>One of the things I love best about WordPress is the vibrant community full of talented developers and designers who care about the application and want it to be the best it can be. Despite the overwhelmingly positive response we&#8217;ve gotten when showing 2.7 at WordCamps and from the majority of the community, there will always be people who would prefer it to be structured another way, which is why we love plugins! The decisions that went into 2.7 were based on a combination of usability testing results from 2.5 and Crazyhorse (both including laser eye tracking, official report to be released soon, but <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/edanzico/riding-the-crazyhorse-future-generation-wordpress-presentation">slides from WordCamp SF</a> available in meantime), community feedback, personal and professional opinions, and some thinking about where the next couple of versions will be going in terms of new features, so that we will have a design that scales to accommodate some the features we hope to incorporate in the future.</p>
<p>So, I hope you enjoy getting an inside look at how we&#8217;ve been organizing our thoughts around 2.7, and that when the community feedback starts flowing everyone remembers that we all want the same thing: the best WordPress possible.</p>";}i:25;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: Revolution Theme Going Open Source";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4265";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/01/revolution-theme-going-open-source/";s:11:"description";s:1480:"<p><a href="http://www.briangardner.com/blog/revolution-going-open-source.htm">Revolution Theme Going Open Source</a>: Brian Gardner&#8217;s Revolution Theme for WordPress is going 100% Open Source. All the themes that are currently on Brian&#8217;s Revolution site will no longer be available as or October 31st and will be replaced with a set of new themes that will be developed and released under the GPL. The original Revolution themes will continue to be supported for those who have purchased them in the past. The new GPL themes will also be sold in packages that include support, access to customizations, tutorials and other items. Brian explains his decision in the linked post, talks about his plans for the future of Revolution and explains why he chose to remove the original Revolution themes from his site.</p>
<p>I have met Brian at various conferences and we have become friends. In our past discussions on valid and financially viable models for theme developers and designers to adopt, Brian had expressed his concerns on adopting the GPL for his themes. Not that I had anything to do with this decision (I did not) but I had asked him to take a closer look and I had assured him that the community he could build around GPL themes would be supportive and would respond very positively. I applaud this move. <a href="http://ma.tt/2008/10/theme-revolution/">Matt also posted about this change</a>. Disclosure: Revolution Theme is an advertiser on this blog.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:49:17 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Mark Ghosh";}s:7:"summary";s:1480:"<p><a href="http://www.briangardner.com/blog/revolution-going-open-source.htm">Revolution Theme Going Open Source</a>: Brian Gardner&#8217;s Revolution Theme for WordPress is going 100% Open Source. All the themes that are currently on Brian&#8217;s Revolution site will no longer be available as or October 31st and will be replaced with a set of new themes that will be developed and released under the GPL. The original Revolution themes will continue to be supported for those who have purchased them in the past. The new GPL themes will also be sold in packages that include support, access to customizations, tutorials and other items. Brian explains his decision in the linked post, talks about his plans for the future of Revolution and explains why he chose to remove the original Revolution themes from his site.</p>
<p>I have met Brian at various conferences and we have become friends. In our past discussions on valid and financially viable models for theme developers and designers to adopt, Brian had expressed his concerns on adopting the GPL for his themes. Not that I had anything to do with this decision (I did not) but I had asked him to take a closer look and I had assured him that the community he could build around GPL themes would be supportive and would respond very positively. I applaud this move. <a href="http://ma.tt/2008/10/theme-revolution/">Matt also posted about this change</a>. Disclosure: Revolution Theme is an advertiser on this blog.</p>";}i:26;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 10/01";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4267";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/01/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-1001/";s:11:"description";s:2471:"<p><a href="http://www.web-templates.nu/2008/09/28/wp-blurb/"><strong>WP Blurb</strong></a></p>
<p>Limit posts, pages, categories or your custom text. Limit the number of characters to what you like. You are calling the plugin function from your theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://kishoreasokan.com/ajax-wordpress-twitter-plugin/"><strong>Ajax Twitter</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin is using the <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Asokans">Twitter</a> API to get and post the updates.</p>
<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/"><strong>WordPress MU Sitewide Tags</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin creates a central blog where all the most recent posts on a WordPress MU site can be found. The number of posts is configurable and defaults to 5,000 posts. (Only for WordPress MU)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.themeslive.com/wp-dockbar-mac-style-dockbar-plugin-for-your-wordpress/"><strong>WP Dockbar</strong></a></p>
<p>Wp Dockbar is a plugin developed for users of WordPress who are not very familiar with the use of javascript code, html and CSS. With Wp Dockbar will not be necessary edit html code, even for the inclusion of new buttons in dockbar.</p>
<p><a href="http://zazamataz.com/?page_id=26"><strong>TDW Combobox Links</strong></a></p>
<p>Display links in a combobox.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-live/"><strong>bbPress Live</strong></a></p>
<p>bbPress Live allows you to pull data from a <a href="http://bbpress.org">bbPress</a> 1.0 forum using the new XML-RPC publishing API in bbPress.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jonathanspence.com/software/wordpress-plugins/xavins-review-ratings/"><strong>Xavin&#8217;s Review Ratings</strong></a></p>
<p>Xavin’s Review Ratings is a Wordpress plugin that adds a shortcode tag [xrr rating="4/5"] that displays a rating in one of several formats. It is intended for sites doing reviews.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/praized-tools/"><strong>Praized Tools</strong></a></p>
<p>The Praized Tools plugin will enable new editorial tools within your WordPress install for you to blog about places and tie everything back to your or a 3rd party&#8217;s Praized community. It will also help you create your Praized sidebar widget.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simpler-ipaper/"><strong>Simpler iPaper</strong></a></p>
<p>The Simpler iPaper plugin was created out of the need for a simpler way of embedding Scribd iPaper documents in blog posts.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:42:20 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:2471:"<p><a href="http://www.web-templates.nu/2008/09/28/wp-blurb/"><strong>WP Blurb</strong></a></p>
<p>Limit posts, pages, categories or your custom text. Limit the number of characters to what you like. You are calling the plugin function from your theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://kishoreasokan.com/ajax-wordpress-twitter-plugin/"><strong>Ajax Twitter</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin is using the <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Asokans">Twitter</a> API to get and post the updates.</p>
<p><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/"><strong>WordPress MU Sitewide Tags</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin creates a central blog where all the most recent posts on a WordPress MU site can be found. The number of posts is configurable and defaults to 5,000 posts. (Only for WordPress MU)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.themeslive.com/wp-dockbar-mac-style-dockbar-plugin-for-your-wordpress/"><strong>WP Dockbar</strong></a></p>
<p>Wp Dockbar is a plugin developed for users of WordPress who are not very familiar with the use of javascript code, html and CSS. With Wp Dockbar will not be necessary edit html code, even for the inclusion of new buttons in dockbar.</p>
<p><a href="http://zazamataz.com/?page_id=26"><strong>TDW Combobox Links</strong></a></p>
<p>Display links in a combobox.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-live/"><strong>bbPress Live</strong></a></p>
<p>bbPress Live allows you to pull data from a <a href="http://bbpress.org">bbPress</a> 1.0 forum using the new XML-RPC publishing API in bbPress.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jonathanspence.com/software/wordpress-plugins/xavins-review-ratings/"><strong>Xavin&#8217;s Review Ratings</strong></a></p>
<p>Xavin’s Review Ratings is a Wordpress plugin that adds a shortcode tag [xrr rating="4/5"] that displays a rating in one of several formats. It is intended for sites doing reviews.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/praized-tools/"><strong>Praized Tools</strong></a></p>
<p>The Praized Tools plugin will enable new editorial tools within your WordPress install for you to blog about places and tie everything back to your or a 3rd party&#8217;s Praized community. It will also help you create your Praized sidebar widget.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simpler-ipaper/"><strong>Simpler iPaper</strong></a></p>
