Add interactive video capabilities to your blog! Enhance your WordPress blog with a full video experience. Enable playing and editing of video remixes.

Authenticate Lite

Authenticate Lite enables universal and/or targeted inclusion of custom content for both feeds and posts. Ideal for adding copyright information, distribution policy, thank-you messages, custom links, special offers, etc.

WP-UnitPNGfix

WP-UnitPNGfix includes the ‘unitpngfix.js’ javascript file if the browser is IE6 or lower. In plain words, it implements the solution for the PNG transparency provided by Unit Interactive Labs. It works on both img objects and background-image attributes.

Constant Contact WordPress Widget

Adds Constant Contact signup form to your sidebar without touching code. Includes options for Title, Button Text, Tag Wrapper, Form ID Code, and Intro Paragraph. The form code is as standards-compliant as possible while still working with Constant Contact.

Weather Postin’

Weather Postin’ retrieves the current weather provided from RSS Weather when your post is published. After that, when you view your posts the weather conditions will display at the end of your post. This does not alter the original text of the post; it is only displayed at run-time.

Postalicious

Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted is very customizable and is designed to meet your specific needs.

iLast.Fm

The plugin iLast.Fm provides a complete integration between your blog and your Last.fm account.

As of this post, the various plugins have received over 960 votes.

While this may seem to be a sizable number, it also means that many of our visitors have still not given their votes to their favorite plugins. Remember that there is a lot at stake in this competition and it would do justice for the plugin authors to receive your esteemed vote!

Meanwhile, our judges are busy testing and evaluating the plugins and we should have the results pretty soon.

Have you placed your vote yet? If not, then hurry before the voting closes!

Makes the native WordPress galleries introduced in WordPress 2.5 use jQuery Lightbox by balupton to display the fullsize images.

Disable Theme Preview

Disables the cool but sometimes annoying theme preview feature added in WordPress 2.6. You’ll still be able to preview themes by clicking a link located below the theme’s description.

Direct Image URLs For Galleries

Modifies thumbnails to link to fullsize image instead of the page containing the medium thumbnail.

Statrix

Statrix plugin collects data about your blog visits. It creates charts and lists of the full data history in real-time, which you can browse, filter and export immediately after plugin activation. The plugin keeps the full visits history, so you can make reports about any period of time you want.

Version Information

This plugin displays version and configuration information for WordPress, PHP, MySQL, and the web server. A summary is displayed in the Site Admin dashboard and more details are displayed under a Version Information page under the Site Admin Plugins menu.

Peter’s Collaboration Emails

Enhance the “Submit for Review” feature for Contributor users in WordPress 2.3 and above. This plugin enables automatic e-mails to the relevant users when posts are pending and when they are approved.

Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam Image

This differs from the other image plugins in that it creates an anti-spam jpg using random words of your choice (adding a fun element) and it does not require visitors to have cookies or JavaScript enabled. It also generates audio files for visually impaired visitors.

Extra Feed Links

Adds links to the specific feed for each page type in Wordpress. Ex: Comments Feed for single posts and pages; Category Feed for category pages etc.

The plugin on this page, when activated, puts an entry in your PHP log any time a deprecated function is called, or a deprecated file is included. The entry is far more useful than the default WordPress log notice - this one tells you the name of the function, the exact file that called it, the line the call was on, and what new function, if any, you should use instead.

PicasaView

With picasaView you can easily view your picasaweb-albums in your WordPress blog.

GD Plugin Core

This is not actually plugin, but base class you can use to extend and create your own plugin. Along with the base class, you have a Wizard for creating plugins using base class.

Digg Digg

Add Digg Button Into Wordpress Content with four prefix template

Header Image Rotator

Displays a new header image in your blog based on different time variables.

Nofollow Links Page

A simple plugin to create a special links page or blogroll page with embedded nofollow tag to prevent PageRank leak.

AVH Amazon

The AVH Amazon plugin give you the abillity to add multiple widgets which will display a random item from your Amazon wishlist, baby registry and/or wedding registry.

