The Blog Herald

The fourth release candidate for Movable Type 4.2 is out now, and apparently it is the last one prior to the release. Check it out if you want to be bleeding edge.

Backbone Magazine asked the readers to nominate Web 2.0 companies/services in Canada for a list, and then a jury took these nominations and made a list called PICK 20. This was the result: 01. Club Penguin 02. FreshBooks 03. ConceptShare 04. Cambrian House 05. Smallthought Sytems’ Dabble DB 06. Octopz 07. Open Text 08. Kaboose 09. Standout Jobs 10. NowPublic 11. blogTO 12. Jiibe 12. Something Simpler 14. Mob4Hire 15. MovieSet 15. b5media 17. SmartHippo 18. ThoughtFarmer 19. Protagonize 20. Store Ops-Center Obviously, some of these have tied positions, as you can see from the list. Bold means blog related.

The last couple of weeks has seen a ton of exciting features being developed by the community including a polling plugin, a new plugin and tutorial for creating photo galleries as well as an alternate wysiwyg editor. A short conference call with the MTOS community was also hosted last week with discussion around the development of Movable Type 4.2 - especially highlighting the large role the community has played! Welcome to Movable Type Monday! MTOS Community Updates Poll Position: Late last week, prominent community member Dan Wolfgang of Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type and uiNNovations released Poll Position, a brand new plugin that allows you to easily add polls (and soon, surveys!) to your Movable Type blogs. The plugin seamlessly integrates with Movable Type s interface, allowing you to create an unlimited number of polls and responses, styling them any which way and uses Google Charts to display the results beautifully. Poll Position is available in a free and licensed version, the latter (named Poll Position: Champion also offers a poll custom field type allowing you to simply add polls to entries!) A live demo of the plugin in action is also available. Fantastic work Dan! Asset Gallery: A new plugin by yours truly creates a new custom field type that allows you to create collections of assets (or files) for entries. A great example of this is photo galleries for your entries which are displayed beautifully within the app using a CoverFlow-esque interface. Asset Gallery, however, isn t limited to just images and supports non-photo uploads too including Word documents, PDFs and video files! A great example of Asset Gallery in action is on the Movable Type Plugin Directory itself, Asset Gallery powers the screenshot galleries you find on plugin profile pages. Photo Galleries with jQuery and Assets: Billy Mabray wrote a great article on creating a slick photo gallery using Movable Type s powerful built-in asset manager and jQuery - to give you beautiful slide-show like animation and interaction. It looks like a simple, elegant solution and Billy s tutorial guides you, step-by-step, through the process! Check out the live demo for a preview of what a few lines of code can accomplish, great work Billy! Getting Started with Movable Type: Movable Type was recently featured on the front page of the venerable Webmonkey with a guide to Get Started with Movable Type. The guide concisely explains the differences between the open source and commercial versions, how to install Movable Type and provides an introduction to Movable Type s HTML-esque templating language. The guide also recommends some plugins to install, including the popular Action Streams Identi.ca Update Stream: Last week John Eckman released a new action stream plugin that aggregates your content from the Identi.ca microblogging service TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor: One of the great things about Movable Type is its flexibility. For example, the entry editor can easily be replace through a plugin. A host of such plugins exist bringing the popular FCKEditor and YUI Rich Text Editor to Movable Type. Last week, alfasado added TinyMCE to the list of Movable Type compatible editors with his open source plugin. MTOS Conference Call Every other week, Six Apart hosts a conference call with the Movable Type community. Notes and a podcast recording of last weeks call are available. It was a shorter call than usual but discussion centered on community involvement with the official Movable Type development process and the community s involvement with the latest release was highlighted - a prodigious list given the open source project is only six months old! International members of the Movable Type community are also brainstorming ways they can participate in the conference calls too which currently is based in the United States due to the conference call provider. If you d like to dial in for the next call (scheduled for the 23rd), the dial-in information follows, everyone is welcome! * 1-712-432-3000 * Bridge Number: 353177

WordCamps in Australia and Hawaii announced. Worried about security? New WordPress Plugin to scan for WordPress exploits. Lots of tips for WordPress Plugin writers. Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition heating up with great Plugins. WordPress 2.6 Beta Candidate part two released. Google Gears for WordPress.com. Lots of news on WordPress 2.6. And if not WordPress, what? WordPress News Scanning for WordPress Exploits: WordPress Exploit Scanner WordPress Plugin by Donncha O Caoimh searches the files and database of your WordPress blog for signs of suspicious activity. It won t prevent attacks but will help you find them if they do occur. WordPress 2.6 News: There have been two beta releases of WordPress 2.6, the most recent one is WordPress 2.6 Beta 2. Improvements and changes include tag auto-suggest, Visual Text Editor, Media Library fixes and changes, SSL and i18n localization fixes, inline documentation, and more. More news and commentary on WordPress 2.6 include: What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6 by Ozh of PlanetOzh. Weblog Tools Collecton - What You Need To Know About WordPress 2.6 covers post revisioning, improvements in the Press-It (now called Press This ) bookmarklet, faster WordPress Administration Panels, incorporation of Google Gears to enhance speed improvements, XML-RPC requires Administrator Permissions to enable, ability to activate multiple Plugins at once and delete them, ease of deleting Plugins you no longer use, the ability to move the config file to different directory, moving the content directory, image previewing, and customizable default avatars. Dougal Campbell - Update on WordPress blog APIs covers the issues around changes to the XML-RPC and Atom blog APIs being disabled by default in WordPress 2.6. Aaron Brazell - 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 covered Shift Click selection of multiple check boxes in the WordPress Administration Panels, Google Gears support for pre-caching, avatar options, XML-RPC as an option to enable XML-RPC editing and upgrading, Press This, Theme preview, post versions, Page Templates over XML-RPC, and Plugin mass activation and deletion. Shoemoney likes Post Revision, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors. Dougal Campbell is also jazzed about Post Revisions and Google Gears support, and describes some of the other new features in greater detail including support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs being turned off by default for security protection, improved SSL access to Administration Panels, a new version of the Press This (formerly Press-It) bookmarklet, avatar options, improved WordPress Plugin management, and more. Blog Security explores the security improvements in WordPress 2.6 and reports that a number of XMLRPC features will be deactivated by default, adding more protection, along with improved password and cookie security improvements in past versions. They say it s on the right track for strong security standards. Peter Westwood is excited about the improvements in the security of WordPress 2.6 including support for SSL and disabling remote publishing protocols by default. Lester Chan, popular WordPress Plugin author, is excited about the new features including the new link in the top menu called Speed Up which connects with Google Gears, the new Dashboard Panel feature Right Now which gives a breakdown of your blog s activity in the moment, the new Word Count feature, and Theme Previews. However, with the some recent changes in WordPress versions which impact WordPress Plugins, Chan is debating whether or not to maintain WordPress 2.5 compatibility for the next wave of WordPress Plugins, especially those impacted by the new features that allow wp-config.php to move up one level from the WordPress root and allowing the wp-content directory to be in a custom location. Many are reporting their excitement about the new WordPress Auto-Upgrade feature which will make upgrading WordPress easier, though rumors are flying that this might be pushed back a version. WordPress Plugin Competition: The Weblog Tools Collection s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ continues to grow with new prizes and Plugins. Here are the Plugin entries listed on the Plugin Competition Blog so far: PhotoJAR: Base tWPtter ~ Wordpress Microblogging New WP Comment Remix Version Sidebars PostGroups v1.1.0 WP Easy Uploader Upgrade and backup *all* your WordPress blogs with one click! Current tags PostGroups Manageable ZdMultilang Post Tabs MailPress Great Real Estate WPMU Plugin Commander SEO Smart Links Adminimize DL-MENU Tab generation and dynamic colorschemes Content By Country Automatic Timezone Plugin Simple Flash Video WordPress Plugin Sermon management WordPress Plugin for churches Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin Why Not Use WordPress? The Best Already Are: BloggingPro looks at who is using WordPress and asks that if the big names like CNN, Yahoo, Sony, The New York Times, People, Ebay, and b5Media are using WordPress, is there anything else that is better they could be using? After all, these groups have the money, expertise, technology, and access to the research information that helped them make their decision. They must know what their options are. So what are the options besides WordPress? BlogSecurity s Next Generation Security Tester: BlogSecurity announces the launch of BlogSecurity Next Generation, the new modular, expanded version of the WP-scanner WordPress Plugin which tests your blog for security issues and vulnerabilities. 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: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress 2.6 Beta and First Looks, WordCamp UK New Location, Batcache, Naked Themes, and More. 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. WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Episode 21 Round 2 with Jeffro included WordPress 2.6 news, hacked blogs, Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, and more. WordCast Podcast: WordCast 19: Irreverelevant covered new Theme releases, the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin competition, Underrated WordPress Plugins, WordPress 2.6, and more WordPress news. WordPress on Your Calendar WordCamp Announcements: WordCamp Australia has been officially announced and will be December 6-7, 2008, in Sydney. Oct 24, 2008, is the date for a PodCamp and WordCamp in Hawaii, so get out your surf boards and sun lotion, folks! WordCamp UK Changes Locations: Only a few weeks away, WordCamp UK has had a last minute change of venue to The Studio in Birmingham. Check out WordCamp UK for more details and maps. 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). Huntsville WordPress Meetup, Alabama - June 28, 2008 Nashville WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008 Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008 The New York City WordPress - July 19, 2008 WordCamp UK - July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK VENUE 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 - Aug 16, 2008 WordPress 2.6 - July 7, 2008 WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008 Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008 South by Deep South WordCamp - Birmingham, Alabama - September 26-28 WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008 WordCamp Toronto 2008 at Centennial College, Progress Campus, Toronto - October 4, 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 Do You Say WordPress Plugin on Your Plugin Page? I m finding a lot of WordPress Plugin authors are not using the word WordPress Plugin in their Plugin s official page, nor within the text. Remember that WordPress Plugin is a popular keyword search term and if you aren t using it, your chances of being found drops. Avoid separating the two words like WordPress Blah Blah Plugin and keep them together such as Blah Blah WordPress Plugin as the closer the terms are to each other, the more important they are. Most people search for how to do blah WordPress Plugin when they search, so help them find you by using the words and keeping them together. What WordPress Plugin Authors Need to Know About WordPress 2.6: While there will be little change for WordPress Themes, template tags, and functions, a few of the changes in WordPress 2.6 may make or break your WordPress Plugins. What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6 by Ozh takes you in detail through these such as the changes in how the wp-config.php will work in the future, and more. Ozh also offers some WordPress Plugin Coding Tips to help write better WordPress Plugins, as a complement to a series on WordPress Plugin code tips by Nerdaphernalia. If you have or are writing WordPress Plugins, check out these tips to help improve your WordPress Plugins and the user s experience. Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I stumbled on recently: Page Excerpt WordPress Plugin adds a meta box to the Write Post Panel for use as a Page Excerpt. Inline Google Docs WordPress Plugin allows embedding of Google documents into WordPress. Inline Google Docs WordPress Plugin allows the blog administrator to embed Google Docs and Spreadsheets as content in posts and Pages with a shortcode. WordPress Themed Categories Plugin assigns different WordPress Themes for specific categories, great for review sites. Authenticate WordPress Plugin enabled universal or targetted inclusion of custom content in feeds and posts for including copyright information, policies, special offers and more. It can be added before, after, or within the post content. 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.com News Google Gears for WordPress.com Blogs: WordPress.com users now have Google Gears for their blogs. In the upper right corner of the Administration Panels is a link called Turbo. You will be taken to a Google Gears installation. Google Gears is a browser extension for FireFox and Internet Explorer and allows the browser to use web-based applications like Google Docs and Remember the Milk. It can create a local database and file storage on your computer and run JavaScript in the background of your computer without slowing down the web browser as you work. For WordPress.com users, it will store all your images and other web page components from the WordPress Administration Panels to your computer, speeding up the process and reducing your web bandwidth and traffic. The question most people are asking is if this will be available for full versions of WordPress. According to the development news, it will be included in WordPress 2.6. WordPress Techniques and Tips Can t Find Your Category ID Numbers? How To: Finding Category Numbers in WordPress 2.5 by HackWordPress helps you find those missing category ID numbers for links to your categories by ID, selecting a specific category for the front page of your blog and magazine WordPress Themes, and other usages. Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I ve uncovered: WordPress Hacks: Using Custom Fields to Auto-Embed YouTube Videos Working with widgets at the new WordPress.com JJ and the Kids Podcast - Episode 5 - Create a Database for WordPress ZEPREZ WordPress Video Guides - How to Save An Edited Post Or A Draft In WordPress 2.0 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 . WordPress Community News Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug and shared my love with a lot of people recently. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies. 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). 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. Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports 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 Wednesday News: WordPress at 50, WordPress Tweeters, Tracking WordPress 2.6, WordPress.com Stats, and Hot WordPress Plugins WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 5 Years Old, WordCamps International, WordPress 2.6 On Track, Plugin Competition is Hot, Genko Updated WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Apache Patch for Securer Passwords, WordPress Plugin Contest, and More WordPress 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 WordPress Weekly live show with Jeffro2pt0 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:

