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New Plugins

LibDig

Adds a Lib Dig box to WordPress posts and pages

scrnshotsRSS

This plugin for WordPress allows you to show Scrnshots.com captures on your sites

eFiles Backup

This plugin for Wordpress allows you to download backups of your Uploads, Themes and Plugin directories. It also allows you to download the entire wp-content directory. Not suitable for WPMU without alteration, or for large sites.

WP-UDIF-Entrecard

This plugin enables a simple method of displaying an Entrecard Widget on your Blog and will also display a “U Drop I follow” Image below it for members of the U Drop I Follow Moment

Updated Plugins

AVH Amazon

The avh-amazon WordPress plugin gives you the ability to add a widget which will display a random item from your Amazon wish list, baby registry and/or wedding registry.

Related Posts by Category

Display related posts based on their category. (Page in German)

DasboardZone

Displays statistics about your posts and post frequency on the WordPress Dashboard

Event Calendar 3

Manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar.

Alt Link Text

Alt Link Text adds “Alternative Link Text” and “Alternative Title Attribute” fields to the Write Page and Manage Page screens.

Pods

Pods is a Wordpress plugin that adds CMS abilities to blog posts.

Drain Hole

Drain Hole is a centralized download manager with full monitoring, statistics, versioning, SVN support, and proper SEO download URLs

Child themes are a trend which appears to be gaining traction everywhere you look. Theme authors such as Ian Stewart, Justin Tadlock and Darren Hoyt are just a few of the influential people pushing this concept. In order to try and grasp an understanding of child themes, I interviewed Ian Stewart of Themeshaper.com. His responses were so long, this interview will end up being published in two parts. Here is part 1.

1. First off, could you please explain what Child themes are in the simplest way possible?

A Child Theme is a WordPress theme that installs and activates just like any other WordPress theme—with 2 crucial differences. Firstly, it requires no PHP template files of it’s own to work. That’s because it uses the template files of a defined Parent Theme. The Parent Theme must be installed—but not activated—in your blog’s themes directory for the Child Theme to work.

Secondly, as of WordPress 2.7, template files located in your Child Theme folder will be used instead of the template file in your Parent Theme folder. Don’t like how the header is coded up for a particular theme you want to edit? Copy the header.php file from your Parent theme into your Child Theme folder and make the change there. WordPress, as of 2.7, will look for header.php (or any possible template file) in the Child Theme first and use the Child Theme template file instead. This new feature in WordPress 2.7 makes custom theming really exciting and even easier.

It’s really very simple to make your own Child Theme. So simple, I can tell you and your readers how to do it right here in four ridiculously easy steps. It’ll help you get your head around using a Child Theme if you follow along (with a test blog—this’ll be easy but our test theme isn’t going to be pretty).

1. Make a folder in your blog themes directory called “achildthemetest”.

2. Create a “style.css” file in that folder with the following code copy-pasted into that “style.css” file.

/*
Theme Name: A Child Theme Test
Theme URI:
Description: Trying out a Child Theme with the classic theme
Author:
Author URI:
Template: classic
Version:
*/

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

/*
Now, for a demonstration, let's make all the anchors red.
*/
a {
color:red;
}

3. Refresh your blog’s theme directory in the WordPress admin. You should see a theme called “A Child Theme Test”. It’s using the classic theme as a Parent Theme. If you look at the code above you should see a line that starts with “Template” it’s there that we defined that Parent Theme as “classic”, the folder name of our Parent Theme (which could be any installed theme).

4. Activate your new Child Theme and check out your blog. Are all the links in the main content area red? Congratulations. You just made a WordPress Child Theme. You can now edit your WordPress theme of choice—in this instance, the Classic theme—through CSS alone without having to modify any of the original template files. (If you’re a more advanced WordPress developer you can also include a functions.php file in your Child Theme that lets you interact with WordPress and your themes just like a plugin. But that’s another story altogether.)

2. What are some of the benefits that child themes offer versus stand alone themes?

There’s 2 main benefits for the end user when it comes to using a Child Theme versus editing a theme directly: Simplicity and Upgrade-readiness. To explain, I’ll tell you why I use a Child Theme of my own theme, Thematic, on ThemeShaper.com. That’s right, I’m not even editing my own theme directly on my own WordPress Theme blog.