WPG2

WPG2 is a Wordpress Plug-in that embeds Gallery2 within Wordpress to share photos, videos and any other Gallery2 content seamlessly into the Wordpress Sidebar and Blog entries.

WordPress News

WordPress iPhone: The WordPress iPhone is now at version 1.1 with a lot of improvements and a couple bug fixes. You can learn more about it on the WordPress iPhone Development Blog and study the source code on the WordPress iPhone SVN.

WordPress 2.6 Released: WordPress 2.6 was released last week and appears to be a fairly stable release. It is a mandatory release with security patches and you should Download WordPress 2.6 now. Over 194 bugs were fixed, too. I’ve included a lot of the new features in past issues of the WordPress Wednesday News. For those with WordPress Themes that have not been updated to handle the new image placement, see Hack WordPress and WP Lover for technical help.

WordPress 2.6 Stats: Matt Mullenweg released some numbers on WordPress 2.6. Within the first 10 days, there are 201,000 blogs using 2.6. The English version had been downloaded on average 23,000 a day. According to the WordPress Development blog, there have been 34 issues fixed so far for the upcoming release of 2.6.1.

WordCamp UK Simon Dickson Presentation: The presentation by Simon Dickson has been declared a showstopper at WordCamp UK and he goes into more detail about the things he covered on using WordPress within a business, including a the use of WordPress for 10 Downing Street, the seat of the British Prime Minister. He also offered tips on how WordPress could improve, especially as a CMS.

WordPress 2.5 Branch No Longer Supported: The announcement of the release of WordPress 2.6 came with the news that WordPress 2.5 will no longer be supported. It is nearly identical to the new version and has little impact on Themes and Plugins.

WordPress Theme Directory Submissions: Matt Mullenweg reports that more than 300 WordPress Themes have been added to the new WordPress Theme Directory in the first 6 days. Jeff Chandler of Performancing offers a guided tour of the new WordPress Theme Directory.

WordPressMU 2.6 Released: WordPressMU 2.6 has been released and Donncha offers details on the improvements, including bringing it up to WordPress 2.6 specs. As mentioned last week, the signup page is more secure, improvements have been made in WordPress Themes, Plugins, custom front page posts, and more. A lot of security issues have been addressed and a bunch of bugs fixed in this multiple user version of WordPress.

Checked out Weblog Tools Collection Lately? One of the best resources for top-notch information on WordPress is the Weblog Tools Collection blog. They cover everything including frquent WordPress Plugin Releases (see WordPress Plugin Releases for 07/29, WordPress Plugin Releases for 07/28), and WordPress Plugin Releases 07/24), WordPress Theme Releases and Announcements (see WordPress Theme Releases for 07/25 and WordPress Theme Releases 07/23), and now offer a summary of WordPress Tips they find along their daily WordPress surfing (see WordPress Tips for 7/27. They are also the host of the annual Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition and voting is on right now, so go vote for your favorite WordPress Plugin in the competition and turn a Plugin author into a rockstar and WordPress guru!

Having Trouble Publishing Code in Posts and Comment? If you publish code in your WordPress posts and comments, WordPress may think it is code. To prevent code acting like code, WordPress automatically filters it out of the posts and comments, as does many other blogging and CMS programs. To publish code as content, see Writing Code in Your WordPress Posts and Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: iPhone, 10 Downing Street, WordCamp UK, WordPress 2.6 Rocks, WordPress International, and WordPress Themes Directory.

WordPress Podcasts

WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Podcast: Episode 43: Out Of Date Blogs Hacked, All-In-One SEO Gets Dropped, Then Picked Up covered those topics and the development of the Crazy Horse new WordPress Administration Panels interface, Batcache, HyperDB, WordPress Plugins, WordPress 2.6, and security issues.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 23: Sexy Asian Commenters has been released and features WordPress Plugins, Liz Strauss pushing WordPress by releasing over 260 blog posts - one a minute - using the future post feature, the WordPress iPhone, WordPress 2.6 statistics and news, and more. The WordCast Mugshot Contest is still on. Send in a photograph of your Mug and you may win.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordCamp San Francisco 2008: Registration is now open for WordCamp San Francisco 2008 on August 16, 2008 at the Mission Bay Conference Center. There is a constantly updated list of attendees and the schedule is yet to be announced for the speakers and events. Lloyd Budd is looking for WordPress Geniuses to help set up a help “bar” during WordCamp to help answer WordPress questions and solve problems. Interested?