This past week saw another round of incredible plugins being released with the majority focussed on integrating your Movable Type blog with third party services including FriendFeed, action stream plugins for BrightKite, Seesmic and Sporepedia! The bi-weekly Movable Type Conference Call was also held and featured updates about upcoming and future releases. Release Candidate 3 of the next version of Movable Type (and public betas of the Commercial and Community Solutions) was also released last week. Welcome to Movable Type Monday! Movable Type Community Updates Seesmic for MT: Seesmic, an innovative video conversation service has released a new plugin for Movable Type that allows readers to record and post video comments. The Seesmic Wiki has more information on how to integrate the plugin more closely with your site. It will be interesting to see how popular video comments become! Yves Luther also followed up and released an action streams plugin for Seesmic. BrightKite Action Stream: Another plugin from from Yves Luther brings BrightKite actions to Movable Type s Action Streams plugin. BrightKite is a relatively new location-based network and Yves plugin allows you to display your checkins, photos and messages with the service on your blog. Sporepedia Action Stream: Richard Benson released an action stream plugin for Spore - what appears to be the start of a new creature-based game! Currently, Spore allows you to create a variety of creatures and Richard s plugin allows you to display them in your action stream! Fascinating! FriendFeed Comments: Mark Carey, one of the leading plugin developers for Movable Type, released FriendFeed Comments, a new plugin that allows you to display comments from FriendFeed on your entries. Mark not only provides screenshots of the plugin in action but even has a live demo available! The plugin appears to be free but you have to register with Mark s site first. Custom Asset Markup: Veteran Movable Type developer, Jay Allen, released two plugins last week. The first was born through discussions in the #movabletype IRC chatroom and the MTOS-dev mailing list and tackles a problem many users faced. When adding an asset (an image, video or any file) to an entry, Movable Type wraps it with markup that is near impossible to customize (this leads to customization problems as Jay elaborates). Jay s plugin gives users an easy way to customize this inserted markup using Movable Type s built in templating system! Log4MT: A plugin that ll undoubtedly make plugin developers happy, Log4MT brings the powerful Log4Perl framework to Movable Type allowing you to debug your code, handle exceptions and send notifications in a much easier way. As a plugin developer, I m definitely looking forward to play around with it. Thanks Jay! MailChimp Signup Form: MailChimp is an email marketing service and their plugin for Movable Type allows you to add the MailChimp signup form to your blog with a simple drag and drop process. A step-by-step guide, with accompanying screenshots, is provided. Lixtal: A plugin targeted towards Scandinavian bloggers calculates the readability index of your entry to give you an understanding of how well your writing corresponds to your audience. This plugin sounds intriguing, I d be really interested to see a similar plugin that analyses English! Bi-Weekly Phone Call Every two weeks, Six Apart hosts a phone call with, and open to, the entire Movable Type community. Notes and a podcast of last week s call have been posted for anyone unable to attend. Topics included an update about Movable Type 4.2 with a release in late July being announced (to give the large changes introduced in this release to be better tested). Byrne Reese, product manager for Movable Type, also elaborated on the planning for the next-next version of Movable Type, codenamed Greyhound. Finally, consultant and community member Dave Aiello sparked a good discussion on making the case to clients to upgrade to 4.2 as well as enhancements to template editing. A tentative agenda for the next call, scheduled for July 9, has been posted and includes Improving Transparency The process of deprecation IP Banning Template Tags Timelines Notifications Movable Type 4.2 Beta Test The third release candidate for Movable Type 4.2 was released last week along public betas for the Professional Pack, which includes the Universal Template Set and Custom Fields functionality, and Community Solution, which, among many things, allows your readers to easily submit entries and even includes a template set to turn your Movable Type blog into forums! As mentioned in the call, the release of Movable Type 4.2 was pushed back until late July such that the large number of low-level changes (introduced to improve performance) could be better tested. In preparation for the release, documentation is being swiftly improved!

