This weekend is the granddaddy of WordCamps, WordCamp San Francisco 2009 on May 30, 2009. Registration is closed at over 700 attendees for this one day event packed with a ton of the top blogging, social media, search engine, business, and WordPress experts. I’ll be there, so be sure and find me for a hug.

That’s part of the joy and difference between a WordPress event and other social tech events. WordPressers serve up hugs, not just hand shakes. What I hear over and over again at these events is how we all know each other, so meeting face to face is just another step in the relationship process that began a few months to a few years ago. We’re already friends!

This year so far it has been my honor to be included and speaking at a variety of WordCamp events including WordCamp Las Vegas, WordCamp Whistler, WordCamp Toronto, and WordCamp Columbus, and you will probably find me rattling around WordCamp Dallas, WordCamp Portland, WordCamp Seattle, Netherlands – WordCamp NL, WordCamp Israel, and WordCamp/Podcamp Hawaii.

According to the WordPress Meetup Groups on Meetup.com, there are 32 Meetup Groups focused specifically on WordPress, representing 3,394 Members in 5 different countries among 32 Meetup groups in 28 different cities. There are almost 2,000 people interested in a WordPress event and meetup without a group near them.

Here is a list of the most popular WordPress-specific Meetup Groups on Meetup.com from around the world. The number next to some of the group names represents the current number of registered members.

• The London Bloggers Meetup Group (592)
• The New York City WordPress Meetup Group (415)
• NY Bloggers Meetup Group (354)
• Dallas/Fort Worth WordPress Meetup (296)
• The Austin WordPress Meetup Group (172)
• South Florida WordPress Meetup Group (164)
• Atlanta WordPress Users Group (147)
• The Bay Area WordPress Meetup (138)
• The Boston WordPress Meetup Group (110)
• The Chicago WordPress Meetup Group (97)
• The Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group
• The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group
• The New Jersey WordPress Meetup Group
• The Southern California WordPress Meetup Group
• Greater Charlotte Area WordPress Group
  

  Matt Mullenweg, Andy Skelton, Mark Jaquith at WordCamp San Francisco 2008

• The Scottsdale WordPress Meetup Group
• The Ferndale WordPress Meetup Group
• Raleigh WordPress Meetup Group
• OKC WordPress Users Group
• Singapore Blogger Meetup Group
• Seattle WordPress 2.0
• The Bonita Springs WordPress Meetup Group
• Gulf Coast Twitter/WordPress Group

While there are WordPress meetup groups around the world, there are a lot of people are shouting out for one in their area. Copenhagen (61 interested), Philadelphia (45), Houston, London, and Denver are among the many. Some of these have had or are about to have a WordCamp event, so why aren’t there regular WordPress meetups?

WordPress Meetup Groups on Meetup.com offers a map of all the places where there are WordPress events and activities and where ones are wanted. You can browse a list of cities hosting WordPress events or go directly to your region to find out where one is or who might be interested in putting one together.

What is the Difference Between a WordPress Meetup and WordCamp?

A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordPress”, as many track WordPress event announcements there.

A WordPress Meetup allows locals to get together and learn from each other on how to use WordPress. There are formal WordPress meetups and informal ones, covering nothing but WordPress or including WordPress as part of other topics on web publishing and social media. WordPress meetups are usually held monthly or quarterly.

A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. WordCamp Toronto was the first, I believe, to have a three day WordCamp event, but there are no rules. It differs from a WordPress Meetup because it is offered rarely instead of regularly.

WordCamps were originally formatted on the Barcamp structure, loosely put together, grassroots gatherings of WordPress fans in a day long unconference style. While this works for some communities familiar with the unconference style, some stick with a more traditional conference format.

While a WordPress Meetup can cover any topics of interest to their members, a WordCamp event is focused on WordPress for the majority of the programs and workshops.

Many distinguish the two events based upon the length and speakers. WordPress Meetups tend to last a few hours where WordCamps are day long events. The speakers at WordCamps can come from your region or around the world.

How Do I Start a WordCamp or WordPress Meetup?

If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. There are also articles with tips and techniques for WordPress Meetups and WordCamps on The WordCamp Report, as well as on blogs by those who have run these events.

In general, you need to have a team of at least 5 active volunteers, a location and date, speakers, sponsors, and food or easy access to food. The rest of it is up to you.

Get a free blog on WordPress.com or host your own for the WordCamp, until WordCamp Central finishes setting up their WordPressMU blog network. Get a Twitter account and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordCamp. These are tracked by many WordPress fans around the world, many whom are willing to fly in to the various WordPress and WordCamp events.

How Do I Get WordPress Rock Stars to My WordPress Event?

While Matt Mullenweg, myself, and other representatives of WordPress and Automattic try to get to as many WordCamp and WordPress events as we can, look to your own neighborhood and community for your own WordPress experts and rock stars.

Many think it helps to have a “big name” to help attract attendees. In some large cities it does, but promote the event as a chance to learn about how to use WordPress in your business or personal life, and you’d be stunned at the number of people who will show up, just because they love WordPress.

To ask one of the press-o-rati, contact them through their blogs, email or Twitter accounts. To request someone officially from Automattic or WordPress, use the WordCamp Central contact form and ask. You can be vague and invite whoever is willing to come, or be specific and request someone who is an expert in WordPress Themes, Plugins, BuddyPress, bbPress, PollDaddy, Intense Debate, or any of the other WordPress and Automattic specific features and services.

