WordPress 3.3.1 was released on January 3, 2012 and maintenance and security update.

As always, we recommend upgrading as soon as possible.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.3, “Sonny”, was released on December 12, 2011 and is a major release that adds:

• drag-and-drop uploader
• hover menus for the navigation
• a new toolbar
• improved co-editing support
• Tumblr importer
• pointer tips for new features included in each update
• revamped help tabs throughout the interface
• improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.2, was released on July 4, 2011 and is a major release that adds:

• making WordPress faster and lighter
• a refreshed dashboard design
• the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme
• the new distraction-free writing or zen mode

WordPress 3.2.1, was released on July 12, 2011 and is a maintenance release that  fixes a server incompatibility related to JSON, as well as a few other fixes in the new dashboard design and the Twenty Eleven theme. Upgrading is recommended.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.1.4, was released on June 29, 2011 and is a maintenance & security release.

As always, we suggest you upgrade to as soon as possible to WordPress 3.1.4.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.1.3, was released on May 25, 2011 and is a maintenance & security release.

As always, we suggest you upgrade to as soon as possible to WordPress 3.1.3. This release also fixes a few bugs.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.1.2, was released on April 26, 2011 and is a maintenance & security release.

This release addresses a vulnerability that allowed Contributor-level users to improperly publish posts.

We suggest you update to 3.1.2 promptly, especially if you allow users to register as contributors or if you have untrusted users. This release also fixes a few bugs.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 3.1, was released on February 23, 2011 and is a major release that adds:

• a 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
• a handful of backend updates that plugin & theme developers will enjoy which also increase WordPress’ content management (CMS) capabilities

WordPress 3.1.1, was released on April 5, 2011 and is a maintenance & security release that addresses about 30 minor issues. Upgrading is recommended.

If you need assistance with upgrading, please schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

We hope your 2011 is off to a fantastic start!

To kick off the new year we’re offering our Silver WordPress Website Maintenance Package and our Gold WordPress Website Maintenance Package for an amazing 25% off!

Your time is valuable and time spent maintaining your WordPress website takes away from the time you could be doing what you really love. Allow us to take charge of your WordPress maintenance tasks and sleep well knowing that your WordPress based website is in good hands.

Also, as a WordSprung WordPress Maintenance Package customer, monthly consulting time from Watershed Studio is included in each package, as are discounts for other Watershed Studio services. It’s a win-win for everyone!

If you are interested in signing up for either the Silver or Gold WordPress Maintenance Package, please do so today as this offer is only available for new orders placed through Monday, January 31, 2011.

Have a great new year!

The Watershed Studio September 2010 Newsletter is now online.

Fall is officially upon us and Watershed Studio, Surge Bucket Media & Indy Media School have decided to pack up their recording gear and head out into the big city and mingle with our fellow citizens as part of the October Oddness 2010 Meetups/Tweetups.  We’ll be podcasting, snapping photos & recording videos as we facilitate these events in conjunction with our gracious event hosts.  If you live in or around the Indianapolis area we’d love to see you and your family out at an event or two.

As we all know, this is the time of year when things start picking up in preparation for the Holiday season and year’s end.  We’re here to assist if you need anything at all, be it blog related, social media related, marketing related or anything in between, so please contact us and we’ll be happy to help out in any manner.

In the meantime, check out these blog posts from September:

• Dilbert: Social Media Marketing Manager
• Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 3

The Watershed Studio August 2010 Newsletter is now online.

August was a very busy month here at Watershed Studio and included everything from getting the kids back into the swing of things at school to attending Blog Indiana 2010 and having the opportunity to catch Jeff Pulver at the 140 Characters Conference Roadtrip Tweetup here in Indy. Now that fall is only a few weeks away we’re gearing up for the new projects that always hit this time of year and we have a few things of our own up our sleeves.

If you need anything at all, please contact us.   In the meantime, check out these blog posts from August:

• Indy Media School: September 2010 Courses
• Blogging for Passion or for Dollars – Would you blog if the government taxed you to do so? The city of Philadelphia is trying to do just that.
• Hootsuite Premium Pricing Shocker – This month Hootsuite unveiled their pricing structure which caught everyone off guard. If you use Hootsuite, be sure to check this out.
• Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) – This is a review from one of the sessions at Blog Indiana focused on SEO from a PR angle.
• Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 2

When I saw this story this morning, my jaw dropped.

Taking a step closer to an eerie Orwellian state where creativity is crushed in the name of “the greater good,” the city of Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for the privilege of writing on the Internet.