Want your own song? Win the Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition! WordPress 2.6 Beta released for testing. First looks at the new features coming in WordPress 2.6. WordCamp UK changes locations. Batcache strikes. Plugin menus on the Administration Panels discussed. Is your WordPress Theme naked without a print stylesheet? We ve got WordPress tips, WordPress news, and more WordPress than ever! WordPress News WordPress 2.6 Beta Released: For the WordPress beta testers, Ryan Boren announced the release of WordPress 2.6 Beta 1 for testing. The release is slated for July 7 with a July 14 possibility, depending upon how testing and fixes go, which is a month earlier than has been reported. I ve reported on many of the new features in past WordPress Wednesday News on the Blog Herald. Here are some of the first reports coming in: Shoemoney likes Post Revision, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors. Dougal Campbell is also jazzed about Post Revisions and Google Gears support, and describes some of the other new features in greater detail including support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs being turned off by default for security protection, improved SSL access to Administration Panels, a new version of the Press This (formerly Press-It) bookmarklet, avatar options, improved WordPress Plugin management, and more. Blog Security explores the security improvements in WordPress 2.6 and reports that a number of XMLRPC features will be deactivated by default, adding more protection, along with improved password and cookie security improvements in past versions. They say it s on the right track for strong security standards. Peter Westwood is excited about the improvements in the security of WordPress 2.6 including support for SSL and disabling remote publishing protocols by default. Lester Chan, popular WordPress Plugin author, is excited about the new features including the new link in the top menu called Speed Up which connects with Google Gears, the new Dashboard Panel feature Right Now which gives a breakdown of your blog s activity in the moment, the new Word Count feature, and Theme Previews. However, with the some recent changes in WordPress versions which impact WordPress Plugins, Chan is debating whether or not to maintain WordPress 2.5 compatibility for the next wave of WordPress Plugins, especially those impacted by the new features that allow wp-config.php to move up one level from the WordPress root and allowing the wp-content directory to be in a custom location. Many are reporting their excitement about the new WordPress Auto-Upgrade feature which will make upgrading WordPress easier. WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collections announces that Kym Huynh, a songwriter, has just donated a new prize to the growing collection, a song written for the winning recipient and professionally recorded. The Weblog Tools Collection s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ continues to grow with new prizes and Plugins. Here are the Plugin entries listed on the Plugin Competition Blog so far: Automatic Timezone Plugin Content By Country DL-MENU Tab generation and dynamic colorschemes Adminimize SEO Smart Links WPMU Plugin Commander Great Real Estate MailPress Post Tabs ZdMultilang Simple Flash Video WordPress Plugin Sermon management WordPress Plugin for churches Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin WP Comment Remix WordPress Plugin Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin WordPress: Display Comments On Main Page WordPress Plugin WordPress and Google Summer of Code Update: Lloyd Budd reports on WordPress Google Summer of Code and how the team is improving WordPress to make it faster, better, and adding new features including new importing features, improved code, code documentation, and more. BlogSecurity s Next Generation Security Tester: BlogSecurify announces the launch of Launch BlogSecurify Next Generation! BlogSecurify Next Generation, the new modular, expanded version of the WP-scanner WordPress Plugin which tests your blog for security issues and vulnerabilities. WordPress Blogs Hacked: If you have not updated your WordPress blog, your blog maybe at risk from hackers due to security vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress. Update now. Here are more articles dealing with WordPress security issues: Donncha - Did Your WordPress Site Get Hacked? Donncha - WordPress: Catch website file changes with AIDE Peter s Useful Crap » WordPress: File Change Notifications For Your WordPress blog on Linux WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares WordPress Podcast: Episode 42: Our favorite Plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design is out from the WordPress Podcast and features a new segment by Matt Mullenweg answering questions about WordPress news and issues, discussion of new WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, WordPress Themes, and more on their favorite WordPress Plugins. They are also seeing your top ten favorite WordPress Plugins for an upcoming episode. WP Weekly Podcast: Episode 21 of the WP Weekly Podcast was canceled due to technical difficulties, but hopefully it will be back up and running next week. WordCast Podcast: WordCast started a while ago, and eventually found their stride to becoming a bit of an irreverent but fun look at the news from the WordPress Community. Podcast hosts Beth Skinner, Kym Huynh and Dave Moyer have interviewed a variety of WordPress experts and pros and feature a variety of interesting WordPress news and tips each week. Recent episodes include: WordCast 18: Sucky Stats WordCast 17: Head-eating Cartoons WordCast 16: Serenade the Developers WordCast 15: Stalking the Monks WordCast 8: Tweet My Thingie WordCast 10: The WordPress Widget Mafia WordCast 11: Bodily function control WordCast 12: Mother of a WordPress WordCast 13: WPancake WordCast 14: Blog’s Anatomy WordPress News and Tips from Canada: If you haven t found the new Planet WordPress Canada aggregator, you are missing out on some interesting WordPress tips and information coming from the north. Here are some recent highlights: [Peter s Useful Crap] Redirect users to the WordPress front page after logging in [Kulpreet Singh] Question: Will WordPress Bring Me Traffic? [Peter s Useful Crap] File change notifications for your WordPress blog on Linux [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Related Posts [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Clean Archives Reloaded [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Category Selector Sidebar [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] KeywordLuv Plugin 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 New: Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More. WordPress on Your Calendar WordCamp UK Changes Locations: Only a few weeks away, WordCamp UK has had a last minute change of venue to The Studio in Birmingham. Check out WordCamp UK for more details and maps. 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). Huntsville WordPress Meetup, Alabama - June 28, 2008 Nashville WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008 Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008 The New York City WordPress - July 19, 2008 WordCamp UK - July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK VENUE CHANGE WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - Aug 16, 2008 WordPress 2.6 - July 7, 2008 WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008 Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008 South by Deep South WordCamp - September 26-28 - Birmingham, Alabama WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008 WordCamp Toronto - October 4th, 2008 MinneWordCamp - Minneapolis - November 15, 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 Andy Skelton has announced Batcache for WordPress, a competitor, so to speak, to Super-Cache WordPress Plugin. While Super Cache works well on typical servers, the Batcache WordPress Plugin works with enterprises with multiple servers that don t share disk space, and those who won t or can t use file-based caching. Andy says that Batcache creates a simple caching model to protect your database and servers from traffic spikes by caching a requested document when it is clear the document has been accessed several times within a specific period of time and temporarily caches that document for X seconds, providing new users with the cached copy for the short duration and lightening the load on the servers. This is used on WordPress.com. It also resquires Memchached. Does Your Theme Have a Print Stylesheet? Hack WordPress reminds us all that if you offer a WordPress Theme, especially a premium (paid) WordPress Theme, it must include a print stylesheet as part of the Theme s styles. While many of us want to live in a paperless world, many web users want to print out blog posts to read them on the go, share them with friends, or file them for future reference. Make their life easier by including a print stylesheet. WordPress Meets Magento: The Lazzymonk s WordPress Integration Plugin integrates WordPress into the open source ecommerce system called Magento. Where and How Do You Put Your Plugin s Panel? Nerdaphernalia discusses how to direct users to your WordPress Administration Panel for your Plugin, a frequent request on the mailing lists and forums, and gives a technical option on how to place the Plugin s options menu panel. Traditionally, all Administration Panels for Plugins should be under the Plugins menu, unless it is a frequently accessed panel or associated with a specific task. For example, the Akismet Comment Spam WordPress Plugin is located on the Comments Panel due to the frequency of access and strong association with Comments. But a Plugin that requires a one-time setting of options and then forget about it attitude should reside within the Plugins Panel. Nedaphernalia s technique helps WordPress Plugin authors help users by including links to the Plugin s menu Panel from a variety of sources, to avoid hunting and confusion. Manage More Than One Blog: Nerdaphernalia has released Virtual Multiblog WordPress Plugin, Plugin that turns your WordPress Administration Panel into a multiple blog management system. It s been recently updated to work with the newest version of WordPress and has a lot of new features and improvements. Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I stumbled on recently: Draft Posts WordPress Widget displays your draft posts on your blog so readers can see what is coming up. I would prefer to use something that featured future posts, as I have drafts that may never see the light of day that have been sitting in my draft list for two or more years. Increase Sociability WordPress Plugin shows custom messages to visitors from social networking sites only. Smartlinker WordPress Plugin adds to the WordPress Visual Text Editor toolbar another toolbar for linking to words and phrases within your blog that are names, places, or things. AU Footer WordPress Plugin adds HTML code to your blog s footer so you can include copyright notices or other information from within the Administration Panels. Twitter Style Links WordPress Plugin adds Twitter-style links to blog comments. 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.com News WordPress.com Gets XML Sitemaps: WordPress.com bloggers now have XML Sitemaps built right in. An XML sitemap is a file stored in your blog s directory that acts as a roadmap to guide search engines that recognize XML sitemaps, which currently include Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and MSN. The purpose is to direct the web crawler through your site, directing it to most recent posts and post modifications. It helps eliminate orphans , pages without intrasite links. Unlike what some will tell you, you do not need to do anything with the new XML Sitemaps. You won t even know they are there. You do not need to register with Google or make any changes. If you have disabled pings and search engine indexing in your blog options, Google and other search engines won t visit on purpose. WordPress Techniques and Tips Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I ve uncovered: Use WordPress Blogroll For Site Navigation Reset Your WordPress Password via phpMyAdmin Dean Sabatino - How To: Creating Your Corporate Intranet Using WordPress Darren Hoyt - Displaying Related Categories and Content in WordPress 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 . WordPress Community News Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug and shared my love with a lot of people recently. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies. 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). 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. Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports 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 Wednesday News: WordPress at 50, WordPress Tweeters, Tracking WordPress 2.6, WordPress.com Stats, and Hot WordPress Plugins WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 5 Years Old, WordCamps International, WordPress 2.6 On Track, Plugin Competition is Hot, Genko Updated WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Apache Patch for Securer Passwords, WordPress Plugin Contest, and More WordPress 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 WordPress Weekly live show with Jeffro2pt0 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:

