As part of the proposed Potential WordPress.org Improvements, the WordPress.org plugin directory is going to be getting some new features that will improve user interaction with the directory, the plugin authors, and the rest of the community. The improvements have been narrowed to the following for a final selection process:

• A standardized taxonomy for organizing plugins and making tags more relevant.
• Allow filtering of plugin search results based on version compatibility.
• Allow the community to publicly ‘Like’ plugins.
• Allow plugin pages to display hash-style URLs from the Read Me file.
• UI Improvements for i8n support.
• Allow users to publicly review plugins.
• Small UI changes to the Plugin Directory
• Plugin Adoption Stats
• The formation of a Plugin Security Review Team.

Your feedback is welcome. If you’ve got some burning ideas you’d like to contribute, drop a comment on the announcement at the WordPress Development blog.

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As part of the proposed Potential WordPress.org Improvements, the WordPress.org plugin directory is going to be getting some new features that will improve user interaction with the directory, the plugin authors, and the rest of the community. The improvements have been narrowed to the following for a final selection process:

• A standardized taxonomy for organizing plugins and making tags more relevant.
• Allow filtering of plugin search results based on version compatibility.
• Allow the community to publicly ‘Like’ plugins.
• Allow plugin pages to display hash-style URLs from the Read Me file.
• UI Improvements for i8n support.
• Allow users to publicly review plugins.
• Small UI changes to the Plugin Directory
• Plugin Adoption Stats
• The formation of a Plugin Security Review Team.

Your feedback is welcome. If you’ve got some burning ideas you’d like to contribute, drop a comment on the announcement at the WordPress Development blog.

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We usually don’t think too much about permalinks – just set them and go. However, this can prove to be quite an ordeal later when you have hundreds of posts and pages and realize that you want to change your permalink structure. Did you know a bad permalink structure can have a significant influence on the performance of your WordPress site? Before you get too far down the road, it’s a good idea to do a little research. We’ve prepared some bite-sized bits for your consideration in selecting a permalink structure that will serve your site as it grows.

If you’re new to WordPress permalinks, they are the permanent URLs to your individual posts and categories. You can change the settings at Dashboard >> Settings >> Permalinks.

WordPress Permalinks: What NOT to Do

This is a very important and often-ignored bit from the WordPress codex:

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.

So, what does this mean for the ubiquitous /%category%/%postname% recommendation that you see everywhere for SEO? It’s bad for performance. That also goes for %postname% by itself. The reason is because WordPress has to spend extra time trying to distinguish posts from pages and will then have to generate unique rules for each page in order to differentiate them. This kind of permalink structure can cause timeouts and sluggishness and is not recommended. For more information on this I highly recommend Otto’s article: Category in Permalinks Considered Harmful

Permalinks Structures For Scaling and Performance

I know when approaching permalinks for the first time there seem to be far too many options, but some are better than others. If you want to ensure that your site can scale gracefully and stay speedy, here are a few rules to live by when selecting a permalink structure:

• Do not start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields.
• Don’t listen to permalink advice from SEO experts who know nothing about WordPress. Keep your site running fast and let the content speak for itself.
• Select a structure that starts with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.
• Make sure to end your structure with either %post_id% or %postname% (e.g. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/) so that each permalink points to an individual post.
• Do not put your site url in the permalinks slot. You must use one of the structure tags, or a combination of tags only.

Permalinks and SEO

One of the best things you can do for SEO is to select a solid permalink structure and stick to it, so that you don’t end up orphaning the inbound links that you’ve been building.

Let’s say your site has hundreds of posts, some of which bring you approximately 20% to 30% of your new traffic. What happens to all of those links out there when you change your permalink structure? They lead to 404 pages, which can instantly turn visitors off. They don’t want to have to hunt. So if you do have to change your permalinks, obtain the help of a plugin to assist you in redirecting the old links to the new structure. This will ensure that you don’t completely invalidate all of your pages that have been indexed with search engines and the bookmarks and links people have made to point to your site.

Give a little thought to your permalinks before just pasting something in there. Read up on using permalinks in the codex. You’ll thank yourself later.

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WordPress 3.0.1 is out.

With a heap of bug fixes… and nothing particularly major (it’s all good!) this will doubtless be a pretty stable and long lasting release!

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There’s a new BuddyPress plugin available that will allow you to manually activate users through your dashboard who have not activated themselves. Sometimes this happens because the activation link goes to the user’s spam folder or an email address that they don’t normally use. Add this to your site by installing the WP Activate Users plugin. You’ll have a new menu in your admin area that will allow you to activate the users directly through the dashboard without having to touch the database. This is a great option if you don’t want to disable the activation email but are worried about some of the emails not arriving to the user’s inbox.