This $300 “business privilege license” is for all local bloggers – even the ones that make no money off their words.

The city doesn’t stop there. In addition to the $300 for the license to write on the World Wide Web, bloggers must pay city wage taxes, business privilege taxes and taxes on any net profits — on top of state and federal taxes — even if the blogger only made $11 over two years, reports the City Paper.

Full story at NBC Philadelphia

Even though I’ve never heard of anything like a blanket “business privilege license”, I understand paying taxes is something we all have to do. If that’s how it is in Philly for any business, then fine.  But when you automatically label bloggers as businesses then I have a problem with that.

Taking a step back to the mid-1990′s, I used to publish a ‘zine (and yes, ‘zines are still alive and well in 2010).  We printed 100 copies, got some free music to review, had a few small ad sales, and if we were lucky we broke even.  But it was about our passion for the subject and it was nothing more than a hobby for a group of college kids.

Step forward to 2002 and I jumped head first into blogging and haven’t looked back.  The idea of being a zinester & the idea of being a blogger were pretty much the same thing for me, but with blogging there was a lot less overhead and many more potential eyeballs.

Now jump to present day 2010 and I find myself making a living off of blogging.  (Note that I didn’t say from blogging.)

When Watershed Studio was started back in 2004 our focus was on web design and building PHP based web  applications since that’s what I was doing as a day job back then. Today that has morphed into a lot of WordPress development for clients as well as social media related consulting, coaching & training.  Last year WordSprung was launched as an extension of our WordPress services and earlier this year we launched Indy Media School to focus on the social media training side of things.

On the flip side of the coin, in 2006 the decision was made to separate our content (blogs, podcasts, writings, etc) from the design & consulting side of things and Surge Bucket Media was formed.  Four years later Surge Bucket Media (SBM) consists of dozens of web properties, many of which are networked together.  The difference here being that SBM is currently nowhere near the money maker that everything under the Watershed Studio umbrella is.  And a lot of that is on purpose as we are trying to keep advertising down to an absolute minimum and frankly we do that because we like to do it.

All of that to say, we have seen quite the spectrum of blogs & bloggers throughout the years. While many of our clients are businesses, both small and large, we also have numerous clients who blog out of their own pockets. In other words, their blogs are their passion and they are funding them themselves without a concern for monetary gain.  And it’s this crowd that the vast majority of bloggers would fall into.

Going back to Philadelphia, I honestly don’t see how this will hold up. There are just too many issues at hand, not to mention the moment when freedom of speech and press are brought up (and Philly should be pretty familiar with those, right?).   If I were a small potatoes blogger in Philly I wouldn’t be packing my bags just yet, but I certainly would raise a ruckus with your city government.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Please leave us a comment or leave a voicemail at 317-565-4250.

The Watershed Studio July 2010 Newsletter is now online. Be sure to check it out for recent Watershed Studio news and information including:

• WordPress 3.0.1
• Indy Media School: August 2010 Courses
• Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 1

The Watershed Studio June 2010 Newsletter is now online. Be sure to check it out for recent Watershed Studio news and information including:

• WordPress 3.0
• Indy Media School: July 2010 Courses

The Watershed Studio May 2010 Newsletter is now online. Be sure to check it out for recent Watershed Studio news and information including:

• Indy Media School: WordPress For Small Business and Nonprofits
• WordSprung’s WordPress Maintenance Package

From the WordSprung Blog:

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.

If you need assistance, please contact us.

[Question submitted by Kelly Whalen.]

From the WordSprung Blog:

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

1. Upload the plugin files to your plugins directory
2. Activate the plugin
3. Go to Tools > Datafeedr Random Ads
4. Create an Ad Group (a set of ads that you want to rotate)
5. Place a widget in your sidebar or template code in your template files

If you need assistance, please contact us.

From the WordSprung Blog:

Q: How Do I Add A Contact Form On WordPress.com?

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.

If you need assistance, please contact us.

WordPress 2.8.3 was released on August 3rd, 2009 as is a security release.

Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked. With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3. Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.

Schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 2.8.2 was released on July 20th, 2009 as is a security release.

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.

Schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.

WordPress 2.8.1 was released on July 9th, 2009 and is a bug fix & security release.

WordPress 2.8.1 fixes many bugs and tightens security for plugin administration pages. Core Security Technologies notified us that admin pages added by certain plugins could be viewed by unprivileged users, resulting in information being leaked. Not all plugins are vulnerable to this problem, but we advise upgrading to 2.8.1 to be safe.

Schedule your WordPress upgrade today via our WordSprung WordPress Upgrade Service.