It’s beautiful, fast and flexible! The best thing is – version 2.7 allows you to upgrade your WordPress blog with the one-click-upgrade feature, like what you have been doing while upgrading plugins in the previous version.

I’m going to upgrade all my blogs to WordPress 2.7 now.

Download the latest WordPress version here.

This is a very simple plugin for all WordPress blogs! Unlike the traditional Javascript snowflake , all you need to do is:

1. Download the Let It Snow plugin.
2. Upload the let-it-snow folder and its contents to your blog’s plugin folder (wp-content/plugins).
3. Activate this plugin and you’re done!

If you encounter any problems, click here for support.

If you are using Blogger (blogspot) classic template, perhaps you would like to read this for adding Javascript snowflake to your blog.

Let your blog snows, spread the Christmas feel and have a great holiday season. ^^

Although I have Akismet installed, I still can get a lot of spam comments which will be filed under “Akismet Spam” for further manual moderation. Although you can mark the comment as spam to let Akismet learns to identify more spams, it is still quite tiring if you have to moderate all spam comments that looks like this:

Won’t it be just annoying to receive whole lots of such comments in your Akismet spam section? Furthermore, to enable Akismet plugin, you need an API key which can be obtained from creating a free account in WordPress.com. That’s something extra you have to do if you want to use Akismet.

Now, it’s time to also install the WP-SpamFree plugin for your WordPress blog. I’ve been using this plugin for some time and it has captured lots of spam comments and deleted them automatically.

What is WP-SpamFree?

An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

Can I use Akismet with WP-SpamFree?

Yes, you can. I have both of these plugins installed, although not necessary. Actually WP-SpamFree can do all the cleaning job. Sometimes one or two comments will be left out and it will be caught by Akismet.

Say no to spam and get WP-SpamFree for your WordPress blog today! Just install the WP-SpamFree plugin, sit back and relax to watch it do all its magical work.

You may also want to read additional information on:

• Uploading plugins to host via FireFTP
• Adding contact form to your blog

Most hosting plans include a bundle of pre-install scripts in your control panel (eg. CPanel, DirectAdmin). There are several script library like Fantastico, Installatron, etc. (depends on your host provider). To make life easier, you can always install your WordPress blog via the script installer. Learn how to install WordPress using Fantastico. It’s more or less the same for other script installer.

Now you have WordPress installed, and you probably don’t want to stick to the default K2 theme, which looks so plain and not attractive. Although content is the king, first impression is also very important. What to do next? Search for your desire WordPress theme! There are plenty of free themes available. But please beware of free themes provided by less trustful source. (hacker can encrypt codes in the theme and easily access your blog.)

After you find your favorite WordPress theme (mostly come in compressed format like .zip or .rar), extract it and you will have to upload it to your host. How to do that, you wonder. It’s very easy. You can either upload the whole theme folder via your control panel but that will be kinda slow, so I highly recommend you to upload your theme (any files) via FireFTP (Yes, you need Firefox to do that).

Next, you have to navigate to the correct directory to upload your WordPress theme. First you have to look for your WordPress folder, the folder that have all your WordPress files. Normally it will be in WWW or public_html folder.

Take this as an example: www.yourdomain.com/blog

The /blog is your WordPress folder. The folder name defers, as you are the one who determine the name earlier during WordPress installation stage.

To upload your WordPress theme (the whole theme folder that you have downloaded and extracted), navigate to the following directory (in FireFTP or your control panel):

Your wordpress folder (eg: blog)/wp-content/themes

After uploading your theme, you will be able to see your uploaded theme in the “Design” tab in your WordPress admin panel. Just click on the theme you want, and you have successfully change your blog theme!

To add your sidebar, just click on the “Widgets” and have fun adding (available only for widget-ready themes).

Tip: You can use the same method to upload plugins to your host (WordPress folder).

If you have any questions regarding this topic, do not hasitate to ask in the comment section.

Check out the following short clip for a preview of WordPress 2.6.

Are you a WordPress user? Will you update to WordPress 2.6? Find out more about WordPress 2.6 here.

New to WordPress? Find out how to upgrade your own WordPress blog.

Download WordPress 2.6 now.

I’ll be upgrading this blog shortly after.

Although there are several popular CMS other than WordPress, such as Joomla, Drupal, Movable Type, etc.. WordPress seems to be the most widely used platform in the blogosphere.

That derives a new problem. People tend to get jeolous or start to cultivate mischievious ideas when you are getting popular. Wordpress, naturally became the target for hackers. It doesn’t mean that other blogging platforms is far from hackers. WordPress, in this case, has a higher percentage of being targetted by hackers.

Now, a question for you as the title suggested:

How secure in your WordPress blog? (if you are running your blog under Wordrpess)

Quoting what Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, once said:

The best thing you could do to make sure your blog is secure is to stay up to date with the latest stable version of WordPress.

