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RSSCloud support has been enabled on all WordPress.com blogs. If you are running a WordPress.org powered blog you can do the same thing with the RSSCloud plugin.

So what does this really mean?

From the point of view of WordPress and this plugin there are three main additions:

Adds the <cloud> element to your RSS2 feed (more details here and here) which tells clients where and how to sign up for notification requests.
Registers a URL handler with WordPress to process the notification signups.
Sends out notification updates when a new post is published.

The cloud element looks like this:

<cloud domain=’josephscott.org’ port=’80′…

A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn’t sew my way out of a bag, but it’s true advice for bloggers as well — a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you…

The vBSEO team is proud to announce its latest release!

Don’t miss out on the 72 hr vBSEO End of Summer Sale!

<div id="cd-container">End Of Summer Sale ends in:<script src="http://www.vbseo.com/countdown.php?timezone=US/Eastern&amp;countto=2009-09-07 20:00:00&amp;do=t&amp;data=0"></script></div>
vBSEO End of Summer Sale Details

vBSEO 3.3.1 is now available in your Downloads area. 3.3.1 is primarily a maintenance release, but does include some new features as outlined below. This update is available for all non-expired licenses. [Check License Status]

Bug Fixes:
FIX: Invalid argument in functions_vbseo.php on some server instances
FIX: Virtual HTML breaks W3 validation
FIX: vBSEO Acronym expansion for Guests
FIX: Acronyms – Ajax edit
FIX: Missing 301 redirect for member profiles applied
FIX: Social Groups – Discussion title caused invalid…

New Plugins

Appointment Scheduler – Appointy Plugin

Appointment Scheduler – Appointy plugin allows you to accept appointments from your clients 24×7×365 directly on your wordpress powered websites. It has a powerful yet simple Ajax interface which allows one click booking. With just one click your clients can see your availability in the entire month.

Formatted post

This plugin is for the users who need to post with fixed format regularly

BNS Corner Logo

Widget to display a logo; or, used as a plugin displays image fixed in one of the four corners.

Delete Duplicate Posts

Easy way to delete duplicate posts on your WordPress blog.

Updated Plugins

YouTube…

Display Thumbnails For Related Posts in Wordpress: I have been a huge fan of related posts in blogs for some time. They really help your readers by drawing them into the conversation and increase stickiness of your blog. WordPress.com has a similar feature with related posts from various other blog on the network. Variations of the related posts plugins include our very own “Where did they go from here?” plugin and more centralized version such as the Waypath service.

The tutorial linked above explains one way to add thumbnails to your related post links in order to draw your readers attention…

For the next version of BuddyPress there has been a fair amount of re-factoring work done. We’ve listened to your feedback from version 1.0 and made a number of internal changes that are going to make your lives as plugin developers and theme designers easier.

One of the biggest changes in BuddyPress 1.1 will be the way themes are built.

In version 1.0 BuddyPress required two themes to function. The first theme was a “WordPress home” theme that handled the blog and front page of your site. It was essentially a standard WordPress theme. The second was a “BuddyPress member” theme that…

New Plugins

Super Cat Lister

SuperCatLister greatly extends the abilities of Wordpress as a content management system. It does this by giving site designers the ability to insert links or content from posts in specified categories into other posts.

Testimonials Manager

Testimonials Manager is a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage and display testimonials for your blog, product or service. It can be used to build your portfolio or to encourage readers to subscribe / buy your products.

Search API

This plugin creates a basis for a new search engine to replace the simple input box search currently employed. The plugin creates an API…

I often get asked something along the line of, “If you weren’t leading Automattic, what would you work on?” There’s not a single answer to this question; the answer changes day to day. But I think if you asked me today, I’d say I would like to start a bank.

There are very few people who really love their bank. We’ve all dealt with overage fees that stack up, brain-dead fine print, and a general malaise. There’s also a unique opportunity in that mainstream contempt for financial institutions has never been higher, while at the same time there is an incredible…

My Google Summer of Code 2009 student, Justin Shreve, has done an excellent job creating a new search API for WordPress. We hope this API will be integrated into the WordPress core because it would simplify replacing the core search functionality and encourage developers to create many more options for searching blogs.

Justin’s Search plugin is actually a package of three plugins. The first plugin installs the API that lets other plugins do the searching. The other two plugins use the API to provide search systems that we think will please most users who are dissatisfied with the built-in WordPress search results:…

For publishers looking at the search traffic benefits of WordPress, Matt Cutts from the Web Spam team at Google, offers his take:

WordPress takes care of 80-90% of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Below is a great video of Matt speaking at WordCamp SF 2009 about how Google search works and what publishers should be doing to ensure proper indexing:

[ Slides from Matt's presentation available on mattcutts.com ]

If you are a WordPress developer or designer or have been messing around in the world of WordPress for any period of time, you have by no doubt heard of WordPress hooks. Hooks are a set of custom written functions that can be added to existing functions in the WordPress core to increase, improve or remove functionality. WordPress plugins make extensive use of hooks to latch onto various portions of the WordPress themes or to the admin interface in order to provide the additional functionality or to perform certain actions in certain parts of the code. If you are looking…

vBSEO launches UserVoice Feedback System!

What do you want to see? What do you suggest? vBSEO is listening!

Introducing our new Suggestion & Feedback tool, powered by UserVoice!

UserVoice is a neat tool that will help us organize all of your thoughts and suggestions in one place. The biggest feature to us is it’s Digg-like voting system. This will show us how many other customers like your suggestion. It will help us to prioritize new features that most of you want.

With this announcement, we will be closing our "Feature Request" forums to new threads/replies here on vBSEO.com. They will, however, be readable. The…

vBulletin.com Blog Entry: Widget Programming
Author: Edwin Brown
Published: 14th August 2009 05:01 AM

<div>Widget Programming

Introduction
This is intended for reasonably experienced PHP programmers with some experience in vBulletin programming. You should have at least a basic understand of the vB templating system and phrasing. If you don’t, I strongly recommend you do some homework before trying to program a widget. I will use as an example the static html widget.

It’s very early to be writing this, I know. I can’t say exactly when alpha testing will start on the CMS system, which will be part of the suite. Soon, but…

vBulletin.com Blog Entry: Widget Programming
Author: Edwin Brown
Published: 14th August 2009 05:01 AM

<div>Widget Programming

Introduction
This is intended for reasonably experienced PHP programmers with some experience in vBulletin programming. You should have at least a basic understand of the vB templating system and phrasing. If you don’t, I strongly recommend you do some homework before trying to program a widget. I will use as an example the static html widget.

It’s very early to be writing this, I know. I can’t say exactly when alpha testing will start on the CMS system, which will be part of the suite. Soon, but…