Record Breaking WordCamps: We’ve got some record breakers coming up for WordCamp events. There are 5 WordCamps set for this September, and three will all be on September 27: WordCamp Utah in Salt Lake City, WordCamp Birmingham in Alabama, and WordCamp Portland in Oregon. Three WordCamps are scheduled so far for October. It’s going to be an autumn stuffed with WordCamp and WordPress fun.

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change).

• WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - August 16, 2008
• The New York City WordPress August Meetup - August 16, 2008
• The Boston WordPress August Meetup - August 21, 2008
• The Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress August Meetup - August 23, 2008
• WordCamp South Africa - Cape Town - August 23, 2008
• Central Coast WordPress Meetup - Pismo Beach, California - Aug 30, 2008
• WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008
• Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008
• WordCamp China - Beijing - September 20-21, 2008
• WordCamp Utah - Salt Lake City - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp Birmingham - Alabama - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp New York - New York - October 4, 2008
• WordCamp Toronto - October 4-5, 2008
• Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii - Oct 24, 2008
• MinneWordCamp - Minneapolis - November 15, 2008
• WordCamp Australia - Sydney - December 6-7, 2008

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, as many track WordPress event announcements there.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

Mark Jaquith - One Line WordPress Plugin: After publishing How to Write a Solid and Stable WordPress Plugin, Mark Jaquith wrote a WordPress Plugin all on one line just to prove it could be done. The Post Timestamp Visible WordPress Plugin opens the post timestamp editing fields so they are visible all the time for those who use the future posts feature of WordPress. The technical article on writing WordPress Plugins is a good guideline for creating consistent, well-written, and secure Plugins and worth adding to your references.

Inline Documentation for WordPress: Peter Westwood has created the WordPress Inline Documentation site with PHPdocumentor which outlines all the classes, functions, and more in WordPress. This is excellent for Theme and Plugin authors. This joins the ranks of other core programming functions and resources such as the WordPress Codex Function Reference. Peter Westwood also has a good guide on how to track deprecated functions for WordPress coders and extenders.

Prologue WordPress Theme Upgraded: The Prologue WordPress Theme is now version 1.4.1, updated with fixes in the CSS for lists, improved comments login message, iPhone stylesheet integration, and much more overall improvements and fixes. The Prologue WordPress Theme is a “social” Theme produced by Automattic, and considered a Twitter-style blog format.

Log Your Deprecated Calls: Stephen Rider has released the Log Deprecated Calls WordPress Plugin especially for Plugin and Theme authors. If WordPress calls a function or file that has been deprecated due to version changes or modifications, a message is logged in a PHP file that identifies the call’s location and makes a recommendation on what to replace it with. It should allow faster and easier upgrades and modifications from version to version.

Using Classes in WordPress Plugins: Stephen Rider of Nerdaphernalia wrote about how to use classes in your WordPress Plugins to improve code portability and minimize name conflicts within the code. He discusses the pros and cons and highly recommends you wrap your Plugins’ functions in a PHP class to future proof your Plugins.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I found recently:

• WordPress Tabs and Slides WordPress Plugin adds accordion-style navigation to your WordPress Theme with tags and slides, creating a multi-page structure within a single pageview.
• MaxRef WordPress Widgets adds unlimited widgets to your WordPress blog sidebar to display posts from a specific category, links from a link category, comments, and a variety of other sidebar options.
• <a href=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cloogooq/” title=”Cloud-O-Google Queries WordPress Plugin uses a filter to display a keyword “cloud” based upon search engine queries to your blog.
• Display Google Spreadsheet WordPress Plugin allows embedding of Google online spreadsheets within your WordPress blog post.
• Peter’s Collaboration E-mails WordPress Plugin takes advantage of the Pending Review feature of recent versions of WordPress to send an email to the moderators or editors when a post is submitted and ready for review, and another to the contributor when the post is approved for publishing.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

• ZEPREZ WordPress Video Guides - How To Publish Posts To Your Website With WordPress 2.0
• How To: Display the Recent Posts of Specific Categories
• HACK: Fixing The Code Syntax Highlighter WordPress Plugins To Work With WYSIWYG
• How to Put Adsense on Your WordPress Blog

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

WordPress.com News

Post Revisions on WordPress.com: The WordPress.com Blog goes into greater detail on how the new Post Revisions feature works for WordPress.com bloggers. For those with multiple bloggers, it helps track who has done what on the blog posts. If you make a boo boo, you can easily go back to an older version.