I highly recommend you make your WordCamp and WordPress event about your community. WordCamp/Podcamp Hawaii brought in local social media experts, musicians, and tourist industry representatives familiar with WordPress to speak to attendees, giving them the local perspective that their community needs. WordCamp Toronto brought in members of the local art community to display interactive art work and held community competitions for the event logo, blog designs, and Plugins, involving as many people and groups as possible to make the event a social one. WordCamp San Francisco 2008 had a fund-raising event “Scavenger Hunt” for a local educational charity on the day after the WordCamp sessions.

There are a lot of ways you can involve your community and help others blog and share their voice with the world and benefit your community in general. Make your WordPress event inclusive not exclusive

To publicize your WordPress event or WordCamp, contact WordCamp Central, The WordCamp Report, Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events, and Upcoming events tagged with “WordCamp” or “WordPress,” and contact me by email for inclusion on the Blog Herald and my site and other WordPress fan sites.

Upcoming WordPress and WordCamp Events

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Events include:

May 2009

• Akron, Ohio – Ohio WordPress Meetup – May 28, 2009
• WordCamp San Francisco 2009 – May 30, 2009
• San Francisco Area – The East Bay WordPress May Meetup – May 31, 2009

June 2009

• WordCamp Chicago – June 6-7, 2009
• North Carolina – WordCampRDU 2009 – June 13, 2009
• Los Angeles WordPress Users Group – June 14, 2009
• WordCamp Brazil – June 21, 2009
• WordCamp Dallas 2009 – Dallas, Texas – June 27-28, 2009

July 2009

• Canada – WordCamp Montreal – July 11-12, 2009
• United Kingdom – WordCamp UK, Cardiff, Wales, July 18-19, 2009

August 2009

• Alabama – WordCamp Huntsville – August 15-16, 2009

September 2009

• Los Angeles, California – WordCamp LA – September 12, 2009
• Portland, Oregon – WordCamp Portland – September 19-20, 2009
• WordCamp Seattle – September 26, 2009 (WordCamp Seattle Twitter)

October 2009

• WordCamp New York City 2009 – October 24, 2009
• Netherlands – WordCamp NL – October 31, 2009

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

• WordCamp Indy (Indianapolis)
• WordCamp Augusta
• WordCamp Argentina
• WordCamp San Diego
• WordCamp Perú
• WordCamp New Zealand
• WordCamp Israel

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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The best Plugin competition, The Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 (3.0), is underway. WordPress fans rejoice.

The annual WTC WordPress Plugin Competition has rocked the WordPress Community since 2005. Each event brings out the best and most creative WordPress Plugin authors competing for prizes, and many of the award winners and entrants are now among the most popular WordPress Plugins in the world.

Some popular past winners and submissions include WP Easy Uploader, OneClick, Who Sees Ads, WP Comment Remix, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, and Popularity Contest.

As most of you know, I’m a huge WordPress Plugin fangirl. Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today recently covered “5 WordPress Plugins I Never Blog Without” on the Blog Herald, with some great recommendations, and in 2007, I spent an entire month writing daily about WordPress Plugins, including showcasing your favorite WordPress Plugins and a huge list of your lists of WordPress Plugin recommendations, since users often say more about WordPress Plugins then those who write them.

Please lend Weblog Tools Collection your support by helping to spread the word and the love, and help test the Plugin submissions and have your say on the ones you enjoy the most. If you would like to help sponsor the event, you are also welcome as this is a fantastic way to give back to the WordPress Community, especially to the Plugin authors who make our blogs run better and faster with little or no compensation.

I expect to see some WordPressMU and BuddyPress Plugins in addition to single hosted WordPress Plugins in the list this year. It should be one of the most exciting WordPress Plugin Competitions ever!

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Of all the WordCamp events to track, WordCamp Toronto this weekend, May 8-10, 2009, has been one of the most product and prolific. The Schedule is three very packed days of events, speakers, and…everything.

Starting at 8AM on Friday and closing Sunday afternoon with an awards ceremony, it’s going to be a packed weekend event – and I’ll be there to share in all the fun and adventure!

One of the exciting parts of the conference is the FlashPress event. FlashPress is a WordPress Plugin which integrates a WordPress PHP based CMS and Flash site. One Method and BackSpaceStudios teamed up for this open source project which will feature the rebuilding of the One Method site from the ground up with the FlashPress bundle. They will be documenting the process, code, and challenges along the way as participants lend a hand in the process.

There is plenty of social during this three day event, including the Opening Night Party at Lou Dogs on Friday, a popular southern barbecue and blues locale.

The Speakers list is amazing, featuring some of the best of the best in WordPress and blogging from around Canada and the world. Speakers include:

• Christopher Wulff
• Dan Zen
• David Peralty
• Duncan
• Erin Blaskie
• Glenn McKnight
• Ilya Grigorick
• James Walker
• Jeremy Clarke
• Joe Taiabjee
• Joey DeVilla
• Nick La
• Paul Laberge
• Paul Morrison
• Peter Flaschner
• Rannie Turingan
• Terry Smith

Oh, and me, Lorelle on WordPress.

Members of the local b5media team will also be speaking and in attendance, one of the popular blog networks built on WordPress.

The event will feature three tracks each day, with the third “track” being mostly social interaction and barcamp style unconference meetups. Everything from the technical aspects to the creative design elements, to writing styles and social media will be covered – with a lot of partying and coding in between.

I believe there are a few tickets left so hurry for this exciting WordPress adventure in Toronto, Canada.