A day late but this week s Movable Type Monday is chock full of updates from the MTOS community including two ways of running Movable Type as a desktop application, two new plugins, updates from the biweekly conference call and an updated schedule for the release of the next version of MTOS with a second release candidate for MTOS 4.2. Welcome to Movable Type Tuesday Monday! MTOS Community Updates Movable Type Desktop Application: Last week, Jesse Gardner posted two articles that will have many Mac MT users excited - the ability to have Movable Type running as a desktop application! With his first tutorial, Jesse guides you through setting up a full-blown MTOS application with Fluid, and has even created a gorgeous icon for when MTOS sits in your dock! With his second guide, Jesse explores making Movable Type a MenuExtra in conjunction with the iMT plugin. MenuExtras are the little applications that sit on the right hand side of your menubar and as his screenshot shows, this is a slick new and simple way of blogging with Movable Type, a la Twitterific! What s the benefit, why not just leave MTOS in the web browser? Personally, having MTOS as a menuextra might encourage me to blog more but as Jesse says: I have one Movable Type install on my server that powers nearly a dozen of my sites, so I’m constantly accessing it. Since I work quite a bit with other client’s installs, it’s easy to get them mixed up when I’ve got thirty tabs open. Fluid lets me turn my Movable Type install into an app which is then accessible via Quicksilver. Fantastic stuff! MTOS Conference Call: Six Apart hosts a bi-weekly conference call with members from the Professional and Movable Type Open Source community. Notes as well as a podcast of last wednesday s call are available for everyone who was unable to attend - topics discussed included information about MTOS 4.2 s performance benchmarks and schedule as well as the recently announced native TypePad application for the iPhone! The next call is scheduled for next Wednesday, June 25 at 10:00am. More information on dialing in is available on the wiki page. Byrne Reese, Product Manager of Movable Type, also mentioned that work on the next version of Movable Type is slowly beginning and polled the community for feedback on what they d like to see. If you have ideas, suggestions or criticisms, feel free to post them to the Ideas Forum. Picnik Photo Editing: Last week, I highlighted a innovative new plugin, Pixenate, that brought photo editing to Movable Type. This week saw the launch of Picnik, a new plugin that provides an alternative to editing photos within Movable Type by integrating MTOS with the Picnik.com photo editing service! Simply click a link from MTOS and you are taken to the Picnik site where you can edit and save your photos, which are then automatically synched back to MTOS! Translate: Bryan Tighe released Translate, a new plugin that uses Google s Language APIs to easily translate your entries to a number of different languages. On his blog, Bryan elaborates on which language translation is important by highlighting that only about a third of most people in the world speak English! MTOS 4 and FastCGI: One of the ways to make Movable Type run incredibly fast is to install FastCGI. Unfortunately, not only is FastCGI itself pretty labourious to install but getting MTOS to work with it reliably can often be tricky. Thankfully Beau comes to the rescue and gives us an easy two step process of getting MTOS 4 working with FastCGI. Thanks Beau! MTOS Beta Test Updates MTOS 4.2RC2: Last week, the second release candidate of MTOS 4.2 was released and a changelog was also posted. In preparation for a final release, an Upgrade Guide has also been posted to the wiki. I encourage community members to quickly look over it and suggest any improvements! 4.2 Benchmarks: As we know by now, one of the biggest improvements with MTOS 4.2 has been the performance improvements but we ve never been provided with benchmarks. During the conference call, Byrne finally provided the community with more definitive benchmarks. On a blog with 10,000 entries, 100,000 comments, 3 categories and 3 authors: Simply by upgrading from MT 4.1 to 4.2 and making no other changes to your system can yield publishing improvements of up to 33%. By turning on module caching for all widgets (with a 5 minute cache window) yielding publishing speed improvements of 45%. Movable Type 4.2 has been shown to be 2x faster than MT 3.x was out of the box. By turning on module caching it has been shown to be 3x faster. Search performance has been increase 100x in MT 4.2 over MT 3.x.

The past week was, once again, an activity filled week for the MTOS community with a large number of plugins being released including a new rich text editor, a new custom field plugin as well as a photo editing plugin! Welcome to Movable Type Monday! MTOS Community Updates YUI Rich Text Editor: Movable Type 4.0 introduced a powerful new rich text editor and 4.1 took it a step further by allowing the editor to be easily replaced by another one. We ve already seen the community embrace this feature with the popular FCKEditor plugin and this week, Richard Benson released another editor alternative with his YUI Rich Text Editor plugin which brings Yahoo s Rich Text Editor to MTOS. The YUI editor is quite an advanced and extensible editor so I m excited to see it being brought to MTOS and the opportunities it now enables! Great work Richard! PlasticField: Jesse Gardner is a name that should be familiar to many Movable Type users as the talent behind the looks of movabletype.org, Learning Movable Type and one of the co-founders of The Style Contest. Last week, he released his first plugin dubbed PlasticField, a plugin that makes use of the new built in extensible custom fields functionality in the Movable Type Commercial Pack. PlasticField introduces a new formatted multi-line text field field - a textbox with the old-school formatting buttons. Definitely scratches an itch that many CustomFields users have had! Zemanta: A new plugin by Bostjan Spetic brings the Zemanta experience to the MTOS by drawing in interesting content from around the web and presenting it on the new entry composition screen for inspiration! True Type Fonts: SpagDesign launched a great new plugin dubbed TTFpj and allows you to display headings in rich typography. A definitely welcome alternative to sIFR and other similar techniques out there! Curvaceous: Wrapping text around images is one of the great pains for beginners to blogging with MTOS which is why I m happy that Ole Wolf has released a plugin to make it an automatic process! The screenshot illustrates what the plugin is capable of! Joomsayer: Another plugin by Ole Wolf allows you to easily display quotations in a quote box. Handy! I ve always wanted something similar for my personal blog but could never quite figure out the CSS behind it! Pixenate Photo Editor: Perhaps one of the most fascinating and innovative new plugins out there today, Pixenate Photo Editor allows you to edit images that you have uploaded through MTOS asset manager - including rotating, cropping and changing brightness/contrast values - all from the comfort of Movable Type. I m really wowed by this plugin as I ve often wanted to make minor adjustments to an image once it s been uploaded (and find the process of adjusting it on my desktop and then re-uploading too arduous!). Although it takes a little bit of hacking (hopefully something that Walter can overcome with subsequent releases) I think this plugin has the makings of a must-install plugin! Fantastic work Walter! Movable Type 4.2 to focus on Speed: InformationWeek s Peter Hagopian posted a short review of Movable Type 4.2, concluding: That s compelling news on the speed and performance front. It s good to see that Movable Type is becoming the subject of more balanced reviews! Obama for MTOS: Or rather, MTOS for Obama! As part of ZDNet s coverage of how Web 2.0 has been helping the presidential candidates, Larry Dignan took a look at the technology powering Barack Obama s presidential campaign. As Larry reports: Obama kept his IT strategy simple. The campaign didn’t customize heavily and it didn’t look for bleeding edge technology. It used the same stuff the rest of the blogging world does–Movable Type, PHP, MySQL with a dose of community. The competitive advantage came from using social networking to “empower a highly decentralized, largely self-organizing, network of volunteers,” reports Carr. Official Usage Survey: Possibly in preparation for the imminent release of Movable Type 4.2, Six Apart posted a survey in order to solicit information from MTOS users about how installations of Movable Type have been configured. Byrne Reese describes the survey as simple, multiple-choice and anonymous and will be used to better understand user needs to build a product more optimized for common usage scenarios. I encourage all Movable Type readers reading to fill out the survey when you have a free moment! iPhone Application: Although not technically related to Movable Type, Six Apart s Michael Sippey demoed a native TypePad application for the iPhone. Hopefully we will see something similar for Movable Type soon! In the meanwhile, however, the iMT plugin (also by Six Apart) has been available for quite some time and provides a very robust way of blogging on MTOS with an iPhone!