Firstly, it really is just simpler. I currently have only 2 files in my Child Theme folder: style.css and functions.php. Everything else is coming from the same Thematic template files anyone can download and use. When I want to change the look of my theme, I do it in style.css. If I want to get really serious with theme changes, like, plugin-serious, I write some simple code in functions.php. I don’t think about my Parent Theme and, excepting the XHTML it eventually outputs and displays in my browser, I don’t even look at it. Except! Except when it comes time to upgrade.

When I need to upgrade Thematic, my Parent Theme, I can do so without worries. That’s because I haven’t touched the original template files. I haven’t edited the header. I haven’t edited the footer. I haven’t edited single.php. Or index.php. All my theme edits have been made in the stylesheet and functions file of my Child Theme.

Look at it this way: I have another blog I manage with a really fresh and distinctive design that I get compliments on all the time. Unfortunately, I made that design by hacking up and heavily modifying The Sandbox version 0.6. If I wanted to upgrade to a newer version of The Sandbox I’d have to recreate that design. That means I’d have to pull the theme apart, find all my changes, and reintegrate it with a newer version of the theme. If I’d made the modifications in a Child Theme upgrading would mean uploading a newer version of The Sandbox and, well, that’s it really. How long does it take to upload a theme? 10 seconds? When you’re using a Child Theme, upgrading turns from a day long affair into a 10 second chore that can be done while you’re reading weblogtoolscollection.com.

3. Based on what I’ve seen, the child theme trend is really starting to gain traction thanks in large part to you and other theme designers. How long has the ability to develop child themes been available for WordPress? If it’s been available to develop for some time now, why is it that we are only now starting to see heavy development in this area?

As far as I can tell, Child Themes have been available since version 2.1. But I first heard about Child Themes when I entered the Sandbox Designs Competition (http://sndbx.org/). Every entry there is a Child Theme that defines The Sandbox as it’s Parent Theme and modifies the theme with CSS alone. Consequently, I think a lot of the credit for popularizing Child Themes needs to go to Scott Wallick (http://www.plaintxt.org/), co-creator of The Sandbox and organizer of the Sandbox Designs Competition.

But that brings us to why I don’t think there’s been much talk about Child Themes: I think there’s sort of a lack of faith amongst theme authors and users when it comes to what you can actually do with CSS. WordPress developer and theme author Ben Eastaugh thinks that “one reason it hasn’t been more widely publicized is that [modifying Parent Themes with CSS] wasn’t, as it stood, terribly useful” (http://extralogical.net/2008/08/theme-inheritance/). I’d disagree with that in principle but that sort of sums up the feeling of theme authors that have been ignoring this feature.

And, by the way, if you don’t think Child Themes can really do anything with CSS alone make sure you check out the winning entries in The Sandbox Designs competition (http://sndbx.org/results/) or the oft-mentioned and linked to CSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/).

But regardless of what you think you can do with CSS alone, now that WordPress 2.7 let’s you overwrite Parent template files from your Child Theme I expect we’ll be seeing more and more people using them.

Plus, there’s a few other WordPress developments in the works that’ll likely further popularize this method of theme modifying. Namely, the WordPress.com Themes Marketplace and allowing GPL Child Themes to be released through the WordPress Theme Directory.

4. Before we move on, could you explain what a theme framework is? Perhaps providing a few examples for the readers.

In my mind, a Theme Framework would be a theme that, at the very least, was made with clear intentions of being used to develop further themes. A starting point theme if you will. I think a good Theme Framework also shows consideration of, or planning for, what can be done with Child Themes, now and in WordPress 2.7+. And that’s because, really, you shouldn’t be touching a framework if you can help it.

Think of WordPress as a framework where the contents of the database are output in a controlled fashion by your theme. We don’t go in and tinker with the WordPress core in order to make our themes work better (well, some people do but that’s another story again). The same thing with a theme framework. We can modify the theme framework with our Child Themes and leave the framework pristine for easy, safe upgrades.

This concludes part 1 of the interview. Stay tuned for Part 2 which will be arriving shortly.

