Weblog Tools Collection

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I never get this right. There are times when I will be reading a post and it feels as if the chronological order of comments would make better sense. At other times, such as the comments on this post on IP Democracy (which has newest comments on top), seems opposite. I actually found it quite difficult and counter intuitive to read through the comments on that post to follow the story as it unfolded. Scrolling upwards on a post is just plain weird. On more popular posts, readers tend to complain when the list of comments grows beyond a certain number and they loose the forest for the trees. The TechCrunch comment threads are simply useless if you want to follow any part of the discussion and I tend to just read the highlighted ones from Michael or the other authors. On the other hand, comment reply threads are unwieldy, take up too much space and somehow fail to mirror forum discussions. Alternatively, outsourcing comments to a third party is just not an elegant or attractive solution for most people.

I feel that commenting systems on blogs need to evolve some more. Some blogs have decided to spin off comments to forums. Others have moved their comments to external services such as Disqus. Yet others like TechCrunch move comments to a linked forum for further discussion after the post has become somewhat stale.

What do forums have that comment threads on blogs do not? Are paged comments a good idea? Should comments threads be pruned by type? Are you more willing to participate in a forum discussion than post a comment on a blog? If that is the case, how could we enhance commenting on blogs to mimic the reader involvement of forums?

I don’t think there is a single right answer. However, I do consider our readers’ comments to be the lifeline of our blogs and shy away from shipping them off elsewhere. That being said, Disqus and Intense Debate have the right idea but the execution takes away from blog ownership. Comment editing and tagging, and comment to post and comment to commenter relationships need a lot more TLC if comments are to become as ubiquitous and as widely used as forum posts. Gravatars go a long way in bringing those relationships closer to a global audience but more needs to be done.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the present state of comments in the blogosphere. Did you come across a commenting system that bridges some of these gaps? Was there some feature that stuck with you or made you go Hmmm? What would make commenting less of a hurdle for you?

Good day. I am Ajay D’Souza. I blog at http://ajaydsouza.com/ and http://techtites.com/. Those of you who have been following this blog for more than a year may remember my daily release posts as well as the A-Plugin-A-Day series. MBA life has kept me busy since then, but that’s another story.

As part of my new assignment out here, I’ll be looking after the Plugin Competition. I’ll be maintaining the WordPress Plugin Competition Blog as well as making weekly posts both here and at the Competition Blog.

With the WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 beginning today, I thought I’d just write in with a few tips on making your entry.

Firstly, read the rules to be followed are listed in the post. Please make sure that your entry does not break any of them.

Getting Inspired

One of the important rules that we have is that the plugins should be new, i.e. no updates to already existing plugins. One great place to get inspired is WordPress Ideas. WordPress Ideas is a place where the people from the WordPress Community, both users and developers vote for what they would like included in WordPress. Some have been implemented, while some may actually appear in future versions and still others that may not be. So, why not make a plugin to accommodate for the latter two?

You can also hunt for ideas in these posts or this posting in our News Forum.

Offering the plugin for download

Something that many authors forget in their zeal to develop a plugin (or a theme) is its documentation.

Firstly, make sure your plugin zip file contains a readme.txt. If needed, include a full fledged help section as well. You can also put this on the plugin release page on your site.

Next, create a separate page on your blog / site dedicated for the plugin. Posts are a no-no! They get lost in the crowd.

Make sure the page has the following:

• Overview
• Requirements
• Features
• Installation Instructions
• Download Link
• License
• Method to get support

When linking to the download file, one method I follow is to link to a file without any version etc. e.g. it reads simply pluginname.zip. The purpose of this is that I can always update the zip file with the latest version of the plugin without bothering to change the link.

Old versions of the plugin can be archived as pluginname_v1.0.zip, pluginname_v1.1.zip and so on.

Sending it to us

You’ll need to send your plugin to us via email. We will reveal the email address that you need to send the plugins to in the second month of the competition.