<p>The Simpler iPaper plugin was created out of the need for a simpler way of embedding Scribd iPaper documents in blog posts.</p>";}i:27;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Dougal Campbell: Back from WordCamp Birmingham 2008";s:4:"guid";s:33:"http://dougal.gunters.org/?p=1106";s:4:"link";s:76:"http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2008/10/01/back-from-wordcamp-birmingham-2008";s:11:"description";s:5156:"<div class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/blakehelms/2893294728/in/pool-wordcampbham"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/2893294728_3936c419bd_m_d.jpg" alt="Dougal, Mitch, and Donna" width="240" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Dougal, Mitch, and Donna</p></div>
<p>As mentioned previously, I gave a presentation last weekend at <a href="http://birmingham.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Birmingham 2008</a> on &#8220;The Future of WordPress&#8221;. My section on &#8220;The Past of WordPress&#8221; ran a little longer than I had planned, but a lot of people told me that they liked that overview, so I guess it was alright. I was pretty nervous at the beginning, but a couple of minutes after I got started, I settled in a bit, and I felt like I avoided looking and sounding like a <em>total</em> doofus.</p>
<p>I was thankful to have gotten the very first presenter time slot. Once I was done with my bit, I was able to sit, relax, and listen to the other presenters. <a href="http://seo-scoop.com/">Donna Fontenot</a> was up after me, with some good tips on <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization"><span class="caps">SEO</span></acronym>. I saw lots of people getting &#8220;aha&#8221; expressions and scribbling down notes during that one. I particularly enjoyed <a href="http://www.thesocialpath.com/">Dave Griner</a>&#8217;s humorous presentation, even with its &#8220;Why I chose TypePad&#8221; joke <img src="http://dougal.gunters.org/wordpress/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> (seriously though, he doesn&#8217;t currently use WordPress, and that&#8217;s okay).</p>
<p>After the first round of presentations, we enjoyed a thoroughly meatatarian lunch from Full Moon BBQ, graciously provided by Microsoft. Pork BBQ sammiches <acronym title="For the Win"><span class="caps">FTW</span></acronym>! The lunch break was a great opportunity to actually talk to people. I did the best I could to look for names that I recognized from Twitter and say &#8216;hi&#8217; to folks I recognized. But I know there were lots of people I never really got to talk to.</p>
<p>After lunch, we had <a href="http://www.jeremyflint.com/">Jeremy Flint</a>, <a href="http://www.studionashvegas.com/">Mitch Canter</a>, and <a href="http://bhamterminal.com/">Andre Natta</a> speaking on using WordPress as a <acronym title="Content Management System"><span class="caps">CMS</span></acronym>. There were lots of good tips and plugin suggestions, and plenty of questions from the audience. Next up was <a href="http://mediascribbler.com/">Dana Franks</a> with Effective Blogging in Mass Market Media, which actually covered lots of social networking, not just blogging. Last, but not least, was <a href="http://sosaidwhitney.wordpress.com/">Whitney Sides</a> with Blogging for Health. Whitney shared her story of being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, her doctor introducing her to &#8220;cancer blogs&#8221;, and her own decision to begin a blog to chronicle her ups and downs. And she ended with the awesome news that she was in remission! Yay!</p>
<p>There was a second day of the WordCamp, which I was unfortunately unable to attend. But I had a great time on Saturday, and I&#8217;m looking forward to next year&#8217;s event, which has already confirmed <a href="http://ma.tt/">Matt Mullenweg</a> as the keynote speaker. Now that I&#8217;ve done one presentation, I feel like I&#8217;ve caught the bug, and I&#8217;m already trying to think of other ideas I could turn into presentations. In the meantime, and until it&#8217;s outdated by the release of WordPress 2.7 later this year, you can find my &#8220;Future of WordPress&#8221; presentation below.</p>
<p><span id="more-1106"></span></p>
<div id="__ss_621585"><a title="The Future Of WordPress Presentation" href="http://www.slideshare.net/DougalCampbell/the-future-of-wordpress-presentation-presentation?type=powerpoint">The Future Of WordPress Presentation</a></p>
<div>View SlideShare <a title="View The Future Of WordPress Presentation on SlideShare" href="http://www.slideshare.net/DougalCampbell/the-future-of-wordpress-presentation-presentation?type=powerpoint">presentation</a> or <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/cms">cms</a> <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/blogging">blogging</a>)</div>
</div>
<p>Of course, this is pretty much just an outline. My original version, and the spoken presentation had additional notes about particularly important milestones, and details on certain features. If anybody at WordCamp Birmingham got any video of my presentation, let me know!</p>
<p>Other presentations are <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/event/wordcamp-birmingham">available on SlideShare</a>. There are over 200 <a href="http://flickr.com/groups/wordcampbham/">WordCamp Birmingham photos on Flickr.</a> And you can get a pretty good sense of the event buzz from following Twitter messages <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=942199501&amp;page=30&amp;q=%23wordcampbham">tagged with #wordcampbham</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:40:11 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:6:"Dougal";}s:7:"summary";s:5156:"<div class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/blakehelms/2893294728/in/pool-wordcampbham"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/2893294728_3936c419bd_m_d.jpg" alt="Dougal, Mitch, and Donna" width="240" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Dougal, Mitch, and Donna</p></div>
<p>As mentioned previously, I gave a presentation last weekend at <a href="http://birmingham.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Birmingham 2008</a> on &#8220;The Future of WordPress&#8221;. My section on &#8220;The Past of WordPress&#8221; ran a little longer than I had planned, but a lot of people told me that they liked that overview, so I guess it was alright. I was pretty nervous at the beginning, but a couple of minutes after I got started, I settled in a bit, and I felt like I avoided looking and sounding like a <em>total</em> doofus.</p>
<p>I was thankful to have gotten the very first presenter time slot. Once I was done with my bit, I was able to sit, relax, and listen to the other presenters. <a href="http://seo-scoop.com/">Donna Fontenot</a> was up after me, with some good tips on <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization"><span class="caps">SEO</span></acronym>. I saw lots of people getting &#8220;aha&#8221; expressions and scribbling down notes during that one. I particularly enjoyed <a href="http://www.thesocialpath.com/">Dave Griner</a>&#8217;s humorous presentation, even with its &#8220;Why I chose TypePad&#8221; joke <img src="http://dougal.gunters.org/wordpress/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> (seriously though, he doesn&#8217;t currently use WordPress, and that&#8217;s okay).</p>
<p>After the first round of presentations, we enjoyed a thoroughly meatatarian lunch from Full Moon BBQ, graciously provided by Microsoft. Pork BBQ sammiches <acronym title="For the Win"><span class="caps">FTW</span></acronym>! The lunch break was a great opportunity to actually talk to people. I did the best I could to look for names that I recognized from Twitter and say &#8216;hi&#8217; to folks I recognized. But I know there were lots of people I never really got to talk to.</p>
<p>After lunch, we had <a href="http://www.jeremyflint.com/">Jeremy Flint</a>, <a href="http://www.studionashvegas.com/">Mitch Canter</a>, and <a href="http://bhamterminal.com/">Andre Natta</a> speaking on using WordPress as a <acronym title="Content Management System"><span class="caps">CMS</span></acronym>. There were lots of good tips and plugin suggestions, and plenty of questions from the audience. Next up was <a href="http://mediascribbler.com/">Dana Franks</a> with Effective Blogging in Mass Market Media, which actually covered lots of social networking, not just blogging. Last, but not least, was <a href="http://sosaidwhitney.wordpress.com/">Whitney Sides</a> with Blogging for Health. Whitney shared her story of being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, her doctor introducing her to &#8220;cancer blogs&#8221;, and her own decision to begin a blog to chronicle her ups and downs. And she ended with the awesome news that she was in remission! Yay!</p>
<p>There was a second day of the WordCamp, which I was unfortunately unable to attend. But I had a great time on Saturday, and I&#8217;m looking forward to next year&#8217;s event, which has already confirmed <a href="http://ma.tt/">Matt Mullenweg</a> as the keynote speaker. Now that I&#8217;ve done one presentation, I feel like I&#8217;ve caught the bug, and I&#8217;m already trying to think of other ideas I could turn into presentations. In the meantime, and until it&#8217;s outdated by the release of WordPress 2.7 later this year, you can find my &#8220;Future of WordPress&#8221; presentation below.</p>
<p><span id="more-1106"></span></p>
<div id="__ss_621585"><a title="The Future Of WordPress Presentation" href="http://www.slideshare.net/DougalCampbell/the-future-of-wordpress-presentation-presentation?type=powerpoint">The Future Of WordPress Presentation</a></p>
<div>View SlideShare <a title="View The Future Of WordPress Presentation on SlideShare" href="http://www.slideshare.net/DougalCampbell/the-future-of-wordpress-presentation-presentation?type=powerpoint">presentation</a> or <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/cms">cms</a> <a href="http://slideshare.net/tag/blogging">blogging</a>)</div>
</div>
<p>Of course, this is pretty much just an outline. My original version, and the spoken presentation had additional notes about particularly important milestones, and details on certain features. If anybody at WordCamp Birmingham got any video of my presentation, let me know!</p>