Adding Captions to Images on WordPress.com: You can now add captions to photographs on your WordPress.com blog. Captions have been a real bear for web page designers, so this is a major accomplishment to add to WordPress.com blogs. To add a caption, type it in the Caption field on the Media Library Image panel and it should appear. There are also shortcodes you can use to create the caption.

iPhone updated for WordPress Themes: The new iPhone WordPress application has been updated to work with the Prologue and Mdot WordPress Themes on WordPress.com. The mobile interface has been updated, which can be reached at m.wordpress.com. They are working on improving the look, but for now, you can post to your blog, check stats, add a bookmark, and other goodies to your WordPress blog from your iPhone.

WordPress Community News

Looking Back Into the History of WordPress: Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Collection shares “Evolution of WordPress: B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0″, a history lesson on how WordPress grew out of B2/Cafelog in the early days.

Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies. Don’t want to buy one? Enter the WordCast Mugshot Contest and you could win one, alone with some other fun schwag. A lot of blogs are offering WordPress mugs for prizes. Why not you?

Found a Bug in WordPress? If you find a bug in WordPress, report it by following the instructions in Reporting Bugs on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.

Give Something Back to WordPress: Jeff Chandler of Weblog Tools Collection has written “24 Ways To Contribute To WordPress” with suggestions on how to get involved in helping WordPress development. If you would like to help with the WordPress Codex, the official online user manual for WordPress users, we need you. If you would like to contribute to WordPress as a volunteer in the WordPress Support Forums, testing, coding, and more, see Contributing to WordPress. If you would like to help improve WordPress by reporting bugs, please report them via the WordPress Bug Report form. Your help is needed to ensure WordPress works.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The WordPress Ideas section. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list from Automattic, the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Installed For Free: Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress) is a free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Don’t Use WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: It’s about respect. Please use WordPress names right because WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s domain name or URL unless you have permission of Automattic and WordPress. Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

• WordPress Wednesday News: iPhone, 10 Downing Street, WordCamp UK, WordPress 2.6 Rocks, WordPress International, and WordPress Themes Directory
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Africa and China, WordPress 2.6, WordPress Plugin Contest Ready for Votes, WordCamp UK, and More WordPress News
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Australia and Hawaii, Security Check Plugin, Google Gears, Lots of Plugin News and Tips, WordPress 2.6 News, and If Not WordPress, What?
• WordPress Wednesday News: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress 2.6 Beta and First Looks, WordCamp UK New Location, Batcache, Naked Themes, and More
• WordPress Wednesday New: Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News

WordPress News Sources

• WordPress Planet
• WordPress Development Blog
• WordPress.com Blog
• Weblog Tools Collection
• The WordPress Podcast
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
• WordPress Publisher Blog
• Planet WordPress Canada

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

This plugin modifies wp_title() (the function used to create the title of your website to output all parent Pages when viewing a Page.

Allow Numeric Stubs

Starting with WordPress 2.5, there is a bug where you cannot have a child Page that’s stub is a number. For example this will not work: /about/5/. That URL conflicts with paged content feature where you can posts and Pages with multiple pages of content by adding <!--nextpage--> within your content.

This plugin allows you to have children Pages with numbers as stubs by giving up the ability to have paged Pages which isn’t a big deal as most people don’t use paged Pages anyway.

p2pConverter

Converts either a static Page into a Post, or a Post into a static Page! Just click on the Manage tab in the Admin interface, and click the Posts or Pages sub-tab.

