WordPress News: LiveJournal Migration Improved, WordPress Plugin Search Improved, bbPress Updated, and More

I’ve just posted this week’s WordPress News: Can You Spot a WordPress Blog? WordPress 2.8 News, Plugin Directory Searchable, iPhone App Tested, and More on the Blog Herald.

Can you spot a WordPress blog? Are you sure? WordPress 2.7.1 released. Improvements on the WordPress Plugin Directory search functions. Help for those transferring from LiveJournal to WordPress.com, and WordPress in the future. WordPress 2.8 development on track. WordPress iPhone app in testing for next release. WordPress.com gets a new data center. More WordPress Tattoo news. WordCamps in Miami and India this weekend, Denver next. Singapore starts its first blogger meetup, including WordPress fans. WordPress jobs, and tips for WordPress Plugin and Theme authors.

Here are some highlights of the WordPress news you can use.

Improvements in the WordPress Plugin Directory

At long last, the WordPress Plugin Directory now has a new and improved search function using Sphinx open source SQL full-text search engine to help you find the Plugins you need in the directory from the site as well as the WordPress Plugins panel.

Improved LiveJournal Migration

For those looking to migrate from LiveJournal to WordPress.com, there is now an even easier LiveJournal migration process that the WordPress.com team has come up with to help the ever increasing number of people moving to WordPress.com from one of the oldest blogging platforms in the world.

The new technique is a step by step approach that improves the importing from importing by the month without comments to now include comments, handle “friends only” posts, private posts, improvements in tagging, link back to LiveJournal blogs, and connection to the LiveJournal API to download all posts and comments in one pass. One LiveJournal users helped test the importer which handled over 3,700 posts and nearly 200,000 comments. That’s impressive.

The new importer will be included in the next major release of the full version of WordPress.

iPhone WordPress App in Testing Mode

The latest version of the WordPress iPhone app is underway and they are looking for hardware testers for the next version.

The changes in the iPhones operating system delayed this new update, but now they are nearly ready for the release to the Apple store. The upcoming version includes landscape mode with the extra wide keyboard, link creation help, editing and creating Pages, comment moderation, asynchronous publishing, photo resizing, and a few more goodies.

bbPress On Fire

Matt Mullenweg has announced that this is going to be a very active year for development of bbPress, the open source forum software that drives the WordPress forums. It begins the year with some new announcements and activities including two new bbPress releases. One is a security fix to prevent XSS attacks on login pages for Internet Explorer 6, which is highly recommend, and the second includes code improvements that increase the speed at which bbPress interacts with MySQL and integration with WordPress.

I’m working on an article for Lorelle on WordPress on bbPress, so stay tuned.

Help The WordPress Support Forum, Please

As a long time volunteer on the WordPress Support Forums, I join MichaelH in his request to improve the WordPress Support Forums and applaud his recent post on Weblog Tools Collection called “Wish list for the WordPress Support Forums software.”

Run on bbPress with a ton of customizations, there are a lot of limitations and problems on the Forums that could easily be fixed, and MichaelH joins a growing voice requesting the Forum be upgraded for increased functionality both by the users and the volunteers and staff who spend a lot of time helping others fix and use WordPress.

New Theme on WordPress.com

WordPress.com announced the Vigilance WordPress Theme has been added to the collection which includes customizable colors, alert boxes that appear at the top of the page for announcements, hidden pages from the main menu, custom image header, and special sidebar WordPress Widget functions.

Comment Threading on WordPress.com

WordPress.com announced comment threading and other cool comment features for their free blog hosting service.

All WordPress Themes are now set up to enable threaded comments, breaking comments into pages, and changing the comment order from the oldest comments on top to the newest comments at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom of the list. Comment threads are allowed up to ten levels.

To enable this on your WordPress.com blog, go to Settings > Discussion > Other Comment Settings and mark the appropriate boxes. It is disabled by default.

WordPress on Your Calendar

Some upcoming WordPress events include:

• Delhi – WordCamp India – February 21-22, 2009
• Miami, Florida – WordCamp Miami 2009 – February 22, 2009
• San Francisco – WordPress Surf and Turf – February 24, 2009
• Austin WordPress Meetup Group – Almost Everyone is a WordPress Expert – February 24, 2009
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – February 26, 2009
• Singapore Blogger Meetup Froup – February 27, 2009
• WordCamp Denver 2009 – February 28, 2009 (Facebook)
• Dallas/Fort Worth WordPress Meetup – Dallas, Texas – February 28, 2009
• Atlanta WordPress Users Group Meetup – Learning WordPress 2.7 – Atlanta, Georgia – February 28, 2009
• The Chicago WordPress February Meetup – February 28, 2009
• New Jersey – The New Jersey WordPress March Meetup – March 4, 2009
• Mobile, Alabama – Gulf Coast WordPress/Blogger WordPress Meetup – March 5, 2009
• Las Vegas WordPress Meetup – March 5, 2009
• Los Angeles WordPress Users Group – March 8, 2009

The last issue of my WordPress News on the Blog Herald was WordPress News: Release Week News, WordPress 2.7.1, BuddyPress, WordPress MU, and More Releases.

For more WordPress news, check out my weekly Blog Herald WordPress News. For more WordCamp news, check out the The WordCamp Report.

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