WordPress

As we near the end of September, I figured it’s time to give you a status update on my usage of Adjix which I reviewed back in August. I also published an article which contained the CEO’s response to criticsm when the service launched. Since then, Adjix has added the ability to shorten a URL with no ads attached, essentially allowing you to use their service as a means of recieveing statistics regarding who clicked your links. Although I did not use Adjix exclusively due to the TinyURL FireFox extension making TinyURL creation so dog gone convenient, I did use it for a number of links. Lets see how much I earned.

Well, based on my usage, it will take forever to reach my first payout. Despite the number of impressions, it is worthy of noting that not all of those impressions were valid or payable as some of the impressions were caused by Google Spiders crawling the link on Twitter.

My conclusion is that using Ajix to monetize your Twitter usage is a pipe dream. Instead, I would use Adjix as a URL shrinking analytics service. Despite all the hell which was raised in the comments when I first profiled Adjix, I still don’t believe the company is filled with ill-will. In fact, once Adjix launched, a number of other services followed suit. When it is all said and done, I highly doubt that any individual will be able to monetize their use of Twitter let alone a company.

Over the past few years, Automattic has experimented with displaying advertisements on select tag and post pages on WordPress.com. According to Automattic, that experiment has evolved into a nice balance between barely seeing ads, and making revenue on the ads that have been displayed. Personally, I have never seen an ad on a WordPress.com powered blog but that might be because I am using the Ad Block Plus Firefox extension. At any rate, the ads have allowed Automattic to provide free features instead of more premium, paid for based upgrades.

However, despite the fact that ads are rarely seen, some people may not want to ever display ads on their WordPress.com powered site. Today, Automattic has announced that users can now purchase a premium upgrade that would allow no one, whether they’re logged in or not, to ever seen an ad on your WordPress.com blog.

The No-Ads upgrade costs 30 credits per year ($30.00) or, ($0.08) per day. You can purchase the upgrade through the Upgrades tab in your blog’s dashboard.

I’ve been using WordPress since 2.3 and I’ve yet to participate in any survey such as this one. The WordPress team currently has a survey open to the public which will allow you to vote on the specifics regarding the navigational menus. The goal for this survey is to figure out which navigational menus should be displayed, what those menus should be called, which items should be within those parent navigational items and more.

During the survey, users are presented with screenshots showcasing different navigational structures. The first question is multiple choice with three different layouts to choose from. After answering the first question, you are presented with ample opportunity to voice your opinions on why you chose your answer. After that, you get the chance to add your thoughts and opinions as to which labels the team should use for the navigational menu items. For example, I don’t like the way they are substituting themes for design. I’d rather they keep it the way it is. I guess this means you know what I answered for the labels section!

The last part of the survey asks you questions that are specific to each individual. Not sure how the responses to the last few questions will play into the answers they receive, but at least the team will have some meta data along with the survey results.

I applaud the team for giving end users the chance to respond openly towards the project, even more so with this survey. I for one would love to see more surveys like this in the future. This move also serves as more proof that WordPress 2.7 should be one hell of a release once November arrives.

Let me know if you took the survey and also share your thoughts on this approach from the WordPress team in the comments.

Vladimir Prelovac, author of many excellent WordPress plugins recently published his thoughts on where he sees WordPress headed in the future. Not only that, he also provides a critique on how things are currently being handled by the WordPress team as it relates to the WordPress core. While I agree with some of the points Vladimir has made, there is one thing that was mentioned that I hinted to back in January on another post (Uninstalling Conundrum Part 2) and that is, a plugin validation team.

I admire the PHPbb3 team for executing this concept brilliantly. Here is what they do. First, for any modification to be added to their mod database, it has to go through a minor code audit. This audit is used to look for security flaws as well as bugs inside of the code. This means that users can feel safe knowing that the mods they download from the database are free of security vulnerabilities and are safe to use on their own forum. Despite the fact that the validation process can be a time consuming one, the benefits far outweigh the negative aspects of the process.

I would like to see something like what the PHPbb team does for their mods, done for WordPress plugins and the plugin repository. Vladimir’s take on this issue is that a team is needed to validate WordPress plugins as a means of security because of the potential dangers in having a plugin author account becoming compromised. My opinion on the matter is the same today as it was in January:

So what I’m proposing is that, the WordPress team should get together along with the community and develop a series of coding guidelines. These are the guidelines that third party plugins would have to abide by, in order to be housed within the official WordPress plugin database. This is the only way WordPress would be able to somewhat control the quality of plugins that are coded and released to the public. Granted, you’re not going to solve the problem completely as people will still be able to code plugins for WordPress and release them via their own website, but then, end users of WordPress should think twice about those particular plugins and realize that the only safe route to go should be through the official source of plugins that being the WordPress.org plugin database.