This week saw an incredible amount of activity in the Movable Type community with a slew of new plugins (including new plugins for Action Streams) and tutorials (including a couple of pagination, an oft-requested feature!). By far the biggest was Six Apart s announcement of TypePad Antispam as well as the rechristening of the next version of Movable Type as Movable Type 4.2. There s never been a better time to be a Movable Type user, welcome to Movable Type Monday! TypePad Antispam: TechCrunch wrote a review of this new Akismet competitor as well as announcing that they had switched from Akismet to TypePad Antispam and were experiencing better results. ProBlogger reports the same! Six Apart s new service, unlike Akismet, is completely open source (from the plugins available for both Movable Type and WordPress to the backend engine that powers the service) and free for all users. When commenters expressed skepticism, Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart, replied by pointing to Six Apart s track record and called for people to not judge them by one mistake committed four years ago! MTOS Community Updates First lets start with all the fabulous new plugins released this week! Action Stream Plugins: I m a huge fan of the Action Streams which allows you to setup a more powerful version of FriendFeed within Movable Type. The beauty of the Action Streams plugin is its potential, plugins for Action Streams allow it to work with any service that launches. This week saw the release of a number of new plugins for Action Streams including: TripIt by John Eckman which brings your travel information from TripIt to MTOS. Last.fm Recently Played also by John Eckman aggregates your Last.fm recently played tracks Amazon Music Wishlist is another Action Streams plugin by John Eckman and allows you to display new CDs added to your Amazon.com wishlist along with grabbing a thumbnail of the Album Art! John has a complete list of all his Action Stream plugins, along with updates on his website, fantastic stuff! Plurk from Yves Luther brings your Plurk timeline to MTOS! XRDS Simple: Steve Ivy released a new plugin to bring XRDS Simple Service discovery to MTOS. He presents it as a compliment to the Action Streams plugin as many services are now providing XRDS Simple feeds to aggregate activity. OpenID Plugins: As Byrne Reese writes, Movable Type Open Source 4.2 is one of the first blogging platforms to support the new OpenID 2.0 protocol. One of the cool things about OpenID support in Movable Type is its ability to work with any OpenID endpoint, all you need is a simple one-file plugin. Byrne released Yahoo! OpenID today which allows you to log into to comment with MTOS using your Yahoo! username. Other similar plugins include the WordPress OpenID Plugin also by Byrne Reese and AIM OpenID Plugin by Minh Nguyễn. Automattic Stats for MTOS: Chad Everett released MT-WPStats, a new stats tracking plugin that integrates Automattic s WordPress.com Stats with Movable Type. Easy Video Embedding: Emiliano Bruni launched a cool new plugin which should make embedding video a piece of cake. MTVideoEmbedding introduces a new button to MTOS s entry editor and allows you to embed videos through a simple BBCode like tag. Check out the description and screenshots!. EmoticonButton: A new plugin by Six Apart Japan employee Fumiaki Yoshimatsu adds a new button to MTOS s entry editor and allows you to easily add spice up your entries with emoticons! Check out the screenshots for a better look at how this plugin works! BuildTime: The next version of Movable Type is all about speed! BuildTime helps you analyze how long it takes to build pages of the MTOS administrative UI and will undoubtedly be useful for system administrators! TidyTags: Although not technically a plugin, I hope Beau will forgive me for including it under this header! Movable Type 4 introduced a new, more readable format for its template tags and I ve always lamented the lack of an easy way of converting old templates to the new format! TidyTags finally scratches that itch and is a new command line tool that allows you to easily your template tag formats! Beau provides some examples of how to use it. Many members of the MTOS community also published a number of great new tutorials to help you get the most out of Movable Type Open Source: Pagination: Jesse Gardner published an article that summarizes the options available to MTOS users who wish to paginate their content (i.e. spread it over multiple pages). Shortly after he published his article, Six Apart published a new page in the documentation which highlighted an experimental new feature in MT4.2: Pagination in Dynamic Publishing. Advanced Archive Widgets: I ve always been jealous of how Anil Dash displays his archives on his blog, I ve never quite been able to figure it out! Thankfully, Beau Smith spills the beans and not only gives us the snippet of code, but holds our hand and painstakingly explains it, line-by-line. Thanks Beau! Review of MTOS 4.1: Although not technically a tutorial, it is not often that you find a fair and balanced review of blogging platforms - especially Movable Type - which is why I felt compelled to highlight linux.com s recent review of MTOS 4.1. Darius O. Martin looks at all aspects of MTOS, from it s interface to how composing and publishing works, and concludes: Having tried both platforms, I found MT to be a clever and capable alternative to other blogging platforms, but also, software that created a niche of its own. In the end, using one blogging platform over another is a question of personal taste or a matter of fulfilling some needs. If you have to set up many functional blogs in a limited amount of time, Movable Type is the tool you need. Hopefully we will see less fuss online about which tool people use and more energy geared towards getting more people blogging! MTOS Beta Test Updates Movable Type 4.2 Release Candidate: Byrne Reese posted a lengthy post announcing the release candidate of MTOS 4.2. For the first time, we re presented with definitive proof of the speed increases found in MTOS 4.2 (over 100x faster in some cases!) as well as a complete list of all the new features including built in support for Six Apart s new TypePad Antispam service and a vast number of contributions from the MTOS community: In truth Movable Type 4.2 has seen the largest number of contributions, both big and small, than any other release in Movable Type s history. Six Apart has posted a known issues list and announced that the final version of MTOS 4.2 will be issued in the next few weeks once it has been thoroughly tested against all databases it supports!

As we told you last month, the Democrats are giving select bloggers access to be on the floor of the national convention in Denver this summer. Fifty-five lucky bloggers have been chosen. Here s the full list of State Blogger Corps : ALASKA: Celtic Diva s Blue Oasis: divasblueoasis.blogspot.com ALABAMA: Doc s Political Parlor: www.politicalparlor.net ARKANSAS: Under The Dome.com: www.underthedome.com ARIZONA: Ted Prezelski - Rum, Romanism and Rebellion: www.rumromanismrebellion.net CALIFORNIA: Calitics: Calitics.com COLORADO: SquareState.net: squarestate.net CONNECTICUT: My Left Nutmeg: myleftnutmeg.com DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: DCist.com: dcist.com DELAWARE: TommyWonk: tommywonk.blogspot.com/ DEMOCRATS Abroad: Democrats Abroad Argentina: www.yanquimike.com.ar FLORIDA: Florida Progressive Coalition: flaprogressives.org GEORGIA: Tondee s Tavern: www.tondeestavern.com GUAM: No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro: minagahet.blogspot.com HAWAII: iLind.net: Ian Lind Online: www.ilind.net IOWA: The Iowa Independent: iowaindependent.com IDAHO: 43rdStateBlues.com: www.43rdstateblues.com ILLINOIS: Prairie State Blue: www.PrairieStateBlue.com INDIANA: Blue Indiana: www.blueindiana.net KANSAS: EverydayCitizen.com: everydaycitizen.com KENTUCKY: BlueGrassRoots: www.bluegrassroots.org LOUISIANA: Daily Kingfish: www.dailykingfish.com MASSACHUSETTS: Blue Mass. Group: www.bluemassgroup.com MARYLAND: The Center for Emerging Media: www.centerforemergingmedia.com MAINE: Turn Maine Blue: www.turnmaineblue.com MICHIGAN: Blogging For Michigan: bloggingformichigan.com MINNESOTA: Minnesota Monitor: minnesotamonitor.com MISSISSIPPI: The Natchez Blog: natchezms.blogspot.com MISSOURI: Fired Up! LLC: www.firedupmissouri.com MONTANA: Left in the West: www.leftinthewest.com NORTH CAROLINA: BlueNC.com: bluenc.com NORTH DAKOTA: NorthDecoder.com: www.northdecoder.com NEBRASKA: New Nebraska Network: www.NewNebraska.net NEW HAMPSHIRE: Blue Hampshire: www.bluehampshire.com NEW JERSEY: PolitickerNJ.com: www.politickernj.com NEW MEXICO: Democracy for New Mexico: www.DemocracyForNewMexico.com NEVADA: Las Vegas Gleaner: www.lasvegasgleaner.com NEW YORK: Room 8: www.r8ny.com OHIO: Ohio Daily Blog: www.ohiodailyblog.com OKLAHOMA: DemoOkie: www.DemoOkie.com OREGON: BlueOregon (blog): www.blueoregon.com PENNSYLVANIA: Keystone Politics: www.keystonepolitics.com PUERTO RICO: Jusiper: jusiper.blogspot.com RHODE ISLAND: Rhode Island s Future: www.rifuture.org SOUTH CAROLINA: CracktheBell.com: www.crackthebell.com SOUTH DAKOTA: Badlands Blue: www.badlandsblue.com TENNESSEE: KnoxViews/TennViews: www.knoxviews.com TEXAS: Burnt Orange Report: www.BurntOrangeReport.com UTAH: The Utah Amicus: utahamicus.com VIRGINIA: Raising Kaine: www.raisingkaine.com VIRGIN ISLANDS: Democratic Party of the US Virgin Islands: groups.yahoo.com/group/democratvi VERMONT: Green Mountain Daily: greenmountaindaily.com WASHINGTON: HorsesAss.org: www.horsesass.org WISCONSIN: Uppity Wisconsin: www.uppitywis.org WEST VIRGINIA: West Virginia Blue: www.wvablue.com WYOMING: Hummingbirdminds blog: hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com