<p>Other presentations are <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/event/wordcamp-birmingham">available on SlideShare</a>. There are over 200 <a href="http://flickr.com/groups/wordcampbham/">WordCamp Birmingham photos on Flickr.</a> And you can get a pretty good sense of the event buzz from following Twitter messages <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=942199501&amp;page=30&amp;q=%23wordcampbham">tagged with #wordcampbham</a>.</p>";}i:28;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:22:"Matt: Theme Revolution";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7891";s:4:"link";s:38:"http://ma.tt/2008/10/theme-revolution/";s:11:"description";s:372:"<p>Brian Gardner&#8217;s Revolution theme, widely regarded as the most successful in the &#8220;premium&#8221; theme space, has seen the light and <a href="http://www.briangardner.com/blog/revolution-going-open-source.htm">is going 100% Open Source</a> under the GPL. Definitely a forward-thinking and strategic move. I think this may shake up the premium theme space.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:01:59 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:372:"<p>Brian Gardner&#8217;s Revolution theme, widely regarded as the most successful in the &#8220;premium&#8221; theme space, has seen the light and <a href="http://www.briangardner.com/blog/revolution-going-open-source.htm">is going 100% Open Source</a> under the GPL. Definitely a forward-thinking and strategic move. I think this may shake up the premium theme space.</p>";}i:29;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:47:"Donncha: WordPress MU Sitewide Tags Pages 0.3.1";s:4:"guid";s:29:"http://ocaoimh.ie/?p=89494071";s:4:"link";s:66:"http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/10/01/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags-pages-031/";s:11:"description";s:1849:"<p>One of these days I&#8217;ll rename all my plugins and give them nice snappy titles.</p>
<p>Version 0.3.1 of the <a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/">Sitewide Tags Pages</a> plugin (for WordPress MU) has just been released. If you&#8217;ve been using this plugin you should probably update because this fixes a number of bugs including <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/207475?replies=3">the problem</a> with the Prologue Theme (and possibly Feedwordpress but I haven&#8217;t tested that.)<br />
This release wouldn&#8217;t have been possible without the help of <a href="http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/">Thomas Schneider</a>!</p>
<p>Main changes:
<ul>
<li> Pages are now filtered out because they don&#8217;t really fit neatly anywhere in the global posts page.</li>
<li> Prologue Theme problem with wp_insert_category() is fixed.</li>
<li> Set comment and ping status of global posts to closed.</li>
<li> Lots of translation work, including a German translation.</li>
<li> Lots of fixes related to when blogs change status, or posts are edited.</li>
</ul>
<p>Grab it from the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/">download page</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU Sitewide Tags">WordPress MU Sitewide Tags</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/07/19/sitewide-tags-pages-for-wordpress-mu/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Sitewide tags pages for WordPress MU">Sitewide tags pages for WordPress MU</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/08/11/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping-01/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU Domain Mapping 0.1">WordPress MU Domain Mapping 0.1</a></li></ul></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:03:16 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:7:"Donncha";}s:7:"summary";s:1849:"<p>One of these days I&#8217;ll rename all my plugins and give them nice snappy titles.</p>
<p>Version 0.3.1 of the <a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/">Sitewide Tags Pages</a> plugin (for WordPress MU) has just been released. If you&#8217;ve been using this plugin you should probably update because this fixes a number of bugs including <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/207475?replies=3">the problem</a> with the Prologue Theme (and possibly Feedwordpress but I haven&#8217;t tested that.)<br />
This release wouldn&#8217;t have been possible without the help of <a href="http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/">Thomas Schneider</a>!</p>
<p>Main changes:
<ul>
<li> Pages are now filtered out because they don&#8217;t really fit neatly anywhere in the global posts page.</li>
<li> Prologue Theme problem with wp_insert_category() is fixed.</li>
<li> Set comment and ping status of global posts to closed.</li>
<li> Lots of translation work, including a German translation.</li>
<li> Lots of fixes related to when blogs change status, or posts are edited.</li>
</ul>
<p>Grab it from the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/">download page</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU Sitewide Tags">WordPress MU Sitewide Tags</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/07/19/sitewide-tags-pages-for-wordpress-mu/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Sitewide tags pages for WordPress MU">Sitewide tags pages for WordPress MU</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/08/11/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping-01/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU Domain Mapping 0.1">WordPress MU Domain Mapping 0.1</a></li></ul></p>";}i:30;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:20:"Matt: Bandwidth Caps";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7888";s:4:"link";s:36:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/bandwidth-caps/";s:11:"description";s:168:"<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2008/09/30/gigaom-white-paper-the-facts-fiction-of-bandwidth-caps/">GigaOM White Paper: The Facts &#038; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps</a></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:13:39 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:168:"<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2008/09/30/gigaom-white-paper-the-facts-fiction-of-bandwidth-caps/">GigaOM White Paper: The Facts &#038; Fiction of Bandwidth Caps</a></p>";}i:31;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:27:"Donncha: WordPress MU 2.6.2";s:4:"guid";s:29:"http://ocaoimh.ie/?p=89494064";s:4:"link";s:46:"http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/09/30/wordpress-mu-262/";s:11:"description";s:2079:"<p><a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/">WordPress MU</a>, the multi blog version of <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> that runs on <a href="http://wordpress.com/">WordPress.com</a> has been updated.</p>
<p>Version 2.6.2 is now available for <a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/download/">download</a> and is a required update. WordPress MU isn&#8217;t vulnerable to the security bugs that were the reason for <a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-262/">WordPress 2.6.2</a> but it does contain a number of important bug fixes, including:
<ol>
<li>xmlrpc.php works better if you use multiple sites. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/735">#735</a></li>
<li>get_option() wasn&#8217;t reading all options.</li>
<li> Configurable media buttons on the Write page. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/598">#598</a>, <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/738">#738</a></li>
<li> 404 &#8220;file not found&#8221; errors on folder installs is mostly fixed. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/745">#745</a></li>
<li> And more .. (<a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/timeline">timeline</a>)</li>
</ol>
<p>PS. Don&#8217;t forget the <a href="http://wpmu.org/voting-open-plugin-contest/">voting is now open</a> in the WordPress MU plugin competition.<br />
PPS. Registration is now open for <a href="http://www.barcampcork.com/">BarCamp Cork II</a> on November 1st. I&#8217;ve put my name down to give a talk there.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/09/02/wordpress-mu-261/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU 2.6.1">WordPress MU 2.6.1</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2005/08/17/whats-this-wordpresscom-thing-anyway/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: What&#8217;s this WordPress.com thing anyway?">What&#8217;s this WordPress.com thing anyway?</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/01/26/wordpress-mu-132/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU 1.3.2">WordPress MU 1.3.2</a></li></ul></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:44:37 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:7:"Donncha";}s:7:"summary";s:2079:"<p><a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/">WordPress MU</a>, the multi blog version of <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> that runs on <a href="http://wordpress.com/">WordPress.com</a> has been updated.</p>
<p>Version 2.6.2 is now available for <a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/download/">download</a> and is a required update. WordPress MU isn&#8217;t vulnerable to the security bugs that were the reason for <a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-262/">WordPress 2.6.2</a> but it does contain a number of important bug fixes, including:
<ol>
<li>xmlrpc.php works better if you use multiple sites. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/735">#735</a></li>
<li>get_option() wasn&#8217;t reading all options.</li>
<li> Configurable media buttons on the Write page. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/598">#598</a>, <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/738">#738</a></li>
<li> 404 &#8220;file not found&#8221; errors on folder installs is mostly fixed. <a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/745">#745</a></li>
<li> And more .. (<a href="http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/timeline">timeline</a>)</li>
</ol>
<p>PS. Don&#8217;t forget the <a href="http://wpmu.org/voting-open-plugin-contest/">voting is now open</a> in the WordPress MU plugin competition.<br />
PPS. Registration is now open for <a href="http://www.barcampcork.com/">BarCamp Cork II</a> on November 1st. I&#8217;ve put my name down to give a talk there.</p>