Status Press Widget

Adds a Facebook Status Widget to display your Facebook status in your sidebar. Based on Status Press plugin (not required!) by Adam Walker Cleaveland & C. Scott Andreas.

Customizable Search Widget

Adds a Customizable Search Widget to give you more control over how the search box looks on your sidebar.

List Drafts Widget

List Drafts is a simple sidebar widget which outputs a list of the titles of all posts currently saved as drafts. Users can set the title of the widget, and add a label to be used for all untitled drafts.

Post and Page Excerpt Widgets

Creates widgets that display excerpts from posts or pages in the sidebar. You may use ‘more’ links and/or link the widget title to the post or page.

And, while on the topic of plugins, take a look at Clever Carrot’s 10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Great Sites.

WineX is a lightweight script that will import the listing contents of your CellarTracker wine cellar into your Wordpress website.

Hidden Content

Some blocks of the text can be shown/hidden for bots, logged-in users or all visitors (in posts, pages and comments) (Page in Russian)

GD Star Rating

Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating system for pages and/or posts in your blog. Also includes the widget for displaying votes and rating statistics for all posts and pages with votes.

GD LinkedIn Badge

This widget displays badge with a link to a LinkedIn profile page. It can also display some additional custom information above the picture and link.

GD Pages Navigator

Standard display of pages in Wordpress can be a problem if you have a lot of pages with subpages causing the widget with list of pages to take a lot of space on the page.

Silverlight Content

Add Silverlight objects (XAP-files) to the post and manage default values. Like location, width, height and necessary Silverlight version.

Show Active Category

With Worpress it is only possible to show the active category when you browsing the category archive. But when you are on a single post page you have a possibility to show to which category other categories the current blogpost belongs to. This small plugin adds the CSS class “active_category” to all categories the active post belongs to. (Page in German)

WP-Slimstat-Ex

Track your blog stats. Based on Mr. Coolmann’s Wp-SlimStat

Please help us choose the winners by visiting each of the plugins below and rating them on the linked page.

• Adminimize
• AnyVar
• Attachment Extender
• Automatic Timezone
• Broken links Remover
• Click
• ComicPress Manager
• Dk Obama Gallery
• DoDo
• Editor Extender
• Flaresmith
• Flickr Gallery
• Fun with in-context comments
• Great Real Estate
• Idealien Category Enhancements
• Image Browser Extender
• Invite friends
• Live Blogroll
• MailPress
• Manageable
• Maxref Widgets
• Media in response
• MultiSiteManager
• Nonce! Please
• PhotoJAR: Base
• Picture Increment Cron System
• Post Groups
• Post Tabs
• Repost
• Role Scoper
• SEO Smart Links
• Show Me Options
• Sidebars
• Simple Flash Video
• SlideShare Presentation List
• Snazzy Archives
• Paypal API Subscriptions
• Tabbed Widgets
• tWPtter
• Vent
• Vote2Publish
• WP125
• WP Comment Remix
• WP Easy Uploader
• WP Sentry
• WP Wall
• Yank Widget
• ZdMultiLang

Remember to test the plugin properly before giving your vote.

A simple plugin which moves the category selector back to the sidebar of the Post New page. In return, it removes the Related section (just because that I’m new in PHP and this is my first plugin), except the Press This bookmarklet.

Deviant Thumbs

This plugin displays thumbs from deviantART in a configurable carousel. It has widget support and is licensed under the GPL.

Movie Quotes

The Movie Quotes widget will fetch the latest, random or top rated quotes from themoviequotes.com website, and display them on your blog.

Snazzy Archives

A visualization plugin for your WordPress site featuring an unique way to display all your posts. Your archive page will never be boring again!

Show Me Options

How many times have you activated a plugin and the searched hopelessly for it’s options page? When you activate a new plugin, Show Me Options will show you a link to the options page you can use immediately.

ZdMultilang

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.

ZdStats

A WordPress plugin allowing you to trace your visitors. This is not a simple statistics plugin, it’s very flexible and dynamic. This means you can update your filters by yourself and therefore by as realistic as possible.

