I’ve just upgraded all my blogs, installing the new Wordpress 2.7 which seems to be fantastic! This is a review of the new Wordpress script.

First of all, I can say that Wordpress 2.7 has a new interface which, in my opinion, is better in terms of usability and design than the previous interfaces used on the older Wordpress scripts. You wouldn’t notice the changes looking outside-in, but inside-out. The admin panel got a very clean and modern look which reminds me of the operation system called Macintosh. Here’s how the new Wordpress 2.7 admin panel looks like (click on the picture for maximizing it):

What I like about Wordpress 2.7

I personally switched from Wordpress 2.2.1 (I know, I’m oldschool!) so obviously I had a big shock because the things are very different from what I was used with, but I addapted quickly to the new design because many things are now just much better! A new feature I really like is called “Screen Options”. What it basically does is to show or not show different things on the dashboard, things like “Right Now” (which is a short summary of your blog), “Recent Comments”, “Incoming Links”, “Plugins”, “QuickPress”, “Recent Drafts”, “Wordpress Development Blog”, “Other wordpress news”, you know, in general stuff that was before too but you couldn’t do anything about them. You aren’t interested in let’s say “Other wordpress news”? No problem at all, you won’t see that box any much longer! Another cool feature is that you can now drag the boxes and arrange them the way you like. To do this you must click and hold while moving the boxes.

Did you know that wordpress can be a feedreader too? Sure thing! You can now get the latest articles of your favorite blog right into your wordpress dashboard.

What I don’t like at wordpress 2.7

There are only few things I didn’t like. For example, I am a person who should wear glasses, so I would liked it more if the font was a little bit bigger in the “New Post” page. Another aspect that I didn’t really like is still related to my eyes. Although the new design is clean and modern, there seems to be too much gray and my eyes are hurt. I would add some more blue.

Conclusion

All in all, Wordpress 2.7 is great, and I again recommend you to try it. This way you’ll experience something new, something that will make you be proud of wordpress, and you will stay up to date with the latest security updates.

How do I upgrade?

Very simple! All you need to do is to download the new script from here, access your ftp, delete the old “wp-admin” and “wp-includes” folders, and then copy all the new wordpress files (skipping wp-content because there are your themes, pictures, plugins, and you don’t want to lose that), overwriting the old ones. If you encounter any problems, feel free to add a comment here, telling what happened and I will try to help you.

A very essential part of blog optimization is making it be a comfortable place for your old, faithful readers and even the new ones. I’m sure you agree with me that font size is a tricky part, on the internet, there are different opinions about how big or how small a font should be in order not to cause pain to the eyes.

I came across so many blogs and websites that had some really nice articles which could be a great read, but there was a major problem. The font size was too small for my eyes, so I couldn’t read anything. There were 2 possibilities: copy the text in a word processor and make the font bigger in order to read it without problems or just simply hit the x button and close the window. There are 99% chances that you would choose option number two (closing the window), and that’s exactly what I did. In other terms, this means money loss, high bounce rate, big decrease in the subscribers number, and more bad things for the one who tried to write a good article.

The best thing you can do is to install a plugin on your blog that will display a button on every article, a button that allows the reader to make the font smaller or bigger, according to his tastes. Luckily, if you are on wordpress, a smart coder made a very nice plugin called “WP-chgFontSize” which can be downloaded from here. Once the plugin was download, here are the installation steps, according to the author:

2. Decompress and upload the contents of the archive into /wp-content/plugins/.
3. Activate the plugin on your WP Admin > Plugins page by clicking ‘Activate’ at the end of the ‘WP-chgFontSize’ row.
4. Configure the plugin on your WP Admin > Options > Font Size page.
5. To use it, there are two possibilities:
* If your theme supports widgets, and you have installed the [widget plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets/) or you are using Wordpress 2.2 or higher, add the ‘WP-chgFontSize’ widget on your WP Admin > Presentation > Widgets page.
* Add `<?php chgfontsize_display_options(); ?>` at the place in the theme’s file where you want the font size selection appear.

Regarding step 5, I personally chose the second option and it looks like this (click on the photo to make it bigger):

Again, I really recommend you to use this plugin which will definitely make happy some of your readers. If any problem occurs during installation, feel free to add a comment here telling what the problem seems to be and I’ll be glad to help.

This is a list of some young guys that changed the internet with their great ideas. What would you do without them?

1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

They made “Google” in 1998, when they were only 24. Their first “desk” was located in a garage, and after a while they became the owners of a great empire making billions of dollars per year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wordpress is making five years, five years of intense blogging! There was a long but beautiful way from the first release - 0.7.

If you want to celebrate this with other bloggers, then you should rush to the wordpress birthday party that will take place in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM.

For more details check this link.

Many thanks to Matt Mullenweg, the genius behind the Wordpress blogging platform!

This is an interesting wordpress plugin. What it does? Well, when you mouseover a commentator name, something will appear, showing you some information about the person. Here’s a screenshot:

I find it very useful because I always like to keep in touch with the commentators of my blog, a blog is nothing without its commentators. Using this plugin, you could actually track their activity on your blog.

Comment info tip can be downloaded from here.

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We all know that Google can do miracles for your blog and it’s quite easy to get some free targeted traffic to your blog. I think that many of you heard about the seo plugin for wordpress but don’t use it the right way.

Well, I think that you already know how to install it, just download it, and then upload it on the host in the folder wp-content/plugins. After that log into the admin area, go to “plugins” section and activate it.

Ok, you will notice something new at the “write post” section, under the writing box. Here’s a screenshot:

Now, let’s go a little back, at “options - > all in one seo”. There, make sure that “Use Categories for META keywords box” is not checked.

After doing that, everything is easy. At “Title” you should introduce the title of the article (many bloggers say that writing the title in capital letters may get you a better rank in google, but I personally don’t like all the title to be written in capital letters). At “Keywords” you should write some keywords related to the article, and at “Description” I generally write some keywords too. You can leave it blank, but writing some keywords there may get you a better rank in searches.