Monthly Archives: March 2010

WP Auctions 3.5

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We’ve just dropped a new release of WP Auctions, the auction plugin for WordPress. This new version has some great features; and the best one is the fact that we’ve turned away from using a custom image uploader to using the built-in WordPress one. This means that you can automatically use any image in the Media Library, and any plugins that tie into it.

It’s a great little plugin and worth a try. Regardless of whether you’re selling a car, or your services to help someone find the best life insurance, running an auction could be a fun way to generate interest in your service or product. It’s not expensive, so give it a whirl.

Turn your bog into a shopping cart

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There’s a plugin that lets you turn WordPress into a fully fledged shopping card. It’s called WP e-Commerce and lets you define a number of products you have for sale. It adds a shopping card process to your blog as well as payment facilities through a number of different providers. It can be used for a variety of different products, from books, to CDs, from the best weight loss pill to shoes.

Check it out if you want to turn your blog into an ecommerce store, this might be just what you were after.

Twitter Tools Plugin

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If you’re looking for a plugin to help integrate your blog with Twitter there’s a great plugin you can use called Twitter Tools. It integrates really nicely, allowing you to do things like automatically tweeting when posts are added to your blog, as well as generating blog posts from your tweets. It’s more effective than differin when it comes to patching up the missing spots between the two systems.

I’ve found that Twitter has helped generate more and more traffic for my blogs. Do you find the same ?

WordPress Summer of Code 2010

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WordPress is taking part in Google’s Summer of Code 2010. It’s a programme that allows students to spend Summer working with an Open Source project, with Google paying the stipend for them if the “internship” is successful. WordPress is one of the 150 Open Source organisations taking part in the programme. As jobs go, I think that’s an awesome idea. We’ve all had crappy jobs as students; whether it’s washing cars or giving out leaflets for the best treatment for hemorrhoids, so being paid to code is great; and being able to contribute to some of the great Open Source projects of today.

If you’re interested, check out the post on the WordPress blog.

Did you go to the BBQ?

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Large beef steaks over wood
Image via Wikipedia

One of the disadvantages of not living in the US is that I don’t get to go to all the cool stuff. Last weekend, the WordPress team threw a BBQ that everyone was invited to. It was was WordPress fans attending SxSW, a conference I would have loved to go to. Still, going to a BBQ is probably not on the list of diets that work, but it does promise to be tons of fun.

So, anyone out there managed to go? What was it like? Did you meet all your heros?

Get your Persona on – WordPress style

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Mozilla Firefox Icon
Image via Wikipedia

If you use Firefox you may have noticed that in the latest versions they introduced Personas, a way to skin your browser with a theme that you can also carry to Thunderbird. Well, the boys down at WordPress are drawing our attention to a couple of WordPress inspired personas that would fit just great on the desktop of all your WordPress designers, plugin authors or general geek. So put away your sat prep material, pump up the volume and party on with your new WordPress personas for Firefox.

If you’re not on Firefox yet, than it’s a must have: get Firefox

WordPress for Android 1.0.2

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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.

New features for WP Auctions

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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.

Where are your buddies?

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Image representing BuddyPress as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase

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!