The WordPress team started planning for WordPress 3.2 back in March and released WordPress 3.2 beta last week. I spend some time playing around with the next generation of WordPress to see what is new with it.

Here is a review of WordPress 3.2 and a list of the new features that you will be using when the final version comes out. Please note that WordPress 3.2 will require PHP 5.2.4 and  MySQL 5.0, so you might have to upgrade your server software or ask your hosting provider to do it for you.

Important Note: This is a beta version of WordPress, don’t install it on a production server.

New Admin Interface

WordPress 3.2 has a refreshed admin interface which does away with the curved corners and cuts down on the space used between the menus.

The WordPress team has released a new update to WordPress 3.1 which contains several security fixes in the code. WordPress 3.1.1 fixes almost thirty issues in WordPress 3.1.

The new security patches were discovered by WordPress core developers and hardens CSRF prevention in the media uploader. It also adds a patch to avoid a PHP crash in certain environments because of links in comments. The third big patch fixes an XSS flaw in the code.

There are also several other performance improvements and fixes for IIS6 support, fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO permalinks and fixes for various other query and taxonomy issues caused by plugin compatibility.

I highly recommend that you update your WordPress installation to WordPress 3.1.1 to avoid being affected by these security loopholes.

I will keep this short and sweet. While answering a question on Quora (find me here), I came across something which I wasn’t aware of for a while. That something is Apache Roller. Roller is basically a full featured, multi blog and group blog based on Java.

However, it’s usage is not reported as highly as say WordPress, because most webhosts provide users with LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) installs. We internally use a LNMP install (Linux-Nginx-MySQL-PHP-CGI). However, for Apache Roller you will have to use a Java based server like Apache’s own Tomcat.

Though this project is not widely used, it is definitely recommended for people who are not blogging because they use Java based servers. At this point of time I am downloading this software and will review it. Being a Java guy myself, I am pretty much excited that a blogging solution exists for this purpose.

Aha, the hidden gems you get when you are on Quora. If you don’t know what Quora is, may I oblige you with this reading where I tried to explain What is Quora?

Have you ever heard of Apache Roller? Used It? Do give me some scoops on your thoughts about it then.

According to latest statistics, WordPress.com now accounts for more than half of the WordPress blogs around the world including self-hosted blogs. This is an impressive rise and the massive increase in the number of WordPress.com blogs has happened only over the last year.

WordPress.com claim that pageviews for WordPress blogs were up 53% from 2009, which accounted for a total of 23 billion visits. Media uploads and individual blog posts were both doubled from 2009. However, the numbers to watch out for are mobile bloggers who have septupled at 1.4 million. With new and improved media capable cellphone coming out fast, this figure is on a definitive rise.

WordPress had 9 million blogs in 2009 and the figure has increased to 16 million now. That is an impressive 7 million new blogs in a year and an increase of nearly 78%. All these stats came in just when people were claiming that the end of blogging as a public platform is nearing. Blogging might have some metamorphosis but it is here to stay for a long time.

In language, English Spanish and Portuguese were the dominant languages popular amongst WordPress blog readers. With 500,000 posts made every day on an average, WordPress can be seen on any popular blog, be it TechCrunch, The NY Times or here on Techie Buzz and it is expected to grow this year too. For a comparison of WordPress and other blogging platforms, here is a comparative chart. The blue line is WordPress.com whereas the red line is the Blogger service from Google.

(Stats Via: TNW and WordPress)

Windows Live Spaces, the blogging platform from Microsoft will shortly shut shop and move 30 million users to the WordPress platform.

Microsoft today announced the closure of Windows Live Spaces and migration of over 30 millions users will be migrated over to WordPress.com at TechCrunch Disrupt. Users data will be migrated through a process that preserves all the content to WordPress.com, all Windows Live Spaces blogs will also be redirected to the new WordPress.com domain.

Users will also have an option to download the information from their blogs and store or or delete it entirely. Windows Live Spaces will shut down within the next 6 months, giving users ample amount of time to make a decision before forced migration or deletion of data could take place.

WordPress is currently one of the best blogging solution for hosted as well as free blogging, and the 30 million additional users for the site will take their total blog tally to well over 50 million. WordPress currently powers over 8.5% sites across the internet.