<p><img src="http://ocaoimh.ie/?voyeur=1" /></p><p><strong>Related Posts</strong><ul><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/09/02/wordpress-mu-261/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU 2.6.1">WordPress MU 2.6.1</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2005/08/17/whats-this-wordpresscom-thing-anyway/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: What&#8217;s this WordPress.com thing anyway?">What&#8217;s this WordPress.com thing anyway?</a></li><li><a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/01/26/wordpress-mu-132/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WordPress MU 1.3.2">WordPress MU 1.3.2</a></li></ul></p>";}i:32;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4260";s:4:"link";s:87:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/30/wordpress-27-comment-enhancements/";s:11:"description";s:1052:"<p>Otto, who is a well known and respected member of the WordPress community has published a pretty cool article (<a href="http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/" target="_blank">WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements</a>) which explains the various comment enhancements that have made it to the core of WordPress 2.7 thus far. Otto&#8217;s reasoning behind the post was to allow theme authors to gain a head start on creating themes which will be compatible with WordPress 2.7. One thing to keep in mind while reading this article is that, this information was compiled from using the latest developmental version of WordPress 2.7. This means things may not be set in stone with further additions or retractions possible before the initial release.</p>
<p><strong>Here are some of the enhancements that Otto covers:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Creating a 2.7 compatible comments.php file</li>
<li>Password protection check</li>
<li>The comments loop</li>
<li>The power of Ajax</li>
<li>Styling</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks Otto.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:20:43 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";}s:7:"summary";s:1052:"<p>Otto, who is a well known and respected member of the WordPress community has published a pretty cool article (<a href="http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/" target="_blank">WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements</a>) which explains the various comment enhancements that have made it to the core of WordPress 2.7 thus far. Otto&#8217;s reasoning behind the post was to allow theme authors to gain a head start on creating themes which will be compatible with WordPress 2.7. One thing to keep in mind while reading this article is that, this information was compiled from using the latest developmental version of WordPress 2.7. This means things may not be set in stone with further additions or retractions possible before the initial release.</p>
<p><strong>Here are some of the enhancements that Otto covers:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Creating a 2.7 compatible comments.php file</li>
<li>Password protection check</li>
<li>The comments loop</li>
<li>The power of Ajax</li>
<li>Styling</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks Otto.</p>";}i:33;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 09/30";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4258";s:4:"link";s:87:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/30/wordpress-theme-releases-for-0930/";s:11:"description";s:4045:"<p><strong><a href="http://www.codescheme.net/2008/09/29/free-wordpress-theme-staypressed/">StayPressed</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.codescheme.net/?wptheme=staypressed"><img title="staypressed" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/staypressed.jpg" border="0" alt="staypressed" width="134" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>StayPressed is a free WordPress theme, with a double-column right hand-sidebar and a magazine style - kept simple, to let your blog content do the talking</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://pulsr.com/case-a-simple-dark-wordpress-theme/">Case</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://pulsr.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Case"><img title="caseshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/caseshot.png" border="0" alt="caseshot" width="200" height="104" /></a></p>
<p>Case is a dark WordPress theme with blue accents. It has an Ajax box in the sidebar that allows you to switch between categories, tags, recent comments, and recent posts without reloading the page and without taking up a lot of space, which keeps your blog nice and clean.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://pulsr.com/iris-wordpress-theme/">Iris</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://pulsr.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=IRIS"><img title="irispreview" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/irispreview.png" border="0" alt="irispreview" width="200" height="98" /></a></p>
<p>Iris is a a two column <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">WordPress</a> theme with Iris like colors. The theme is mostly purple, with pink, and blue, with nice gradients and textures. It has nice rounded corners on every post to separate them and drive focus to the content. It is widget ready and ready to demo and download.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.blogdesignblog.com/blog-design/designredux-01-free-wordpress-theme-released/">Designredux</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://blogdesignblog.com/wordpress_theme_demo/"><img title="designredux" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/designredux.jpg" border="0" alt="designredux" width="168" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, black and white theme</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.junglejar.com/templatejar/jinv2/">Jin</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.junglejar.com/templates/demos/jin/"><img title="Jin" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/jin.png" border="0" alt="Jin" width="152" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column gravatar and widget ready theme  with ability to post images directly to the frontpage</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.simplywp.net/2008/09/29/free-autumn-theme-for-wordpress/">Free Autumn</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.simplywp.net/index.php?wptheme=Hello+autumn"><img title="hello-autumn-theme-400x218" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/helloautumntheme400x218.jpg" border="0" alt="hello-autumn-theme-400x218" width="200" height="109" /></a></p>
<p>Three columns autumn theme with simple illustration for the header and maple leaf icon for the sidebar title.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://smartpersonaldevelopment.com/get-this-wordpress-theme-free/">PassionDuo</a></strong></p>
<p><img title="passionduo" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/passionduo.jpg" border="0" alt="passionduo" width="182" height="114" /></p>
<p>Three column blue and white theme with a right and left sidebar</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://themeterminal.com/new-wordpress-theme-ships-ahoy/">Ships Ahoy</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://themeterminal.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Ships+Ahoy%21"><img title="shipsahoy" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/shipsahoy.jpg" border="0" alt="shipsahoy" width="175" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Ships Ahoy is three column, widget-ready theme.</p>
<p>With the impending release of WordPress 2.7, Otto has written a very nice article explaining how to <a href="http://planetozh.com/blog/go.php?http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/">get a theme ready for 2.7</a> to take care of the comments enhancements.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:08:52 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:4045:"<p><strong><a href="http://www.codescheme.net/2008/09/29/free-wordpress-theme-staypressed/">StayPressed</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.codescheme.net/?wptheme=staypressed"><img title="staypressed" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/staypressed.jpg" border="0" alt="staypressed" width="134" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>StayPressed is a free WordPress theme, with a double-column right hand-sidebar and a magazine style - kept simple, to let your blog content do the talking</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://pulsr.com/case-a-simple-dark-wordpress-theme/">Case</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://pulsr.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Case"><img title="caseshot" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/caseshot.png" border="0" alt="caseshot" width="200" height="104" /></a></p>
<p>Case is a dark WordPress theme with blue accents. It has an Ajax box in the sidebar that allows you to switch between categories, tags, recent comments, and recent posts without reloading the page and without taking up a lot of space, which keeps your blog nice and clean.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://pulsr.com/iris-wordpress-theme/">Iris</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://pulsr.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=IRIS"><img title="irispreview" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/irispreview.png" border="0" alt="irispreview" width="200" height="98" /></a></p>
<p>Iris is a a two column <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">WordPress</a> theme with Iris like colors. The theme is mostly purple, with pink, and blue, with nice gradients and textures. It has nice rounded corners on every post to separate them and drive focus to the content. It is widget ready and ready to demo and download.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.blogdesignblog.com/blog-design/designredux-01-free-wordpress-theme-released/">Designredux</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://blogdesignblog.com/wordpress_theme_demo/"><img title="designredux" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/designredux.jpg" border="0" alt="designredux" width="168" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column, black and white theme</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.junglejar.com/templatejar/jinv2/">Jin</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.junglejar.com/templates/demos/jin/"><img title="Jin" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/jin.png" border="0" alt="Jin" width="152" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Two column gravatar and widget ready theme  with ability to post images directly to the frontpage</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.simplywp.net/2008/09/29/free-autumn-theme-for-wordpress/">Free Autumn</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://demo.simplywp.net/index.php?wptheme=Hello+autumn"><img title="hello-autumn-theme-400x218" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/helloautumntheme400x218.jpg" border="0" alt="hello-autumn-theme-400x218" width="200" height="109" /></a></p>
