Spam is not limited to just comments. If you leave your WordPress blog open to new user registration, you could be hit by a wave of spam bots or rather nefarious individuals registering with hopes that you’ll give them a chance to post spam on your blog. First of all, do you really need open registration? If not, uncheck “Anyone can register” from the Settings area of your Dashboard. So, what if you need open registration? First, stop the bad bots from even visiting your blog with Bad Behavior. Now, you could certainly use a CAPTCHA on your registration form, but I wouldn’t bother with that. Several CAPTCHA have been broken by a simple program, and they just aren’t accessible. Instead, use Ban Hammer, which compares registration email addresses with your comment blacklist (just add them if you notice a trend) and the collective blacklist at Stop Forum Spam. Like […]

New plugins ChimpExpress allows you to create MailChimp campaigns from within WordPress and include blog posts or import recent campaigns. Updated plugins WP Customer Reviews allows your customers and visitors to leave reviews or testimonials of your services. WP Tweet Button easily and fully implements Twitter’s official Tweet Button on your WordPress blog or site.

WordPress 3.1 has been released. This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so you’re never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options. All together, this release fixes more than 820 issues. Users can upgrade automatically via their Dashboard or use the manual instructions. As always, please contact the WordPress Support Forums if you run into any trouble. Now that WordPress 3.1 has been released, the core developers plan 3.2  to be a shorter development cycle,  “and include some fun improvements […]

So, you’ve just switched from the default WordPress permalink structure and now your permalinks are returning Not Found (404) errors, or you didn’t do anything at all and they’re return the error. First, there could have been a momentary glitch, so try re-saving your permalink structure at Settings/Permalinks in your admin panel. If WordPress cannot automatically edit the .htaccess file, it will provide manual instructions after saving. If that doesn’t work, contact your hosting provider and find out if mod_rewite is installed and active on your server. If it isn’t, refer to this guide for some tips on using permalinks without mod_rewrite, or find yourself a nice Apache-based server with mod_rewrite. Permalinks are a finicky thing. They’ll either work right away, if you re-save, and if you use a work-around, otherwise they just won’t work at all. If you’re still having trouble, contact the WordPress Support Forums for more assistance.

Dusk Till Dawn is an atmospheric WordPress theme with a tropical feel, containing a toggleable widgetbar, a custom multilevel menu and some css3 features. Martin is a black, green and white multi layout theme with a customizable background, custom header, custom navigation menus, widget ready sidebars and footer widget blocks.

If you attempted to upload an audio or video file to a post in WordPress, you may notice that all you get is a link to download the file. If you want the file to actually play, you’ll need to use an extra plugin. By far, the most popular audio plugin is WordPress Audio Player. Video plugins are significantly less popular, probably because video files take up so much space and bandwidth, and it’s so easy to embed videos from external providers. When embedding audio and video, I prefer to use the Degradable HTML5 Audio and Video Plugin. Sure, it may require some file conversion, but it’s a great way to embed both audio and video files that use the browser’s native (non-Flash) player while also providing the option of a Flash-based player for browsers that don’t support HTML5 embeds. If you’d rather embed videos from an external provider, it’s […]

New plugins PressTags is a network for WordPress bloggers designed to help you discover relevant posts written by other WordPress bloggers. rootsPersona provides WordPress users with a simple tool for displaying their family trees in WordPress pages/posts. Updated plugins AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button helps people share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious, and well over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites.

If you’re just starting out with WordPress, you’ve probably made a few mistakes. Don’t let that discourage you! As core developer Andrew Nacin briefly explained at WordCamp Phoenix 2011, he has made plenty of mistakes too. Plus, you just have to love the visual evidence proving the he really does sleep only an hour a week.