Lorelle on WP: WordPress News and Announcements on WordPress 2.7 and More

I’ve just released the latest Blog Herald WordPress Wednesday News on WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.7 Final Features, WTC Plugin Contest Winners, WordCamps, Surveys, and More, and there are some WordPress news tidbits I’d like to call your attention to.

WordPress 2.7 Feature List Set

Ryan Boren has announced the final WordPress 2.7 features to prepare us all for the upcoming release.

They include the new “crazyhorse” WordPress Administration Panels interface, a new Write Post Panel that allows dragging and dropping of meta boxes so you can rearrange your writing surface, the ability to hide columns on the content index pages, inline editing of posts and Pages on the new content index pages, comments XMLRPC API, sticky posts, automatic WordPress Plugin installation and integrated Plugin browser, HTTPOnly auth cookies, and much more.

After all the kvetching I’ve done about the Comments Panel in the WordPress Administration Panels (okay, I’m not the only one), they have finally overhauled it and have added the ability to automatically upgrade WordPress and the total revamping of the Comments Panel to include replying to comments, keyboard shortcuts (hot keys) for managing comments, and threaded comments to help you keep track of the conversation.

I’m waiting to try it out as it may soon be added to WordPress.com as part of the testing. I do hope it will be as user-friendly as WordPress Comment Ninja Greasemonkey Script by Engtech of Internet Duct Tape. I’ll hate to part with my favorite non-WordPress Plugin toy.

Tell WordPress How You Want the WordPress 2.7 Administration Panels to Look and Work

In announcements on the WordPress Development Blog and on WordPress.com, WordPress users are invited to participate in a survey to have your say on how the navigation options on the WordPress 2.7 Administration Panels interface (UI) should look and work.

At WordCamp 2008, Liz Danzico and Jane Wells presented Riding The Crazyhorse: Future Generation WordPress, an inside look at how the new interface was developed and the amazing technology they use to test the results and make improvements.

If you want your say in how it looks, you better speak up and take the survey.

Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Winners Announced

While WordPress 2.7 is rewiring the whole Comments Panel, it is telling that the grand prize winner of the Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition was WP Comment Remix WordPress Plugin by Pressography. It will be interesting how this incredible WordPress Plugin survives the next release of WordPress. I’m sure the creative Plugin author will come up with something even more interesting.

Second prize went to the author of the Manageable WordPress Plugin, followed by third prize, WP Easy Uploader. Consolation prize goes to Prelovac for his amazing work on WordPress Plugins recently.

All the Plugins in the contest are amazing. Check them out and see how creative the WordPress Community continues to be.

Smashing Overload of WordPress Development Resources

Smashing Magazine published the WordPress Developers’ Toolbox, a huge collection of tips, tricks, resources, WordPress Themes, WordPress Theme design help, documentation, and tutorials for WordPress users. It’s overwhelming but there is a ton of great information in there.

Please make sure that the article you are reading covers the version of WordPress you are using as some of the information is version-specific.

A Ton of WordCamp Information

I continue to report on the many WordCamps and WordPress Meetups that are popping up everywhere. If you want your event covered, make sure to email me so I can cover it on the Blog Herald WordPress Wednesday News and The WordCamp Report.

In case you didn’t hear, The WordCamp Report is looking for volunteers to live blog or report on WordCamp and WordPress events around the world. The site is covering WordCamp news, events, and WordPress events, and includes tips for those who want to bring a WordCamp to their area.

If you have been a part of a WordCamp event and would like to submit an article on your experience and lessons learned, just let me know.

And More WordPress and WordPress.com News

I also covered a lot of other WordPress news including these recent announcements on WordPress.com:

SSL Now Available for WordPress.com Bloggers: WordPress.com announced the ability for their bloggers to protect blogs with SSL. If you are blogging on a public access point, “blogjackers” can prey on security vulnerabilities and possibly collect sensitive information. By adding SSL protection, you will automatically be logged onto your blog with an HTTPS connection (secure). You’ve always had the option, but few WordPress.com bloggers understood how it worked.

To activate this new feature, go to My Account > Edit Profile in the WordPress Administration Panels and check of “Always use HTTPS when visiting Administration pages” under Browser Connection.

WordPress.com FAQ Gets Screencasts: The WordPress.com FAQ now has screencasts on their guide posts helping WordPress.com users learn more about how to use specific WordPress.com features.

WordPress.com August 2008 Stats: The August Wrap-Up for statistics on WordPress.com included 286,860 blogs created, 298,655 new users, 3,442,638 file uploads, 439 terabytes of content transferred from our datacenters, 6,750,960 comments, and 1,196,661 active blogs and 14,056,683 active posts. WordPress.com also crossed four million blogs this past week.

New Themes for WordPress.com Members: WordPress.com announced two new WordPress Themes recently. The Albeo Theme for WordPress.com bloggers is designed by Elena at Design Disease. The DePo Masthead WordPress Theme by Derek Powazek features a minimalist magazine design with dynamic features such as header font size changes depending upon the length of the blog title, column heights for front page articles will always be equal, interesting navigation options, and hidden, unfolding comments.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.