Episode 23 of WordPress Weekly is now ready for your consumption. In this episode, Keith and I discuss the IntenseDebate acquisition and what that means for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org while also discussing the business aspects of the deal. We also give our thoughts on the developmental version of WordPress 2.7 thus far. We highlight the fact that there has been at least two differen UI surveys available to the public highlighting the increased awareness as well as end user participation into the final product. There is a major difference between the way the UI is being handled in terms of end user feedback between WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.7. Last but not least, Keith and I give you our plugin picks up the week.

Stories Discussed On The Show:

Automattic acquires IntenseDebate

Wordpress 2.7 - Tentatively Scheduled For Release On November 10th

WordPress Usability Surveys: / Navigation Options / Where To Put That Search Box 

WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements

Didn’t get the chance to mention this on the show but I wanted to pass along a happy birthday to WPCandy.com as they have turned 1 year old.

Plugins Of The Week:

Jeff - Insights by Vladimir Prelovac

Keith - Progressive License v1.0 (Alex King / Crowd Favorite)

Announcements:

Hallsofmontezuma otherwise known as Michael Torbert will be appearing on the first half hour of WordPress Weekly episode 24 Friday October 10th, 2008 at 8 P.M. EST. During this interview, we’ll be covering what it takes to write plugins for WordPress, what it’s like to maintain a plugin used by plenty of WordPress users and much more. If you have questions for this plugin author, be sure to show up during the live stream and ask them in the chatroom or, you can ask them here in the comments.

Also, pay attention to the podcast feed as later this week, you’ll receive a dose of extra content that is not directly related to the podcast.

Thanks to Ryan Mccue, we now have an IRC room setup for the show for those who are technically savvy and who don’t enjoy the Talkshoe interface. Once I receive the IRC information, I’ll pass it along.

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Friday October 10th, 2008 8P.M. EST

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe

Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 3 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode23.mp3

Listen To Episode #23:

WordPress MU, the multi blog version of WordPress that runs on WordPress.com has been updated.

Version 2.6.2 is now available for <a href=”http://ocaoimh.ie/category/wordpress/feed/download and is a required update. WordPress MU isn’t vulnerable to the security bugs that were the reason for WordPress 2.6.2 but it does contain a number of important bug fixes, including:

1. xmlrpc.php works better if you use multiple sites. #735
2. get_option() wasn’t reading all options.
3. Configurable media buttons on the Write page. #598, #738
4. 404 “file not found” errors on folder installs is mostly fixed. #745
5. And more .. (timeline)

Related Posts

• WordPress MU 2.6.1
• What’s this WordPress.com thing anyway?
• WordPress MU 1.3.2

I’ve been dubbed The Publisher by BusinessWeek as one of their “25 Most Influential People on the Web.” Before anyone else writes in that I beat Rupurt Murdoch, I think the slideshow is in alphabetical order.

We are happy to announce our latest stable release Phorum-5.2.8.
It is a bug fix release over 5.2.7 fixing lots of issues found.

Some new things were put in too.
This includes:
- the rewrite of the bbcode module done through the MySQL-conference this year
- new APIs for Ajax usage and newflags
- some more hooks for better module integration
- updated / new documentation from Andy Taylor - mostly in FAQ and Admin Docs.

You can download it from our downloads page.

This is the excerpt from the changelog:

2008-07-22 07:23  mmakaay
	* Suppress output from the memcache cache layer for cases where
	  connecting to the memcached server fails. This prevents memcached
	  problems from breaking the page ("headers already sent".)
	  Additionally, the inline documentation was updated.

   2008-07-18 13:28  mmakaay
	* Fixed #772: possible corruption of serialized custom field data
	  (reported by Jonhoo).

   2008-07-15 18:11  brian
	* Fix for #731. Strip DESCRIPTION for search page

   2008-07-15 18:07  brian
	* moving the 5.2.x tags to the 5.2 dir

   2008-07-04 16:48  ts77
	* use display_name for reporter as suggested by Oliver Riesen
	  (fixing #761)

   2008-07-04 15:49  ts77
	* same date formatting in read templates as suggested by Oliver
	  Riesen (#749)

   2008-07-02 18:39  mmakaay
	* Fixed an incompatibility between file downloads with the "only
	  from this forum" restriction, in combination with URI
	  authentication. Before this fix, access for downloading the image
	  would be denied, even though the file was downloaded directly from
	  the forum. # Also a typo-fix-of-the-day change (learned that it is
	  "existent" :-).