The competition is on for another two months, which gives you plenty of time to release a feature rich plugin.

Before that, release a well tested version to the public. Fix any bugs that come up, try to provide more features as requested.

The WordPress community is demanding and extremely helpful at guiding you down your path.

All the best for now.

To the WordPress Community

I’m sure you’ll love the competition and many of the plugins that stem from it. Authors are always hunting for ideas and who better to tell them than you. Please feel free to post your ideas in the comments section below.

Or, you can also post them in any of these two posts or this posting in our News Forum.

If you would like to sponsor a prize or donate some money to the competition, please contact us. Lots of eyes see these competitions and your encouragement goes a long way in helping provide incentives.

Stay tuned and please help spread the word.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a WordPress plugin. One of my goals was to have fancy and relevant error messages.

I contemplated writing my own error manager, and even began a very basic one. I experienced hurdle after hurdle, and finally I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t WordPress have its own error manager also?”

So I did a quick source-code search and came across the WP_Error class.

One of the hurdles I ran into in creating my own error manager was error localization. The WP_Error class makes localizing error messages extremely simple.

Adding Error Messages

To add an error message, the first thing you’ll want to do is instantiate your own instance of WP_Error.

$myErrors = new WP_Error();

The next step is to add in your error messages.

$myErrors->add('access_denied', __('You do not have permission to do that.',$myLocalizationName));

There are a few things to notice here. There is something called an error code, which you will use to look up the full error message. You also have the full error message, which uses the __ function for localization.

Retrieving Error Messages

After you have added in your error messages, you’ll want to retrieve them at some point.

Retrieving an error message is as simple as calling the get_error_message method and passing it your error code.

$errorMessage = $myErrors->get_error_message($code);

From there you can echo out your message in whatever manner suits you.

Applications

Using the WP_Error class is ideal for those with themes and plugins.

For plugins, it’s best to have your errors as a member of a class. Using the class approach assures that you can access the errors throughout your methods, and also avoid naming conflicts.

For themes, you can also create your own class, or have a prefixed variable so you don’t have possible conflicts with other variables.

Downloadable and Example Code

Here is some downloadable code with an example of how the class might be used in a theme. As stated earlier, plugin authors may want to use a class for this.

The code is assumed to be placed in a theme’s “functions.php” file.

class my_class {
	function my_class() {
		$this->localizionName = '';
		$this->errors = new WP_Error();
		$this->initialize_errors();
	}
	/* get_error - Returns an error message based on the passed code
	Parameters - $code (the error code as a string)
	Returns an error message */
	function get_error($code = '') {
		$errorMessage = $this->errors->get_error_message($code);
		if ($errorMessage == null) {
			return __("Unknown error.", $this->localizionName);
		}
		return $errorMessage;
	}
	/* Initializes all the error messages */
	function initialize_errors() {
		$this->errors->add('my_weird_error', __('Some weird error has occurred', $myLocalizationName));
		$this->errors->add('access_denied', __('You do not have permission to do that.',$myLocalizationName));
	} //end function initialize_errors
}
$myErrors = new my_class();
echo $myErrors->get_error('my_weird_error');

The above code has two helper methods, one which retrieves the errors, and one which initializes the errors. The example is very basic, but should give you a good idea on how to use the WP_Error class.

Conclusion

There are many features of the WP_Error class not mentioned here, but you can dissect the code yourself if you like. The class is found in the wp-includes folder under classes.php.

The WP_Error class is a simple and powerful way to store errors, and output them rather easily. And the best thing, the messages can be localized.

Not too long ago, a new plugin was released called WP-Crontrol. WP-Crontrol allows you to take control over what is happening in the WP-Cron system.

WP-Cron is a tangle of black magic that allows a plugin developer or a user to schedule commands to be executed. WP-Crontrol is a plugin that lets a blog owner see through that magic and figure out what’s actually going on

If you want a detailed introduction to this plugin as well as an explanation as to how to use this plugin in conjunction with WP Database Backup to create backups when you want them, be sure to check out this article: Add a new WordPress backup schedule with WP-Crontrol

Also on the radar today is a quick fix for the WordPress 2.5.x image uploader. Awsom.org is reporting that there is a no-flash plugin that is available which returns the previous image upload function from earlier versions of WordPress.

