It’s been a while science the last update of WordPress, and we already discussed here few of the new features of WordPress version 2.8. There have been some additional updates for the security reasons, the last one being WordPress 2.8.4, which brought some more improvements. So lets take a deeper look into what your new WordPress can do and how you can use the main improvements for your advantage. Using them properly you’ll safe a lot of time for creating unique content and promotion.
Theme Manager
For the majority of the bloggers who use WordPress this feature is the most useful and longed-for. It is now very easy to edit, preview and delete WP themes from within your administrator dashboard. You can easily browse, install and maintain WordPress themes using your new theme manager.
Edit post section
Another awesome feature every WordPress blogger has been longing for. Now you do not have to go to the page to see the post comments, all the comments belonging to a specific post can easily be reached in your dashboard. This improvement gives you an opportunity to overview the post and delete, edit or mark the comments as spam.
Widget Management
Personally I think this is a great if not the best improvement WordPress 2.8 has. You now are able to drag and drop widgets from the widget collection of yours over your sidebars. If you have multiple sidebars you now see them and their contents and settings. Plus you are now able to add multiple instances of the same widget.
Dashboard Improvements
Every new version of WordPress has some improvements for the dashboard. The latest improvements include contextual menus. This means that specific help options are displayed in the upper part of every screen you are in. You’ll also notice the increased speed of the dashboard.
As mentioned above there have been additional releases for the sake of security, thus if you have not still updated it is strongly recommended to do so.
Well, what are the new WordPress features you especially like and longed for?
Posts Tagged ‘widget’
Master New Features of Your WordPress
August 18th, 2009Posted in WordPress News | No Comments »
Ultimate List of Tools for Your WordPress Part 2
July 29th, 2009Well, this is obviously the sequel of my previous post Ultimate List of Tools for Your WordPress Part 1, where I gave you the selection of the most useful WordPress plugins for your posts, RSS feeds, video and comments maintaining. So, without further ado, here is the second part:
Statistics
* Backlinks inbound links counter
This plugin allows you to track all incoming links using MSN.
* Bsuite
This great plugin tracks your page loads, top performing posts, search terms that were used on incoming links and gives the list of related posts at the end of each entry.
* CountPosts
Allows you to see how many times each of your posts gets visited without counting visits from the admin.
* FeedBurner StandardStats
This plugin allows you to easily install the FeedBurner script to let you monitor your RSS feed statistics.
* FeedStats http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedstats-de/
Displays your feeds stats and measures the length of stay on your site at your dashboard.
* Live
Lets you see new comments, grabbed feeds and posts visited in real time.
* Open Web Analytics
This plugin allows you to track visits and unique visitors, page views and clicks, referring websites and even shows your visitor geography on Google Earth.
* Search Phrases
Very simple plugin that displays search terms that brought your visitors to the blog of yours.
* Ultimate Google Analytics
Allows you to easily add the Google Analytics script plus counts downloads and outbound links.
* WP-Stats
Gives you general stats - number of posts, comments etc.
* Alexa Rank
Well, displays your Alexa rank at your web page.
* Google PageRank
Displays your Google Page Rank at your web page.
* Impress
Lets you boast about the number of your users and posts, pages and comments, categories and many more on your weblog.
Social Bookmarking
* Digg Button
Gives you the opportunity to add Digg button anywhere within a post using a simple code snippet.
* JPF Add to Reddit
Allows your readers to easily and fast submit your posts to Reddit.
* Share This
Lets you add multiple social bookmarking links and email-this feature in one single button.
* Sociable
Adds links to 61 social bookmarking sites.
* Socializer Plugin
Gives you the ability to add your posts to almost 40 social bookmarking sites.
* WP-Notable
Allows you to add the links with icons of multiple social bookmarking sites to each blog entry.
* wphotspots
Allows you to track the activity of your posts on a number of social bookmarking sites.
* Ma.gnolia Widget
This widget lets you display links from your Ma.gnolia account.
Navigation
* WP-PageNavi
Gives you an opportunity to add a more advanced paging navigation at your blog.
* Wordpress Navigation List
Great plugin with drag ‘n drop interface that gives you the ability to easily create a completely unique site navigation.
* Multi-level Navigation
Allows you to add a horizontal dropdown, vertical flyout or horizontal slider menu to your WordPress blog.
