It sucks, but a lot of plugins require certain directories to be set at CHMOD 777 for its file permissions. Of course, you should not use any plugin that requires 777 directories, but if you absolutely must, you can help protect the folder by adding a thin slice of htaccess. This works great for any directory requiring “loose-ish” permissions (i.e., anything greater than 755), and may also be useful for other key folders as well.

Just a quick reminder to anyone out there that may not know.. Enabling the Visual Editor in your User Profile settings gets you access to both Visual and HTML editors in the Write/Edit Post screen. Just click on either tab above the toolbar to toggle between modes. So you can write your posts in HTML and then jump into the Visual Editor to take advantage of the new Linking tool, which makes adding links incredibly easy. Read on to learn more about linking with the WordPress Visual Editor..

New Poll! We’ve got several polls running in the sidebar at DigWP.com, and the latest asks which caching plugin is best. Sure it’s all anecdotal and subjective, but user feedback is a fun way to see trends and get an idea of the top plugins.

We’ve got a fresh batch of Digging into WordPress 3.1 now available in printed format. 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.

At the heart of the WordPress theme template is the venerable WordPress loop. When you’re looking at your index.php file, for example, the loop is the part that typically begins with if(have_posts()) and contains all the tags and markup used to generate the page. The default loop works perfectly well for most single-loop themes, but for more advanced designs with stuff like multiple and custom loops, more looping power is needed. Fortunately, WordPress provides plenty of flexibility with four or five ways to loop:

One of my other sites, CSS-Tricks, has been around a number of years now. There are nearly 1,400 unique pages of content almost all of which have a comment thread. I had a feeling that in the last four years, despite fairly steady growth in traffic and subscribers, that the number of comments per post has dropped. But how to prove it? I don’t know of a way to easily see that data.

According to our latest poll, so far the votes are pretty much split on whether people love, hate, or don’t care about WordPress’ new Admin Bar. Over time, it looks like “Hate it” has started to pull ahead, but it doesn’t matter because the Admin Bar Toolbar is here to stay, regardless of opinion. Already there are many awesome ways to make it do virtually whatever you want. So that’s the deal, and in this DigWP post, we round up a ton of tips, tricks, and plugins for ultimately mastering the WordPress Admin Bar.

During the recent book update, we needed to make some room for the new WordPress-3.1 content. The book is already over 400 pages and growing. So we have to make some hard decisions about which content is useful but maybe not needed in the book.

And, as useful as long lists of anti-spam plugins might be, moving them from the book to the blog seems like a good way to free up some room while keeping the information available. So without further ado, here is a quick list of 15 anti-spam plugins to help you run a more user-friendly, hassle-free comment system on your WordPress-powered site.

We cooked up a special widescreen edition of the PDF for Digging Into WordPress 3.1. This new edition contains exactly the same content as the original, but instead breaking the spreads into single-page format, the widescreen version retains the same “two-up” layout, so it’s just like you’re reading the actual printed book. The pages are pretty wide, so probably best for readers with larger screens :)