Last week saw the release of some awesome plugins (one that has been long-awaited by the community) as well as a new beta release for the next version of Movable Type and lively discussion on the MTOS mailing lists, especially in area of translations. Welcome to Movable Type Monday! MTOS Community Updates CleanSweep: Early last week, Byrne Reese released an update to his Clean Sweep - a plugin that sounds like a must have for almost every blogger. In his own words: Clean Sweep is a plugin I released in conjunction with Movable Type 4.0 to help users keep URLs and permalinks valid on their web site even after a major change to your URL structure. The plugin worked by tracking broken links on your web site and allowing you to create rewrite rules within Movable Type for those broken links. In his announcement entry, Byrne talks about how Clean Sweep helped him manage his site along with the new features in the latest version (including mapping old MT URL formats to knew ones). RF2CF: Chad Everett of Everitz Consulting released a long awaited update to his RF2CF plugin which allows people who use the Right Fields plugin to upgrade to MTOS 4.x with its built-in support for Custom Fields (via the Commercial Pack). The latest version of the plugin includes support for migrating RightFields users who used custom SQL datasources and file upload fields as well as makes the whole process a lot more stable and reliable. The response he received to the plugin on the MTOS-dev mailing list shows how much this plugin was needed and removes one of the last remaining hurdles people had for embracing MTOS 4.x! Polish, Russian and Italian Translations: There was a tremendous amount of activity on the MTOS-translators mailing list with Patryk Ściborek beginning work on a Polish Translation and Mirco Macrelli updating his Italian translation. Alex Demidov also linked to the Russian translation now found on Google Code. Screencasts of the translation in action can be found on movabletype.ru, where the founder of the Russian translation project, Andrey Serebryakov, blogs about Movable Type and the Russian community. On MT Feed Support: Following a lively debate on the MTOS-dev mailing list, Tim Appnel posted a follow-up on why the decision to only provide an Atom Feed by default from he next version of MTOS was a wise decision. MTOS Beta Test Updates Beta 5: Beta 5 was released early last week and according to Byrne Reese, Movable Type product manager, should be the last beta release. Release Candidates should begin to appear starting this week! Perusing the changelog, the most exciting change with this beta is the integration of Widget Manager. Widgets are now just another type of template! As a result, you can now have global widgets too (i.e. a common set of widgets that can be used on every blog on the system). Generating a Changelog: Byrne Reese also documented the process of creating a changelog from the code repository on the MTOS Wiki. This is extremely useful when you ve checked something out directly from the repository (rather than downloading one of the official beta releases) and want to get a list of changes since the last time you updated

Duncan Riley, the former owner of The Blog Herald, has left his gig as a blogger for Michael Arrington s TechCrunch, the number one blog in the blogosphere. In this exclusive interview with Duncan, we talk about how he landed the gig at TechCrunch, his thoughts on working with Mike and the gang, some observations about the Web 2.0/VC situation in Silicon Valley, and what his future plans are. We ll also get into the Full Feed v. Partial Feed debate and talk about a few other topics as well. You can subscribe directly to our podcast feed in order to receive our show each day that it is released. For iTunes users, you can subscribe directly via iTunes. Update: Duncan has announced his departure in a final post over at TechCrunch. Michael Arrington has a post up at TechCrunch about Duncan s departure now. He also outs Duncan s new venture at Inquisitr. And now, on with the show. Notes after the jump . Note: Show notes are not in the order we discuss in the interview, but rather an overall look at links mentioned in the podcast. b5media - Duncan s former employer startup TechCrunch Louis Gray: Duncan Riley misses the point of Friendfeed Duncan Riley: Friendfeed = More Hyped Yawn Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Shel Israel (1938 Media Parody) Shel Israel s Real Website 1938 Media Inquisitr

NewTeeVee spotted that Amanda Congdon is returning to web video with a new show, called Sometimesdaily. There s a web page up with a teaser clip, embedded below for your convenience: Introducing Sometimesdaily from Sometimesdaily on Vimeo. Amanda Congdon was the host for Rocketboom, the video show of video shows, and then she did something at ABC, and disappeared from the scene after that.

When writing last week s Movable Type Monday, I decided to save a few items for this week to prevent them from getting overshadowed by Six Apart s announcement of their new Services and Media divisions. This week, I ll be looking at a number of exciting plugins that have released, the announcement of MT Day as well as some of the new features in the latest MT 4.15 beta. Welcome to another Movable Type Monday! MTOS Community Updates Movable Type Day: Niall Kennedy announced the first Movable Type Day to the MTOS-dev last week. The first in-person meeting of the MTOS community will be held on Friday, May 30 in the San Francisco Public Library. A tentative schedule featuring some proposals for presentations is already available as well as information on accommodation and transportation. Be sure to RSVP if you can make it! PostOffice: PostOffice is a new plugin from Six Apart (but not yet officially released!) that finally creates a seamless moblogging experience for Movable Type. Although there have been several scripts to do this for a number of years, PostOffice is perhaps the most elegant solution so far. Su has written some documentation for the plugin and provides a bookmarklet to download the plugin from Trac until it is officially released! NotifyReplyee: Patrick Benny released a new plugin that compliments the new comment threading feature found in Movable Type 4 (and improved in 4.15!). NotifyReplyee allows you to automatically send an email to the replyee notifying them about the reply. Check the plugin s page for more information as well as screenshots. Responder: Mike T has released an intriguing new plugin for MTOS. Responder brings feed reading functionality to Movable Type and provides a convenient widget that will display the newest posts on the dashboard. What really interests me about this plugin is its integration with the entry editor which provides a new way to respond to posts found on other blogs. In Mike s words I wanted a dialog in the entry editor that would show you someone else s entries, and then allow you to import the text as you desired, so that you could respond to one of their blog posts. Action Stream Plugins: Action Streams is one of my favourite plugins for Movable Type. Written by Mark Paschal, it allows you to aggregate your activity from around the Internet (from del.icio.us to Facebook). One of the best parts of Action Streams is the fact that you can build plugins for it (plugins for plugins!) to allow it to work with other services. John Eckman did just that, creating a plugin that works with TripIt. Dan Wolfgang also updated his Amazon Wishlist action streams plugin which allows you to aggregate data from your Amazon Wishlist. MTOS 4.15 Beta Test Updates Professional Pack Beta: A beta release for the Professional Pack was released last week, the biggest feature being the ability to store custom fields data in custom tables - a feature that many sorely lacked after the CustomFields plugin was acquired by Six Apart. Beta 4 Released: Beta 4 in the MTOS 4.15 beta test was released this week. A changelog has been posted and contains some interesting tidbits, including the following features and notable bug fixes: Pluralization of Count Tags: The latest beta contains a lovely feature that will make template code far cleaner. Pluralization of Count Tags explains three new attributes added to all Count tags that allow you to define what is displayed when the count is zero, singular (one) and plural. This removes the need for nasty nested ifs that we d previously need to use. A most welcome change indeed! Updates to Interface: Beta 4 contains more improvements to the user interface. Six Apart incorporated much of the feedback they received regarding the new template listing screen. One of the biggest complaints was the time it took, waiting for a page refresh, to filter the listing (such that only templates of a certain type were displayed at once). Beta 4 introduces a slick new filtering system that filters on-the-fly. New Developer Features: A pretty major change was made to how metadata is stored in the database (making the new ProPack possible). Metadata is now stored in a separate table. Mark Paschal elaborates on MTOS-dev explaining how plugin authors can take advantage of this new functionality. Cleverer Loop Glues: A pet peeve of mine has finally been fixed in the latest beta. Loop tags in Movable Type could optionally be given a glue attribute that allowed you to join items together with some text. An annoying side-effect was that blank items were also joined together (which often resulted in some odd display). This bug, amongst a long list of others, has been fixed!