So while Vladimir covers security, my reasoning is more along the lines of quality assurance/control. Based on a comment made my Matt himself, there are a few things that they do automatically to ensure that nothing malicious is entered into the repository. However, Matt appears to be in agreement now, that a team of volunteers will be needed to validate plugin code and also keep an eye on plugin changesets.

Even though I love WordPress and there are many of us out there, who is going to review plugin code for hours on end as a means of contributing to the project? Is this something you would be interested in doing? What about the proposed restrictions to the plugin repository. Do you feel as if that is needed to ensure that the plugins that are hosted their are of top notch quality and free from security vulnerabilities?

WordPress 2.6.2 was released due to a weakness that has been discovered in something known as mt_rand(). WordPress 2.6.2 is a critical release for those of you who allow open registration on your blog. Here is the reason why:

With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.

Along with this critical fix, 2.6.2 is an interim release and therefor contains a few other bug fixes as well such as images that were always inserted into a post at full size, RSS widget linking if there isn’t a link, and the inability to control where a user redirects to when they log in. You can view the rest of the bug fixes here (Fixed Bugs In 2.6.2).

I have already upgraded my blog without a problem!

Steve Smith who writes for Orderedlist.com has published the results of their recent Content Management Survey. Keep in mind when reviewing the data that OrderedList.com caters to Web designers and those are the folks who most likely responded to the survey.

Although there have been countless debates on whether WordPress is a CMS or not (See the comments of the survey to see another one), it topped the list for which CMS people used. This actually coincides with the results from our own poll on which self hosted publishing platform people used. Surprisingly, the choice of (Other) came in second, meaning there are either plenty of custom CMS’s which people are using or, there are many content management systems that are still under the radar. ExpressionEngine took the third spot.

ExpressionsEngine took the cake as far as satisfaction level. WordPress contained a 41% Very Satisfied rating while all other systems equaled 43%. ExpressionEngine however, contained a whopping 64% Very Satisfied rating. ExpressionEngine is a paid for solution so it is easy to see why the satisfaction rating is so high. If you are going to pay for a CMS, it is likely due to the fact that it suits your needs. Thus, the higher satisfaction levels.

The survey also displays data on whether people prefer to host their own CMS or choose a hosted solution. Also noted at the end of the survey results was proof that designers are control freaks. No big surprise there.

It is obvious that the majority of publishers and bloggers are using WordPress. But my question is why?

WordPress is great and fits the bill for most people out of the box. However, there are plugins available which take WordPress to the next level in terms of publishing. Here are 12 of my favorite.

WP AJAX Edit Comments – Allows users and admins to edit comments on a post inline using AJAX.

WP Comment Remix – Adds much needed comment functionality to WordPress such as the ability to reply to comments already made. Also has the ability to display a Quote link which allows users to easily quote each other when making a comment. Also provides functionality where you can reply to comments from the administration panel.

YACTP – Yet Another Comment Threading Plugin allows visitors to reply to existed comments and present them in a threaded fashion to make following multiple conversations easier.

All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

Popularity Contest – Keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular.

Custom Query String – set the number of posts (custom queries) for every single page on your website like categories, archives, or search results pages.

KB Advanced RSS Widget – A WordPress widget that gives you complete control over how RSS feeds are parsed for your sidebar.

Share This – Lets your visitors add your post to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail to a friend.

Vipers Video Quicktags – This plugin provides buttons to the visual editor which make it easy to embed videos from a myriad of different services. No more copy and paste of embedding code!.

AskApache Google 404 – Adds Intelligent SEO Ajax-powered Google Search to 404 pages

WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.

If you have a favorite plugin that you install on with every new WordPress installation, let me know about it in the comments.

WordPress 2.7, (Tentatively) scheduled for a November release looks like it is going to blow the pants off of us. Recently, I took the opportunity to download a developmental version of 2.7 and although it is very early in development, I really like what I’ve seen thus far. Some highlights worth noting:

The developmental version of WordPress 2.7 should not be used on a live blog as it is not considered stable.

Redesigned back end: Although 2.5 introduced a brand new administration panel for WordPress, 2.7 is going to include a new user interface which I believe many people will enjoy. I liken it to the WordPress 2.3 backend with the style of 2.5.

Revamped Write Panel: One of the biggest complaints from users in WordPress 2.5 was the inability to move things around in the Write panel. Thankfully, this is coming back with a few additions tacked on.

Browsing And Installing Plugins From The Back End: WordPress 2.7 has tied the plugin repository into the back end of WordPress. This means you’ll be able to search, download and install plugins right from your installation of WordPress. How cool is that?

There are many other features which may or may not make it into the next version but so far, I have really enjoyed working with the new user interface. The navigational column on the left hand side of the page threw me for a loop for a little while but I have since come to enjoy the lack of vertical scrolling thanks to this column.

If you really want to get a detailed overview as to the changes found within 2.7 thus far, I suggest reading this post entitled (First Look At WordPress 2.7).

Tell me something, are you looking forward to 2.7?