Broken Links Remover

It helps you fix bad/broken links, both text links(anchor tags) and image links (img tags). It blocks the display of such links on your WordPress post/page, until you fix them. These are not made visible to search engine robots as well, until you correct them.

Dk Obama

Imitates the gallery as on Barack Obama’s site.

WP125

The WP125 plugin can help you manage your ads more efficiently, leaving you with more time to write new posts. Ads are automatically taken down when their time is up, and optional click counting is available.

McCain Widget

Place a Blogs for McCain widget in your side bar.

Overweight Calculator

This bmi calculator is intended to blogs who write about health, wellness, fitness, food and recipes and sport. The plugin helps your visitors calculate their body mass index and if they are overweight, to understand what is the weight range they should aim for.

Investment Calculator

This plugin will be most useful for personal finance, credit, loans, investment related or trading blogs.

WordPress News

iPhone for WordPress: It’s the talk of the web. The WordPress for iPhone brings your WordPress blog to your iPhone. It is Open Source and compatible with iPhone 3G, iPhone, and iPod Touch and works with full-versions of WordPress (2.5.1 or higher) and WordPress.com. You can download it for free from the iTunes App Store. There is a WordPress iPhone frequently asked questions page to help, and a place to report iPhone WordPress problems. A walk-through video on WordPress for iPhone is on the Automattic Publisher blog. CNet Webware gives a positive review of the iPhone WordPress app, including pros and cons such as uploading photos from your Media Library or from your phone’s camera, and a good post preview. The downside is not being able to copy and paste links and text. It’s all hand HTML coding, too. There are a lot of WordPress mobile options for blogging and keeping up with your WordPress blog via your cell phone.

WordPress Now Rules a Nation: Simon Dickson announced at WordCamp UK that Number 10 Downing new site will be on WordPress.

WordPress 2.6 Released: WordPress 2.6 was released last week and appears to be a fairly stable release. It is a mandatory release with security patches and you should Download WordPress 2.6 now. Over 194 bugs were fixed, too. I’ve included a lot of the new features in past issues of the WordPress Wednesday News.

WordPress 2.6 Image Placement Changes: Hack WordPress reports on how WordPress 2.6 changes images image handling and WP Lover covers how to float an image in a post in the latest version of WordPres. The new class set up, alignleft, alignright, and aligncentered do not come setup on many blogs. You have to add the float CSS to make it work right. Hopefully this will be fixed in future versions so the floats do not have to rely upon the Theme designer.

Upgrade with the Automatic Upgrade WordPress Plugin: WordPress Automatic Upgrade WordPress Plugin, which makes upgrading easier, has been updated to work with WordPress 2.6.

WordPress 2.5 Branch No Longer Supported: The announcement of the release of WordPresss 2.6 came with the news that WordPress 2.5 will no longer be supported. It is nearly identical to the new version and has little impact on Themes and Plugins.

News on the Next Versions of WordPress: According to Jacob Santos, the WordPress Trac version milestones include WordPress 2.8 being released before the end of the year with WordPress 2.9 and 2.10 coming next year. WordPress has skipped a version number a few times in the past, so this is a far projection for those looking into the future. He also says that WordPress 3.0 will have an emphasis on using BackPress being developed by Michael Adams.

New WordPress Theme Directory in Extends: After a lot of
debate and questions concerning the WordPress Theme site, especially over continued problems with security and hidden scripts and ads, WordPress has announced the new WordPress Theme Directory within their Extend WordPress area, calling it the official WordPress Themes Directory. Following the lessons learned in the Plugins Directory, they hope that submissions and updates to WordPress Themes for authors will be simple. A Theme will be automatically checked for some of the Theme requirements and errors, providing authors with error reports if there is a problem. For users, there are still some interface issues, especially with the “drilling down” to find the Theme you want, but with so few Themes to check currently, this will clearly improve with time and usage.

WordPressMU Beta Release: WordPressMU 2.6 beta 1 has been released to work with WordPress 2.6 features and includes a change in the version number from 1.6 to 2.6 to match WordPress, improved spam proofing on the sign up page, object cache changes to improve efficiency and speed, and many more bug and security fixes. WordPressMU is the WordPress version that runs multi-user blogs like WordPress.com.

