Long story short, our Weblog Tools Videos has had some major spam issues recently and we have taken action to try and prevent this deluge of spam. Thanks to Otto for the heads up on that. In this mess, we have also had a couple of content generators complain that their videos, hosted on sites such as DailyMotion and YouTube, were used on Weblog Tools Videos without their explicit consent. This got me thinking about the possible ramifications embedding videos on a blog or website. I could not find any permission or license information on the pages where the allegedly infringed videos were hosted and so I assumed that we should remove the videos, which we did. If the video page allows embedding, does that constitute implicit permission to post it elsewhere? Is there copyright and license information buried within the agreement that users electronically sign on uploading to YouTube? Do […]

This morning, I read a refreshing post by Justin Tadlock on his personal blog which does a wonderful job explaining the roles and capabilities system in WordPress. See, Justin is working on a fancy new plugin which will make creating new roles and assigning capabilities to those roles easy as 1-2-3. It’s a good thing to know how a system works before you tinker around with it. While I know there is a Codex article dedicated to roles and capabilities, the way Justin explained the system illuminated a number of light bulbs in my head. It all makes sense to me now and it doesn’t seem as overly complex as I originally thought. Please give the article a read for yourself and not only provide Justin with some feedback, but I’m wondering if his explanation helped anyone else?

Stats – Stats – Stats.  They can drive everything for your WordPress site.  They can help you understand how visitors move around your site; how they got there in the first place; what are the most popular posts they are visiting; what browser and OS they are using. The list can go on and on. I have spent a lot of time over the last few months looking for just the right plug-in to track stats on my WindowsObserver.com website and I think I may have hit the mother lode with my most recent discovery. CyStats is written by Michael Weingaertner and has been downloaded from the WordPress.org Extend directory 32,435 times over the 23 months it has been available there. The last update was last October so it would be nice to see an update however, it works just fine with the current release of WordPress (2.8.4). According to […]

Eximius Eximius is a three column WordPress theme with left and right Sidebars. This free theme is widget-ready and SEO optimized. With simple yet elegant looks, Eximius is a very lightweight theme and loads quite fast in any browser. The two Sidebars can accommodate Wide Skyscraper Ads (160×600). Eximius has a textured navigation menu bar with integrated search box. Persephone Persephone is a WordPress theme, two-column, dark background, with a right sidebar, compatible with WordPress version 2.7 upwards, and all ready for paged and threaded comments. 3 styles to choose from – good old blue, red, green… F2 F2 is a fast loading fluid width theme for WordPress. Customizable header, any of the two sidebars can be optionally turned off, and much more options in the settings page. Compatible with WordPress 2.8 and above. Visiting Card A quick mini site with links to social networking sites. The theme comes with […]

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EDIT: For those that missed out on this opportunity, go to Weblog Tools Collection Schwag to get one for yourself. So I was decking out my laptop with stickers the other day and realized that I really miss having a Weblog Tools Collection laptop sticker. So I got in touch with a few vendors and come upon Sticker Giant who were great to work with. Now that I have a sticker for my own laptop, I have many others left on the roll and I am itching to give them away. So if you want a Weblog Tools Collection laptop sticker for free, please fill out the form (closed, reached max. number) and we will send a few out for you ASAP. Since postage is kind of expensive, if you missed this round and would still like one, we will have more of these sticker giveaways in the future and if […]

New Plugins WP Paging Unlike many other page navigation plugins, this one is based on a core page number function called paginate_links. WordPress use this function for the page numbers in wp-admin. If it’s good enough to use in WordPress core, it’s good enough right? Gravatar Box Gravatars are great. But many people don’t have them. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when a user was filling in the comments form, the page could automatically detect and show a users gravatar, if they have one? Or even better, show a sign up link if they don’t have one? Fast and Secure Contact Form Fast and Secure Contact Form for WordPress. The contact form lets your visitors send you a quick email message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Includes a CAPTCHA. Does not require JavaScript. Easy and Quick 3 step install. Import CSV Import CSV or […]

Display Thumbnails For Related Posts in WordPress: I have been a huge fan of related posts in blogs for some time. They really help your readers by drawing them into the conversation and increase stickiness of your blog. WordPress.com has a similar feature with related posts from various other blog on the network. Variations of the related posts plugins include our very own “Where did they go from here?” plugin and more centralized version such as the Waypath service. The tutorial linked above explains one way to add thumbnails to your related post links in order to draw your readers attention to the links. The method is not as automated as I would like it to be and does require a few bits of code that is provided but I believe it can really help keep readers on your blog longer. I remember when small pictures were added next to […]