   2008-07-01 14:30  mmakaay
	* Fixed a compatibility problem between the new BBcode module and
	  PHP versions prior to 5.1.0. The PHP function
	  htmlspecialchars_decode() is not available for those versions of
	  PHP. Thanks to Adam for noticing the problem and for providing a
	  work-around!

   2008-06-25 21:14  ts77
	* fixed undefined index in event_logger module (#748, reported by
	  Oliver Riesen)

   2008-06-25 21:07  ts77
	* stripped quotes from plain-text forum description as suggested by
	  Oliver Riesen (#743)

   2008-06-25 20:53  ts77
	* added line-height for thread options as suggested by Oliver Riesen
	  (#730)

   2008-06-25 20:20  ts77
	* made users tz_offset a float value for non-integer timezones

   2008-06-17 11:19  mmakaay
	* The "Force hiding of email addresses" option is now only
	  applicable to regular forum users. Administrators and moderators
	  can always see the email addresses of the users. For moderators,
	  this can be restricted by setting the PHORUM_MOD_EMAIL_VIEW
	  constant to false in include/constants.php. Some more fine grained
	  control for email address displaying will be added to Phorum 5.3.

   2008-06-16 10:15  ts77
	* quote anonymous authors with their name (fixing #744)

   2008-06-16 09:59  ts77
	* sort strictly by datestamp to get the recent_post (fixing #755)

   2008-06-16 09:32  ts77
	* added user's posts to edit screen (readonly), fixing #759

   2008-06-16 09:06  mmakaay
	* Another fix for #765: UTF-8 byte order markers at the start of
	  template files are now stripped by include/templates.php.

   2008-06-16 08:20  mmakaay
	* Fix for #765: catch the output of include files
	  (include/db/config.php, include/lang/* and
	  templates/*/settings.tpl) to prevent extra output like UTF-8 byte
	  order markers from breaking the pages.

   2008-06-13 18:28  ts77
	* case insensitive search for block tags in html module (fixing
	  #760)

   2008-06-05 00:21  mmakaay
	* Implemented some improvements for the Editor Tools module as
	  suggested by David King (phorum.org user "Optimal") and Oliver
	  Riesen. The behavior when adding tags using the buttons is now
	  much better. The textarea won't scroll up anymore if it is
	  scrolled downwards a bit and the text that was selected previously
	  to adding the tag will be reselected after adding the tag.

   2008-06-03 09:41  mmakaay
	* Fixed a bug in handling stale close tags that directly follow
	  another open or close tag. Thanks to CBiLL for the problem report.
	  The related error message was: Unsupported operand types in
	  [..]/bbcode/api.php

   2008-06-02 08:09  mmakaay
	* Fix for #762: moved pm_sent hook to always trigger the hook after
	  a sent PM. Before, it would not trigger if the PM mail
	  notification was disabled.

   2008-05-27 20:34  mmakaay
	* Improved handling of stale close tags in the text and fixed a PHP
	  undefined index warning along with it. Thanks to CBiLL for the
	  problem report.

   2008-05-25 22:58  mmakaay
	* MFT: # Undefined indexes fixed.

   2008-05-25 11:57  mmakaay
	* Added the conference 2008 rewrite release of the BBcode module to
	  the tree.

   2008-05-25 09:35  mmakaay
	* Added javascript_filter hook (for things like javascript
	  compression). Added a refresh=1 parameter for javascript.php to
	  let it ignore the cache.

   2008-05-19 15:51  mmakaay
	* The javascript.php script automatically loads the Ajax client
	  code, so modules can be sure that they can make use of it and
	  don’t have to load it specifically. Templates can now contain a
	  "javascript.tpl", which is loaded in by the javascript.php code
	  automatically. This corresponds to the way that the CSS code works
	  (where you can create a "css.tpl").

   2008-05-13 03:51  ataylor
	* Added File Path block

   2008-05-08 15:00  mmakaay
	* Added a new API layer for handling JSON data (final goal: Ajax
	  layer)

   2008-05-08 14:56  mmakaay
	* Added a new API layer for newflags handling.