Weekends are typically slow times for copyright news. With the courts closed and most Web hosts gone for 48 hours, very little usually happens. However, this weekend was a definite exception. It saw a veritable blogstorm over the RSS aggregation service Shyftr and its republishing of RSS content. Some bloggers, such as Robert Scoble and Louis Gray came down in favor of the service while others, including Tony Hung and Raoul Pop were firmly against it. In the end, Shyftr backed down and changed its policy but not before drawing a vast amount of unwanted attention and dozens of angry blog posts. However, now that things have died down some, we can take a look back at what happened and what it may mean for both bloggers and for other companies that may want to enter a similar market. Shyftr s Story Shyftr, which stands for Share Your Feeds Together, describes itself as a mashup between RSS reading and social networking. It s goal, according to its site is to enable users to find feeds by searching content brought directly to you through the Shyftr network, as well as feeds that other users follow by viewing their feed list. But while the idea of social RSS reading is also a part of other sites, such as Streamy, where Shyftr ran afoul of many blogger s sense of fair play was in its republishing of the full RSS feed and allowing its users to comment on the feed, away from the original site. The act of scraping and republishing an RSS feed is an act commonly associated with spam blogs and the fact that Shyftr, a seemingly legitimate RSS reader, was engaging in the behavior raised the ire of many bloggers, even pushing Raoul Pop to threaten sending DMCA notices to them if they did not remove his content. In the end, Shyftr relented, saying that we have decided to revise the format around our discussions. We will only display the title, author, and date of an item where discussions occur outside of the reader. We deeply respect content publishers, and it is not our intention to cause unease. This, in turn, seemed to appease many of the critics of the site, including Mathew Ingram, and seemed to put the issue largely at rest. Legal Issues Though the story had many threads running through it, one of the issues that came up repeatedly was the discussion as to whether or not publishing an RSS feed, in particular a full one, offers an implied license for others to republish the feed on their site. Many commenters, especially to Tony s original post, felt that it did and that meant Shyftr was within its rights to republish the full content. Others, however, chose to disagree. One of those who disagreed was copyright attorney Evan D. Brown who, in his post on the topic, cited both a 1990 case that dealt with the kinds of issues an implied license was designed for and and an earlier post by blogger Eric Berlin. Combined with opinions from other attorneys, it seems that there is something of a consensus that, at the very least, there is little reason to assume that there is such an implied license. However, even if there were, it would be trumped by an actual license, meaning that a blogger would still have the right to refuse their feed being used in such a manner, very similar to how Google can not index sites that decline it. However, until we see a court ruling on the matter of implied license with RSS feeds, these types of issues are going to consistently re-emerge and are only going to grow more frequent. The Bigger Picture However, the larger thread running the discussion was one about how blogs were meant to be consumed. Many, such as Scoble, favored a completely de-centralized view where the content appears on as many places as possible while others want to continue to serve the interests of the reader, while still maintaining some degree of control. But while there was a great deal of discussion and debate about the republishing of RSS feeds, one thing that there was agreement on was that blogs were not just a Web page, that they were intended to be consumed, in many cases, off of the site. In fact, in many cases the debate was as heated as it was because bloggers wanted to continue to offer a full feed to their readers without seeing the work republished by Shyftr or sites like it. It seems that most bloggers agree that blog reading is a decentralized activity, one that takes place in a variety of RSS readers. However, the debate lies in whether or not other sites should be able to republish the full content in a public location, rather than just to active subscribers. That debate is far from settled and it doesn t appear that it will be any time soon. What We Need However, even if the blogging community does manage to reach a consensus, there will always be dissenters one way or another. This is a matter of personal choice for the blogger and that choice should be respected. The problem is that companies such as Shyftr have no way of predicting which bloggers are going to allow republication and which are not. They would have to get permission directly from every blogger that they wanted to republish. But while obtaining permission and licensing is certainly something familiar to those that work in the copyright field, in the age of Creative Commons, meta tags and robots.txt, this seems archaic. More than a consensus, we need a way for bloggers and other RSS publishers to voice their preferences about republication with the RSS feed itself. Companies should not have to knock on every door to obtain permission, imagine if search engines had to do so, and bloggers who are not comfortable with sites like Shyftr should not have to worry about their content being misused. Such a system would also help separate the legitimate RSS republishers from the spam bloggers, the same was robots.txt separates the legitimate spiders from the questionable ones, and encourage responsible RSS use. Best of all, it would speed up the dialog about RSS republishing by making everyone s opinion known, and encouraging people to talk about why they made the choices they did. This would be far more efficient than waiting for a site like Shyftr to become the center of attention and start a heated debate. Conclusions Personally, I side with those that felt Shyftr crossed a line. By republishing the full RSS feed and making it available to non-subscribers, who aren t counted as readers in any tracking program, and to the search engines, they did a great disservice to the content creators they used. They were right to change their policies and I am glad they were so quick to listen. However, I also agree with Shyftr that the discussions we ve had over the past few days have been healthy . Though I was in the middle of a host transfer for most of the weekend and unable to participate much until Sunday, the discussions and dialogs have been great and have shown that, despite not selling the work, bloggers still take their content very seriously and take a great deal of interest in how it is used. It is also clear that bloggers have many reasons, other than republishing, to offer a full RSS feed. The idea of simply offering a shortened feed is not acceptable to many as it is a disservice to their regular readers. Clearly, a full feed is not intended to be a blanket blessing to republish at will, at least to a large percentage of bloggers, and that makes it clear that there is a need for some other indicator. In the end, we only have two choices in this matter. One is we can let the courts decide how RSS feeds are intended to be used, or we can let technology help give bloggers an individual choice. Clearly the time has come to re-evaluate licensing and RSS feeds. If anything good is to come out of the Shyftr saga, let us hope that it is a practical way for bloggers to have their wishes expressed and for the rest of us to avoid these kinds of issues in the future.

The primary focus of activity this week was around the Movable Type Open Source (MTOS) 4.15 beta test and the release of the second beta release. Before we dive into that information however, I thought I d address one of the hot topics of the last week. Welcome to Movable Type Monday! MTOS Security Reflecting on Movable Type s security history, MT4 was released on August 15, 2007 and before the next feature release (MT 4.1) saw two security releases. The first (MT 4.01) was released just over a month later and was more a bug-fix release, fixing only one security bug that was discovered during a normal quality assurance process. As a result, MT 4.01 was recommended but not mandatory. There were no known exploits for the one security bug fixed with v4.01. On the other hand, the second bug fix was MT 4.01a which came 116 days after v4.01. This was a mandatory release that addressed a potential security issue. Once again, there were no known Movable Type users who had been affected by this issue. And, although MT 3 was no longer officially supported, Six Apart chose to release MT 3.36 in order to patch an older version of MT which suffered from the same issue. Since MT 4.1 (and with it MTOS 4.1) was released in January, there have been no security releases nor any known exploits (further confirmed by scanning the changelogs for the MT 4.15 beta which lists no security changes). As we can see, Movable Type has had a proven, trustworthy security track record. Few exploits have been found to date and when they have, they have been patched quickly. Talk to the Team A lesser known aspect of the MTOS community is the bi-weekly phone calls that Six Apart hosts, every other Wednesday. Although the wiki page hasn t yet been updated, by my calculations, the next call should be this coming Wednesday (April 16). The agenda of the bi-weekly phone calls varies greatly but, it is none-the-less a great way to engage in discussion with Six Apart and other members in the MTOS community on the direction and future of the product. Conference Number: 1-712-432-3000 Bridge Number: 353177 If you re unable to call in, a podcast is usually available in a few days! MTOS 4.15 Beta Test Beta 2: The second beta version of MT4.15 was released late this week. On carefully perusing the changelog, we see that besides a long list of bug fixes, there are also a few features hidden in this release: Clone a template with one click Republish a template with one click from the template listing (a oft-requested feature!) Sort entry listings by the number of comments or trackbacks they ve received Template Listing Feedback: MTOS 4.15 featured a number of updates to the backend administration interface. One of these updates was to the template listing screen which now displayed all the templates together (rather than under different tabs or behind different filters as MT3.x and MT4.0 did respectively). This change triggered a discussion on the MTOS-dev mailing list with members debating scaling this new listing (would it start to get unwieldily with a large number of templates?) as well as the nomenclature used with the various different publishing methods MTOS 4.15 now supports. Release Date: While by no means set in stone, Byrne Reese, the product manager of Movable Type at Six Apart, has posted a tentative release date of mid-to-late May to the mailing list (and updated the Roadmap page on the wiki). Living on the Bleeding Edge: I thought that this beta test would also be the perfect opportunity to highlight how to live on the bleeding edge of MTOS development. Automated nightly builds are of course available but lets take this up a notch. How can you get the source? A trac has been setup which allows you to browse through the source code in an easy way as well as get a list of updates to the code. This page in the documentation explains how to actually check out the source code from the repository whilst this entry on the MTOS blog highlights some of the nuances of the MTOS code repository. Check it out! MTOS Community News Debian Package: Byrne Reese published an interview with Dominic Hargreaves, the author of the Debian MTOS package that I highlighted last week. Dominic talks about why Debian is his preferred distribution and what he likes and would improve with MTOS. Documentation Updates: This week also some updates to the documentation. A new page details the magic variables in archive templates and many template tag pages were updated to be more detailed and include more examples. To stay up-to-date with MTOS documentation, subscribe to the changelog.

Podcast 2008.1: Shel Israel v. Loren Feldman In this edition, we take a look at the drama between Shel Israel and Loren Feldman.. we ll also talk about some weekend stories here on The Blog Herald. You can subscribe directly to our podcast feed in order to receive our show each day that it is released. For iTunes users, you can subscribe directly via iTunes. And now, on with the show. Notes after the jump . Rocketboom Founder posts twitter account for sale on ebay (TechCrunch) Duncan Riley - founder of The Blog Herald Gridjit (a social portal for twitter) How an online forum helped a car dealer recover a stolen car Beyond.ca car enthusiast website What s your blog workspace? My Problogging Setup How a videoblogger from NYC outsmarted a so-called social media expert Shel Israel - The Fake One A Brief Followup on the Shel Israel v. Loren Feldman Drama 3 Brands vs. 1 Puppet, Guess Who Wins @ 3by9 The Peter Principle Fast Company @ TymeSaid Download Standard Podcast