<p>Three columns autumn theme with simple illustration for the header and maple leaf icon for the sidebar title.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://smartpersonaldevelopment.com/get-this-wordpress-theme-free/">PassionDuo</a></strong></p>
<p><img title="passionduo" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/passionduo.jpg" border="0" alt="passionduo" width="182" height="114" /></p>
<p>Three column blue and white theme with a right and left sidebar</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://themeterminal.com/new-wordpress-theme-ships-ahoy/">Ships Ahoy</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://themeterminal.com/demo/index.php?wptheme=Ships+Ahoy%21"><img title="shipsahoy" src="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/2008/09/shipsahoy.jpg" border="0" alt="shipsahoy" width="175" height="114" /></a></p>
<p>Ships Ahoy is three column, widget-ready theme.</p>
<p>With the impending release of WordPress 2.7, Otto has written a very nice article explaining how to <a href="http://planetozh.com/blog/go.php?http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/">get a theme ready for 2.7</a> to take care of the comments enhancements.</p>";}i:34;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:19:"Matt: The Publisher";s:4:"guid";s:35:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/the-publisher/";s:4:"link";s:35:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/the-publisher/";s:11:"description";s:502:"<p>I&#8217;ve been dubbed <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/14.htm">The Publisher by BusinessWeek</a> as one of their &#8220;25 Most Influential People on the Web.&#8221; Before anyone else writes in that I beat <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/15.htm">Rupert Murdoch</a>, I think the slideshow is in alphabetical order. <img src="http://ma.tt/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /></p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:54:04 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:502:"<p>I&#8217;ve been dubbed <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/14.htm">The Publisher by BusinessWeek</a> as one of their &#8220;25 Most Influential People on the Web.&#8221; Before anyone else writes in that I beat <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/15.htm">Rupert Murdoch</a>, I think the slideshow is in alphabetical order. <img src="http://ma.tt/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" /></p>";}i:35;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:86:"Weblog Tools Collection: Matt Mullenweg #14 most influential on the web - BusinessWeek";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4246";s:4:"link";s:112:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/29/matt-mullenweg-14-most-influential-on-the-web-businessweek/";s:11:"description";s:1146:"<p><a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/14.htm">Matt Mullenweg #14 most influential on the web - BusinessWeek</a>.: According to BusinessWeek, Matt Mullenweg is one of the 25 most influential people on the web. He shares the accolade with the likes of Steve Ballmer, Steve jobs, Joi Ito and Jon Stewart. At first I thought that this was a ranking much like the <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/129301-2/the_50_most_important_people_on_the_web.html">50 most important people of the web</a> from PC World but this appears to be more of a collection. Matt is labelled as &#8220;The Publisher&#8221; and WordPress as &#8220;the blogging service that most serious bloggers turn to&#8221;.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2008/tc20080928_412324.htm">associated article</a> is more about how the web is magnifying the influence of jon Stewart and others like him in engaging the American Public in online discourse about the political campaigns. Be sure to <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/1.htm">check out the whole slide show</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:33:43 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Mark Ghosh";}s:7:"summary";s:1146:"<p><a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/14.htm">Matt Mullenweg #14 most influential on the web - BusinessWeek</a>.: According to BusinessWeek, Matt Mullenweg is one of the 25 most influential people on the web. He shares the accolade with the likes of Steve Ballmer, Steve jobs, Joi Ito and Jon Stewart. At first I thought that this was a ranking much like the <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/129301-2/the_50_most_important_people_on_the_web.html">50 most important people of the web</a> from PC World but this appears to be more of a collection. Matt is labelled as &#8220;The Publisher&#8221; and WordPress as &#8220;the blogging service that most serious bloggers turn to&#8221;.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2008/tc20080928_412324.htm">associated article</a> is more about how the web is magnifying the influence of jon Stewart and others like him in engaging the American Public in online discourse about the political campaigns. Be sure to <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/09/0929_most_influential/1.htm">check out the whole slide show</a>.</p>";}i:36;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Weblog Tools Collection: WLTC Reader Survey Results";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4243";s:4:"link";s:80:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/29/wltc-reader-survey-results/";s:11:"description";s:3162:"<p>We recently ran a reader survey to have you answer some basic questions that we had about Weblog Tools Collection and would like to thank all those who participated in the survey. We were not looking for specific answers but were trying to gauge some sentiments and help shape ourselves to serve you better. We are also looking for a better understanding of where we should spend our resources to provide the most value to our readers. In that spirit, most of the answers were helpful and some of the comments made us look a little closely at the mirror.</p>
<p>Here are the results from the survey</p>
<ol>
<li>Where did you first hear about Weblog Tools Collection?
<ol>
<li>WordPress Dashboard 76.2%</li>
<li>WordPress Planet 4.8%</li>
<li><strong>Google Search 11.9%</strong></li>
<li>Link from Another site 4.8%</li>
<li>User Suggestions/Discussions 2.4%</li>
<li>Other (please specify) 0.0%</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Are you subscribed to Weblog Tools Collection to receive daily updates?
<ol>
<li>Subscribed via RSS 25.0%</li>
<li>Subscribed via Email 0.0%</li>
<li>Already on Dashboard 50.0%</li>
<li><strong>Read it on the web 23.8%</strong></li>
<li>Subscribed via other means 0.0%</li>
<li>Other (please specify) 1.2%</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Satisfaction ratings for Weblog Tools Collection
<ol>
<li><strong>Overall satisfaction: 60% voted satisfied, 26% very satisfied</strong></li>
<li>Content: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied</li>
<li><strong>Design: 35% voted somewhat satisfied, 28% satisfied</strong></li>
<li>Format: 45% voted satisfied, 35% somewhat satisfied (leaning towards somewhat satisfied)</li>
<li>Frequency of posts: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied</li>
<li>Features of blog: 65% voted satisfied, 20% somewhat satisfied</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Advertisements
<ol>
<li>Are they usable? 45% Undecided, 35% No</li>
<li>Have you ever clicked on any of them? 65% No, 35% Yes</li>
<li><strong>Are there too many ads? 45% No, 35% Undecided</strong></li>
<li>Are you an advertiser? 95% No</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Site Features
<ol>
<li>Did you know that we offer a news forum? 55% No, 40% Yes</li>
<li>Did you know that we have a video site? 50% No, 40% Yes</li>
<li>Did you know that we have offer translations in 9 languages? 50% Yes, 35% No</li>
<li>Would you participate in future surveys to help us make the site better? 90% Yes</li>
<li><strong>Did you know that registered users see far fewer ads? 80% No, 13% Not Important</strong></li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
<p>The final question asked how we could improve the user experience on Weblog Tools Collection and about a quarter of the respondents sent us comments. Many of the answers were critical of our design. One simile in particular to a web 0.1 site made me shiver. There were comments on removing some of the ads and suggestions on how to make our posts better with more plugin reviews and more articles on design, development and WordPress technology. The primary sentiments expressed in the polls were also reflected in the detailed comments. We appreciate your feedback. Your opinion matters to us and helps us make the right decisions.</p>
<p>Now where is that designer?</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:06:55 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Mark Ghosh";}s:7:"summary";s:3162:"<p>We recently ran a reader survey to have you answer some basic questions that we had about Weblog Tools Collection and would like to thank all those who participated in the survey. We were not looking for specific answers but were trying to gauge some sentiments and help shape ourselves to serve you better. We are also looking for a better understanding of where we should spend our resources to provide the most value to our readers. In that spirit, most of the answers were helpful and some of the comments made us look a little closely at the mirror.</p>
<p>Here are the results from the survey</p>
<ol>
<li>Where did you first hear about Weblog Tools Collection?
<ol>
<li>WordPress Dashboard 76.2%</li>
<li>WordPress Planet 4.8%</li>
<li><strong>Google Search 11.9%</strong></li>
<li>Link from Another site 4.8%</li>
<li>User Suggestions/Discussions 2.4%</li>
<li>Other (please specify) 0.0%</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Are you subscribed to Weblog Tools Collection to receive daily updates?
