ThinkPress WordPress Enlightenment

We gave a presentation on maintaining and securing your WordPress installation at this month’s OC WordPress meetup. These are our notes from our presentation. Continue Reading

It has been said that the majority of readers don’t comment on blog posts because they don’t feel like they have anything specific to add to a conversation.

This plugin allows you to prompt your readers to comment by asking them to answer a question specific to that post. A simple box with text that you define when writing your post is added above the comment form. The box can be styled to match your site by adjusting some predefined options. Continue Reading

WordPress 2.8.6 was released today. It includes some security fixes for vulnerabilities found by WordPress users.

As always you can get the newest version of WordPress from the WordPress.org download page. We recommend always upgrading WordPress to the latest stable version available. If you don’t have the time or don’t know how, you can always hire us to make the upgrade for you. Just fill out the form on our “need help?” page and we’ll be in touch.

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges.  If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.

The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch.  The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these.

Sency is a real-time search engine. While the service is still in its infancy, I think it has the potential to become a big player in the search industry. My initial reactions to the service were of the “so what” nature, but after talking through the goal of the service with the founder, Evan Britton, I’ve changed my tune a little bit. This service differs from Google in that it’s not really a web search engine. It’s more of a conversation search engine. The interface mimics a “dressed up Google”, but the functionality couldn’t be more different.

Sency searches the web (predominately Twitter at this point) for conversations related to your keyword search. Not only does it filter out a lot of the junk that comes through Twitter, it actually separates the most popular links for that search term throughout the day so you can see what’s most popular at any given time.

Pretty cool, eh?

Well, we think it’s going to catch on, so we built a plugin that lets you put Sency search results in your WordPress sidebar.

Download Sency (137.86 kB) Update: This plugin is now hosted at the WordPress.org Plugin Directory

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to attend Blogworld Expo as well as WordCamp Las Vegas. Blogworld was pretty huge, but WordCamp Las Vegas was a much smaller conference within the main conference. I had the chance to talk with some really great WordPress users and developers. I really got a good sense of what’s going on in the WordPress world. Unfortunately, Automattic decided to call a last minute pow-wow in Ottowa (if I remember correctly), so there was no official representation from the main developer of WordPress. I valued the opportunity to meet both Matt and Beau at previous WordCamps, so it was a little disappointing not having an Automattician there.

8 Meaningful Takeaways

1. Accessibility counts for something. Glenda Watson Hyatt laid out some ground rules for making your website POUR (Perceivable Operable Understandable Robust). I’m not going to give it all away, but you can download the ebook from her site: http://blogaccessibility.com/
2. John P says that using URL shortening services like bit.ly, su.pr and TinyUrl is a detriment to your search engine reach. Instead of putting links to your website out in the wild to build some authority, you send out these other services’ links and boost up their popularity in the search engines. Pretty Link Pro by Blair Williams will likely replace two or three of your existing WordPress plugins and solve this exact problem for you. It will allow you to create short links for twitter and other sharing right on your own domain. This will help you keep all the Google juice that you deserve. I could probably have gotten Blair to give me a copy of the plugin after palling around all weekend, but as soon as I got home, I turned on my computer and bought the sucker. Check out the feature video for details: http://think-press.com/prettylink/
3. Go meet people in person at conferences. It’s nice to have a billion friends/followers online, but I bet having just five of those billion friends be actual real-life friends is more motivating, profitable and fun. Just make sure there’s no overlap, otherwise you’ll never have anything to talk about…hehe. Oh, and one more thing. Go to conferences alone. It will force you to interact with people that you wouldn’t otherwise approach.
4. Go where the people are. Chris Pirillo is an Internet giant, yet he comes to where the people hang out online instead of forcing them to come to him. This means that getting your content syndicated in as many places as possible is super important.
5. Care. Don’t care so much about the money you’re hoping to make, just care about why you’re doing it. If you put your heart into it, the money will come.
6. It’s not good enough to just install the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. You have to use it. When you’re posting to your website, scroll all the way down and fill in the meta box. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with your results.
7. Never say no to a free show ticket. That’s kind of obvious, I know.
8. Take your laptop with you.

If you want the short version, stop reading here. Otherwise, block out a good twenty minutes and read the rest of my ramblings about the weekend.

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