When it comes to exporting, WordPress already does a wonderful job with it’s support to export posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. However, there is a problem. The WordPress exporter lacks granularity. What I mean by this is that, the exporter covers the entire blog instead of being able to select certain categories to export. I’ve searched the WordPress Plugin database high and low to look for a plugin that would specifically export categories and I could not find one. I did manage to come across two techniques though that get the job done.

There are two ways to export specific categories. The first is to read this forum post where HandySolo explains how to use the category RSS feed to export specific categories from a self hosted blog to a WordPress.com blog. The problem with this method is that, none of the meta data attached to the posts are carried over with the posts.

The second method is not pretty but it gets the job done. What I ended up doing was creating a new user account on my blog. I then used the post manager and filtered the posts by the category for which I wanted to export. I went through each individual post and quickly changed the post author from the original account, to the newly created user account. In my case, I had to do this to 25 individual posts. What is annoying about this method is that, when you save a post under a new author name, any blogs or posts that you have linked to within those posts will end up resending PINGs. However, I believe if you turn off this setting under the SETTINGS-DISCUSSION link in your administration panel this will prevent that from happening. Just remember to turn that back on after you’re finished.

After all of the posts within the category have been reassigned to a new author, you are ready to export. In your WordPress administration panel browse to MANAGE - EXPORT. Now here is the important step. Underneath where it says OPTIONS, you have a drop down box where you can restrict the export to a certain author.

In the drop down box, select the newly created author and click on the DOWNLOAD EXPORT FILE and a WordPress WXR file will be downloaded to your desktop. This file will contain all of the posts from the category you wanted to export because the new user you created was assigned to only those posts within that category. This method actually allows you to export specific categories while maintaining the meta data associated with those posts such as comments and tags.

This is probably not the best way to obtain these results but it’s the only method that I’ve found that allows me to export specific posts/categories while still having all of the other data attached to those posts. If you have a better solution or know of a plugin that can obtain the same results, I’d be very interested to know about it.

Woopra was opened up to the world at the Dallas WordCamp where I met John for the first time. His talk was not on Woopra but he introduced it to the event in a very short, three minute spiel. Since then Woopra has generated a tremendous amount of buzz in blogging circles. In short, Woopra is a stats tool for websites that lives as an application on your desktop (among other places) and can provide live webstats on your visitors. I like it since it is fast and since the developers gave me an opportunity to look at the insides early on, I have developed quite a fondness for it. They are in growth mode and with the recent upgrade to their desktop client, they can support more locations and are in the process of approving a large number of new users for their service.

All of that being said, with my previous knowledge of Woopra and its capabilities, I was literally floored this afternoon by a flood of new “stuff” that I had either completely missed or capabilities that were added in this new release. So if you are a Woopra user (or if you are not, just sign up), pull up a chair, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and read on. This is pretty cool.

All of the following assumes that you have an active Woopra account, are using WordPress, have the WordPress plugin installed and have the Woopra application (1.1.1.0) installed on your machine.

• With Woopra, and the Woopra WordPress Plugin, you can monitor all your registered users and all your commenters. This sounds obvious/relatively mundane until you install the plugin on your WordPress blog and create an event notification on the application. Follow the bouncing ball.
  • Open up your Woorpa application, click on the manage tab on the left and then click on Create a new Event Notification.
  • Then type in “Known Visitors” into the label box, click Next.
  • On the next window, click and activate the checkbox next to “Visitor is tagged or is a member” and click next until you come to the “Edit Notification’s look and feel” screen.
  • Here click on the “Notification’s Icon” dropdown to click on “visitor’s Avatar” and then paste the following in the “Custom notification message” box: Visitor %NAME% is viewing %PAGETITLE% Then click on Apply Notification button

  Now you will receive a notification on your desktop whenever a registered user or a user who has left a comment, visits your blog. This gets even cooler when you notice their gravatar shows up on the notification and you are now able to track these known visitors are they traverse through your blog. You can even choose to initiate a web chat with these visitors through the Woopra application. The chat shows up on their browser. This is cool and scary at the same time.

