'Wordpress' News.

WP Super Cache version 0.8.7 is now available. WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will significantly speed up your website.

This release addresses some issues large or busy sites had with deleting expired cache files. Some sites generated so many cache files that there were two many files generated, even when those files were cleared out every hour. To fix that I limited the recursive function that deletes the files to 100 deletions at a time. That function is called until all the cache files are deleted (or strictly speaking, no files are deleted. That’s how the expired file cleanup works).
It’s also possible to set the garbage collection interval to 10 minutes now which will also help.

Related Posts

• WP Super Cache 0.8.4, the garbage collector
• WP Super Cache 0.8.3 “Speedy”
• Want to test super speed caching?

New Plugins

WP-Admin Quick Links

WP Admin Quicklinks is a very simple little WordPress plugin that adds an intelligent, unobtrusive little admin panel to the top-right of all your site’s pages and posts giving you shortcuts to the most commonly used WP Admin sections.

Mailto-staff

For multi-author blogs. Plugin generates mailto links on the dashboard referring to all user groups of the blog. Quite handy way of internal staff communication.

WordPress PageRank Widget Plugin

Allows you to display a PageRank badge as a widget. It is much more convenient than having modify your templates to include such a badge. It can be used either at a page/post level, or a top site level.

Is Child Of

This plugin implements a function called ‘is_child_of’, which can check if a page is a descendant page of another page, regardless of how many levels there are in between them.

Tweet Stats

Tweet Stats adds two widgets to your blog: “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts”. It works hand in hand with the newly released “Tweetbacks” plugin.

Default Categories

Allows authors to set their default categories for authoring new posts.

Comment Form Quicktags

This plugin inserts a quicktag toolbar on the comment form.

No Update

This plugin will allow you to disable plugin upgrade options for selected plugins.

Updated Plugins

Google AJAX Libraries API

The Google Ajax Libraries API Plugin is designed to make it easy to use the Google hosted libraries without the need to mess with your theme and plugin code.

WordPress Backup

WordPress backup zips the uploads (images), plugin, and current theme directories. Optionally emailing the zip files to an email address of choice. v1.4 Exposes the folders and permissions used for the backup.

Social Bookmarks

The Social Bookmarks plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.

Visit Counter

Visitcounter is a small WordPress 2++ plugin which counts the visits of your weblog on a daily base. There a several functions which can show different stats: all visits, currently online, daily visits.

Linklist

This plugin allows you to create a personal linklist as a new page. It’s easy to manage and gives you a lot of features. You can control and manage it with the WordPress admin, edit links and categories and much more!

Wordpress Popular Posts

With Wordpress Popular Posts, you can show your visitors what are the most popular entries on your blog.

Duplicate Post

Create a copy of a post.

Shockingly Simple Favicon

A shockingly simple favicon for your site. it changes de favicon of your blog without having to edit the theme files

Custom Field Template

This plugin adds the default custom fields on the Write Post/Page.

Dashboard: Technorati Reactions Extended

Widget for the WordPress +2.7 dashboard to display the latest technorati reactions.

Berkeley Coworking and cog motive are hosting a WordPress Installfest on January 15 to help folks get going with WordPress 2.7.

When I was in Buenos Aires last I sat down in the morning with La Nacion and here is the resulting video in English and transcription in Spanish.

Clearpress

The unique feature about this theme is that it divides the blog posts into three separate column. The theme also features a pull-down sidebar which is totally unobtrusive and contains three widgetized sidebars. ClearPress is Gravatar-ready, Image Gallery ready, and consists of beautifully styled comments and archive pages.

Color Plus

Template consists of two columns, supports widgets, comments, is static in size. In the pattern dominated by black, blue, green and red. Good design, which is suitable for any blog.

Satin Rose

Satin Rose is a simple two column, widget ready theme compatible with WordPress 2.7

Pellucid Dashed

Two column, widget ready theme with support for Twitter

Satorii

Satorii is a theme for WordPress (2.7 or higher) with a minimalist, simple, elegant and clean style, a strong focus on contents and readability, with one centered column for content and three widgetized columns in the footer.

