This one’s self-explanatory, but a lot has changed so I thought I’d poll one up to see what people think. It seems there are a lot more sites these days without the www. in their canonical URLs, but a lot of big sites continue to include the “www” subdomain (think Google home page). Which one is best? Let’s find out..

Attaching any unattached media files that you may have floating around is a good way to keep things organized and running smooth. Normally, when you’re working on a post in the Edit Post screen, you click the Upload/Insert button and use the nifty drag-n-drop media uploader to get ‘er done. When you upload your media files in this manner, WordPress “knows” that you want to attach the file to that particular post. Super straightforward sure, but there are situations where WordPress doesn’t know which post to use. In this DigWP post, we walk through the process of finding unattached media files and attaching them to their respective posts.

An easy way for visitors to enter their emails is by commenting on a post. We did this recently for people to sign up for a notification email. Instead of using a plugin or custom function for a one-time email list, we just went with WordPress core functionality and used post comments for people to sign up. Then the trick is retrieving the comment information from the database for the sign-up post.

Good news! The new version-3.3 printed books are now available. The new books are better than ever, updated for WordPress 3.3 with new content, refreshed graphics, and new features galore. Each book is printed in full-color, with new extra-thick covers and slick spiral binding for laying it flat while reading. These features make the print edition feel really solid and durable, like you know you’re reading a well-crafted, quality book. Here’s a recent photo of the printed version showing how the chapters are color-coded and easy to recognize:

New version of Digging into WordPress now available! The DiW v3.3 update covers WordPress 3.3 & 3.2, with fresh new sections and updated content throughout the book. Similar to the latest versions of WordPress, DiW 3.3 refreshes the look and feel of the book, with updated graphics and screenshots, streamlined content, and new bonus versions of the PDF. As the 9th Edition of the book, Digging into WordPress 3.3 is more fluid, focused and current than ever. This is a free update to everyone who owns either version of the book.

Digging into WordPress v3.3 is now available, and more printed books are on the way. It can take some time for the books to be printed and delivered, so we’re setting up a notification list for people who want to know when the new books are back in stock.

To make room for new content for the DigWP 3.3 update, we’re “excerpting” this section into its own blog post. Here you’ll find an extensive round-up of CMS plugins for WordPress. This includes CMS plugins for better admin functionality, user-role management, custom content display, e-commerce and shopping carts, forums, newsletters, and a whole lot more. This isn’t a comprehensive list, so be sure to let us know of any awesome CMS plugins that we might have missed.

See those crazy characters in the title of this post? Now see how they don’t appear in the post’s URL? That’s one of the finer details of the WordPress 3.3 update: smarter permalink slugs.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act will make things worse online by imposing unnecessary regulation over the Web. To protest these two horrible bills, major websites (including Google and Wikipedia) will “blackout” their content on Wednesday, January 18, 2012. We’re joining in too, and will be shutting down DigWP.com on that day. You too can get involved and let your voice be heard! To make things easy, here is a list of stop-SOPA/PIPA plugins to help blackout your WordPress-powered site.

When the Admin Bar hit the streets in WordPress 3.1, people seemed to either love it or hate it. And rightly so, it was a significant change in the appearance of the WP Admin area, and if not disabled in your User Profile, the front-end of your site as well. Many tips, tricks and plugins for customizing the Admin Bar began appearing around the Web. And then just as the dust began to settle, BAM — the “Admin Bar” transforms into the “Toolbar” with the WP 3.3 update.

We’ve had several polls going in the DigWP.com sidebar for quite some time now, and it’s been interesting watching the trends change over time. The first and longest ongoing poll is HTML or XHTML for Markup?, which now has over 7,000 votes. This quick post summarizes some of the poll data we’ve received so far, and also covers some news about the book and website.

A cool trick you can do with WordPress is display information directly from your theme’s style.css stylesheet. I recently used this on a site where the theme’s version number is used throughout the template to keep things current and consistent.