   2008-05-03 13:53  mmakaay
	* Backported the phorum_switch_template() function from trunk to
	  5.2. This new function makes it possible to switch the active
	  Phorum template to a template that is stored in any directory.
	  This is for example useful if a module includes a full Phorum
	  template, where the template is packaged with the module code.
	  With this new function, the Phorum can activate the module’s
	  template without the need for the admin to copy the template to
	  the main templates directory.

   2008-04-29 16:41  mmakaay
	* Fixed #740: Mark read in folder (classic index) goes back to root
	  (thanks Oliver!)

   2008-04-29 16:03  mmakaay
	* Fixed #754: Display name filter was not included in pagination
	  (thanks Oliver!)

   2008-04-29 16:01  mmakaay
	* Fixed #738: problems with German help file for smileys module
	  (thanks Oliver!)

   2008-04-29 15:54  mmakaay
	* Fixed #757: Fixed typo in hook call for "posting_permissions"
	  (thanks Alexey)

   2008-04-17 15:24  ts77
	* use the correct default language for announcement conversion
	  (fixing #734)

   2008-04-03 08:42  mmakaay
	* Fixed #735: Added missing backslash in JavaScript code (thanks to
	  Oliver Riesen)

   2008-03-23 00:24  mmakaay
	* Fixed spam flagging by SpamAssassin for rule
	  SUBJECT_NEEDS_ENCODING. This prevents spam flagging of mail in
	  case the admin uses a name that contains special characters in the
	  "System Emails From Name" field. Encoding was implemented using
	  the Quoted-Printable description from RFC 2045.

   2008-03-21 11:25  mmakaay
	* Fixed spam flagging by SpamAssassin for rule FROM_BLANK_NAME
	  (From: contains empty name). This prevents spam flagging of mail
	  in case the admin did not fill in the "System Emails From Name"
	  field. This resulted in a header like: From: ""
	  <admin@example.com>

   2008-03-21 11:16  mmakaay
	* Fixed spam flagging by SpamAssassin for rule MSGID_FROM_MTA_HEADER
	  (Message-Id was added by a relay). This prevents spam flagging of
	  mail messages that are not sent for new message notification (for
	  those we already generated a Message-Id header).

PhotoQ

PhotoQ is a WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a photoblog. If you have a lot of pictures to post, PhotoQ is your ideal companion. With PhotoQ you can mass upload several photos at the same time thanks to its batch upload functionality.

Admin Drop Down Menus

Admin Drop Down Menus rearranges the existing default Dashboard/Admin menus into javascript driven dropdowns, making navigation around your Wordpress Admin quicker, easier and considerably more efficient.

Viper’s Video Quicktags

Just simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box.

Tabbed Widgets

Tabbed interfaces are the most common on newspaper type website where they can save a lot of vertical space and make it look less cluttered. This plugin allows you to create them.

Hatena Star

Hatena Star is a recommendation service for webpages, popular in Japan.

Blinko Broadcaster for WordPress

The Blinko Broadcaster Plugin gives any WordPress user the opportunity to create their own broadcasting page, by signing up to an evaluation account to Blinko just by filling in an email address, all through a user-friendly interface in the Admin Panel.

WP MarkitUp

WP MarkItUp! is the Wordpress plugin that replaces the old “quicktags” toolbar with MarkItUp!, a jQuery plugin written by Jay Salvat that allows to turn any textarea into an highly customizable markup editor.

Find and Replacer

Find and replacer is a powerful search plugin for replacing tags and text throughout your blog installation.

WP Easy Digg

The plugin will add a digg button to every post, so your readers could digg the post if they really like it.

Scrippets

Scrippets is a text format designed by screenwriter John August to allow writers to input part of a screenplay in easy-to-write plain text and have it converted to properly styled HTML….

WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will significantly speed up your website.

If you’re not interested in the changes, simply grab the latest version of the plugin and copy the files into your plugin folder. It’ll work, but if you’re upgrading, you should read on.