* Simple Sidebar Navigation
This is a very simple plugin that lets you add a widget to create custom navigation in any sidebar without writing any PHP code.
This is by far not the full list of useful plugins. WordPress is that much popular exactly due to the many features created every day, thus there are thousands of really helpful plugins. Feel free to share them in the comments below.
Posted in Blogging Basics, WordPress Plugins | 7 Comments »
Ultimate List of Tools for Your WordPress Part 1
July 23rd, 2009
WordPress is the hugely popular blogging platform, no wonder there is such immense number of tools developed for WordPress powered blogs. To simplify your life I’ve made a selection of the most useful plugins and extensions to give you the ultimate list of WordPress tools.
Much has been said about such essential plugins as Akismet and All in One SEO Pack, thus I won’t touch upon them here. And don’t expect to see here tools for SEO, security, audio and image sharing as I already covered these subjects at this blog.
Tools for Posts:
* Auto Link
Automatically links keywords within your blog posts to any location you specify
* Category Posts Widget
You can specify how many posts you want to be shown within the specified category
* Code Markup
This plugin allows you to put snippets of code (HTML included) into the posts without affecting your page.
* Easy Post-To-Post Links
Use a shortcut to link to another posts on your blog.
* WP-PostRatings
Let your visitors vote for your posts. Plugin also allows to display the most or least ranked posts on your sidebar.
* WP-Footnotes
This plugin allows, well… to put footnotes at your posts.
* Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Gives a list of old posts on your blog related to the current one
* WP-PostViews
Displays the number of times a post has been viewed.
RSS Feed Tools:
* Feed Control
Among many features this plugin gives you are the ability to exclude posts from your feed and add pages.
* Feed Footer
Adds copyright and ads to your RSS posts.
* DeCat
Gives you an opportunity to select categories that won’t be included in your feeds.
* Feed Styler
Style your feed as you want it to be.
* FeedStats
Gives you every statistics on your feeds
* Subscribe-Remind
This nice plugin allows you to remind your readers to subscribe to your feed at the end of each post.
Video Tools:
* Easy Inline SWF
Allows you to easily insert Flash files in .swf format into your blog entries.
* Extreme Video
Allows you to play any .flv file on your blog. Supports YouTube, Quicktime, Google Video and more.
* YouTube Brackets
With this plugin you do not need to copy and paste embed code to insert a YouTube video into your post, all you need is to enter an URL
* SeeTheFace
This tool allows you to record video and post it at your blog.
Comments Tools:
* Bannage
With this plugin you can ban any annoying user by name, email, or IP.
* Admin Panel Comment Reply
This plugin will add a “reply to comment” option in the comments section of your WordPress admin area.
* WP-Most Commented Posts
Displays the most commented posts at your blog sidebar
* Live Comment Preview
With this plugin you will allow your users to preview their comments before posting them.
* Edit Comments XT
Your users will be able to edit their comments.
* DoFollow
Removes the “nofollow” attributes from links in comments.
* DoFollow Trackbacks
Removes “nofollow” attributes from the trackbacks.
* Show Top Commentators
List your most devoted commentators with links to their websites.
This was the first part of the list of the most essential WordPress tools. What type of tools would you like to see in the next part?
Posted in Blogging Basics, WordPress Plugins, WordPress tips | 4 Comments »
Top 10 Video Tutorials for WordPress Beginners
July 7th, 2009
When you are new to something you for sure prefer to have an expert who will show you the basics, don’t you? Well, I decided to make a selection of the most useful video tutorials recorded by real experts. Now you can say you’ve been taught by the best WordPress professionals 
Well, what do you want to know first of all? Of course how to install your WordPress, I can recommend these tutorials:
* How to install WordPress from siteground.com
* Installing Wordpress from killersites.com
Now you may be interested in changing your WP theme:
* How to Change/Activate Themes from ithemes.com
* How to change the theme from siteground.com
* How to Modify WordPress Theme from web2whizzing.com
Good tutorials on widgets:
* How widgets work from ithemes.com
* Create your first widget
* How To Make Your Own WordPress Widget from wpinformer.com
How to install and create your own plugins:
* How to install WordPress plugins from siteground.com
* How to make a wordpress plugin from weblogtoolsvideos.com
Well, this was my top 10 WordPress video tutorials. Would you like to see more of them?
Posted in Blogging Basics, WordPress Tutorials | 3 Comments »