Do You Blog By Email? Ozh brings up blogging by email and asks readers if they are using this long time core feature of WordPress. Are you? Would you like to see it improved? Join the conversation.

WordPress Plugin Competition: The final listing of the Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition Finalists and Prize List is out. The list of 51 entries was published in last week’s WordPress Wednesday and now the voting is on. Go have your say on which WordPress Plugin you can’t live without.

Having Trouble Publishing Code in Posts and Comment? If you publish code in your WordPress posts and comments, WordPress may think it is code. To prevent code acting like code, WordPress automatically filters it out of the posts and comments, as does many other blogging and CMS programs. To publish code as content, see Writing Code in Your WordPress Posts and Writing and Publishing Code in Your WordPress Blog Posts.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Africa and China, WordPress 2.6, WordPress Plugin Contest Ready for Votes, WordCamp UK, and More WordPress News.

WordPress Podcasts

WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Podcast: Episode 43: Out Of Date Blogs Hacked, All-In-One SEO Gets Dropped, Then Picked Up covered those topics and the development of the Crazy Horse new WordPress Administration Panels interface, Batcache, HyperDB, WordPress Plugins, WordPress 2.6, and security issues.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast is having a WordCast Mugshot Contest with winners winning WordPress mugs and other prizes. To enter, you must share a picture of your favorite mug. The latest episode of WordCast 22: Rawk On! features issues with WordPress 2.6, PodPress, the WordPress Theme Directory, Weblog Tools Collection’s Plugin Competition, legal blogging issues, and some hot WordPress Plugins.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordCamp UK: The reports of the weekend’s successful WordCamp UK are still coming in, including summaries, slides, and video of the speakers. They are also holding a competition looking for the best write-up of WordCamp UK with prizes on offer. Here are a few highlights.

• Speaker Kulpreet Singh on WordPress Security (upto WordPress 2.6) (video)
• Speaker Peter Westwoord - Get Involved with WordPress (slides)
• WordPress Is Not A Blog from WordCamp UK 2008 by Jonnya Freelance Creative (slides)
• WordCamp UK 2008 Washup Summary
• WordCamp UK 2008 Day 1 presentation notes
• Wordcampuk Tag — Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress.com
• SlideShare Presentations about wordcampuk
• Dave Briggs - Reflections on WordCampUK | DavePress
• Flickr Pictures - WordCamp UK 2008 (Set)
• Chris Garrett - That was the Wordcamp that was…
• Twitter Search for WordCamp UK
• Dave Briggs - Simon Dickson at WordCampUK

Record Breaking WordCamps: We’ve got some record breakers coming up for WordCamp events. There are 5 WordCamps set for this September, and three will all be on September 27: WordCamp Utah in Salt Lake City, WordCamp Birmingham in Alabama, and WordCamp Portland in Oregon. Three WordCamps are scheduled so far for October. It’s going to be an autumn stuffed with WordCamp and WordPress fun.

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change).

• Boston WordPress July Meetup - July 24, 2008
• The Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress July Meetup - July 26, 2008
• WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - August 16, 2008
• The New York City WordPress August Meetup - August 16, 2008
• WordCamp South Africa - Cape Town - August 23, 2008
• WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008
• Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008
• WordCamp China - Beijing - September 20-21, 2008
• WordCamp Utah - Salt Lake City - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp Birmingham - Alabama - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp New York - New York - October 4, 2008
• WordCamp Toronto - October 4-5, 2008
• Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii - Oct 24, 2008
• MinneWordCamp - Minneapolis - November 15, 2008
• WordCamp Australia - Sydney - December 6-7, 2008

WordCamp San Francisco August 16: August 16, 2008 is the next WordCamp San Francisco, considered by many to be the premier WordCamp event. This year, it appears it will be only one day instead of two, but details are still coming. It will be at the Mission Bay Conference Center this year.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, as many track WordPress event announcements there.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugin Translation Aids: Jacob Santos announced improved translation for WordPress Plugin headers in WordPress 2.7. These will help Plugin authors to play better with the new Automattic i18n Tools and the Plugin Extend Administration IU online translation tool, making your Plugins play nice internationally. This is all part of the overall internationalization project of WordPress.