Joost De Valk who operates Yoast.com in conjunction with the guys behind SunPress has launched a competition in which a Macbook Air is up for grabs. The competition is centered around expanding SunPress. This could be a plugin, a theme, a widget, nothing is off limits. The contest will end on February 16th. If you win but are unable to accept the Macbook Air as the prize, you’ll receive the cash equivalent. All entries must be created under the GPL License. For more information regarding the contest, please read the fine print on the contest announcement page.

Every year I make resolutions. Some years I do them. This year I want to try something different and open source them by opening it up to you guys. Here’s how we’ll try it: leave a comment with what you think my resolution(s) should be for 2009. I’ll pick the best ones, and if you’re the first to propose one I pick I’ll credit you in the follow-up post. I’ll print out the winning resolutions and put them on my desk for the year, so hopefully they’ll have a lasting effect. Remember, measurable things are better!

New Plugins

WordPress Backup

Performs regular backups of your upload (images) and current theme directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don’t get caught without a recent backup of your theme or images.

Automatic Blog Stats

This plugin makes available a number of statistics about your blog, including pagerank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, Feedburner RSS count and more which you can use as shortcodes in your posts. Automatically updates all statistics daily.

Plain Gtalk Status Sync

This plugin will automatically show your GTalk status on your WordPress blog. You can set a max-shown number and the cache interval to make it works more smoothly.

Add a Separator

Simple Plugin to add a separator between the intro and the (more…) content. This plugin adds a separator between the intro text and the extended (more…) text of the content of a post. It simply replaces the span id more tag with the separator that is set in the plugins php file.

WP Click Track

Scans posts and extracts all the hrefs, rewrites them to include an onclick event which handles the tracking. Basic reports are displayed on the post and page modification areas.

Antispam Bee

Protects your blog from spam by replacing the comment field. Page in German

Email Alerts

Allows users to configure whether they wish to be alerted when a comment is added, comment held, post posted.

WP-Slimbox2

An WordPress implementation of the Slimbox2 JavaScript.

Pending Posts Indicator

Will show a bubble in the left-hand admin menu of the number of posts pending review, if more than zero.

Updated Plugins

Simple Shortcodes

Simple Shortcodes provides an easy to use mechanism for creating and using custom shortcodes. Added in this version are options to control how the configuration page works and the 255 character limit on shortcode values has been removed.

AddThis

The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget allows your users to bookmark your site easily with over 45 popular services, and to share it with friends via email.

Daily Top 10

Track the hits of each blog post for the current day and cumulatively at the same time. You may also display sidebar widgets containing a list of the most popular posts for the day and most popular posts overall.

WP Decoratr

WP Decoratr can automatically find images relevant to your post content from Flickr to spice up your posts.

DandyID Services

Displays all of your online identities (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, more) as clickable links in your sidebar.

Textile Live Preview

Allows you to place a realtime comment preview with support for Textile.

Quote Comments

Creates a little quote icon in comment boxes which, when clicked, copies that comment to the comment box wrapped in blockquote.

Admin Menu

The admin menu plugin for WordPress sticks key admin menu links to the top of your blog’s screen.

PCworld

PC World two column, widget ready theme is built for technology oriented guys who wants to devote their blogs for computer technology. Blog uses a beautiful header image with great typography.

WP Commerce Steel [Removed, Sponsored]

Sleek and versatile Wordpress theme specifically designed to work with eBay and Amazon affiliate programs, also works great for regular Blogs.

Oulipo

Oulipo is a clean, minimal, thee-column, widget-ready theme with great typography and a grid-based layout. Oulipo supports threaded comments and sticky posts in WordPress 2.7.

Technology Blog

Three column, widget ready, gravatar ready theme.

Nash Magazine

The Nash WP theme comes along with with a multi column red / black / white color scheme, eleven recent posts and two bars for the splash page with pagination enabled, one lead posts, followed by your twitter messages, “about blurbs” and six random posts with additional six posts underneath,
the sidebar is meant to be as an additional ads place and it shows only at the front page.

Raw Corporate

The Raw WP theme comes along with with a red / black / white color scheme, three recent posts and one widgetized bar for the inner pages with pagination enabled, the front slider is meant to be as an additional info place and it shows only at the front page. Configurable via the themes admin panel to show your custom messages

Kallista

A minimalistic wordpress theme, Kallista features Gravatar support, microformats, widgets and great typography. Content focused, an excellent theme for any blog.