<ol>
<li>Subscribed via RSS 25.0%</li>
<li>Subscribed via Email 0.0%</li>
<li>Already on Dashboard 50.0%</li>
<li><strong>Read it on the web 23.8%</strong></li>
<li>Subscribed via other means 0.0%</li>
<li>Other (please specify) 1.2%</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Satisfaction ratings for Weblog Tools Collection
<ol>
<li><strong>Overall satisfaction: 60% voted satisfied, 26% very satisfied</strong></li>
<li>Content: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied</li>
<li><strong>Design: 35% voted somewhat satisfied, 28% satisfied</strong></li>
<li>Format: 45% voted satisfied, 35% somewhat satisfied (leaning towards somewhat satisfied)</li>
<li>Frequency of posts: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied</li>
<li>Features of blog: 65% voted satisfied, 20% somewhat satisfied</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Advertisements
<ol>
<li>Are they usable? 45% Undecided, 35% No</li>
<li>Have you ever clicked on any of them? 65% No, 35% Yes</li>
<li><strong>Are there too many ads? 45% No, 35% Undecided</strong></li>
<li>Are you an advertiser? 95% No</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Site Features
<ol>
<li>Did you know that we offer a news forum? 55% No, 40% Yes</li>
<li>Did you know that we have a video site? 50% No, 40% Yes</li>
<li>Did you know that we have offer translations in 9 languages? 50% Yes, 35% No</li>
<li>Would you participate in future surveys to help us make the site better? 90% Yes</li>
<li><strong>Did you know that registered users see far fewer ads? 80% No, 13% Not Important</strong></li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
<p>The final question asked how we could improve the user experience on Weblog Tools Collection and about a quarter of the respondents sent us comments. Many of the answers were critical of our design. One simile in particular to a web 0.1 site made me shiver. There were comments on removing some of the ads and suggestions on how to make our posts better with more plugin reviews and more articles on design, development and WordPress technology. The primary sentiments expressed in the polls were also reflected in the detailed comments. We appreciate your feedback. Your opinion matters to us and helps us make the right decisions.</p>
<p>Now where is that designer?</p>";}i:37;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:32:"Matt: Startonomics This Thursday";s:4:"guid";s:48:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/startonomics-this-thursday/";s:4:"link";s:48:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/startonomics-this-thursday/";s:11:"description";s:180:"<p>The <a href="http://startonomics.com/">Startonomics conference is happening this Thursday in San Francisco</a> and looks pretty interesting, I&#8217;m going to try to go by.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:41:42 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:180:"<p>The <a href="http://startonomics.com/">Startonomics conference is happening this Thursday in San Francisco</a> and looks pretty interesting, I&#8217;m going to try to go by.</p>";}i:38;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:95:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2: Search box, Favorites menu, Future Publish";s:4:"guid";s:119:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-ui-survey-2-search-box-favorites-menu-future-publish/";s:4:"link";s:119:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/29/wordpress-27-ui-survey-2-search-box-favorites-menu-future-publish/";s:11:"description";s:402:"<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-2-7-survey-no2/">WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2: Search box, Favorites menu, Future Publish</a>.: You wanted more surveys and you got them! This time the WordPress 2.7 UI survey is about the search box, the add new post button and the future publish button. The poll is set for 5000 responses and will close thereafter. Have you voted yet?</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:38:25 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Mark Ghosh";}s:7:"summary";s:402:"<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-2-7-survey-no2/">WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2: Search box, Favorites menu, Future Publish</a>.: You wanted more surveys and you got them! This time the WordPress 2.7 UI survey is about the search box, the add new post button and the future publish button. The poll is set for 5000 responses and will close thereafter. Have you voted yet?</p>";}i:39;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:80:"Dev Blog: WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2: Search box, Favorites menu, Future Publish";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=327";s:4:"link";s:66:"http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpress-2-7-survey-no2/";s:11:"description";s:781:"<p><strong>October 1, 2008 Update: The survey is now closed. Thanks to all those who participated.</strong></p>
<p>Another round of mini-mockups and multiple choice questions awaits the first 5000 respondents. WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2 is now available to take your opinions regarding:</p>
<ul>
<li>Where to put the search box</li>
<li>Where to put the Add New Post button/favorites menu</li>
<li>How to label the Future Publish/Edit Timestamp function</li>
</ul>
<p>The survey (hosted by the good guys over at PollDaddy.com) will automatically close after receiving 5000 responses, which only took about two days for the navigation survey, so hurry over and cast your votes.</p>
<p>Note: when the survey has closed, these links will be disabled and this post will be updated.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:56:13 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"jane";}s:7:"summary";s:781:"<p><strong>October 1, 2008 Update: The survey is now closed. Thanks to all those who participated.</strong></p>
<p>Another round of mini-mockups and multiple choice questions awaits the first 5000 respondents. WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2 is now available to take your opinions regarding:</p>
<ul>
<li>Where to put the search box</li>
<li>Where to put the Add New Post button/favorites menu</li>
<li>How to label the Future Publish/Edit Timestamp function</li>
</ul>
<p>The survey (hosted by the good guys over at PollDaddy.com) will automatically close after receiving 5000 responses, which only took about two days for the navigation survey, so hurry over and cast your votes.</p>
<p>Note: when the survey has closed, these links will be disabled and this post will be updated.</p>";}i:40;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:60:"Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 09/28";s:4:"guid";s:40:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/?p=4235";s:4:"link";s:88:"http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/28/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-0928/";s:11:"description";s:3095:"<p><a href="http://geekforbrains.com/wordpress/g4b-photo-gallery-plugin-for-wordpress"><strong>G4B Photo Gallery</strong></a></p>
<p>G4B Photo Gallery is a free, flexible plugin for WordPress. It provides a simple and effective way to include a complete gallery anywhere on your site, just by typing in a keyword.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.weinschenker.name/avatars-for-comment-feeds/"><strong>Avatars for Comment Feeds</strong></a></p>
<p>It will allow you to add avatars or gravatars of comment-authors to the comment-feeds of your WordPress-blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-mollom/"><strong>WP Mollom</strong></a></p>
<p>This is a plugin that brings the anti-spam power of <a href="http://mollom.com">Mollom</a> to WordPress. WP-Mollom protects your website against comment and trackback spam. The difference with other spam services is that Mollom takes care of everything. The idea is to relieve you, the administrator, editor, maintainer,&#8230; of whatever moderation or clean up tasks you would normally need to perform in order to keep your blog spamfree.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dashboardzone.com/monitor-your-blog-goals-with-wordpress-plugin"><strong>DashboardZone</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin will help you and your readers to keep you on track for reaching your targets. We created this wordpress plugin that monitors the various blog goals and in an effort tries to engage your readers more effectively.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thebrokersedge.com/menu-creator/"><strong>WordPress Menu Creator</strong></a></p>
<p>The Brokers Edge developed this free plugin to provide website owners with true easy to manage easy to configure menu solution for WordPress or WordPress CMS sites.</p>
<p><a href="http://ozblog.mmow.biz/2008/08/20/29/"><strong>WordPress Help Desk</strong></a></p>
<p>WordPress Help Desk is a comprehensive integrated help desk and trouble ticketing system that helps site admin to support there users and resolve issues quickly. Users and support personnel can interact in real time to report, diagnose and resolve issues quickly and with as little pain as possible. [EDIT] This plugin is ONLY compatible with WordPress MU</p>
<p><a href="http://ozblog.mmow.biz/2008/09/20/wordpress-terms-of-use-plugin/"><strong>Terms of Use</strong></a></p>
<p>Instead of making the user agree to the Terms of Use when they join the site this plugin makes them agree to the terms and conditions the first time they login.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/yaapc"><strong>Yet another AJAX paged comments</strong></a></p>
<p>When the user navigate through the comments via page selector,only the comments area will be send to the client,not the full page.This actually save your server load and bandwidth thus making your blog faster and more responsive.</p>
<p><a href="http://striderweb.com/nerdaphernalia/features/wp-javascript-pull-quotes/"><strong>Javascript Pull Quotes</strong></a></p>
<p>The JavaScript Pull-Quotes plugin is an add-on for WordPress that allows you to easily insert pull-quotes into your posts and pages.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:01:48 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Ajay";}s:7:"summary";s:3095:"<p><a href="http://geekforbrains.com/wordpress/g4b-photo-gallery-plugin-for-wordpress"><strong>G4B Photo Gallery</strong></a></p>
<p>G4B Photo Gallery is a free, flexible plugin for WordPress. It provides a simple and effective way to include a complete gallery anywhere on your site, just by typing in a keyword.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.weinschenker.name/avatars-for-comment-feeds/"><strong>Avatars for Comment Feeds</strong></a></p>
<p>It will allow you to add avatars or gravatars of comment-authors to the comment-feeds of your WordPress-blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-mollom/"><strong>WP Mollom</strong></a></p>
<p>This is a plugin that brings the anti-spam power of <a href="http://mollom.com">Mollom</a> to WordPress. WP-Mollom protects your website against comment and trackback spam. The difference with other spam services is that Mollom takes care of everything. The idea is to relieve you, the administrator, editor, maintainer,&#8230; of whatever moderation or clean up tasks you would normally need to perform in order to keep your blog spamfree.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dashboardzone.com/monitor-your-blog-goals-with-wordpress-plugin"><strong>DashboardZone</strong></a></p>
<p>This plugin will help you and your readers to keep you on track for reaching your targets. We created this wordpress plugin that monitors the various blog goals and in an effort tries to engage your readers more effectively.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thebrokersedge.com/menu-creator/"><strong>WordPress Menu Creator</strong></a></p>
<p>The Brokers Edge developed this free plugin to provide website owners with true easy to manage easy to configure menu solution for WordPress or WordPress CMS sites.</p>
<p><a href="http://ozblog.mmow.biz/2008/08/20/29/"><strong>WordPress Help Desk</strong></a></p>
<p>WordPress Help Desk is a comprehensive integrated help desk and trouble ticketing system that helps site admin to support there users and resolve issues quickly. Users and support personnel can interact in real time to report, diagnose and resolve issues quickly and with as little pain as possible. [EDIT] This plugin is ONLY compatible with WordPress MU</p>
<p><a href="http://ozblog.mmow.biz/2008/09/20/wordpress-terms-of-use-plugin/"><strong>Terms of Use</strong></a></p>
<p>Instead of making the user agree to the Terms of Use when they join the site this plugin makes them agree to the terms and conditions the first time they login.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/yaapc"><strong>Yet another AJAX paged comments</strong></a></p>
<p>When the user navigate through the comments via page selector,only the comments area will be send to the client,not the full page.This actually save your server load and bandwidth thus making your blog faster and more responsive.</p>
<p><a href="http://striderweb.com/nerdaphernalia/features/wp-javascript-pull-quotes/"><strong>Javascript Pull Quotes</strong></a></p>
<p>The JavaScript Pull-Quotes plugin is an add-on for WordPress that allows you to easily insert pull-quotes into your posts and pages.</p>";}i:41;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:47:"Matt: Video - How WordPress Has Changed My Life";s:4:"guid";s:61:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/video-how-wordpress-has-changed-my-life/";s:4:"link";s:61:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/video-how-wordpress-has-changed-my-life/";s:11:"description";s:103:"<p></p>
<p>Hat tip: <a href="http://twitter.com/moneycoach/statuses/937836802">Nancy Zimmerman</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 28 Sep 2008 06:36:21 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:103:"<p></p>