Throughout the past few months, there have been t-shirt giveways and ticket contests and all kind of events and activity around the WordCamp event. I believe this is the second WordCamp in Toronto and they are truly setting a standard for WordCamps around the world. Raising the bar, they are!

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Tomorrow, April 23, 2009, I’m the keynote at Real Estate BarCamp, in Portland, Oregon, at Cubespace. The event is free but sold out. If you are interested in attending, check first.

I’ll be speaking to Real Estate agents, brokers, and related industry members about blogging, social, media, WordPress, and Woopra – though not all at the same time.

My keynote presentation will be on blogging and finding your voice on the web. I’ll talk about blogging your passion and creating your online identity that carries into your professional, and even personal, life. In the afternoon, I’ll be talking about web analytics and statistics and using tools like Woopra to learn more about your demographics and the connections you make on the web.

I’ll also be a part of a WordPress lab where we will sit down and answer any WordPress issues, offer tips, set up WordPress blogs on WordPress.com, and help attendees with their blogging needs hands-on.

How the Web is Changing the Real Estate Market

I grew up in the Real Estate industry with both parents, however, my mother was the ground breaker in the Real Estate industry, becoming a company owner, teacher and industry leader. Her work on a state and national level, the world for the buyer and seller are safer today than they were many years ago. I even studied for my real estate license, though life took me in other directions.

So I’m eager to be back in the world I grew up with, surrounded by people who sincerely care about helping people find the home of their dreams as well as make the right investments for their future.

The Real Estate world has changed dramatically since I was directly involved. Then, social media meant being an active member in your community, going to social events, meeting people how and when you could, signing deals on the hoods of cars, chasing down every lead you could with phone calls, brochures, newsletters, signs, social meetings…I guess little has changed.

What is different is that while some of the old marketing techniques work, the web changes things. Instead of working your community for leads, a client can come from Britain, Dubai, or Hong Kong. You might never meet them in person, but you can build a relationship enough to call them friends as you shake virtual hands and make those direct connections across the web.

Blogs are today’s brochures and newsletters, bringing the news and information to clients, old and new. Where it once was a fad to put your face on your business cards and signs, it’s now a requirement to put your face on your blog and videos, and your voice on podcasts.

It’s not just about being a good sales person and marketer. You have to write great content, knowing how to communicate and interact with the written word.

Social media tools like Twitter changes things even more, as do tools like iPhones and Blackberries. We’re connecting through 140 characters instantly – and people demand an instant response in kind.

It’s confusing and there are so many technological changes happening, but I believe that at the very core, all businesses are successful when they serve the needs of their customers on an individual basis – or at least put their focus on the individual not just the collective. The members of the Real Estate industry are experts at connecting with the individual.

And I hope to help them connect better with individuals online.

Is your world being totally changed by the web? If you are in the Real Estate or personal service industry, what would you want to know about connecting online and finding customers and building communities? What would you like to hear me talk about at such a workshop?

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordCast celebrates 50 episodes this week with a fun podcast featuring WordPress and WordCast fans Liz Strauss, Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, and myself, along with hosts Dave Moyer and Kym Huynh in WordCast 50: Our Semi-centennial!

It was amazing to have Liz in Chicago, Dave in Denver, Kym in Australia, Jonathan in Louisiana, and me in Portland, Oregon, all chatting away and debating about once again calling Brian Gardner and talking to his answering machine. We had some questions about his new WordPress Theme lines. We got so carried away talking about Liz’s butt, among other WordPressy things.

While there was much discussion about our favorite WordPress features over the last few years of releases, WordPress history, and WordPress 2.8, we also talked about Liz’s butt at SxSW in a lovely photograph by Brian Solis, SOBCon 2009, a great WordCast intro by Matt Mullenweg, a lesson in how Liz Strauss taught Matt Mullenweg to order me around, a fabulous rap by Kym called the “WordCamp Rap,” a quick look back at some of the WordCast jingles, and a lot of other nonsense.

Congrats to Dave and Kym for a great 50 episodes full of WordPress information, tips, and giggles. And here’s to 50+ more!

WordCast, the WordPress Podcast, is released weekly, usually on Tuesday, and is part of the Bitwire Media Networks.

Isn’t 50 old in podcasting years…or is that dog years?

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

In my Blog Herald WordPress News, I used to feature a round-up of WordPress-related podcasts and fan blogs offering great tips and useful information on using WordPress from the beginner level to advanced techniques. I’ve decided to continue this tradition here on Lorelle on WordPress.

Every week or so, I’ll publish a Round WordPress post featuring highlights and most recent articles by some of the top WordPress blogging experts. I encourage you to visit these blogs and add them to your feed reader as they continue to provide invaluable WordPress tips, techniques, news, resources, and information.

This week, the talk around the WordPress Community is fired up over the discussion started by Weblog Tools Collection on retiring the Kubrick/Default WordPress Theme, Google/WordPress Summer of Code, WordPress 2.8, voting for new WordPress IRC ops and moderators, and the new WordPress Widget API.

WordPress Podcasts

WordCast: The WordCast features news, interviews, and great laughter on WordPress-related topics. This week’s episode is WordCast 49: Barbaric Blog Herald Barrage with Lorelle VanFossen as guest co-host, covering the delay of WordPress 2.8, WordPress/Google Summer of Code 2009, WordCamp Toronto’s efforts to involve their community in their WordPress Event, Celebrity Pressers help needed for Blog Herald WordPress News, WordPress for iPhone, contributing to WordPress, the Making of WordPress.tv, and more tips and news on WordPress.