Just over two weeks ago, the community was abuzz about the disappearance of 200 to 300 themes being removed from the theme repository. During that blip of time, there were many posts dedicated to covering the subject of not only the theme removals, but of community, GPL and much more. Andrew Rickmann who I consider to be a ‘thought leader‘ within the WordPress community published an excellent post which has had my head churning through thoughts and ideas ever since I read it. The article goes into detail on what the point of community is.

However, despite the overall article being a great read, question number five that Andrew raises is the one that continuously has me thinking. In question five, Andrew asks what is it that you value? He then gives eight different perspectives which I find to be very interesting. Here is one of them:

Do you agree that: A person that makes a plugin freely available is appropriately compensated by the thousands of other plugins and themes that are available to him for free?

Just that thought alone was enough to stop me in my tracks and really think about it. I wanted to share this article to the WordPress community because I think Andrew did a great job raising some interesting points worthy of more discussion.

We’re kicking of our plugin review process with a feature rich plugin labeled Simple:Press Forum. This was also the first plugin review request that we received.

So what is Simple:Press?

Simple:Press is a feature rich forum plugin for WordPress. It fully integrates into your WP based site utilizing the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page. It is fully customizable and comes with a number of skins and sets of icons to get your started. Current users have shown it to be fully scalable whether your site membership numbers the tens or the thousands.

Through it’s powerful and flexible permissions system it is suitable for those who wish to run private, specialist forums with invited members but is equally able to accommodate open, public forums that allow guest posting.

Also included is a Private Messaging sub-system, the ability to link blog posts with forum topics, the capability to extend the forum display with custom code, a number of template tags for use outside of the forums, extensive online help that explains every option and full language support.

Features:

• Fully integrated with WordPress user registrations and logins
• Creates ‘pretty/SEO friendly’ permalinks
• Underpinned by a powerful user and permission system
• Can create private forums
• Forums can be ‘Members Only’ or can allow for Guests
• Private Messaging system
• Admins can allow for post moderation (approval)
• Built in Search tool
• Fully customizable skins and icons
• Most rendering functions are ‘pluggable’
• Member Profile updating - users can change own passwords
• Choice of Editors (RTE, HTML, bbCODE)
• Options Signatures, Signature Image, Avatars, and Rankings
• A variety of Template Tags - recent posts etc
• Programmable Hooks for user extension
• Optional Spam Prevention tools
• Optional Cookies to track Guests and Members
• Fully Localized for language support
• Optional and various RSS feeds and email subscription to topics
• Various display options to suit your needs and theme
• An Admin toolset to perform many tasks from within the forum itself
• Blog Posts and Forum Topics can be linked
• Support for the Democracy Polls plugin
• Support for the Gravatars 2 plugin
• Forum Statistics - including who is online
• Complete uninstall/removal option
• Support for the All In One SEO Pack Plugin (Browser title bar)
• View Admins New Post Queue from ALL views with ‘Quick Reply’
• Right-to-left language support in the TinyMCE editor
• Topic Status Tracking
• Custom Smileys
• RTE Toolbar Customization
• Pre-registration Policy display option
• Post Ratings
• Add Custom Profile data items
• ‘Watched’ topics
• Multiple forum Admins
• Members List

Demo

A live demo of the forum is the Support Forum for the plugin itself on the developers’ site.

Our Review

Simple:Press forum is a staunch competitor of bbPress. Looking at the features and from the demo, it seems like Simple:Press has a lot more to offer than bbPress.

Installation of the plugin is extremely simple. You install it just like you would any other WordPress plugin. Upload the entire folder (2.2MB) to your plugins folder of your blog and activate the plugin. The forum has an inbuilt installation program.

You can then use the administration interface of the forum to create new forums.

Improvements?

As for the plugin, one feature could be the ability to install it on a separate domain as in the case with bbPress.

Looking beyond the plugin, one thing we advocate is a well kept plugin page. Simple:Press does well in this respect as it has its very own domain and support system.

What I would love to see is a detailed installation page with screenshots. As well as detailed tutorials and documentation on using and customizing the forum.

Are you a user of Simple:Press Forum? What has been your experience with the same? Why did you choose this plugin over other full-fledged forums? What features would you like to see added / improved / removed?