<p>Hat tip: <a href="http://twitter.com/moneycoach/statuses/937836802">Nancy Zimmerman</a>.</p>";}i:42;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:16:"Matt: Carrington";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7780";s:4:"link";s:32:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/carrington/";s:11:"description";s:377:"<p>Alex King is on stage at WordCamp Utah and just <a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/">announced and launched the Carrington theme</a>. It allows really advanced conditional template displays based on any number of variables and executed by naming conventions and its structure. I think this could be the base for a whole new generation of themes and development.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 23:25:25 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:377:"<p>Alex King is on stage at WordCamp Utah and just <a href="http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/">announced and launched the Carrington theme</a>. It allows really advanced conditional template displays based on any number of variables and executed by naming conventions and its structure. I think this could be the base for a whole new generation of themes and development.</p>";}i:43;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Matt: Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Hackaday, and Royal Navy";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7773";s:4:"link";s:36:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/more-switchers/";s:11:"description";s:389:"<p><a href="http://blogmaverick.com/">Mark Cuban</a>, <a href="http://calacanis.com/">Jason Calacanis</a>, <a href="http://hackaday.com/">Hackaday</a>, and the <a href="http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/">Royal Navy</a> all now have WordPress-powered blogs. The first three switched from Blogsmith. Hat tip: <a href="http://publisherblog.automattic.com/">Automattic Publisher Blog</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:20:38 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:389:"<p><a href="http://blogmaverick.com/">Mark Cuban</a>, <a href="http://calacanis.com/">Jason Calacanis</a>, <a href="http://hackaday.com/">Hackaday</a>, and the <a href="http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/">Royal Navy</a> all now have WordPress-powered blogs. The first three switched from Blogsmith. Hat tip: <a href="http://publisherblog.automattic.com/">Automattic Publisher Blog</a>.</p>";}i:44;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:29:"Matt: Revisiting Moral Hazard";s:4:"guid";s:45:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/revisiting-moral-hazard/";s:4:"link";s:45:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/revisiting-moral-hazard/";s:11:"description";s:205:"<p><a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/revisiting-moral-hazard/">Revisiting Moral Hazard</a>, by Bob McTeer. (<a href="http://ma.tt/photos/person/bob-mcteer">Whom I&#8217;ve met</a>.)</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:205:"<p><a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/revisiting-moral-hazard/">Revisiting Moral Hazard</a>, by Bob McTeer. (<a href="http://ma.tt/photos/person/bob-mcteer">Whom I&#8217;ve met</a>.)</p>";}i:45;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:22:"Matt: WordCamp Weekend";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7734";s:4:"link";s:38:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/wordcamp-weekend/";s:11:"description";s:639:"<p>There&#8217;s not one but <em><del datetime="2008-09-25T16:20:21+00:00">three</del> four</em> WordCamps this weekend. I just got back from China, where both the <a href="http://china.wordcamp.org/">Beijing and Shanghai events</a> were great. (More pictures coming soon.) This Saturday you can check out WordPress events in <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/">Portland</a>, <a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/">Salt Lake City</a> (I&#8217;ll be attending this one, they asked me first), <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampVancouver2008WordCamp">Vancouver</a>, and <a href="http://barcamp.org/WordCampBirmingham">Birmingham</a>.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:639:"<p>There&#8217;s not one but <em><del datetime="2008-09-25T16:20:21+00:00">three</del> four</em> WordCamps this weekend. I just got back from China, where both the <a href="http://china.wordcamp.org/">Beijing and Shanghai events</a> were great. (More pictures coming soon.) This Saturday you can check out WordPress events in <a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/">Portland</a>, <a href="http://utah.wordcamp.org/">Salt Lake City</a> (I&#8217;ll be attending this one, they asked me first), <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampVancouver2008WordCamp">Vancouver</a>, and <a href="http://barcamp.org/WordCampBirmingham">Birmingham</a>.</p>";}i:46;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:36:"Matt: Intense Debate Goes Automattic";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7727";s:4:"link";s:52:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/intense-debate-goes-automattic/";s:11:"description";s:2410:"<p>Some cool news today &#8212; <a href="http://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> is acquiring <a href="http://intensedebate.com/">Intense Debate</a>. You can read more on<a href="http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/"> Jon&#8217;s blog on Intense Debate</a>, or <a href="http://toni.org/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/">on Toni&#8217;s blog</a>, or <a href="http://vcmike.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intense-debate/">on VC Mike&#8217;s blog</a>.</p>
<p>For those of you who aren&#8217;t familiar with the product, Intense Debate supercharges the comment section of WordPress blogs and other sites with cool features like threading, reply by email, voting, reputation, and global profiles. There are a few companies tackling this space right now, but I was impressed with how much ID (Intense Debate) has been able to do with a small team, and happy to find that their common platform (PHP and MySQL) would make integration a lot easier.</p>
<p>Going forward, the plan is to keep Intense Debate available as a platform-agnostic independent service, much like <a href="http://akismet.com/">Akismet</a>. We&#8217;ll start to integrate its features into WordPress core, WordPress.com, and Gravatar as appropriate. For example, comment threading is going to be in WordPress 2.7, but reply by email is a lot easier to implement on a hosted service like WordPress.com. We&#8217;re also going to be able to lend our expertise in scaling to the ID team to make sure their users enjoy the same hassle-free speed and bulletproof availability as users of other Automattic services.</p>
<p>Long-term, I think that comments are the most crucial interaction point for blogs, and an area that deserves a lot of investment and innovation. Comments really haven&#8217;t changed in a decade, and it&#8217;s time to spice things up a little.</p>
<p>We were early in the space with investing in Akismet to solve the spam problem, but now I think the real growth opportunities are in the user interaction and social features across comments. There is a huge opportunity to increase the traffic and engagement of blogs significantly. WordPress.com alone already gets about three legitimate comments every second &#8212; more than a quarter of a million every day. I&#8217;m excited to see what the Intense Debate team can do to make things more interesting.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:2410:"<p>Some cool news today &#8212; <a href="http://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> is acquiring <a href="http://intensedebate.com/">Intense Debate</a>. You can read more on<a href="http://www.intensedebate.com/blog/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/"> Jon&#8217;s blog on Intense Debate</a>, or <a href="http://toni.org/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intensedebate/">on Toni&#8217;s blog</a>, or <a href="http://vcmike.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires-intense-debate/">on VC Mike&#8217;s blog</a>.</p>
<p>For those of you who aren&#8217;t familiar with the product, Intense Debate supercharges the comment section of WordPress blogs and other sites with cool features like threading, reply by email, voting, reputation, and global profiles. There are a few companies tackling this space right now, but I was impressed with how much ID (Intense Debate) has been able to do with a small team, and happy to find that their common platform (PHP and MySQL) would make integration a lot easier.</p>
<p>Going forward, the plan is to keep Intense Debate available as a platform-agnostic independent service, much like <a href="http://akismet.com/">Akismet</a>. We&#8217;ll start to integrate its features into WordPress core, WordPress.com, and Gravatar as appropriate. For example, comment threading is going to be in WordPress 2.7, but reply by email is a lot easier to implement on a hosted service like WordPress.com. We&#8217;re also going to be able to lend our expertise in scaling to the ID team to make sure their users enjoy the same hassle-free speed and bulletproof availability as users of other Automattic services.</p>
<p>Long-term, I think that comments are the most crucial interaction point for blogs, and an area that deserves a lot of investment and innovation. Comments really haven&#8217;t changed in a decade, and it&#8217;s time to spice things up a little.</p>
<p>We were early in the space with investing in Akismet to solve the spam problem, but now I think the real growth opportunities are in the user interaction and social features across comments. There is a huge opportunity to increase the traffic and engagement of blogs significantly. WordPress.com alone already gets about three legitimate comments every second &#8212; more than a quarter of a million every day. I&#8217;m excited to see what the Intense Debate team can do to make things more interesting.</p>";}i:47;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:23:"Matt: 18 on 30 Under 30";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7725";s:4:"link";s:39:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/18-on-30-under-30/";s:11:"description";s:212:"<p>Inc. just announced <a href="http://www.inc.com/30under30/2008/">their Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 and I came in at #18</a>. Cool! Some really young ones on the list though &#8212; I&#8217;m getting old.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:212:"<p>Inc. just announced <a href="http://www.inc.com/30under30/2008/">their Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 and I came in at #18</a>. Cool! Some really young ones on the list though &#8212; I&#8217;m getting old.</p>";}i:48;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:26:"Matt: First day in Beijing";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7661";s:4:"link";s:42:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/";s:11:"description";s:12849:"<p>Flying to Beijing, dinner, walking around Tienanmen Square.</p>
<p><span id="more-7661"></span></p>

<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0078-2/" title="mcm_0078"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0078-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0079/" title="mcm_0079"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0079-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0080-2/" title="mcm_0080"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0080-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0081-2/" title="mcm_0081"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0081-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0082/" title="mcm_0082"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0082-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0083/" title="mcm_0083"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0083-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0084-2/" title="mcm_0084"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0084-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0086-2/" title="mcm_0086"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0086-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0087/" title="mcm_0087"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0087-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0089-2/" title="mcm_0089"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0089-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0090-2/" title="mcm_0090"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0090-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0091/" title="mcm_0091"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0091-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0092-2/" title="mcm_0092"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0092-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0093-2/" title="mcm_0093"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0093-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0094-2/" title="mcm_0094"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0094-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0095/" title="mcm_0095"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0095-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0096/" title="mcm_0096"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0096-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0097-2/" title="mcm_0097"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0097-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0099-2/" title="mcm_0099"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0099-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0100-2/" title="mcm_0100"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0100-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0101-2/" title="mcm_0101"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0101-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0102-2/" title="mcm_0102"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0102-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0104/" title="mcm_0104"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0104-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0105-2/" title="mcm_0105"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0105-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0108/" title="mcm_0108"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0108-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0110-2/" title="mcm_0110"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0110-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0111-2/" title="mcm_0111"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0111-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0112/" title="mcm_0112"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0112-