WP Tavern WordPress Weekly Podcast: Jeffro interviews Andrew Ozz, the person responsible for the JavaScript load optimization articles and features, TinyMCE integration and updates, and other key and core WordPress features.

The most recent episode of the The WordPress Plugins Podcast featuring the MailPress Plugin and Search And Replace Plugin.

WordPress Fan and Expert Blogs

Weblog Tools Collection:

• Is It Time For Kubrick To Retire?
• Plugin Review: cSprites for WordPress

WP Engineer:

• Pages & Subpages – Is Parent?
• WordPress Plugin Readme File Generator

WPRecipes:

• WordPress shortcode to display related posts
• How to: Show related posts without a plugin
• How to: Resize images on the fly
• How to: Force using SSL on wp-admin directory
• How to: Display your most popular content in your blog sidebar
• How to: Display the number of results in WordPress search
• How to: Allow your visitors to send your articles by email to their friends

WPTavern:

• WPWeekly Episode 48 – Interview With Joost De Valk
• WordPress Plugin Readme Generator
• Where To Draw The Line With Support Models
• Vote For WordPress In Webware 100
• Vote For New WordPress IRC Channel Ops
• Vladimir’s Plugin Developer Tips
• Since When Has Matt Been Right Anyway
• Leland Returns! ThemeLab To Continue
• If CMS’s Were Operating Systems
• Automattic ALMOST Acquired At One Point
• Addicott Web Suggests 6 More Plugins

WP Hacks:

• Optimize Your WordPress Database with Optimize DB WordPress Plugin
• Tools & Resources for Multi-Author WordPress Blogs
• How To: Prevent Images from Being to Large

Yoast:

• On WPWeekly Episode 48
• Optimizing WordPress database performance

Featured WordPress Fan Blog

If you aren’t familiar with our WordPress experts and fans up north, check out Planet WordPress Canada, an aggregator similar to WordPress Planet, the official WordPress aggregator, dedicated to Canadian WordPress experts.

Here are some highlights published recently on the aggregator.

• [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] WordPress Wednesday: Revision Control
• [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] WordPress Development: Creating Top-Level Menu Items
• [BlueFur.com Web Hosting] WordPress Wednesday: Page Management
• [See How Two] Unschedule a post so it will publish immediately
• [See How Two] Change the colour of an individual text link
• [See How Two] Create a link within the text of posts or pages
• [See How Two] Flowing text around images in posts or pages
• [RiteTurnOnly.com] Hide Themes When Using Theme Switcher Plugin
• [RiteTurnOnly.com] WordPress Magazine Themes Revisted
• [RiteTurnOnly.com] Keep Your Images In Check
• [RiteTurnOnly.com] Twitter Meets WordPress
• [RiteTurnOnly.com] Plugin Review: Front-end Editor

Other WordPress Tips and Techniques

Every week I collect WordPress tips and techniques from around the web to publish here and on my @lorelleonwp Twitter daily. Here are some goodies I’ve found recently. They may apply to older versions of WordPress, but they still are helpful articles, probably featuring things you didn’t know you could do with WordPress.

• Get the latest sticky posts in WordPress
• Offline Blog Editing Tools
• Tutorial: A category based archive on WordPress
• WordPress Theme Hacks
• WordPress Tutorial: Hide Posts From Home Page, Only Display In RSS

The WordPress Community generates some of the best WordPress tips, techniques, and resources. If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in my lists, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

As most of you know, I’m extremely passionate about supporting and encouraging WordPress Plugin authors. I’ve written a love letter to WordPress Plugin authors, spent a month writing over 36 posts on nothing but WordPress Plugins, published extensive tips on how to install, configure, and use WordPress Plugins and another guide for finding Plugins, “Where to Find WordPress Plugins.” I’ve researched lists of your favorite WordPress Plugins pointing out the most popular WordPress Plugins WordPress fans recommend, and even feature a WordPress Plugin a day on my @lorelleonwp Twitter.

Okay, I’m a WordPress Plugin obsessed fan.

Some are saying this will be the year of the WordPress Theme with the addition of the auto-load and update feature for Themes in WordPress 2.8, but I think it will be the year of the WordPress Plugin as so many are now exploring more Plugin options with the WordPress 2.7 search, auto-install, and update for WordPress Plugins. With the release of the new WordPress Widgets API and Validimir Prelovac’s new book, “WordPress Plugin Development Beginner’s Guide,” it’s time for WordPress Plugins and their authors to get the support and respect they deserve. Without them, how would our WordPress blogs survive?

As I prepare my weekly Blog Herald WordPress News, I collect a lot of tips and articles for and about WordPress Plugins. I will be moving those here to Lorelle on WordPress, publishing summaries of news and articles WordPress Plugin authors need to know on a fairly regular basis.

If you are a WordPress Plugin fan, there will be a ton of great information here, too.

New WordPresa Widgets API Feedback Wanted

The WordPress developers are seeking testers and feedback on the new Widgets API which will be released with WordPress 2.8.

WordPress Plugin Checkoff List

All WordPress Plugin authors need to check the article Weblog Tools Collection recently published called the “Top 10 Characteristics of a Great WordPress Plugin.”

It is a checklist to follow when reviewing or coding a new WordPress Plugin. Print this checklist out when preparing their Plugin for public release, as well as the recommendations I made in my own list for WordPress Plugin authors and you will make WordPress fans around the world love and adore you.

WordPress Plugin Developer Center

Have you seen the new Developer Center within the WordPress Plugin Directory?