• Another cool new tool I discovered today was the little map of the world on the top left corner of the “live” tab. Now I had noticed the map there but had not looked into it much. Look for a small arrow on the top right corner of that map. Once you click on that arrow, the map opens up to a full screen view and now you are able to use your mouses’ scroll wheel to zoom in on any part of the map and use your cursor to identify users. I could spend hours doing this on a busy day.
• I had noticed the small column of labels at the top right hand corner of the Woopra desktop application but had not paid much attention to it. The lowest item on that list is called “live” and once clicked it shows the number of  users on your blog on a moving bar graph, much like whos.amung.us
• The analytics tab has a bunch of hidden gems. Some newer features were also added to the items on this tab. Click on the Analytics tab on the Woopra application and look for the following:
  • The “referrers” tab now has a few new subtabs. They include regular stats stuff like webpages, domains and search engines. But now this tab also include Feed Readers, Emails, Social Bookmarks, Social Networks, Media, News and Communities. Each one of these intrigued me and the I was taken aback by the breakdowns of referrals from various applications. The Email tab gave me the most food for thought. If your blog has email readers or you publish regular newletters via email, this tab could help you identify reader populations from various email services. Clicking on the graph part of the display brings up a historical view.
  • The “pages” tab breaks up visitors by subdirectories. With WordPress’ permalinks, you can now determine how hard your yearly archives are working for you. Apparently, over a thousand people looked at my archives from 2003 this week. As your data grows, this tab could contain breakdowns by tag, by author and any other permalink features that you have enabled through your blog. I wonder why our WordPress tag is so popular?
  • The last tab to point out is “systems”. Now this data can be mundane and almost all stats programs offer some sort of systems breakdown. Woopra adds to this functionality by letting you find permutations of systems options. This blog receives more Chinese speaking, Internet Explorer 6 users on Windows XP than any other language. I will be using that information to my advantage, I am sure you can find your particular niche to help or enhance.

Woopra is a great tool. It is even better with these little tidbits. There are literally thousands of different ways to enhance your stats and understand your reader population better. I have just outlined a few that I had completely missed till today.

Have you found any cool new tricks for Woopra that you would like to share?

Although there were over 80 security/bug fixes in WordPress 2.5.1, there was one thing that crept up immediately following the release. According to numerous reports by individuals and a ticket filed in the WordPress Trac when a user resets their password, the password reset link received in the email does not work. The error message that is received looks like this “Sorry, that key does not appear to be valid.”

This bug has already been fixed and will be included in WordPress 2.5.2. However, if you are having issues with the reset link right now, you can read this post by Ryan McCue on how to Reset your WP Password Manually through phpMyAdmin.

[EDIT] Ryan has included the files which contain the patch that you can download here

I had this interesting thought which I am sure can be easily defeated but definitely points towards the success of WordPress.

I was searching the web for something inconspicuous as the “iWrap” and I came upon some interesting results. While browsing the results and then switching back to the search results page, I realized that the first page had at least three results that were either related to WordPress or were on a WordPress blog. I repeated the search for completely inane search terms and had at least one result show up on every search I performed from a blog that used WordPress as the blogging tool. I have had this happen in the past with various other queries but had not quite put two and two together. So my hypothesis is that a WordPress blog or a link that is somehow related to WordPress, shows up on the first page of results on every search performed on Google.

Do you have a search term or phrase that proves otherwise?

[EDIT] Since there seems to be some that do not, conversely, what percentage of search results do you think has WordPress in the first page of results?

