DigWP 3.4 Book Winners!
Congratulations to ThatGuyKC for winning an all-expense paid print-edition of Digging into WordPress version 3.4! And to show our appreciation to all who left a comment on the announcement post, we’re also giving away a free copy of the PDF/eBook to three lucky winners: Peter Shackelford, Shea, and Amy Eileen Koester. Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated!
Adoption Program for Abandoned Plugins
One of the the most convenient things about WordPress is the abundant 21,834+ free plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository, but how many times do you run into the scary warning at the top of the page, “This plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress”. If that doesn’t discourage you enough not to download the plugin, maybe putting scary zombies all over the page will do the trick.
Customizing WordPress Feeds
WordPress feeds enable your visitors to subscribe to your content for use in their favorite feed-reader. For example, subscribing to the main-posts feed and/or the comments feed is a great way for your readers to stay current with all the latest news and content from your website.
With WordPress, you can deliver a wide variety of “Full-text” or “Summary” (partial) feeds in numerous formats, including Atom, RDF, and RSS2. This variety extends the reach of your content by enabling your feeds to be read in more apps, readers, and devices.
Simple Feed Stats
New plugin! Simple Feed Stats (SFS) makes it easy to track your WordPress feeds, add custom content, display your feed stats, and much more. Provides a wealth of tools and options to customize and manage your feed statistics.
DigWP Version 3.4 Update
Digging Into WordPress version 3.4 is here! The DigWP v3.4 update covers WordPress 3.4 (Green), with new and revised content throughout the book. This is the book’s 10th Edition, making version 3.4 more fluid, focused and current than ever. It’s also a free update to everyone who owns either print or digital versions of the book. Read on for a sneak peek and summary of the book’s features..
All-AJAX Theme Update
Just a heads up! Chris’ awesome All AJAX theme is now updated to version 2.0, featuring a whole slew of great improvements, tweaks, and bug fixes..
Notification List for New Books
Just a quick note: we’re currently updating the book to version 3.4, and will be ordering a fresh batch of printed books soon. In the meantime, we’re setting up a notification list for people who want to know when the new books are back in stock.
How to Setup Secure Media Uploads
As discussed, it’s important to protect your site by setting proper file permissions on the server. This can be tricky for certain directories such as /uploads/, /upgrade/, and /backups/, which need to be writable by the server in order for things like uploads, upgrades, and backups to work.
.htaccess made easy
New book about .htaccess! Covers all the basics then goes into configuration, optimization, redirects, SEO, usability, security, and just about everything else. Includes a chapter on .htaccess techniques for WordPress to make it all good.
WP Plugin: Posts in Sidebar
Awesome new plugin for displaying your posts in sidebars! Organize and display posts by category, author, tags and more. Includes many options for stuff like featured images, excerpt-length, and post-tags to help dial it in just right.
WordPress Deployment Survey
To better understand how the WordPress community currently deploy their sites, the fine folks at 88MPH have devised a short survey to gather some data about who is using WordPress and how they are deploying it. Please take a few moments to participate and share your experience! Editor’s note: 404 link removed 2023/04/06.
Add Shortcut Links to the WordPress Toolbar
WordPress makes it easy to add custom stuff to the Toolbar. This is a great way to personalize the look and feel of the WP Admin with custom menus, links, or whatever makes sense. To further streamline workflow, you can create keyboard-shortcuts to open your Toolbar links with a single keystroke.
WordPress Themes in Top 1 Million Websites
Some interesting data on how themes are used in the top million WordPress sites. For example, 51% of the leading WordPress sites are running premium or commercial themes. Must-read for theme designers!
Top 100 WordPress-Related Sites
Awesome list of 100 WordPress-related sites for 2012. It’s an honor to be included!
Editor’s note: 404 link removed.