It is a general guide on how WordPress hosts WordPress Plugins and how to get your Plugin into the directory.

Not all WordPress Plugins are found in the directory, but all WordPress Plugins found through the new built-in WordPress Plugin search and install feature in WordPress 2.7+ are found only within the Directory.

To get into the WordPress Plugin Directory, there are a few requirements.

1. The plugin must be GPL Compatible.
2. It can’t do anything illegal, or be morally offensive.
3. Use of the subversion repository is required to host the Plugin.

Automatically Generate WordPress Plugin Readme Files

Check out the news WPEngineer wrote about with the new WordPress Plugin Readme File Generator by Sudar Muthu. This Plugin automatically creates and validates readme files for WordPress Plugins. Many WordPress Plugins need to have instructions to help users install and use them, so this is a very useful tool for the WordPress Plugin author.

Scott Reilly On WordPress Plugin Development Overload

A year ago, the incredibly prolific WordPress Plugin author, Scott Reilly of Coffee2Code, and creator of the powerful Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin, spent 14 days releasing a Plugin a day. By the end of the two weeks, he’d created 14 new WordPress Plugins and updated 20 more. Now he’s at it again.

So far, he’s created or updated Admin Per Page Limits WordPress Plugin to control the number of posts per page, pages per page, and comments per page that appear in the Administration Panel listings of posts, pages, and comments; Restrict Usernames WordPress Plugin to restrict the usernames that new users may use when registering with your WordPress blog; Linkify Categories to turn a string, list, or array of category IDs and/or slugs into a list of links to those categories; Linkify Tags to convert a list of tag IDs and/or slugs into a list of links to those tags; Disable Search to turn off the search capabilities of the native WordPress search; and Configure SMTP updated for configuring SMTP mailing in WordPress with support to send email via SSL/TLS (like Gmail), with more on the way.

I’ll be covering more of his new odyssey in WordPress Plugin production as he moves his way to the top of the list as one of the most prolific WordPress Plugin authors in the WordPress Plugin Directory, giving the likes of Michael Torbert, Matt Mullenweg, Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan, Arne Brachhold, and Andy Skelton a run for Plugin fame.

Top Niche WordPress Plugins

The Top WordPress Plugin Niches by W-Shadow is a list based upon the top 100 most downloaded WordPress Plugins to determine their “niche” categories. It’s an interesting look at the types of Plugins most WordPress users desire and use.

There are now various ways to check out which WordPress Plugins are the most popular on the WordPress Plugin Directory.

• Most Popular WordPress Plugins
• Highest Rated WordPress Plugins
• Newest WordPress Plugins
• Recently Updated WordPress Plugins
• By Tags

WordPress Plugin Podcast

I’m not the only fan of WordPress Plugins. Check out the most recent episodes of the The WordPress Plugins Podcast featuring the MailPress Plugin and Search And Replace Plugin.

Past episodes included:

• Plugins 001 – Blubrry Powerpress Podcasting Plugin
• Plugins 002 – 7 Minutes on Blubrry Powerpress Podcasting Plugin
• Plugins 003 – Peters Custom Anti Spam
• Plugins 004 – CFormsII Custom Forms
• Plugins 005 – Google XML Sitemaps
• Plugins 006 – All In One SEO Pack Plugin
• Plugins 007 – Special Guest Peter Keung author of Peter’s Custom Anti-SPAM Plugin
• Plugins 008 – WP-DB-Backup Plugin
• Plugins 009 – Share This Plugin
• Plugins 010 – Contact Form 7 Plugin
• Plugins 011 – Search And Replace Plugin

Highlights of WordPress Plugin Tips and Techniques

Here are some past goodies to warm you up. Some of these related to older versions of WordPress, but don’t discount them. There are invaluable lessons to be learned from such articles. The topics cover a wide range of WordPress-specific tips and techniques for Plugin and Theme developers, as well as PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, and jQuery.

• WordPress Functions Implementation History Tool
• ThemeLab – WordPress Template Tag Lookup Tool
• Validimir Prelovac – WordPress Fundamentals for Newbies
• Pearsonified – How You Can Use WordPress Functions to Run a Smarter Blog
• DBSWebsite – WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide
• 5 Helpful Tips for Creating Secure PHP Applications
• 25 Resources to Get You Started with PHP from Scratch
• WordPress Development – Converting Default Widgets to the New WordPress API
• WordPress Development – Optimizing script loading, implementation
• WordPress Development – Optimizing script loading part 2
• WordPress Development – Optimizing Script Loading
• WordPress.tv – PHP Cross Reference of the WordPress Source (Video)
• Installing WordPress locally with WampServer
• Will Norris – Authentication in WordPress 2.8
• Secrets of the Conditional Tag Revealed: How to Gain More Control Over Your WordPress Templates
• Nettus – What You Must Know About jQuery UI 1.7
• Nettus – 10 Reasons Why Your Code Won’t Validate (and How to Fix it)
• Webdesigner Depot – 7 Interface Design Techniques to Simplify and De-clutter Your Interfaces
• Lester Chan – New WP_Widget Class In WordPress 2.8
• Preparing for WordPress 2.8: Using JavaScript in WordPress Plugins
• Justin Tadlock – What’s in store for WordPress Themes in 2009?
• Nerdaphernalia – On Attribution and Plugin Priorities in WordPress
• Justin Tadlock – My Plugins are Now Hosted on the WordPress Plugins Repository
• Custom Theme Design – Building a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme
• WordPress Codex – Formatting Date and Time in WordPress
• WordPress Codex – WordPress Conditional Tags

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

With work underway with the Google/WordPress Summer of Code which includes work on the native gallery system within WordPress, let’s not overlook some of the WordPress Plugins which have taken the bare bones of the WordPress gallery feature and turned it into magic.