The results for the Webware 100 have been released. WordPress.org along with WordPress.com have taken home the award for best publisher. Congratulations to the team at Automattic, the core developers of WordPress.org and last but not least, thanks to all of you who voted and continue to use and support WordPress on a daily basis.

Those of you who have been wanting a Technology conference to visit the South Eastern United States are now in luck. The event is called South By Deep South and is a take on the familiar South by South West conference. The event will be held in Birmingham, Alabama on September 26th-28th. The final details of the event are still being worked out but Ike Pigott has already let us know some of what we can expect from this event:

• Social Media/PR/Marketing
• Web development
• A full-blown WordCamp

In case you missed it, that last one says WordCamp. Personally, I thought Atlanta, Georgia would of been the first city in the South Eastern United States to get a WordCamp event, but it looks like I was wrong. Ike also notes that there will be a SideWalk Festival that will be taking place during the same weekend.

I’m really glad to see these WordCamp events making there way east rather than being confined to silicon valley. As a matter of fact, WordCamps are starting to crop up everywhere, and that is a good thing!

So, who is looking forward to this event and will you be lucky enough to attend?

If you cannot see, the video, please visit this link: Absolute Comments - Video Plugin Review

Today’s WordPress Plugin video review is of Absolute Comments by PlanetOzh.

Video Summary: Absolute Comments is a major improvement over the WordPress 2.5 Comments Panel. The plugin allows you to reply to comments easily without having to visit a post. The plugin also allows you to view all comments for a particular post. An immense timesaver.

Pros: Major improvement over the existing WordPress 2.5 comments panel. The plugin makes it easy to reply to comments.

Cons: None, although it would be nice if there was a way to change the default reply text (or have several options) in the admin-panel without having to edit the plugin’s code.

If you think your WordPress plugin will merit itself to a video review, please get in contact with me via e-mail (ronalfy+wltc @ gmail dot com). Please keep in mind I will not review premium plugins.

For more videos, please check out our brand new video website at Weblog Tools Videos.

One question I come across a lot regarding custom fields is how to only retrieve posts based on a custom field.

For example, if a post has a custom field of “MyData”, someone might want to only retrieve that particular post.

The WordPress Codex has a technique for retrieving posts based on custom fields, which consists of writing your own query and going through the results.

The technique in the Codex is good, but I’ve found a re-usable way one can retrieve only posts with certain custom fields.

The technique I use makes use of two custom functions placed in a theme’s “functions.php” and a custom WordPress Loop.

Let’s get started — The “functions.php” file

First, let’s place the two custom functions in the “functions.php” file. This file should be in your theme directory, but if it isn’t there, you can create one using any text editor.

Here are the two functions below:

function get_custom_field_posts_join($join) {
	global $wpdb, $customFields;
	return $join . "  JOIN $wpdb->postmeta postmeta ON (postmeta.post_id = $wpdb->posts.ID and postmeta.meta_key in ($customFields)) ";
}
function get_custom_field_posts_group($group) {
	global $wpdb;
	$group .= " $wpdb->posts.ID ";
	return $group;
}

The function “get_custom_field_posts_join” makes use of an advanced WordPress filter called “posts_join“. Each time posts are called, you can add on extra MySQL parameters using filters. In this case, I add on an option to find certain postmeta. Please note the use of a global variable called “customFields“, which I’ll explain a bit later.

The function “get_custom_field_posts_group” makes use of another advanced WordPress filter called “posts_group“. This is used to avoid duplicate entries in our return query.

Now Let’s Work on Our Loop

After the two functions are placed in the “functions.php” file, it’s time to work on placing the appropriate code into one of our template files.

For this example, I’ll be modifying the “sidebar.php” file in the WordPress default theme. You could place the below code in any of your theme files, however.

<?php /* Begin Custom Field Posts */ ?>
<h2>Custom Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php
global $customFields;
$customFields = "'Links', 'MyData'"; //Comma seperated 's1', 's2', 's3'

The first part of the code deals with establishing the structure of the output. You really could do anything you want here.