With the released of WordPress 2.5 last month, I have read some comments from my blogger friends that they don’t wish to upgrade to 2.5, not until it is really stable. On the other hand, few days after the release, I started the upgrade for one of my blogs first (this is the blog which I upgraded first). Before upgrading, to make sure everything work fine, I installed 2.5 in my local machine to test out some of the newly implemented features.

It is really improtatnt to keep your WordPress blogs updated with the latest security fix. Keeping a blog is not as easy as it seems, especially when you start your own domain and host your own blog. Although WordPress is free, it has some hidden cost that you won’t notice until some security issue threaten you.

What sort of hidden cost?

1. You have to update your WordPress everytime there’s an update.
2. You have to update your plugins. This is where security leaks most often. [Check plugin compatiblity for 2.5]
3. You may need to update your theme for compatibility. [Check theme compatibility for 2.5]

In conclusion, you have to pay extra attention on the maintenance costs.

These are what you can do to secure your WordPress blogs:

1. Secure your /wp-admin/ directory – Lock down your wp-admin folder so that only certain IP addresses can access that directory
2. Make an empty wp-content/plugins/index.html file – This is to prevent others to access to your plugins folder. Creating a blank index.html is very easy. Just open up a new file in Notepad and save as “index.html” including the double quotes (”"), and upload this blank index.html file to your plugins folder.
3. Keep an eye on WordPress Development blog – I know some of you have some plugins installed to keep away those “useless” widget/announcement appear in the dashboard. But it’s always good to keep an eye on the Wordpress development blog or any updates or simply, subscribe to it.
4. Hide your WordPress version - Most WordPress themes display the current version of Wordpress that you used. This tracking code can be found in the header.php. You want to hide your WordPress version, imagine if your blog is not running the latest version and you are showing the version information, it will then be open to hackers. Just open your theme’s header.php file and look for the following line <meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” /> and remove the <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>

Other than those, you can also install a variety of security plugins. Check out the top 10 security and protection plugins for WordPress. I’m going to check out those plugins myself later.

If you want more extra readings on WordPress security, this is a very good one.
[via Metaphorics Lab, JohnTP]

Why? Because you can easily customize your theme, test out plugins and other features of Wordpress, before you upload the whole thing or implement the plugins that you are going to use, to your host. You can see the result almost instantly, as localhost connection is always faster.

If you ask me how do I customize my blog theme, I will tell you that, I have a local server installed in my computer which is not open to public and I can just preview any changes I made easily without disturbing my current online blog theme.

All you need is a web server application, Apache, MySQL database and PhpMyAdmin application.  There are several open source all-in-one web server application you can choose from. I would suggest you to use WAMP or XAMPP.

For the sake of this tutorial, I would suggest you to use WAMP. To install Wordpress in your computer, you will need the following application and files:

1. WampServer 2. Wordpress release

Lifehacker has written a very good tutorial for this.  Screencasts are included for easier understanding.  Take note that the tutorial was written some time ago, so instead of using WampServer, they were using WAMP5, which is an old version.   For step 2, you can just leave the password blank (since you are the only one who will access this). In step 5, if you leave your password blank in step 2, then for DB_PASSWORD, just leave blank in between the single quotes. Just follow as closely as possible and you will have your Wordpress blog installed in your local computer within the next few minutes.

Remember, you will have to turn on WampServer in order for your http://localhost to work.

By the way, this morning, I have installed the current lastest Wordpress 2.5 release in my localhost and try it out a little.  Here are some screenshots.

The interface is indeed “cleaner”. Here is the login screen.

And this is the Dashboard which claimed to be “cleaner” too.

Now, it’s really more neat and organized in the Dashboard. You can see updates from Wordpress development team under one group.  And you can also find another group of updates on plugins. This is a good place to get you informed about any cool plugins that you can use.

I sort of dislike the “cleaner” white and orange interface.  So what I can do is, click on the “Users” on the right navigation and choose “Your Profile”. From there, I selected “Classic”.

After applying the preference, this is how my Dashboard looks like. That’s more like it.

Something nice about this new release.  Now, there’s a password strength checker.

Built-in Gravatar.   You can see corresponding Gravatar in your comment management section.

This is the reason why I want to install Wordpress in my local computer, so that if there’s any error I can test it before I upload everything to my host. Currently the Popularity Contest plugin is not compatible with Wordpress 2.5.

There are many more things to discover in Wordpress 2.5. I found that the editor interface is really a great improvement, especially the full view mode. I’ll play around with version 2.5 for a little while in my local computer before updating my Wordpress blogs in my host.

A week ago, Wordpress announced that WordPress 2.5 RC1 is available for download. 4 days ago, another released known as the RC2 has been made available. The Wordpress development team is really getting their hands fast on this. Today Wordpress 2.5 is finally released to public, the stable version.

I believe a lot of blogs will be mentioning about this, however, I would still like to inform all my readers about the release of Wordpress 2.5. A list of plugins have been tested for compatibility with Wordpress 2.5. Before updating your Wordpress, please make sure that all the plugins that you are currently using is compatible.