Some of these gallery Plugins were hard at work presenting images on photoblogs and art blogs long before WordPress came up with the gallery feature and Media Library, so they have a long history of helping WordPress users display their images in unique and fun ways with lightbox effects, easy image management from multiple sources, and more.

Blog Oh Blog has reviewed what they think are the 10 best WordPress Gallery Plugins.

They include:

• PhotoXhibit
• Lazyest Gallery Plugin
• Cleaner WordPress Gallery Plugin
• Inline Gallery Plugin
• WP Photo Album Plugin
• FlippingBook Gallery Plugin
• NextGen Gallery Plugin
• Lightbox Gallery Plugin
• AWSOM PixGallery Plugin
• Falbum Gallery Plugin

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

In Want to Break and Remake WordPress? on the Blog Herald, I summarized this year’s WordPress/Google Summer of Code, an exciting annual project that brings together the top WordPress Community experts with college students from around the world dedicated to making and breaking WordPress so we all benefit.

When I read the cute announcement by Jane Wells of Automattic on the WordPress Development blog, I thought of all the amazing things that have come out of the past WordPress Summer of Code events, then took a look at what they have on the menu for this year’s code hacker’s dream come true.

WordPress has been a part of the Google Summer of Code I believe since it began five years ago. Each year, from among over a hundred student applications, about 10 are chosen to work with WordPress staff and experts, with some of them going on to become valuable members of the WordPress development team. The incredible inline documentation and code work by Jacob Santos is just one example of the fine work the students have done.

Each year, free and open source software companies vie to be one of the recipients of the mentoring program sponsored by Google. The students submit applications for the project of their choice from among only 150 free and open source software projects chosen. The project team leaders narrow their choices down based upon the proposals, skills, and expertise of the students. The students are paid a stipend of USD $4,500 to cover expenses and time to dig into the code from May through August.

This year’s deadline for student applications is April 3, 2009 at 19:00 UTC, so you don’t have much time to get your application in.

Among the items proposed are three that really excite me.

WordPress Video Solution Framework

In 2008, Automattic released the WordPress Video Solution Framework, a non-Plugin just for WordPressMU to improve the handling and transcoding uploaded videos. A discussion on the WordPressMU forums included tips for installation, tips, and recommendations for this exciting path for uploading and managing the load videos put upon a site.

When you upload a video to many of the free and paid video hosting services, the video is converted or “transcoded” from one format to the requirements of that video service. Many will take AVI, WMV, MPG, and convert it to Quicktime, Flash, or other formats for faster streaming and the needs of that system.

With the WordPress Video Solution Framework, WordPressMU functions or WordPress Plugins can hook into it to improve video uploading and processing, allowing users to host videos on their own servers, a boon for those using WordPressMU blog networks.

With the demand for video on blogs, I see this as a start in the right direction, especially as server sizes increase and costs drop. I’m nervous about hosting video off-site, outside of my control and ability to protect it. If YouTube or other video hosting service goes down, there goes your video and all the links you counted on. If this is improved in WordPressMU sites, it’s possible it might make its way into the core or as a Plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Media File Management and Features

While we wait for the joy of converting and hosting our own videos, the WordPress Summer of Code list includes digging into the Media Library of WordPress to make it easier to manage multimedia such as images, audio, and video, but also to improve the features overall.

I’m eager to see the gallery feature improve, as well as the ability to add images, slide shows, photo streams, random images, lightbox effects, image bars, and more image manipulation and displays within WordPress Themes that work independently from Plugins and Themes. Not sure we’ll get them all, but I can dream.

What I am most excited about with this project is improvement to the uploading and management of images. Matt Mullenweg brags that he’s uploaded thousands and thousands of images to his blog, but I struggle with my small batches and am terrified to attempt to “import” the thousands of images already sitting on my server.

Can I even import them into the new WordPress media format and storage structure? I haven’t found a way. I’m certainly not going to sit through hours of the long time “crunching” of images in small batches when they are already sitting there on my server.

The labeling and organizing of images stinks. There are no categories, tags, or methods to group or sort your images. There is now a search option, but what if I forget the file name or didn’t put in a title. How would I find it?

I’d like to group images together in interesting ways, maybe sorted by tags or categories, to display them in galleries independent of the post they were uploaded to. I’d like to mix and match images easily from within the media library and showcase those in gallery form. Why not?

There are now image recognition software and web app services. Why can’t something like this or such services have the option to be integrated into our WordPress blogs? The Monologue WordPress Theme has an algorithm that detects the color range of an uploaded image and displays the Theme’s colors for that post to complement the color scheme, like a mat board around a framed picture. Why can’t we skip the changing of the entire color scheme on a per post basis and just have it frame the image with a complementary “mat board” for pretty? Again, why not?

While some of what I want is probably best serviced with a Plugin, but I’m thinking out of the blog post image box here. The Summer of Code is about brainstorming, right? Dreaming the possible and letting the hackers hack away to turn our dreams into reality.

Actually, my dreams for improving the image and multimedia functionality in WordPress is really down to earth and simple. Please, oh, please, fix the damn screwy IMG tag automatically created in the image upload process.

