Upgrading Wordpress 2.7+
I cannot believe how simple Wordpress have made upgrading your blogs. With the release of Wordpress 2.7.1, you can upgrade from 2.7 by visiting the tools panel in your admin sidebar, choosing ‘Upgrade’ and then choosing the automatic option. Wordpress then handles everything for you.
It seems strange, before being offered the chance to upgrade to 2.7.1 I had to use the auto-upgrade option to re-install 2.7. You may need to do the same thing, but I highly recommend upgrading as there are 68 fixes that have been implemented.
I would highly recommend backing up your database and any custom theme files before performing the upgrades (just in case something goes wrong). I have upgraded two blogs and both worked without any problems whatsoever (besides having to re-install 2.7 first).
If you are a little wary of using the automatic feature, then you can still download the package and install it manually from here.
WordPress.TV
As part of this blog, I offer reviews of WordPress plugins and try my best to provide helpful guides that allow you to get the most out of your WordPress blog.
The guys over at WordPress have just stepped up their game, with the launch of WordPress.TV. The videos on the homepage of this new service are currently limited to very short, simple tutorials such as changing the post author (attribution) and publishing posts at a later date. But if you drill-down through the website you will find a great deal of helpful videos. Click the link below to be taken there directly.
The WordPress TV How-To- Section.
What Should be Learnt
I am increasingly becoming aware that to generate extra traffic and increase my blogs exposure, I need to be using my own videos. Following on from my Constructive Criticism post, one of the improvements to this blog is going to be a video section. Once I finalise the camera and where they are to be filmed, I will begin posting a weekly video to this blog.
I also followed suit and purchased DarrenSingleton.TV on the recommendation of Gary Vaynerchuk, I already own the .COM (obviously) and will use the new domain to promote the videos on this blog.
Have you utilized online video on your blog? Let me know! It would be great to find out what my readers are doing. If you liked this post, make sure you sign up to my RSS feed, you can also follow me on Twitter.
WordPress Permalink Structures
One of the key components of WordPress is the permalink structure. This defines how the URL to each of your posts will look in the browser window. By default, WordPress adds something akin to ‘?id=12’ to the end of your main blog URL to indicate that you wish to show the post with the ID of #12. This doesn’t look pretty and doesn’t aid your search engine optimisation (SEO) at all.
Within your WordPress settings in your administration panel, you are able to modify the permalink structure to better suit them to your blog. A series of options are given to you that contain pre-built structures for you to use. Personally, I ignore each and every one of these and opt to create my own custom structure.
The custom structure I use most often can be seen in the image above.
/%postname%
By using this permalink structure, you add the title of your post directly to the URL. Any spaces in the posts title are replaced with hyphens and you are aiding your SEO efforts by adding these keywords to your URL. Other bloggers use this exact same structure (Tyler Cruz, John Chow and Daniel Harrison) though they all append an extra forward-slash to the end to make it read
/%postname%/
I personally don’t feel that it makes a difference adding this forward-slash in there or not, but if you were to visit a URL on this blog with that structure the slash is automatically removed from the address.
Other items that can be added to your structure to consider have been listed below. Other than adding your category before your post title, I cannot see any of these adding any extra benefit to either your users or your standings in the search engines.
%year%
%monthnum%
%day%
%hour%
%minute%
%second%
%postname%
%post_id%
%category%
%author%
If you have any preferences over your permalink structure, let me know. I’d be interested in hearing people’s reasoning behind using structures other than those I have already mentioned.
Announcing your Latest Blog Post
You have just finished writing a great new post, you hit ‘Publish’ in WordPress. Now what!? How are you going to attract new people to your blog post? How will the search engines know to index your latest post?
If you have WordPress, you can configure your settings so that clicking that Publish button can also trigger announcements to a number of services to let them know that you have posted an update. This process is known as ‘Pinging’ and can be very beneficial.
Login to your administration panel and navigate to the ‘Writing Options’ (from the sidebar Settings –> Writing). At the bottom of this screen is the ‘Update Services’ section with a textbox. By default this box will contain one line:
This ensures that when you make a new post to your blog, it automatically notifies Ping-o-Matic that you have made an update. Ping-o-Matic is a service that attempts to notify multiple sources of your update and many of these will then visit your blog to discover what update has been made.
As well as Ping-o-Matic, I have added KPing, which notifies 60 different services of your update and automatically checks for new updates several times a day via your RSS or XML feed. Along with KPing, I have also added a series of other services, whom I wish to ensure that I am informing of my updates. My current list of services can be seen below:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.kping.com/ping/
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/
If you wish to use the above list, feel free – there are many similar lists around the net. If there is a service you feel I should be updating and is missing from this list, please let me know – it would be greatly appreciated.
WordPress 2.8 – Have Your Say
The release of WordPress 2.7 received an overwhelming response, with significant changes to the Admin Dashboard and they way plugins are handled. There was also the possibility to customize the administration section with drag-and-drop panels and most importantly, automated upgrades.
Following 2.7, the next big step will be 2.8. What features do you feel should have been included in 2.7? What features do you feel are missing from WordPress in general? You can have your say on the prioritization of features being integrated into WordPress 2.8 and beyond via the survey here.
For me, the main features to work on would be the speed of the administration section along with the ability to perform a database backup rather than having to use a plugin. I believe the database backup should have been integrated a long time ago and would be a welcome addition for most WordPress users.