Major changes in this release:

1. Generate a semaphore id based on hostname and cache path to avoid problems on shared hosts, props Tigertech.
2. If you run WordPress from a different directory to where it’s installed, supercached files weren’t deleted when a post was made or updated. That is now fixed. Thanks Viper007Bond for all your help on that.
3. Paged archives, category pages, and tag pages are now cleared when a post is edited or comment approved. This replicates what WP Cache did all along so you should hopefully see supercached static files updating more often.
4. If your .htaccess is read-only, the mod_rewrite rules are displayed on the admin page. Thanks Matt for the patch.
5. Updated mod_rewrite rules won’t serve static html files if there’s a “=” in the url. Should catch all sorts of problems with plugins and attachments. You’ll have to manually edit your root .htaccess to match the new rules.
6. Set cache control and expiry headers of supercached files. They are cached for 5 minutes, but with a “must-revalidate” header. Delete wp-content/cache/.htaccess for the new rules to be updated.
7. Check for WordPress MU because it can’t update the .htaccess file.
8. Write supercache html to temporary files and rename. The old way opened the correct file for writing, did some work and wrote the file. In the fraction of a second it took to write the file, someone might request it and get an incomplete page.
9. The Supercache expiry time has been removed. There can be only one.

Related Posts

• WP Super Cache 0.6
• WP Super Cache 0.6.7
• WP Super Cache 0.6.2

For those that are on WordPress.com, Matt and the Automattic team introduced their new Ad-Free version of WordPress.com for a modest fee of 30 credits per year or $0.08 per day. Matt explains the reasoning behind the existence of the ads on WordPress.com and Lorelle writes up us a nice tutorial on how to activate this feature and some information on the ads themselves.

In other cool WordPress news, the WordPress for iPhone app has been downloaded over 100,000 times! Ranaan, who I met for the first time in SF this year and is BBQ averse :), provides a breakdown of the downloads across countries and then runs down a list of new features that are being worked on for version 1.2 including landscape mode, comment moderation and enhanced image options.

>> *Note: This requires Apache & mod rewrite. If you do not have these, I cannot help you.* <<

*What does it do?*
This little code snippet and directory setup, combined with mod rewrite will allow…

AVH Amazon

Gives you the ability to add multiple widgets which will display one or more random item(s) from your Amazon wishlist, baby registry and/or wedding registry.

WP125

The WP125 plugin can help you manage your ads more efficiently, leaving you with more time to write new posts.

WordPress Bookmark Generator

This little plugin will output a bookmarks.html file with your entire WordPress Dashboard in folders, just as they appear on your panel.

Inline Google Docs

This plugin allows the user to embed Google Document/Spreadsheet content in posts and pages using shortcode.

Dynamic Content Gallery

This plugin creates a dynamic gallery of images for latest and/or featured posts. Using JonDesign’s excellent SmoothGallery script, this plugin makes the gallery truly dynamic so that it automatically creates the gallery from your latest and/or featured posts.

WP-Universe

WP-Universe creates a blog universe based on categories of a WordPress blog.

WP Smiley Switcher

With this plugin you can choose a smiley pack from the settings / options in admin or simply choose your own smiley pack directory.

CSS Cache Buster

Always deliver the latest version of your CSS stylesheet to browsers. All caching problems solved.

Sudoku

Add a Sudoku game to your blog with this WordPress widget. (Page in French)

Wordbook

Wordbook is Wordpress plugin designed to integrate Facebook in your blog and your blog into Facebook.

WP-Figlet

WP Figlet allows you to draw ASCII art in your posts and page source.

Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on your blog. This helps reduce the amount of spam aimed at old posts.

Insights

Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time the appeal of your posts.

DivvaFlip

Make your gallery more glamorous with a flipping engine

So tell the truth, were you popular in high school? Did you have a lot of friends, and a wide social circle? Were you an athlete? Did your accomplishments extend far outside the halls of your alma mater to neighboring schools and counties? If so, then congratulations; you’re probably in the minority of those reading this article. What does this example have to do with link popularity you ask; more than you think. Just as in high school, on the World Wide Web, your website is known by the company it keeps. Link to the wrong site or “hang with the wrong crowd” and you could be ostracized by the search engine community before you even begin. Achieve quality inbound links from a wide range of popular kids on the internet, however, and watch your site’s online profile soar. Sounds simple, and it is, if you know what to do…