I’d really like to see the format for the HTML IMG tag cleaned up to comply with Web Standards for Accessibility. WordPress enforces a title which goes into the title attribute of the Image tag. The caption becomes the ALT attribute, a required element in the Anchor tag. It also puts a text caption on the image. What if you don’t want a caption?

You are forced to switch to HTML code mode in the Post Editor and add the ALT to the image and/or remove the caption SPAN by hand. This needs to be switched. Make the “title” become the ALT attribute and the caption be the caption and/or title if necessary. This would save so much time and energy spent editing the image links to conform with web standards, for those who still care.

I want the simple ability to float an embedded video to the right or the left with the text wrapping around it. I want to create a gallery of videos, or at least a bar within a post.

I don’t ask for much. I think these simple things should be natural functions of including multimedia within a blog post or blog. I can wait for the bigger bells and whistles, but let’s start with what should have been in WordPress several versions ago.

Building a Community Organizer Platform

I spend a lot of time talking with and helping WordCamp organizers and sponsors. For three years we’ve dreamed of having a single site that helped WordCamp volunteers produce and promote their event. One of the projects on the WordPress Summer of Code list is such a platform.

The dream is to create a BuddyPress/WordPressMU/bbPress integration to create a new community organizing platform.

Using the new WordCamp site as a base, WordPress mentors want to create a “one stop shop” for WordCamp events and organizers using WordPress and Automattic tools.

Think of the possibilities. All WordCamps and WordPress Meetups hosted under one roof. No hosting charges.

If they can get a deal with an event registration service, or create their own, no longer will WordPress fans have to pay the costs for event registration out of their own pockets, hoping their event will pay them back. The costs of the venue and other fees are still there, but the registration will have a unified, easy-to-use interface and be one less worry.

WordCamp Portland 2008, taking over the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, with the Fairy Blogmother

Special user permissions to allow organizers, participants, speakers, vendors, sponsors, and others to access only the areas they need to provide the information about their part in the event, taking a little of the work load off the organizers.

Want to share a ride with someone or a group of folks coming from your neck of the woods to the event? Need a roommate at a hotel? Want to open your home to someone coming from out of town to the event? Message boards and forums could link people with needs with people meetings needs.

Mark Mullenweg, Andy Skelton, Mark Jaquith at WordCamp San Francisco 2008

Honestly, as so many WordPress projects, news, and information is spread all over the web, it’s hard to find, let alone keep up, with the various WordPress events, especially international ones. Having a centralized WordCamp and WordPress Event site and/or network would be a boon, and a huge draw for the WordPress Community. I dream of a one stop shop to track what’s happening in the WordPress world. This could be an exciting step in that direction.

A platform like this wouldn’t be restricted to WordCamps, but it’s a good testing ground to begin with. Imagine being a band, traveling Broadway production, theatre, school, Tweetup, meetup, or any other social event or interaction group. What you could do with such a platform – wow! That’s exciting stuff coming out of WordPress/Google Summer of Code!

Get Involved with the WordPress Summer of Code

Remember, students must get their WordPress project application in by April 3, 2009 at 19:00 UTC in order to participate in the The Google Summer of Code for 2009. Lloyd Budd will be coordinating the WordPress project, so get his blog into your feed reader along with the other WordPress Summer of Code sites so you can track the development of the various projects.

Everyone within the WordPress Community is invited to lend their support and energies to the project as well. You can start by offering WordPress Ideas or vote on the suggestions of others. If you are currently involved with any of the WordPress projects, or would like to be, listed, contact the mentors of those projects to find out if you might be of service.

There are many ways to get involved with the WordPress Community volunteers and fans.

Don’t forget that WordPress users like to work with WordPress users, whether on projects like the Google and WordPress Summer of Code or WordPress Meetups and events around the world.

There are WordCamp and WordPress events probably forming in your area, so check out the lists on the Blog Herald WordPress News, official WordCamp Central site, The WordCamp Report, Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events, and Upcoming: Public events tagged with “WordCamp”. They need sponsors, helpers, web designers and developers, video and podcasting whizbangs, clean up crews, ticket takers, food servers, t-shirt hander-outers, schwag stylists, speakers, hosts…the list is long and they need all the help they can get. Get to know your fellow WordPresser and you’ll find a new friend.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

This week’s Blog Herald WordPress News is WordPress News: iPhones Up, WordPress Widgets API, 2.8 Delayed, International WordPress.tv, and More, and I’ve covered a lot of WordPress news you can use:

iPhone for WordPress is in the iTunes store. WordPress Widgets will use new Widgets API as of WordPress 2.8. Security authentication will improve with OAuth in future versions. WordPress 2.8 delayed. WordCamps in Hong Kong and China coming up. International languages embraced on WordPress.tv. And more WordPress news, tips, resources, and help.

If you missed last week’s edition on the Blog Herald, it was WordPress News: Plugins Reach Milestone, New WordPress Community Project, Help to Search for WordPress Help.

I am working with the editor of the Blog Herald to change the look and style of the Blog Herald WordPress News. I’d love your input here or on the announcement regarding potential changes and input. The Blog Herald WordPress News is designed to meet the needs of the WordPress Community, so help us help you blog better with WordPress.

Here are some highlights for this week you do not want to miss, followed by WordPress Events, WordCamps, and Meetups coming soon.

iPhone for WordPress

The iPhone for WordPress Version 1.2 is now in the iTunes App Store, ready for you to blog and track comments on your iPhone.

