wordpressguru.eu

There’s a new version of the WordPress application for Android. Here are the improvements on the previous version:

• Support for https (including self-signed certs)
• Connection issue fixes for self-hosted WordPress sites
• Fix for local drafts not showing if the user had no posts/pages
• UI tweaks including a new loading bar in the tab view
• Better support for WordPress MU blogs
• Automatic detection of xmlrpc.php w/ fallback to manual prompt

You’ll find the QR code for the application in this post. Just point your phone barcode scanner at the application and your Android phone will download it for you.

I’m currently working on some new features for WP Auctions, the auction plugin for Wordpress. It’s already quite rich in features, including the ability to set up a variety of different auctions with buy it now features and auto bidding, and the ability to set up auctions in Wordpress posts and pages. However, a number of people have asked for different features, so the next release will have some interesting features.

One area I’m working on concerns the upload of images for auctions. We had our own uploader to date, however I’ve switched things to use the built-in uploader. This should make it easier for users and also keep them in a user interface they are familiar with. Anyway, back to work, let me know if there are any other features you crave. And remember the main feature of WP Auctions, whether you’re selling a Ferrari or nordic track coupons, you don’t pay any commission to anyone, no bidding fees, no listing fees, no winning fees: the profits are all yours.

Have you ever wanted to add social networking features to your site? Well, if you’re running WordPress now you can with an awesome plugin called BuddyPress. Up to now, BuddyPress was only available for MU editions of Wordpress, but in an announcement a few days ago, you can read that BuddyPress is now available for standard versions of WordPress too.

So, regardless of whether you have a blog about ballet shoes, or one about shipping boxes, you can add a social element to your site and let people share ideas and discussions about anything you like. Check it out!

Imagine you had a car site and needed to load MySQL with a big database or car prices so that you can provide a search against this data. Well, imagine the database is so large that it won’t load for you. This can happen if you have a database that’s a bit larger than your server can handle.

I had a bit of a problem today trying to get an 8Mb backup uploaded into MySQL. The problem was caused by the fact that phpMyAdmin was timing out when I tried to import the database. I tried breaking it down into smaller sections but a couple of the tables just had too many rows in them. Just as I was about to bang my head against the wall, I came across BigDump, a MySQL upload tool that staggers the uploads allowing you to upload dump files up to 50Mb in size.

I’ve been playing with some ideas for a new site and using a theme called Spotty. It’s not like the theme has severe acne or anything like that; but it has a dotty like design in the page header and footer. Unfortunately it doesn’t have all the features I wanted (images and floating areas in the post content for example); and while I could update the theme to do all those things, well, sometimes it’s easier to pick a different one and start over.

Anyway, I’ll let you know once the site is live.

photo credit: jefferyalbergo & the neon cat

I came across a great article that talks about some performance improvements that one can put into place on a WordPress blog. The headline things to look at are:

1. Enable WordPress caching
2. Use a caching plugin like WP Super Cache
3. Minimise the number of high performance plugins
4. Turn on MySQL caching
5. Tweak your PHP settings

Just keep in mind that you don’t need to be looking at these things until you’re receiving hundreds of thousands of hits a day. But it’s good to know in case you notice performance issues on your blog. You don’t need slimming pills to make your blog lean and mean. Just implementing a few tweaks can make a world of a difference. Read the complete article here

Do you ever open up your WordPress blog to let your subscribers set up and modify their profile? Well, if you do, you might want to lock down your blog a bit to stop them from wandering around. This is where WP Hide Dashboard comes in. Just like it’s a good idea to get rid of blackheads before going out on a date, it’s always a good idea to hide extra functionality before letting visitors mess around with your blog.

One for the toolbox methinks.

Did you know that you can now post new content to your WordPress blogs using your phone? You can use the mobile apps for adding new posts, moderating comments or uploading media to your blog. So, you could be sitting down at lunch and knock up a quick post. Or sitting on the bus and moderating that comment about acne pills. It’s all about flexibility to work on your blog when and where you have time available. There are mobile applications available for Android, iPhone and Nokia platforms, so you have a selection of different software to try.

Download your apps and give them a try:

I just saw the news, Buddypress 1.2 is now available. It’s a plugin (or an ecosystem really) that lets you add a social network to your WordPress installation. The big thing about it was that up too now you needed a WordPress MU installation to make use of it. This new version works on a standard installation of Wordpress, which means anyone can make use of it. There are some other great things in this release, like a brand new theme and simplified installation; but nothing as big as the standard installation feature.

So how does it work? Let’s say you had a blog about childbirth and raising kids; you could deploy Buddypress onto the blog, so people can debate home schooling, cocoa butter stretch marks or whatever subject that your network wanted to debate.

There’s a new drop of Wordpress which fixes a small bug some of you may have been exposed to. Here are the details of the fix:

Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2.

You can upload directly from your blog if you have a recent version. It doesn’t matter if you have a blog about jokes, or one that reviews all types of acne lotion, it’s always worth being on the latest version of WordPress, just to avoid any issues.