This is a Guest Post by Dan Norris. Dan might be writing more for Weblog Tools Collection in the near future. So please stay tuned.
5 years ago when I started Web Circle I did a bunch of research on which CMS to choose and decided on Joomla!.
For a year or so it was the CMS we used for pretty much every website and it was very sophisticated for what it could do at the time – particularly with the growing extensions directory. However as time went on and WordPress got better and better we gradually moved to using WordPress for most of our small business websites.
Since these days we focus predominantly on small business website design, WordPress has become the platform we use for the majority of our new sites (note we also still use Joomla!).
In 2006
In 2006 WordPress was seen mainly as a blogging tool and Joomla! was in […]
Original post by Mark Ghosh
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
With the release of RC 1, WordPress 3.2 is fast approaching completion. Besides some notable changes, WordPress 3.2 has actually received a total of over 370 changes to date.
Not only will this version of WordPress be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 and requiring a minimum of PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5, but it will be introducing distraction free writing, a new Dashboard, Twenty Eleven, and an expanded Admin Bar.
Which feature are you looking forward to the most?
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
Trend Micro which is an anti-virus company announced their most dangerous list for 2010. Just about everything mentioned in the list has a strong correlation with market share and size which tends to make them more dangerous. This is especially apparent when Trend Micro lists Google as the most dangerous website thanks to its popularity for blackhat-SEO schemes which lead to malware infected sites. However, as for Website Software, Trend Micro labeled WordPress as the riskiest web software used in 2010:
The riskiest software used by websites in 2010 was the popular blogging platform WordPress. Tens of thousands of un-patched WordPress blogs were used by cybercriminals for various schemes, primarily as part of redirection chains that led to various malware attacks or other blackhat search engine optimization (SEO)-related schemes.
I beg to differ. While WordPress certainly made the headlines this year as webhost after webhost became the target of attacks, in most […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, google
James Dalman gave his prediction for the future of the premium theme business on WPCandy yesterday and although he makes a couple of valid points, there are some others I’d like to expand upon as well as add my own thoughts.
First, a little history on the semantics of the market. The word Premium was a term used about two years ago to define a theme that carried a price tag and contained some additional features and enhancements you wouldn’t normally find in a free theme. This lead to the question, What Is A Premium Theme? Premium was and always has been a marketing term. It’s funny because in the commercial theme market today, the rage is centered around theme frameworks. While theme developers in the WordPress community grabbed a hold of this term and gave it their own definition, we once again found ourselves wondering what a theme framework […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Over the years, I’ve read and participated in numerous discussions around the topic of removing Hello Dolly, one of the default plug-ins that ships with WordPress and is used for learning purposes. Despite all of the talk surrounding the plug-in, I’ve never seen anyone mention the issue of copyright. According to ticket 15769 on Trac, Hello Dolly is infringing on the copyrights of Jerry Herman, the creator of the musical. No one knows for sure if Matt or the WordPress Foundation has the permission of Jerry to use the lyrics in the plug-in or if he even needs it since the use may fall under fair use. There is also the discussion that if the plug-in is indeed violating the copyright of Jerry Herman that this infringement terminates the license of WordPress, that being GPL.
None of the people involved in the discussion is a lawyer so keep that in mind […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, music
While WeblogToolsCollection.com focuses on all things WordPress, it’s healthy to get out of the house every once in awhile to see what else is going on in the world. In this instance, the world is Open-Source Content Management Systems. Water and Stone which is a digital agency has released their annual open source CMS market share survey for 2010. This survey was comprised of 5,000 participants with more than 2,800 completing the full questionnaire. The report contains a look at various metrics and trends for 20 different content management systems. While the results of the survey are not definitive, there are some interesting trends specifically with WordPress that I wanted to share.
Water and Stone used Amazon.com to determine who has the largest number of books in print, which systems have been the subject of publishing activity in the last 12 months, and which systems are currently the subject of […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Paul Maloney of WPZine.com has a pretty good question: Is there a point anymore to using the WordPress ping lists? Paul’s experience mirrors my own in that I’ve not been able to calculate a decrease or increase in site traffic thanks to using sites such as Ping-O-Matic. At one point, I removed all of the sites I used to Ping because I was told that if you ping a website too much, it would ban the domain. At the time, I was also told that each time you update a post after it’s been published, a new ping is sent to the ping list. Without knowing it, I could have been sending way too many pings than what was needed but after I removed the ping list, I didn’t notice any decline in traffic.
There was a time when pinging specific websites after new content had been published would allow […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
Alex King who’s been a fantastic member of the WordPress community since the creation of the project has published what I consider a fascinating post on his blog regarding his open-source motivations. The post contains his answers to questions provided by David Hobson who is currently performing research into the business/financial models as well as the motivations for open-source projects.
There are a number of things that come up during the article that are worthy of discussion.
I used to get about $100-200/month in the way of donations through my website. Unfortunately due to changes in the way plugins are presented on WordPress.org that has dried up to about $5/month.
While that quote may look like Alex King is looking to rake in some money via donations, the truth is, the Plugin pages have been redesigned and the donation link is now housed within the FYI box with a tiny blue […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Over the course of time, I imagine that most of the needs and wants of end users change. For example, after performing a fresh install of WordPress, you realize that you need a way to conduct polls, have the poll data reflected in the post, etc. Then, a year later, you find out that polls are no longer a necessary item to have on the site so you decide to remove the plugin. However, you notice that after you deactivate the plugin, the data disappears along with it. This is precisely what happens with the WP-Polls plugin. Once the plugin has been deactivated (not removed) instead of the polling data shown within the post, it’s replaced with the poll ID shortcode which is used to display the poll.
This one example has me wondering how many users out there are experiencing something similar with a WordPress plugin? In the example […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
According to Matt Mullenweg who made a visit to the Forbes offices recently, it’s all about the author. That’s the phrase that was heard repeatedly as he conversed with the Forbes team. Lewis then talks about why they chose to go with WordPress when revamping the True/Slant website:
True/Slant was also about the author — just as Forbes has been for 93 years. At T/S, easy-to-use WordPress tools enabled our contributors to do what they loved to do: create content. They freely self-published 100 to 125 posts a day, sometimes more.
When you stop to take a look at the development of WordPress over the past few years, it’s hard to argue that most of the improvements have NOT been centered around the author. Just a few author specific features that have occurred recently are: Post Revisions, continually improving media management system, Quickpress, word count, quick edit, reply to comments from the […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