Update: More at the official WordPress.com blog.

A few years back Bloglines was one of the most popular feed reader around, however, over the years it has been surpassed by several alternatives including Google Reader.

In early days Bloglines was one of the biggest contributor towards a websites feed count, and it still is for many. However, sadly users who used Bloglines will not be able to do so after October 1, 2010. Older websites feed count may also decline, specially for publishers who have been around for 4-5 years or more. However, the users are bound to move to other providers, so the count may jump back again.

Ask.com, who had bought Bloglines for $10 million in 2005 have decided to close it down because the RSS market has constantly been shrinking due to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. To be frank, I agree with that, because I have hardly visited my Google Reader account since past 4 months and instead rely on several twitter lists to follow feeds.

I remember having an argument with Robert Scoble on one of his posts about Twitter replacing Google Reader, and back then I did think that I would stick with Google Reader. However, as time has passed, I have realized how much more easier it is to actually follow news on Twitter, specially more after Twitter Lists were introduced.

Do you use Feed Readers or have you shifted to Twitter or any other similar service? Let me know your thoughts about using RSS feeds vs Twitter or Facebook to catch up on news.

(Source: TechCrunch)

Social Media on the Web is booming and People Connect is the new mantra. And given the fact that Mobile Web consumption is on a rise these days, Indiatimes.com has just done an apt thing by launching a voice-based social networking and blogging platform called ‘HiBuddy’ (http://hibuddy.in) for mobile phone users.

HiBuddy will enables mobile phone users to create their own profile and network of friends, send voice messages and also record their voice posts or clippings to be shared with or accessed by other members. For creating a profile users need to call a number (58888199) and follow the interactive voice response (IVR) system. After this users can add friends and record voice clips.Users will receive SMS notifications for any new updates.

Initially, the platform will be made available only to users of Reliance Mobile. Later, it will be accessible with other mobile service providers as well. The downside of this service from Indiatimes is that it is not free. Users have to pay Rs 15 every month as subscription fee and Re 1 per minute as voice charges for accessing HiBuddy.

Automattic the company which creates the popular blogging platform WordPress have acquired Plinky, a service which provides a prompt like a question or a challenge and asks users to type in an answer.

Plinky has been integrated into WordPress.com and will allow users to post answers to the questions or challenges to their blog along with offering integration with other social networking services like Twitter and Facebook.

Blogger’s Block basically happens when someone gets stuck for ideas and cannot write for a small period of time. With the help of Plinky users can continue to answer small questions or challenges which in turn will help them recover from a Blogger’s Block. More information on the acquisition can be found here.

(Source)

For the past few days, I am seeing an annoying link appear next to the text content I copy and paste while writing a blog. Being a blogger, I often copy text like references and quotes because they are to be presented in their original form. However, many popular blogs in the blogosphere have signed up for a service called Tynt which is totally tainting the image of these blogs.

Tynt appends an attribution link to the source at the end of the copied content. This content when pasted, appears as a “Read more: http://www.example.com/#tracer”. This manipulation is done with the help of JavaScript and the #tracer is used to track down the copy content.

Not only is this a huge annoyance, it also scales in behavior depending on the size of the copied text. This polymorphism was baffling me and I could not take it anymore.

The obvious solution of simply deleting the link helps, but I wanted something full proof and automated. Some googling came to my rescue. John Gruber at The Daring Fireball has come up with an excellent method. He has blocked the Tynt server from his hosts file and you should do the same too.

In Windows, go to “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts” and add

127.0.0.1   tcr.tynt.com

In Linux, do the same at /etc/hosts. This will block the Tynt server and will put your clipboard back at you control again. Try if it works by visiting TechCrunch and copy-pasting some content.

(Source)

WordPress the popular blogging platform used by millions of users, both on wordpress.com and self-hosted WordPress installation has completed 7 years today.

WordPress in itself has grown over to become one of the best blogging and CMS platforms today with several improvements over the years, and with WordPress 3.0 slated to release shortly, it would definitely grow even more.

I have been personally using WordPress for over 5 years now, and have found the platform to be easy to use and adapt. I bet that several of you might have the same thinking.

If you want to be a little nostalgic, you can visit this blog post on the WordPress blog announcing the release of the first ever public WordPress version.