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This is a tutorial for developers who host projects with Google Code and blog with WordPress. Suppose you could create an automatically-updating archive of your SVN activity for a project you’re working on? The Google Code Commit Tracking plugin for WordPress 3.0 allows you to do just that!

Whenever you make an SVN commit on a Google Code project, you can instruct Google to send a notice to someplace else. This plugin enables WordPress to receive those notices and output them as an SVN Activity custom post type. You’ll be able to view them in a list under the SVN Activity custom post menu in your dashboard:

How to Link Your Google Code Project’s SVN Activity to Your WordPress Site

If you’re setting up your Google Code account for the first time, make sure to select SVN for your repository type if you plan to use this plugin.

1. After installing Google Code Commit Tracking on your WordPress site, go to your Google Code account and copy the Post Commit Authentication Key from the Administer > Source.
2. Paste into the Settings > Google Code options page.
3. Copy the Post-Commit URL on the Config page into the Google Code Post-Commit URL field on Administer > Source.
4. Then you can create a custom page template for the page where you want to display the updates and query the SVN post types using something like this:

   <?php query_posts( 'post_type=svn'); ?>

Now you have a page that will update automatically every time you commit, without you having to do a thing. This is especially useful if you are collaborating on a project with other developers or have a number of people interested in your project who don’t use Google Code. Importing your SVN activity as custom post types lets your site’s visitors to interact with your project by commenting on the updates and following via subscription. Keep everyone up to date with your project directly through your WordPress site!

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This is a fairly common error I have experienced with BuddyPress group forums and have seen others with this issue as well. When trying to create a new topic, you get the following error: “There was an error when creating the topic.” Richie posted this solution in our Premium DEV forums, and I thought I’d share it here. Sometimes this error is caused by a duplicate forum id.

The Fix:

Go to: phpmyadmin > yourdatabase > wp_bp_groups_groupmeta

Find the group you’re attempting to post to and then delete the forum_id value. Go back to your group on the front end. When logged in as admin of the group, go to settings and re-enable your forums. It will save a new forum_id for you and your posts should start working. This is a solution for BuddyPress groups that are starting a fresh new forum, not for groups with forums that have existing posts.

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It’s time for another round of BuddyPress eye candy! Now that WordPress 3.0 is here more users are becoming acquainted with the myriad of possibilities that the WordPress platform affords, not only for multisite blogging functionality, but also social networking in a box with the help of BuddyPress. As the BuddyPress user base expands, we are seeing more and more unique customizations of the basic platform. Grab a cup of coffee and sit back and be inspired. Explore BuddyPress at its best!

Food Network Humor

BetterCodes.org

Neoncon

Androinica

mytelegraph

Ancestry24

The Naughty Daughters

Chwisgi.com

Fugget.com/

Blogatize

The Chemistry Book

Space of Love

Runners Buzz

CSS Activity

ShabuShabu

Ramganjmandi

ClanPlaystation.net

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An exciting new service called Vanityvid is adding a new layer of interaction to social websites. The Vanityvid plugin turns avatars or profile pics into videos on your WordPress site. Wherever your avatar shows, your Vanityvid will be attached to it. This also includes other WordPress sites that have installed the plugin as well as Facebook and Twitter and any widgets that display avatars from these services. In order to see the video avatars on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll need to install the add-on for Firefox or Chrome.

Check out a demo at the Vanityvid website or have a look at their video gallery page.

Is Vanityvid compatible with BuddyPress avatars?

Yes it is!No modifications are necessary. Here’s what it looks like with the default BuddyPress theme on the member’s page:

How can I create a Vanityvid avatar?

Check out how easy it is to create a video avatar and have it hooked up to your account:

If you plan on adding the plugin to your site, the easiest way to add a video avatar is to install and activate the plugin. Then go to Settings >> Vanityvid and upload your video or record it through your webcam. Confirm your email address and you’re done! Any of your users who are also using the service will display video avatars as well. Check out the simple administration screen:

The Vanityvid plugin is a fun addition to any WordPress or BuddyPress site that is purely a social network with everything geared toward increasing user interaction. Video avatars are another way that users can share a bit more about themselves and add a personal greeting. The plugin enables you to offer video avatars without having to host them yourself or handle all the privacy issues, since it’s managed by a 3rd party. Download the Vanityvid WordPress plugin and bring your profile pictures to life!

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Here’s a handy tip from the codex. If you want to use a shortcode outside of the WordPress post or page editor, you can use this snippet to output from the shortcode’s handler(s):

// Use shortcode in a PHP file (outside the post editor).
<?php echo do_shortcode('[gallery]'); ?>

Replace with the shortcode you want to use. More information is available in the WordPress codex on the do_shortcode function page.

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