Please note the use of the global variable “customFields“. What we’re doing here is setting up a comma-separated variable that will be used to search for our custom fields. The “customFields” variable is used in the “get_custom_field_posts_join” function.

In this example, it is assumed we want to find posts with custom fields of “Links” and “MyData“.

Custom Fields - Links and MyData

The next bit of code instantiates a new instance of WP_Query and runs a query to return some posts.

$customPosts = new WP_Query();
add_filter('posts_join', 'get_custom_field_posts_join');
add_filter('posts_groupby', 'get_custom_field_posts_group');
$customPosts->query('showposts=5' );//Uses same parameters as query_posts
remove_filter('posts_join', 'get_custom_field_posts_join');
remove_filter('posts_groupby', 'get_custom_field_posts_group');

Note the use of the “add_filter” and “remove_filter” functions. Since we are doing a post query, we can tap into the query and add our own parameters. So before the query is initiated, two query-type filters are added, and after the query is initiated, the two filters are deactivated since we only want them run once.

This last bit of code initiates our custom loop, gets the custom values, spits them out, and ends the loop.

while ($customPosts->have_posts()) : $customPosts->the_post();
$links = get_post_custom_values("Links");
$data =  get_post_custom_values("MyData");
?>
<li><a href='<?php echo $links[0]; ?>'><?php echo $data[0]; ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>
<?php /* End Custom Field Posts */ ?>

The “get_post_custom_values” WordPress function returns an array of matching keys. It’s assumed there is only one key per post, which is why we echo out the first value (Ex: echo $links[0]).

The Full Post Code

Here is the full post code. The only thing you need to change for your own use is the custom fields needed (change the customFields text) and what type of output is desired within our custom loop.

<?php /* Begin Custom Field Posts */ ?>
<h2>Custom Posts</h2>
<ul>
<?php
global $customFields;
$customFields = "'Links', 'MyData'"; //Comma seperated 's1', 's2', 's3'
$customPosts = new WP_Query();
add_filter('posts_join', 'get_custom_field_posts_join');
add_filter('posts_groupby', 'get_custom_field_posts_group');
$customPosts->query('showposts=5' );//Uses same parameters as query_posts
remove_filter('posts_join', 'get_custom_field_posts_join');
remove_filter('posts_groupby', 'get_custom_field_posts_group');
while ($customPosts->have_posts()) : $customPosts->the_post();
$links = get_post_custom_values("Links");
$data =  get_post_custom_values("MyData");
?>
<li><a href='<?php echo $links[0]; ?>'><?php echo $data[0]; ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>
<?php /* End Custom Field Posts */ ?>

Custom Field Output

Downloadable Code

The full code mentioned in this post is available for download. Within the “zip” file are a sample “functions.php” and “sidebar.php“.

• Downloadable Code for Posts and Custom Fields

Conclusion

With the above technique, you can do some pretty fancy stuff. For example, you can only retrieve posts with custom images for a nice magazine effect.

If you have any questions regarding the code, I’ll do my best to answer them in the comments.

Julien of Webinventif has created a shortcode generator for WordPress. Shortcode is like BBcode in that it provides the ability to use shortcuts to execute a block of code, rather than having to write out the block of code time and time again. Julien has made use of the new API calls within WordPress and with his shortcode generator, makes it easy as 1,2,3 to create your own custom shortcode. Although everything has been written in French, this generator looks promising. If anyone could translate this generator into English, I think there would be many WordPresser’s who would be grateful.

Here is a screencast showcasing the generator in action.

Shortcode generator from WebInventif.fr on Vimeo

Vulnerable WordPress Blogs Not Being Indexed: Technorati has decided to not index vulnerable and exploited WordPress blogs. This comes after the recent spat of hacks that were discovered on various high profile blogs and websites. What was even more interesting was the fact that some of these hacks and exploitations might have come from covert and encrypted code hidden in various themes available for free over the web. The moral of this story is that you need to upgrade your WordPress blog now to WordPress 2.5.