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0115/" title="mcm_0115"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0115-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0116/" title="mcm_0116"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0116-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0117/" title="mcm_0117"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0117-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0118/" title="mcm_0118"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0118-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0120-2/" title="mcm_0120"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0120-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0122-2/" title="mcm_0122"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0122-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0123/" title="mcm_0123"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0123-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0124-2/" title="mcm_0124"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0124-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0125/" title="mcm_0125"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0125-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0126/" title="mcm_0126"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0126-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0127/" title="mcm_0127"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0127-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0128/" title="mcm_0128"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0128-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0129/" title="mcm_0129"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0129-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0130-2/" title="mcm_0130"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0130-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0131-2/" title="mcm_0131"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0131-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0132/" title="mcm_0132"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0132-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0133-2/" title="mcm_0133"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0133-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0134/" title="mcm_0134"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0134-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0135/" title="mcm_0135"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0135-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0137-2/" title="mcm_0137"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0137-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0141/" title="mcm_0141"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0141-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0144/" title="mcm_0144"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0144-140x210.jpg" width="140" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0145/" title="mcm_0145"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0145-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0148-2/" title="mcm_0148"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0148-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0149/" title="mcm_0149"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0149-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0150/" title="mcm_0150"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0150-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0159/" title="mcm_0159"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0159-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0160/" title="mcm_0160"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0160-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0162-2/" title="mcm_0162"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0162-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0164-2/" title="mcm_0164"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0164-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0166/" title="mcm_0166"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0166-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0167/" title="mcm_0167"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0167-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0168-2/" title="mcm_0168"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0168-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:12849:"<p>Flying to Beijing, dinner, walking around Tienanmen Square.</p>
<p><span id="more-7661"></span></p>

<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0078-2/" title="mcm_0078"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0078-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0079/" title="mcm_0079"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0079-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0080-2/" title="mcm_0080"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0080-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0081-2/" title="mcm_0081"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0081-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0082/" title="mcm_0082"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0082-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0083/" title="mcm_0083"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0083-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0084-2/" title="mcm_0084"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0084-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0086-2/" title="mcm_0086"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0086-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0087/" title="mcm_0087"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0087-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0089-2/" title="mcm_0089"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0089-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0090-2/" title="mcm_0090"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0090-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0091/" title="mcm_0091"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0091-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0092-2/" title="mcm_0092"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0092-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0093-2/" title="mcm_0093"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0093-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0094-2/" title="mcm_0094"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0094-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0095/" title="mcm_0095"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0095-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0096/" title="mcm_0096"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0096-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0097-2/" title="mcm_0097"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0097-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0099-2/" title="mcm_0099"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0099-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0100-2/" title="mcm_0100"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0100-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0101-2/" title="mcm_0101"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0101-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0102-2/" title="mcm_0102"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0102-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0104/" title="mcm_0104"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0104-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0105-2/" title="mcm_0105"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0105-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0108/" title="mcm_0108"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0108-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0110-2/" title="mcm_0110"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0110-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0111-2/" title="mcm_0111"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0111-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0112/" title="mcm_0112"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0112-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0115/" title="mcm_0115"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0115-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0116/" title="mcm_0116"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0116-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0117/" title="mcm_0117"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0117-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0118/" title="mcm_0118"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0118-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0120-2/" title="mcm_0120"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0120-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0122-2/" title="mcm_0122"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0122-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0123/" title="mcm_0123"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0123-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0124-2/" title="mcm_0124"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0124-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0125/" title="mcm_0125"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0125-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0126/" title="mcm_0126"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0126-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0127/" title="mcm_0127"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0127-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0128/" title="mcm_0128"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0128-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0129/" title="mcm_0129"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0129-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0130-2/" title="mcm_0130"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0130-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0131-2/" title="mcm_0131"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0131-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0132/" title="mcm_0132"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0132-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0133-2/" title="mcm_0133"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0133-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0134/" title="mcm_0134"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0134-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0135/" title="mcm_0135"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0135-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0137-2/" title="mcm_0137"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0137-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0141/" title="mcm_0141"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0141-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0144/" title="mcm_0144"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0144-140x210.jpg" width="140" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0145/" title="mcm_0145"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0145-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0148-2/" title="mcm_0148"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0148-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0149/" title="mcm_0149"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0149-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0150/" title="mcm_0150"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0150-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0159/" title="mcm_0159"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0159-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0160/" title="mcm_0160"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0160-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0162-2/" title="mcm_0162"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0162-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0164-2/" title="mcm_0164"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0164-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0166/" title="mcm_0166"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0166-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0167/" title="mcm_0167"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0167-195x129.jpg" width="195" height="129" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://ma.tt/2008/09/first-day-in-beijing/mcm_0168-2/" title="mcm_0168"><img src="http://s.ma.tt/files/2008/09/mcm_0168-139x210.jpg" width="139" height="210" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="" /></a>";}i:49;a:7:{s:5:"title";s:20:"Matt: Going to China";s:4:"guid";s:20:"http://ma.tt/?p=7659";s:4:"link";s:36:"http://ma.tt/2008/09/going-to-china/";s:11:"description";s:194:"<p>I&#8217;m going to be in China later this week for <a href="http://china.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Shanghai and Beijing</a>. Really looking forward to meeting all the WordPress users there.</p>";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:15:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:7:"summary";s:194:"<p>I&#8217;m going to be in China later this week for <a href="http://china.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Shanghai and Beijing</a>. Really looking forward to meeting all the WordPress users there.</p>";}}s:7:"channel";a:5:{s:5:"title";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:4:"link";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:8:"language";s:2:"en";s:11:"description";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"tagline";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";}s:9:"textinput";a:0:{}s:5:"image";a:0:{}s:9:"feed_type";s:3:"RSS";s:12:"feed_version";s:3:"2.0";s:5:"stack";a:0:{}s:9:"inchannel";b:0;s:6:"initem";b:0;s:9:"incontent";b:0;s:11:"intextinput";b:0;s:7:"inimage";b:0;s:13:"current_field";s:0:"";s:17:"current_namespace";b:0;s:19:"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS";a:6:{i:0;s:7:"content";i:1;s:7:"summary";i:2;s:4:"info";i:3;s:5:"title";i:4;s:7:"tagline";i:5;s:9:"copyright";}s:4:"etag";s:26:""308b4-48f01dd3-1174596"
";s:13:"last_modified";s:31:"Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:30:27 GMT
";}