Announcing WordPress Themes and Plugins on Weblog Tools Collection: “How to Get Featured in Our Daily Releases on Weblog Tools Collection” describes the steps to help you promote your WordPress Plugin or Theme to the world on one of the most popular news and information sites on WordPress.

PodPress Fix Due Soon: PodPress will not currently work under WordPress 2.6 but a fix is promised soon. Blogging Pro has a temporary solution to keep PodPress running until the fix is ready.

Sitewide Tags for WordPressMU: Donncha has released his Sitewide Tags Pages Plugin for WordPressMU which will create tag pages representing all the tags used by the multiple blogs across the site.

Windows WordPress Toolbox: Peter Westwood has written two posts, Windows WordPress toolbox and My WordPress Toolbox, containing the frequent code and tips he uses for the work he does with the development of WordPress. These are real time savers that will work on Windows, Linux, and other operating systems.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I found recently:

• Comment Redirect WordPress Plugin sends first time commenters to a page of your choosing after they comment to help direct them to more information on your blog or tell them a little more about your blog.
• Blog Metrics WordPress Plugin calculates average author contributions, author word counts, and conversion rates based upon the average number of comments per post and number of words used in comments to posts for an interesting metric for your blog.
• Microkid’s Related Posts WordPress Plugin allows manual selection of related posts with AJAX to add to your blog post.
• Semi-manual Breadcrumb Navigation WordPress Plugin adds a manually controlled breadcrumb navigation structure to your WordPress blog.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

• Managing Trackbacks and Pingbacks in Your WordPress Theme
• Installing a WordPress theme
• How to import Blogger to WordPress
• WordPress Tutorial - Make Menus of Links With the Blogroll 2

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

WordPress.com News

iPhone updated for WordPress Themes: The new iPhone WordPress application has been updated to work with the Prologue and Mdot WordPress Themes on WordPress.com. The mobile interface has been updated, which can be reached at m.wordpress.com. They are working on improving the look, but for now, you can post to your blog, check stats, add a bookmark, and other goodies to your WordPress blog from your iPhone.

WordPress Community News

Looking Back Into the History of WordPress: Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Collection shares “Evolution of WordPress: B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0″, a history lesson on how WordPress grew out of B2/Cafelog in the early days.

Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies. Don’t want to buy one? Enter the WordCast Mugshot Contest and you could win one, alone with some other fun schwag. A lot of blogs are offering WordPress mugs for prizes. Why not you?

Found a Bug in WordPress? If you find a bug in WordPress, report it by following the instructions in Reporting Bugs on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.

Give Something Back to WordPress: Jeff Chandler of Weblog Tools Collection has written “24 Ways To Contribute To WordPress” with suggestions on how to get involved in helping WordPress development. If you would like to help with the WordPress Codex, the official online user manual for WordPress users, we need you. If you would like to contribute to WordPress as a volunteer in the WordPress Support Forums, testing, coding, and more, see Contributing to WordPress. If you would like to help improve WordPress by reporting bugs, please report them via the WordPress Bug Report form. Your help is needed to ensure WordPress works.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The WordPress Ideas section. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list from Automattic, the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Installed For Free: Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress) is a free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Don’t Use WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: It’s about respect. Please use WordPress names right because WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s domain name or URL unless you have permission of Automattic and WordPress. Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Africa and China, WordPress 2.6, WordPress Plugin Contest Ready for Votes, WordCamp UK, and More WordPress News
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Australia and Hawaii, Security Check Plugin, Google Gears, Lots of Plugin News and Tips, WordPress 2.6 News, and If Not WordPress, What?
• WordPress Wednesday News: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress 2.6 Beta and First Looks, WordCamp UK New Location, Batcache, Naked Themes, and More
• WordPress Wednesday New: Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News

WordPress News Sources

• WordPress Planet
• WordPress Development Blog
• WordPress.com Blog
• Weblog Tools Collection
• The WordPress Podcast
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
• WordPress Publisher Blog
• Planet WordPress Canada

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com