Just so that everyone is aware, WordPress 2.5 is the latest stable version and this should be the version that everyone should upgrade to. Any older versions leaves you vulnerable. [EDIT] As mentioned on the legacy 2.0 page, WordPress 2.0.11 is the latest stable download with all the latest security fixes for the 2.0 branch. However, WordPress 2.5 is still the latest and the greatest and should be everyones upgrade target.

As for themes, if you feel that the theme you are using might be suspect of something strange, just disable it and get something else. I suggest you download themes from the original author’s website/blog and stay away from any theme that has an encrypted footer (though that would be hard to determine without looking at the code). At weblogtoolscollection.com we try our darnest to link directly to theme authors for the download.

Technorati is just the beginning. If your blog has spammy links, has covert hidden pages or links, is used for nefarious purposes, even without your knowledge, you are being penalized by the search engines. We are going to put together a post on how to figure out if your blog is hacked/exploited, clean up your blog if it is hacked, get your blog back to order, find spammy pages if they do exist and how to get your blog re-indexed. In the meantime, if you know of a good resource, please let us know and we will add it to the post.

Today is a good day to upgrade to WordPress 2.5

This might be the last WordCamp Dallas 2008 post you see on this blog and since that is the case, better to go out with a bang! In case you were one of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a chance to attend the conference live, the good news is that there were plenty of attendees blogging, vlogging, and live blogging the event. I present to you a list of links which will correspond to the conference schedule.

Matt Mullenweg discussing WordPress 2.5 and beyond. Actually, he announced the redesign of WordPress.org along with the release of 2.5.

John Pozadzides presented his 45 ways to power up your blog.

After Lunch, Jonathan Bailey gave us the lowdown on content theft and protection along with a number of other things that bloggers of any platform would be interested in. Jonathan has also published the slides for his presentation on his own blog which can be viewed here.

Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell shared their experience with using WordPress for powering their websites.

Liz Strauss gave a presentation that was titled, C’mon, Let’s Talk! which dealt with building influence and interaction with blogging. You can check out her full presentation here.

Lorelle VanFossen stepped up to the plate and shared her WordPress Power Tips. Her presentation can be viewed here.

The next day of the event featured a live recording of the WordPress Podcast. The full video of this presentation is now online at WeblogToolsVideos.com.

The next panel was by Chris Smith who went over SEO for Bloggers. The link to the Natural Search Blog contains a link to the presentation that Chris Smith gave the attendees.

Aaron Brazell offered up an extensive presentation called WordPress FAQ. The FAQ answers questions such as can you have too many tags, what is the GPL, and the explanation of hooks. The end of the presentation takes questions from the attendees.

A panel that I particularly found interesting was the Business of blogging session featuring Liz Strauss, Mark Ghosh, Matt Mullenweg and Aaron Brazell. A ton of interesting points and conversations took place during the session and I thought it was one of the highlights of the event. Check out the ustream video that Mark Rizzn of Mashable.com recorded here.

Last but not least, Jacob Santos closed out the event with his presentation on Testing With WordPress. I have yet to see any videos posted of his session but he goes over it in more detail here.

For those that have yet to see what this thing called Woopra is all about, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV interviews John Pozadzides and gives you the low down.

Today’s WordPress Plugin video review is of Admin Favicon by John Kolbert.

Video Summary: Admin Favicon is a plugin for those who have a lot of open tabs and would like to use a Favicon to show using the WordPress Administrative Panels.

Pros: Extremely simple to use and quite useful for those who have a lot of open tabs in their browser. Very light-weight script.

Cons: None. Admin Favicon is not ideal for those who use desktop publishers or browsers without tabbed support.

If you would like your own plugin reviewed, please get in contact with me via e-mail (ronalfy+wltc @ gmail dot com). Please keep in mind I will not review premium plugins.

For more videos, please check out our brand new video website at Weblog Tools Videos.