WordPress

Haaretz: “How do you ‘open’ a blog using WordPress”

haaretz - the markerNice write up (in hebrew) in the top israeli newspaper Haaretz on why WordPress is the best choice for blogging.

They walk you through the basics of what it takes to setup ( self install from WordPress.org ) including MySQL requirements, getting an ftp client, and making the config file changes. Next week they plan to cover plugins. Good stuff ! (Thanks to my buddy Nimmy for letting me know).

We’ve seen lots of great activity in Israel around WordPress, including a very successful WordCamp Israel held a few weeks ago.

Catching up on the last two weeks: Ad Tech, BlogWorld Expo, Quigo & Yedda, WordPress iPhone plugin, Writers strike, and WSJ & Digg

Been traveling and just super busy the last couple of weeks, and started a bunch of posts that are still saved in draft.  So here is a wrap up of what I would have posted, and using a very John Paczkowski-like long headline 🙂

* Ad:Tech New York. Was in town for a few meetings, and a great dinner put together by Mike Hirschland (aka “VC Mike“). It was my first trip back to New York since I moved to San Francisco in July. My overall impression: every industry segment and media outlet is finally aligned to make the online ad world take a huge leap forward. Lots of smart people looking at significant ad dollars moving online and how best to capture them. Measurement will be key.

* I attended BlogWorld Expo in Vegas. I was impressed by the attendance and diversity of companies & speakers. It was also great to meet people in person that I had only emailed or Skype’d with previously (Shoutout to Karen & Dana of ContentRobot and John LoGioco of outbrain). Mark Cuban gave a great closing keynote, and our very own Matt Mullenweg was the opening keynote q&a session and interviewed here by webpronews. Lots of photos of the two day event on flickr.

* Good week to be an Israeli tech company. Quigo, founded by Yaron Galai, was purchased by AOL — congrats to Yaron & team ! Later in the week word spread that Yedda, a Y! Answers like service, also was purchased by AOL.

* On the WordPress front, the winner of the WordPress iPhone plugin challenge was announced. You can download the plugin here.

* The writers strike shows no signs of coming to an end. On how it might all shake out — Marc Andreessen has a superb post titled “Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image“. A definite must-read.

* Great to see wsj.com and Digg working more closely together. Kevin Rose posted details on the Digg blog and TechCrunch has some thoughts too.

WordCamp Israel 2007

WordCamp Israel

One of the great things about WordPress is seeing how it’s being used around the world. From the various language translations to hosted versions the level of engagement and creativity is super impressive.

A great example is what’s happening in Israel. The WordPress community in Israel is now organizing a WordCamp (english blog) on Oct 25th, 2007 in Tel Aviv. I’m sure it’s going to be a great event, and looking forward to seeing when the next one will be held — I’d love to attend 🙂

From their blog:

About WordCamp Israel
WordCamp is coming to Israel on Oct. 25 in Tel Aviv! Lorelle is the keynote speaker, and the lectures and panels will be covering topics like WordPress installation, blogging for business, and more.

WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” now available

WordPressGo grab version 2.3.

What’s new you ask ? From the WordPress.Org development blog:

 

  1. Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.
  2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.
  3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location.
  4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
  5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.

     

    Useful Mac apps: Play WMVs, Google Analytics Widget, and Quinn

    Some helpful ( and fun ) OS X apps that I’ve been using recently:

    – id Software released HD footage of Rage (trailer & developer walk-through), the new internally developed game, at QuakeCon 2007 (Shacknews coverage). It’s in WMV format, so if you are on a Mac and not running some kind of virtualization/windows combo, you should grab the WMV Quicktime component. While I haven’t played PC games in years, this one is looking pretty solid.

    – Using Google Analytics to track your site’s traffic and running OS X ? Dashalytics is a new OS X widget that shows a snapshot from your Google Analytics account in your OS X Dashboard. On the subject of traffic stats, if you are running WordPress, make sure to check out our WordPress.com Stats plugin.

    – Must be something about playing Tetris for hours on end back in the day (aka “Tetris Effect“) that caused me to seek out Tetris clones. A really good one that a few people have emailed me about (and just saw that Jamie wrote about recently) is called Quinn. Really clean interface, and even includes “extensive online highscore database” 🙂 Definitely worth checking out.

    – (UPDATE #1) Forgot to also mention the excellent OS X port of Open Office called NeoOffice. It even handles MS Word tracking changes which is something Google Docs does not currently support. (thanks Matt for the tip)

    This past week, a few firsts: WordCamp, Stinson, Wii, ‘Trapped

    A quick wrap-up of this past week which included a few “firsts”:

    – My first WordCamp this past weekend — quite amazing.  Great to see this very active WordPress community coming together to share ideas and meet up in person.  If you take a look at the WordCamp schedule page, you will see pingbacks to lots of great coverage like Barry’s ‘high performance WordPress” presentation.   In addition, there are a ton of photos of the event on flickr,  and Brian Oberkirch has a nice WordCamp round-up.

    – Stinson beach.  In a word “wow”.  I’ve been up here once before for a quick lunch, but spending a few days here has really solidified this place as gem in my mind.  Even managed to boogieboard/bodyboard for the first time !

    – Wii.  I had played the boxing and golf game briefly while at CES last year.  But @ our off-site this week we’ve had it hooked up to a projector and loaded with sports game, notably tennis.  As a somewhat old school gamer I really loved the change of pace with the Wii.  It’s simple, fun, and way more social than most other console games.

    – Trapped in the Closet.  A must see hip-hopera 🙂  What was great, and a first this week, was watching it followed by “Trapped in a Drive Through“.

    WordPress.com Facebook App

    Joseph Scott just posted on WordPress.com that the new facebook app is ready to go.

    Blogs are one of the ways the Internet has fostered greater communication among people than ever before. Social network sites like Facebook provide a more structured way to keep up with specific people. Wouldn’t it be great if you could mix the two?

    With the new WordPress.com Facebook App you can do exactly that.

    Definitely go check it out.

    Thanks Dow Jones, Hello Automattic !

    Automattic logo

    I wrapped up at Dow Jones Online last week, and today is my first official day at Automattic !

    I just want to say thanks to Dow Jones. It’s been an incredibly rewarding time working at Dow Jones Online, and I’m tremendously proud of all that we accomplished from the various search initiatives, allthingsD.com, to all things multiplatform with mobile, RSS, and widgets.

    Dow Jones is truly an amazing company, and it was great to be in the presence of colleagues who were incredibly hard working and dedicated to their work.

    For those who may not know, Automattic is a remarkable company. The team is smart, passionate, and well respected. How we work is probably a bit different than most companies, and the incredible growth of one of our core offerings — wordpress.com, is impressive 🙂

    wordpress.com traffic

    As a WordPress user from the pre 1.0 days, ( Ver .71 or .72 is when I started following the progress closely ), I’m very exited to be working with Matt, Toni, Barry, and the team.

    In July, I’ll be attending WordCamp 2007, so hope to see many of you there. Feel free to drop me a line if you plan to attend.