Posts Tagged ‘Blogs’

New in WordPress 2.7 trunk: QuickPress

Just uploaded the recent WordPress trunk version (nightly build) to test it out.

The first thing I discovered is a new feature labeled "QuickPress". It's basically a form which allows you to post (title, body text and tags) directly to your blog from your dashboard.

Click image for larger version:

View photo page on Flickr

I'm not too sure what to think about this. I think I preferred the old dashboard with recent comments, incoming links and so on.

WordPress 2.6 Beta 2

No reason to add further words here, head over to Ryan Boren's post.

WordPress 2.6 beta and features

Check Ryan Boren's post for a list of WordPress 2.6 features and a link to the 2.6 beta.

Good stuff :-)

Lesson of the day: Open source software rocks

As those of you following me on Twitter (I'm larskjensen) may know, we recently launched our WordPress powered blog community.

For those of you who don't know what WordPress is (although you should! :-)) it's the state of the art blogging software - and it's open source and free of cost. For our blog community we use the multi user version of WordPress, the aptly named WordPress MU.

Well, we've had some problems with some of the themes of an older date. The CSS in them acts quite weird - most often in Internet Explorer 7…

Anyhow, I have an email correspondance with one of our bloggers and I tell him that either I'll try to find an update for the theme or otherwise we'll have to phase out the theme. But before I can do anything he has written me another mail telling me that there is an updated version of the theme and he also gives me the link.

So I translate the theme (by adding the _e and __ WordPress translation functions to .php files of the theme) and update my already existing language file with the new theme, upload it and email our most friendly user to tell him that the new theme is now online for him to test.

All this just to point out one thing: Open. Source. Software. Rules. :-)

PS: This blog is running on the single blog version of WordPress - of course.

An early look at the new widget management in WordPress 2.5

Since WordPress 2.4 has been canceled the developers now have a lot more time on their hands to redesign the admin section in the next release, which will be WordPress 2.5.

In the latest build of WordPress you can get a look at the new widget management in WordPress 2.5, view large version.

Instead of the current widget system, where you drag the widgets from a "pool" to your sidebar, you know add the widgets using the list of gray boxes in the left hand side of the page. The widget then appears under "current widgets" where you can use drag and drop to change the order of the widgets.

This means that you, apparently, can add as many copies of a certain type of widget as you please. I'm not sure how this works on themes with multiple sidebars, however…

WordPress 2.5 is currently set for release on March 24th.

WordPress DK now finally at da.wordpress.org

René, the lead translator of WordPress DK, has an exiting post at wordpress.dk.

The Danish WordPress project has now been given a subsite at the official WordPress.org: da.wordpress.org.

I still think that most Danish users will end up on wordpress.dk (because of Google Rank and the forum which stays there) but none the less it's great with an official site. This means a lot to the WordPress DK project and shows that it's not just some guys who are translating for fun (and might stop doing it some day) but that WordPress DK is a serious project, that the Danish users can count on.

The official subsite also features a blog, meaning that there are two WordPress DK blogs. As I've written in a comment at WordPress DK I suggest the following:

The da.wordpress.org blog is about new releases with more in depth posts on what's new, known issues and such
The wordpress.dk blog (where I contribute) will be for everything else: tips, hints, suggestions etc. The wordpress.dk blog will also feature shorter posts on new versions with links to the more thorough da.wordpress.org post.

This will, the way I see it, make it easier for both posters/contributors and end users to get a good overview on where to find what.

Anyways, congrats to René!

WordPress 2.4 is cancelled, is now 2.5

The lead translater of the Danish version of open source blogging software WordPress, René, writes on the official WordPress DK blog, that WordPress 2.4 has been cancelled.

The reason is that there are too many corrections to be made, and therefore WP 2.4 could not be ready until March. The next WordPress release will be 2.5, which is set to be out on March 24th.

A Google blog search shows that WPAssist also has a post on this.

WordPress 2.3.2 is out

In case you haven't noticed: WordPress 2.3.2 is out.

So far, no new features (except that you can specify your own error page to display, when you're having database problems), but some security and bug fixes instead. Read more at the above link.

You can download WordPress at wordpress.org/download.

PS: WordPress [Wikipedia] is a state of the art piece of open source blogging software, and WordPress is also the platform driving this blog and many others.

Danish WordPress
I've also been told that a Danish translation of the new WordPress version is on its way. Once it's ready you can get it from wordpress.dk/download.

What if the bloggers went on a strike?

What they want? Webdings, access to Teri Hatcher pictures and a computer like the one in Minority Report. Hilarious.

Found via Matt's blog.

Related posts

Tags: Blogs, Humour, strike, Video

Can you measure a blog's influence? If so, how?

In the Danish corner of the blogosphere there's an interesting debate on how to measure the influence of a blog or more blogs.

The reason for the debate is some analytic work done by Swedish company Primelabs in cooperation with Danish company Cision.

They have tried to map the Danish blogosphere and find out, which blogs are the most influential. They have done this by measuring the amount of inbound links that each blog has.

There a lot of arguing going on on the Danish sites, but this might as well be an international issue, so here are my two cents on this way of measuring:

Links tell you nothing. You can't really tell whether a link to a blog post is good or bad publicity. A link might be a "you gotta read this"-link or a "hey, take a look at this sucker!"-link. Each links will have a positive effect when you measure this way
Link measuring isn't enough. To know the influence of a blog we need to know more than how many links a blog gets from other blogs or sites. We need to know who is linking and why they are doing it. We also need to know who is reading the blog and how many. Most of all, the qualitative aspect is far more interesting than the quantitative aspect of how many are linking and/or reading.
Is this another attempt at gold digging? As blogs and the whole concept of blogging is growing and becoming more popular we will see a lot of companies trying to earn a buck on the blogosphere. Cision and Primelabs are offering companies "blog analysis", which basically means they are selling Google Pagerank (Wikipedia definition), as Søren Storm Hansen at dseneste.dk also points out (Danish link).

As you might have guessed, I'm not a big fan of measuring the influence of blogs by counting inbound links. In this way you honor the link baits, which isn't really what blogging is about.

We need to know more about the various blogs before we can even get close to talk about how influential they are.

But maybe the influence of blogs just wasn't meant to be measured? Perhaps blogs need to be a media platform that we necessarily can't track and know a lot of statistics about. Maybe it's better that way…

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Tags: Blogging, Blogs

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