WordCamp Dallas in Frisco, Texas, rocked the house - or should I say City Hall? Organizers Charles Stricklin and John Pozadzides worked with the city of Frisco so WordCamp could be held in the brand new, state-of-the-art chambers, a beautiful and acoustically fabulous hall. Videos are now out and include: Matt Mullenweg s State of WordPress John Pozadzides 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog Jonathan Bailey - How to Prevent Detect and Stop Content Theft Aaron Brazell - WordPress FAQ Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell at WordCamp Dallas Lorelle VanFossen - WordPress Power Tips Liz Strauss - Cmon, Lets Talk! The WordPress Podcast Live from WordCamp 2008 Chris-Smith on SEO Much thanks goes to the Frisco City Hall facility staff and John Pozadzides for the fantastic videos of the presentations. To track WordCamp Dallas 2008 blog coverage, see the Technorati tags for WordCampDallas2008, WordCampDallas, and WordCamp tags. To track photographs from WordCamp Dallas, see the Flickr tag for wordcampdallas2008 or search for more WordCamp Dallas images on Flickr. I m working on publishing my own set of pictures on Lorelle on WordPress, but like many, I, too, am having a difficult time getting the new Media Library in WordPress 2.5 to work. Stay tuned for that news. Can t Stop Talking About WordCamp Dallas 2008 The following are a few of the discussions, live blogging, and posts about WordCamp Dallas: Not-a-Niche - Was WordCamp Dallas 2008 Boring? If you aren t at WordCamp Dallas Technosailor - WordCamp Dallas: Photos Technosailor - WordPress FAQ Session at WordCamp Dallas My WordCamp Dallas Media - Jeffro2pt0 WordCamp Dallas 2008: El evento! Del GeeksRoom Matt Mullenweg: WordCamp Dallas and WordPress 2.5 RamZ - WordCamp Dallas 2008 Highlights 45 Ways to PowerUp your Blog by John Pozadzides Open Source Marketer - Blogging Tips From WordCamp Dallas 2008 Live from WordCamp Dallas! from paper graffiti WordCamp Dallas - randyhoyt.com Technosailor - The Business of Blogging Panel, WordCamp Dallas 2008 Technosailor - Thoughts on WordCamp Dallas 2008 Weblog Tools Collection - Phenomenal WordCamp Dallas 2008 WordPress Podcast - Matt Mullenweg: WordPress 2.5 and Beyond WordPress Podcast - Cali Lewis s Musings: Takeaway From WordCamp Dallas Part 1 Jeremy s Musings: Takeaway From WordCamp Dallas Part 2 Spamboy - WordCamp Dallas 2008 Liz Strauss - 5 Things I Learned about Bloggers from WordCamp Dallas WILLIAMEDIA » WordCamp Dallas 2008 Summed Up Mashable had a representative there who LiveStreamed most of the programs and published them: LiveStream: Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell [WordCamp Dallas] LiveStream: How to Prevent, Detect and Stop Content Theft with Jonathan Bailey [WordCamp Dallas] LiveStream: Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Dallas Mashable - Observations from Outside the Echo Chamber LiveStream: The Business of Blogging Panel [WordCamp Dallas] LiveStream: The WordPress Podcast Live [WordCamp Dallas] LiveStream: WP FAQ with Aaron Brazell [WordCamp Dallas] Some others videoed various aspects of WordCamp Dallas: Clip of Jonathan Bailey Live at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video Geek Brief TV #338 at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video How to Improve your WordPress Blog and Video Blog (video) Matt Mullenwag at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video WordCamp Dallas Welcome at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video WordCamp HQ at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video WordPress Podcast Recorded Live at WordCamp Dallas - AOL Video WordCamp Dallas : Day One - AOL Video Everyone there was seriously impressed with the short demo John Pozadzides gave on his new product, Woopra, a live statistics analysis program still in beta testing. There is a video of the demonstration of Woopra, and the video heard round the world interview of John and Cali of Greek.tv discussing and demonstrating Woopra, which was picked up by Techcrunch and Mashable. Kudos to All Much thanks and appreciation goes to Charles and John for an amazingly successful WordCamp. I know a lot of problems happen behind the scenes that the audience never sees, and there was almost no trauma or drama behind those scenes. It was well structured, well organized, and people hung in on both days to the bitter, but well earned, end. Thanks also goes to all of the sponsors which included Automattic, b5media, FindMyHost.com, It s a Grind Coffee House, and Layered Technologies, among others. Layered Technologies had some of their staff giving up their weekend to volunteer to help run things behind those famous scenes, including coordinating the meals, snacks, and drinks. Everyone pitched in who saw a need, which is the best thing about WordPress and blogging folks. Hugs and thanks also go to the speakers who traveled and lodged on their own dime or through sponsorship. Much thanks to those sponsors, but great cheers for the speakers who gave their all, no matter their state of health at the moment, and gave WordPress fans exactly what they wanted. This was one of the best combinations of speakers I ve seen in a very long time. Well done all. I d like to personally thank the City of Frisco, the Mayor, and everyone who helped Charles and John put on this incredibly successful event and giving us permission to use your beautiful facility. It was an intimate environment, with double slide projector screens behind the podium, and a phenomenal state-of-the art recording studio which helped create the best videos I ve seen in a long time from a conference facility. The sounds was amazing, built so even the spoken word carried easily. I helped run the microphone to the participants during Q t get enough WordPress at WordCamp Dallas? WILLIAMEDIA wants to start a WordPress Meetup in the Dallas area, so if you are interested in keeping WordPress alive through the year, get involved.

Ever since Lorelle began her WordPress Wednesday series, I ve been eager to see a similar column for Movable Type which is why I m particularly excited to be writing here today! Before I dive into Movable Type news, let me briefly introduce myself. I ve been an active member of the Movable Type community, having written a number of popular plugins, co-founding The Style Contest/Archive and building the new plugins directory. So lets plunge in. Movable Type 4.15 The biggest Movable Type news this past week has been the launch of the Movable Type Open Source 4.15 beta test, codenamed Cal (after a pilot from the team s favourite television show - Battlestar Galactica!). Don t let the version number fool you. It may seem like only a bug fix release but v4.15 is chock full of performance fixes and features including: Full comment threading - whereas previously, only entry authors could reply to comments (from the MT interface), MT 4.15 incorporates the popular Simply Threaded and now allows readers to do so too Template Previews - a feature that will undoubtedly save a lot of time, no longer do you need to rebuild a template (or create a test template) to preview changes you have made. New Search Engine - Movable Type s search engine began as one of the first plugins for the platform, written by Jay Allen, and had seen little updates since then. MT 4.15 introduces a completely new search system that is faster and more accurate than before. Beefed Up Publishing - MT 4.15 gives you a great new interface for better controlling how your templates are published with an interface for Server Side Includes (something that has always been possible but is easier now than ever before!), Module Caching and Publishing Profiles (a simpler way of choosing the best publishing strategy for your website). And this is only touching the tip of the iceberg. The announcement entry lists several more features including new, simpler default templates and large updates to the admin interface. MTOS Developments The MTOS (Movable Type Open Source) mailing lists have been incredibly active with members reporting issues, filing bugs and submitting patches. For example, the new search engine and template listing screens in MT 4.15 were a direct result of community discussion and Hirotaka Ogawa, a member of the MTOS community, was the driving force behind a number of the performance fixes found in this release. MTOS Roadmap: Also seen this week was the beginnings of the Movable Type Open Source Roadmap posted by Byrne Reese, the product manager of Movable Type at Six Apart. The next version has been codenamed Fireball after the Battle Star Galactica callsign with an estimated release date of Summer 2008. Keep an eye on that page, it will undoubtedly see updates once the MT 4.15 beta test nears conclusion! Log4MT: Veteran MT contributor, Jay Allen released Log4MT a fantastic logging and notification plugin which, as the plugin s wiki describes, makes debugging plugins ridiculously easy! Debian Packages: Since the announcement of MTOS, there has been a push to make it easier for people to install and upgrade MT. Dominic Hargreaves, who been spear-heading the effort to create a Debian package, announced that Movable Type will be available with the next release of Debian under the name movabletype-opensource Movable Type Hackathon There are several threads of the MTOS-dev mailing list to finalize the date and details of an MTOS Hackathon or Sprint. The most popular option so far appears to be a two-day event in San Francisco proposed by Niall Kennedy. Tentatively to be held towards the end of April or the beginning of May, Niall pitches: I believe the most productive in-person first meeting of the MTOS community will blend presentations on the current state of the MTOS publishing platform with in-person development collaboration on desired features and enhancement. Exciting stuff! Chime in with your thoughts on the MTOS blog or mtos-dev mailing list. Editor s note: I m very happy to have the talented Arvind Satyanarayan on board, so please welcome him! Expect weekly Movable Type coverage from now on.

Jim Kukral, the guy behind Scratchback, among other things, is playing with Twitter. He s doing Twittermethis, a marketing experiment, and a game where you can win $5 by answering trivia questions sent by its Twitter user. Jim explains: Want to play? Follow @twittermethis then. And while you re at it, do follow The Blog Herald on Twitter as well. You can t win money, but it s all good fun anyway!

Twhirl is a free kickass desktop Twitter client using Adobe AIR, which means that it is available on both Windows and Mac platforms, and Linux soon (Adobe AIR 1.0 is out, so Twhirl should be too, soon at least). I m a user myself since a few days now, and I like it. And now it belongs to Seesmic, the video blogging community service (or whatever you want to call it) that lets you blog using your webcam, or upload video posts for that matter. TechCrunch broke the story, which prompted a 20 reasons why blog post by Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur, and a video as well. Naturally, Seesmic will be added to Twhirl, although the feature will be optional. Twhirl will remain free, and the developer, Marco Kaiser, will continue his work on the client as an employee of Seesmic.

Previously reviewed by TechCrunch, Zemanta offers itself as a usefu