WordPress 2.5 has finally been released, after two release candidates. One of the main changes is the look of the adminstration panel, boasting an uncluttered design putting more focus on activities such as writing and taking emphasis away from less frequented areas such as the plugins and settings. Some other features include dashboard widgets, which can be used for tracking things such as incoming links or statistics. Some other great features focus on image management. Easy file uploading, and built-in photo galleries are now apart of the WordPress core.

If you need any assistance with upgrading to the new version, please let us know. We’ve upgraded a few outdated blogs since the 2.5 release so we’re ready to assist you in any upgrades that need to take place.

Source: WordPress

WordPress just released an urgent security release today (February 5th) that affects everyone with registration enabled, which a lot of people have turned on. The update also fixes a number of small bugs. It’s urgent you at least replace the vulnerable file, the rest of the update is optional.

A flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. Download the latest version ASAP to avoid this. You could also just use this fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy over the existing file.

If you need any assistance upgrading and/or patching this vulnerability, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Source: WordPress

That’s a good question. Some of our visitors expressed confusion on what exactly WordPress is. Hopefully this article will clarify things.

Basically, WordPress is a blog publishing system. It is written in the PHP programming language backed with a MySQL database. Sorry if we’re getting too technical here. The programming language really isn’t important here. What’s important is the powerful set of features available in WordPress, including:

• What You See Is What You Get post editor
• Templating system
• Integrated link management
• Search engine-friendly permalink structure
• Extensible plugin support
• Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
• TrackBack and Pingback
• Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
• Static Pages
• Multiple Authors
• Can store a list of users that visit your blog
• Can block a person’s IP address
• Tag support

And the list goes on. With this feature set, WordPress is not just limited to blogging. It can be used as a full-featured content management system. We can help you achieve your goals harnessing the power of WordPress.

Entrecard is a revolutionary new way of promoting your blog to other bloggers, and best of all, it’s absolutely free. It was launched at the Blog World Expo in November of 2007, so it’s relatively new. Basically, here’s how it works:

• You sign up for an account and make a 125×125 card for your blog.
• You place the Entrecard widget on your blog, so other bloggers can drop their card on you.
• You start dropping your card on other Entrecard blogs.
• You get a credit every time you drop or receive a dropped card.
• You can use the credits to advertise on some real big-name blogs (if approved).

That’s how the basic system works. You can also communicate with other bloggers on the Entrecard forums, send messages to each other, and just get to know others in the blogging community. The networking potential with Entrecard is truly priceless.

WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.

As a little bonus, 2.3.2 allows you to define a custom DB error page. Place your custom template at wp-content/db-error.php. If WP has a problem connecting to your database, this page will displayed rather than the default error message.

For more detail on what’s new in 2.3.2, view the list of fixed bugs and see the changes between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.

Source: WordPress

WPDesigner - We must say, we like this guy’s taste in themes. Most of them he designs himself, however sometimes he will promote others as well. Pretty much all the themes here look great.

WpThemesFree - This site probably has the biggest selection of free WordPress themes. Everything is categorized so it’s easy to search for a theme you’re looking for. The preview feature is also a nice way to see how the theme will look before trying it yourself.

wpSnap - Here’s another great place to find good looking WordPress themes. It seems to have a pretty big collection.

FreeWordPressThemes.com - This is a relatively new WordPress themes site. It has a pretty nice selection. You can view themes by tag or do a keyword search. Unfortunately they don’t have a live preview feature, which would be convenient.

Design Disease - They only have 7 free themes available for download, but they’re very high quality. They also do custom blog design.

Official WordPress Theme Viewer - We thought it was worth a mention to the official theme viewer. They have a wide selection of themes, easily sortable and searchable too. You might find something you like there.

Here are some lists of the “top” WordPress themes, most are very good, and all are handpicked.

• Smashing Magazine I, II, and III.

Here’s a list of our favorite plugins for WordPress. Each plugin has been hand picked by us. We usually make extended use of them in our developments. If you’d like us to install and implement one of these, or any other WordPress plugins you may find, let us know.

Askimet - This is a great and very effective anti-spam plugin. It checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. All you need is a WordPress.com API key to use it. Best of all, it’s free.

BackupWordPress - This plugin is an absolute must for large and small sites alike. It generates scheduled backups of just your database, or the entire site. You can have them stored on your server for later download, or have them e-mailed to you.

Flexible Upload - This plugin is great for those who upload a lot of pictures for their posts. The easy resizing and watermarking features are great extension to the current WordPress image uploading features.

Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin is a must for those serious about SEO for their WordPress sites. It will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress site. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated.

NextGEN Gallery - This is our preferred photo gallery plugin. It features sortable albums, slideshows, watermarking, you name it. Great for just a few pictures, or a collection of photo albums.

Sociable - This great social bookmarking plugin automatically adds social bookmarking icons to all of your posts automatically. It’s compatible with too many social bookmarking sites to count, including StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and about 50 more.

WP-Cache - If you expect an influx of incoming traffic to your WordPress site, this plugin will lessen the load on your server. It is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive.

WP-ContactForm: Akismet Edition - This is a simple contact form plugin which integrates with Askimet in order to prevent spam e-mails. No more annoying CAPTCHA codes that your visitors can’t even read are needed.

WP-PostRatings - This plugin adds an AJAX rating system for your blog. You can make all of your posts or pages rateable.

PlugInstaller - Easily install WordPress plugins directly to your server. No more downloading, extracting, and uploading. This plugin works best with plugins direct from the official WordPress Plugins Directory.

WP-Polls - This plugin adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can also easily add polls in your posts and pages.

WP-PageNavi - This adds a more advanced paging system for your blog, suitable for blogs with several pages of posts.

WP-Print - This plugin generates printer-friendly pages for your posts. Great for news sites.

If you have a good plugin you’d like to suggest for inclusion on this page, feel free to use the contact form to let us know.