WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. (Twenty Ten theme shows all of that off.) Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation. As a user, you will love the new lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click, and blah blah blah just watch the video.
Q: I want to be able to upload images (for ads, banners, etc.) without having to FTP in. I’ve been doing it by adding them to a dummy post and then copying the link and adding where I need it-is there a better solution?
A: There’s a built in solution for WordPress to do just this.
In the sidebar of the WordPress Admin Area, click on “Media > Add New” (located at http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/media-new.php).
Upload Files In WordPress via the Media Section
From there you’ll see the same file uploading interface that you do when you create a post or page.
Q: I am after a YouTube plugin for a widget. What I want to do is have a YouTube video that randomly rotates between three/four videos in the side bar. Is there one?
A: While it was created for serving ads, Datafeedr Random Ads, should do the trick for you. We’ve used it for images in the past and it does exactly what we needed it to.
Installation Instructions
Upload the plugin files to your plugins directory
Activate the plugin
Go to Tools > Datafeedr Random Ads
Create an Ad Group (a set of ads that you want to rotate)
Place a widget in your sidebar or template code in your template files
A: On the standard version of WordPress.com your only built in option is to use the “[contact-form]” short code.
To do this, place “[contact-form]” (without the quotes) in your page where you’d like it to appear and save it.
Once saved you’ll see a form show up that looks similar to your standard comments form. Note that this will look differently to anyone who is logged into WordPress.com.
WordPress.com Contact Form (logged in view)
WordPress.com Contact Form (logged out view)
If that doesn’t suit your needs and you’re after a more customizable solution you’ll need to look for hosted form solutions of which there are various options. And of course, you can always opt to go the self-hosted WordPress.org route.
WordPress 2.9.2 was released on February 15th, 2010 as is a security release.
Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2. As always, you can visit the Tools->Upgrade menu to upgrade.
