WordPress Web 2.0 Spot-Er

WordPress 2.5 have been officially released a few days ago and this is the first time I provide my personal take on it and sharing things You Must Know before doing the upgrade!

I have to admit - the core blog functionality is great. It takes some time to get used to new interface and has One Big Issue with Media Upload (which I’ll explain how to fix in this article) but overall I can actually see that it is faster, better and performs like a champ! And if you don’t use ANY plugin or have verified that ALL plugins you use are compatible - go ahead and upgrade. Otherwise read this article…

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50 Minutes ago developers have released a WordPress RC2 but be aware - it has a problem!

Obviously I have downloaded and installed it to see if some of the previously noticed problems have been addressed only to learn that after upgrade my blog is dead! Luckily I was presented with an error which pointed directly to wp-includes/taxonomy.php file line 165.

In order to get my blog working I had to get that file from RC1 even though this file have been upgraded for RC2. I guess we can only hope that developers will address the issue and update the package. And make sure to watch the screencast by Matt on new Gallery feature that comes with 2.5!

Load time of the WordPress blog is one thing that many bloggers strive to achieve in order to sustain the mass number of visits. And while we do have some control over some of the factors that can greatly help you speed up your blog - you will need to make decisions you might not like …

In this post I’m not going to cover detailed info on caching etc. There are plenty of other posts that explain how to create a minimalistic WordPress blog that loads super fast. I’m here to share how to run a Web 2.0 enabled WordPress blog and still have it load reasonably fast!

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As of few hours ago WordPress Development team has announced the release of WordPress 2.5 RC1. Meaning that even they don’t consider this release 100% ready for production and want to test the waters with as wide audience as possible.

You should take same precautions because in my test - WordPress 2.5 RC1 is not ready to take the space on my production blogs. I have discovered that couple of the plugins that my blog heavily relies on are not compatible with new version.

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In this part of my WordPress Guide I want to build on interest generated by previous posts and provide a solution to what many of my readers consider to be one of the biggest hustles in WordPress - Image Management.

While it might not be as complete answer as I would like it to be but short of doing a core re-write this is best I could possibly find. In this post I will talk about how to enhance your WordPress Image Management system to make it more user friendly and hopefully make you more productive…

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With upcoming release of WordPress 2.5 which introduces some large changes to administrative backend I thought it was appropriate to share my personal WordPress Wish List.

I know it will be largely ignored but hey - let the guy share the dream…

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I had every intention of making this post part of my WordPress Guide series and even begun getting the information together. I always look at security of every “internet facing” application or service as integral part of the design and not something to be addressed later and was going to cover some basics here.

But basics have been covered in multiple posts by multiple bloggers and to make this post stand out - I would have to make it better. Now, that is quite a bit of work unless there is a better solution!

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In last and final part of Customizing WordPress Theme Guide I want to provide details on how to take advantage of your Sidebar even more, while using less of valuable real estate.

Taking advantage of Javascript Domtab technology we will create a tabbed sidebar section exposing your best and most popular content much like Darren at Problogger does but I will make it simple enough that even a brain dead can follow and implement.

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Brians Threaded Comments Plugin is perhaps the most popular among the WordPress blog users due to functionality it provides and a huge enhancement to standard comments system that comes with WordPress. Problem is - the plugin is Not Well Supported and has quite a few bugs.

In fact if you simply decide to use what is provided you will run into quite a few issues and since the plugin is hard to customize if you are not a programmer it might be more problems then one can handle. Well fear not - I have spent a few hours of researching, fixing and testing and want to present you with resulting file. Now you too can have Brians Threaded Comments on your blog, minus all the issues…

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