WordPress 2.8 News

The WordPress Development team has confirmed that WordPress 2.8 will be released in April, pushing back the release date a few weeks in order to take a little more time with improving the underlying code, incorporating the new Widgets API, and improvements for managing JavaScripts, Plugins, AJAX, and more.

There is a list of features, changes, and improvements in the WordPress Codex.

A new WordPress Widgets API in in development for WordPress 2.8. Based upon MultiWidget Class, it will handle all the multi-widget functions and hooks to implement a multi-widget Plugin, giving developers an easier process to extend their WordPress Plugins with Widget functionality.

The WordPress Development team has announced that they are converting all default WordPress Widgets to work with the new Widgets API. If you are a WordPress Plugin author with a Widget-enabled Plugin, or you want to expand the flexibility of your Plugin for WordPress 2.8, check this out.

Lester Chan covers the new WP_Widget Class in WordPress 2.8 in greater detail to help Plugin authors understand how it works and how it can help them.

There will be a lot of changes under the hood, but not so much on the surface in WordPress 2.8. If you are working with WordPress Themes, Plugins, or development, articles on WordPress 2.8 news you should be aware of include:

• Optimizing Script Loading
• Optimizing script loading part 2
• Optimizing script loading, implementation
• Preparing for WordPress 2.8: Using JavaScript in WordPress Plugins
• Change your WordPress Theme on …
• WordPress 2.8 body_class, automatic_feed_links
• What a body!

Will Norris wrote about “Authentication in WordPress 2.8” as part of his ongoing project for the OpenID WordPress Plugin. Working with Peter Westwood, WordPress 2.8 now includes a new filter for authentication that passes through three paramters, along with the username and password. According to Matt Mullenweg, right now, the OAuth for WordPress will be a WordPress Plugin, with hopes of integrating it into the core in the future.

WordPress.tv Goes International and Offers Insider News

WordPress.tv has now launched the Making WordPress.tv development blog run on the new P2 WordPress Theme for those who want to keep up with what is going on with the new video service for the WordPress Community.

The first goal for improving the new WordPress.tv is to improve the localization, the ability to understand the videos in your language. Michael Pick is working on adding language filtering to help with the translation of videos into other languages. You can now filter the videos by language preference, too.

If you would like to help, let them know.

WordPress Tips and Plugins on Twitter

I’ve started sharing WordPress Tips and Plugin suggestions I’ve collected over the past couple years on Twitter at @lorelleonwp.

I post one WordPress tip and one WordPress Plugin link every morning (PST) covering recent versions of WordPress and WordPress usages and features.

Thanks and credit for making this happen goes to TweetLater, a future Twitter posting and management system I reviewed recently.

WordPress Events and WordCamps

Upcoming WordCamps and WordPress events include:

March 2009

• Utah WordPress Meetup – March 18, 2009
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – March 19, 2009
• Ferndale, Michigan – March WordPress Meetup – March 23, 2009
• Atlanta, Georgia – Atlanta WordPress Users Group – March 24, 2009
• New York City WordPress Meetup – The Wonderful World of Widgets – March 24, 2009
• Seattle WordPress Meetup – March 24, 2009
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – Thursday, March 26, 2009
• The Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress March Meetup – March 28, 2009
• The Chicago WordPress March Meetup – WordPress Plugins – March 28, 2009
• Atlanta, Georgia – Atlanta WordPress Users Group Meetup – March 28, 2009
• North Carolina – Greater Charlotte Area WordPress Group March Meetup – March 28, 2009
• Alameda, California – The East Bay WordPress March Mash-up – March 29, 2009

April 2009

• The New Jersey WordPress April Meetup – April 1, 2009
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – April 1, 2009
• New Jersey WordPress Meetup – April 1, 2009
• Gulf Coast WordPress/Blogger April Meetup – April 2, 2009
• WordCamp China – April 4, 2009
• WordCamp Hong Kong – April 5, 2009
• Ft. Lauderdale, Florida – South Florida WordPress April Meetup – April 8, 2009
• New Orleans, Louisiana – WordCamp NOLA – April 10-11, 2008 (Twitter)
• Long Beach, California – Southern California WordPress Group – April 18, 2009

May 2009

• Chicago – Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) – May 1-5, 2009
• WordCamp Toronto – May 8-10, 2009
• Richmond, Virginia – WordCamp RVA – May 9, 2009
• Ohio – WordCamp Columbus – May 16, 2009
• Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia – WordCamp Mid-Atlantic – May 16, 2009
• Milan, Italy – WordCamp Milan 2009 – May 22-23, 2009
• WordCamp San Francisco 2009 – May 30, 2009

Past WordPress News Reports

• WordPress News: Plugins Reach Milestone, New WordPress Community Project, Help to Search for WordPress Help
• WordPress News: WordPress Wins at Irish Blogger Awards, WordPress Events Everywhere, WordPress for PowerPoint, Flash Security Issue, Feedburner Deadline
• WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searcable, iPhone App Tested, and More
• WordPress News: Release Week News, WordPress 2.7.1, BuddyPress, WordPress MU, and More Releases
• WordPress News: Logogate, WordCamps Everywhere, WordPress.tv, BuddyPress, WordPressMU, WordPress Plugin Podcast, and More
• WordPress News: WordPress.tv, WordCamp Whistler, WordPress Logo, City Saves Money, and More

Each week, the Blog Herald features WordPress News, a weekly column by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact her at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, blog herald, blog herald wordpress news, weekly wordpress news, wordpress themes, wordpress plugins, wordpress tips, wordpress help, wordpress advice, wordpress techniques, wordpress tips, wordpress development

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.