I’ll download version 2.5 and install in my local machine and test it out before uploading the new bunch of codes to my host. Are you ready for Wordpress 2.5?

Also check out how to update Wordpress.

How flexible! This additional piece of codes can benefit both you and your readers.

There are a lot of custom ready made Wordpress plugins available to feed your needs. Here is a list of 16 great plugins which I think is really useful (however some are optional) for enhancing your Wordpress blogs.

[1] Adsense Manager

Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your Wordpress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours. If you monetize your blog with Google Adsense, this is a good plugin that allow you to add your Google Adsense ads using widget.

[2] Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments”. By deafault, this plugin is included in every Wordpress.org blogware. All you need is the WordPress.com API key to activate this feature. Signup an account in Wordpress.com to obtain the API key. Without this plugin, you will receive a lot of spam comments when time pass by.

[3] All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. This make it easier for you to introduce SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your blog.

[4] Anarchy Media Player (AMP)

Plays mp3, flv, mov, mp4, m4v, m4a, m4b, 3gp, avi, asf and wmv hypertext links directly on your webpage. Adds buttons to the post editor for embedding swf movies including Google Video etc. I love this plugin. I found it really useful when you want to insert media content to your blog post. An essential tool for music blogs and video blogs.

[5] CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. You must be grateful to your loyal readers. To show your appreciation, why not give them some link love? When your reader enable CommentLuv when they post a comment in your blog, their latest blog post link will be added at the end of his/her comment too.

[6] Enhanced WP-ContactForm
WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. In the message it sends to you it gives the page the user visited before the contact page, as well as the original outside referer. It can be implemented on a page or a post. It would be easier for your readers to contact you by using this feature if you embed it in your blog. The “Contact” page of this blog is an example.

[7] Flexible Upload
Resize picture at upload and make thumbnail creation configurable (like WP1.5), optionally include a watermark to your uploaded images. This is really a great plugin for those who upload their pictures directly to their host via the Wordpress platform. It is really flexible as you can set the resize pixel of your image, add watermark automatically to your images, multiple uploads at once, and many more.

[8] Highlight Author Comment
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author. This is an optional feature. It helps to differentiate the author’s comments/feedback among the readers’ comments. You can customize how your comment via CSS. Here is an example of using this plugin. Notice the author’s comment is in outstanding pale green background.

[9] KG Archives
This is definitely a great plugin to sort out your archive. It will be really handy when you have a lot of archives made up by old posts. You can configure how your archive page look like.

[10] My Avatars
This plugin allows you to add MyBlogLog.com avatars to Wordpress comments. Yet another optional plugin, but can add some colors to your blog.

[11] Random Redirect
Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion. When you have a lot of old posts, it is likely that your new visitors will miss out those wonderful old posts of yours. This plugin enable you to add in the code and let your readers read any random post from your archives. An example can be found in A.P.P.L.E. Click on the to try it out.

[12] Similar Posts
Displays a list of posts similar to the current one by comparing the way they use words. This can bring your readers further to any related/similar posts.

[13] Sociable

Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. These little color icons make it easy for your readers to bookmark your posts to their bookmarking sites. There is a variety of bookmarking sites icons to add on. It also make your blog more cool.

[14] Subscribe to Comment
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. This is a great feature so that your readers can receive updates on any new added comments to the post that they have subscribed.

[15] WP AJAX Edit Comments
Allows you and your users to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments. We often make mistakes. Sometimes when I leave comment in other blogs, I make some typo mistake, but I am not able to edit my comment. With this plugin, your commentors will be able to correct their mistakes made in your blog.

[16] WP-PageNavi

Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. I love this plugin very much. When you have a lot of old posts, it makes it easier for your visitors or even yourself to navigate around your posts.

These are the basic great plugin that you should consider using in your Wordpress blog. Feel free to try them out yourselves.

If you refer to the roadmap, Wordpress 2.5 was planned to be released on 10th March 2008. However, Matt from the development theme said:

The software is basically done and stable, and could be released today, but we’d like to incorporate feedback from a wider audience before making it available to the general public. After a few days of your feedback we’ll set a final release date.

If you are interested to be a tester of Wordpress 2.5 and have feedbacks, you can join the testers mailing list.

This is the new look of the Dashboard. It’s now wider and show a better quick summary of the entire blog. There are also changes in the navigation. It’s cut down by half and more organized now – easier to carry out tasks (especially for new WP users). The Write editor and Manage is improved in the new release too.

Here is an announcement of Wordpress 2.5 sneak peak.

My Two Cents

I still prefer the old blue look of the Dashboard, instead of having a brighter color like orange. However, according to the sneak peak announcement, users are able to change the dashboard look to the old “classic” blue under the user option. Even better, “It’s also pluggable so people can easily add or share their own color schemes.”

Another feature that I think will be very handy is the number count on top of the Comment navigation. User can now easily know if there’s any new (number of) comments (including spams).

I also can’t wait to try out Wordpress 2.5. Be alert these few days as it’s gonna release to the general public soon.