WordPress Station

Some may have experienced over the last week or two the site appearing down. I think I may have found the problem. I didn’t have the default theme in my content folder, so something was triggering a theme switch, and since no default, no theme, no site. A little reading around the support forums, and I came across the blog post, and though I haven’t checked the logs, I do know I hadn’t followed Alex’s instructions either. So, I’ve uploaded the wp-mobile theme to the proper place, added the default theme to the same directory (though I could have changed the name of my custom design to “default”, thereby forcing WP to load it), and hopefully all is well. Hopefully…

The Fun Zone

An update of this build off of another plugin is now out. For those who want to take their site down while testing a plugin, or updating a theme, this is the ticket. Still allows for admins to view the site, while visitors see a message saying to check back. Can be a very handy tool for any WordPress blogger.

Firetree

Version 3.1 is now out, fully supported in WP 2.0.x with many new features, included AJAX calendar, ical supported calendar subscription, and several more features and bug fixes. Even before the upgrade, a really good events and calendar plugin, can’t wait to test it out test this version out.

WP Community

The new podcast is out, covering a few plugins, a couple of WordPress related news items, as well as a listener survey, a newsletter, new forums and toll-free comment line.

Cordobo

Updated with widget support, this 3 columns liquid/fluid design has left navigation, content and right sidebar, resizes automagically to the resolution of the visitors screen. Also has an options page to choose between multiple color schemes, and features rounded corners and gradient backgrounds for headlines.

As the old saying goes, better late than never. So goes our second installment of interviews with members of the WordPress community. Our first, way back in the beginning of the year was with Skippy. Though it was well received, life and other online endeavors got in the way, and the idea fell far to a back burner. However over the past few months it kept creeping its way back up, and I began looking around for someone who’s been active in the community, yet hasn’t received some of the attention that perhaps others have. Not an easy task, as there are numerous contributors to the WP community that deserve some spotlight. That said, Mark Jaquith (also can be found at Mark on WordPress) has shown more and more on my radar. From his video tutorial on how to write a plugin to his many contributions to the core code development, Mark is continually giving back to the community.

In addition to his many contributions, I’m quite excited about the prospects of him
moving to my neck of the woods, and getting a WordPress meetup going, but I digress. I approached Mark on his willingness to answer some questions to help put a person behind the code.

Enough rambling, WordPress Station is proud to present a recent email interview with Mark Jaquith.

Read the rest of this entry »

Instinct Entertainment
According to the authors “WP Campaign Monitor is an email newsletter / SMS tool built for WP users who want to send campaigns, track the results and manage their subscribers. Version Two will integrate with e-commerce lite.” I haven’t tested this, but there very well is a demand for such plugins, especially for those developing WP more as a CMS. While there, checkout the e-commerce plugin. A lot of development has been done since its first introduction.

Simples Idéias.

For those who regularly use last.fm, this plugin will take the most recent track and add it as a custom field for a post, to give readers an idea of what you were listening to when writing. Definitely a different approach than many of the last.fm plugins I’ve seen. Worth checking out if your music and blogging go hand in hand.

alexking.org

I have read several recent discussions about the glut of social bookmarking links on blogs, and the visual distraction they create, and I couldn’t agree more. Alex King has helped solve that problem with the release (and recent upgrade) of his plugin, Share This. A simple text link below the post “Share This”, opens a nifty java script (AJAX?) powered box with all the links there, as well as an option to email the link to a friend. Discussion is ongoing about adding an icon, something that would be “universal”, ala a feed icon, to coincide with the link. All in all, a very smart solution to both offering links to social bookmarking sites and keeping a design clean.

Arne Brachhold

Some have already read, but Google, Yahoo and MSN have joined forces (can you believe it!?) to develop a standard sitemaps structure. To that end, Arne has updated his Google sitemaps plugin to reflect this new standard. Still in beta, and not supported in 2.1alpha, so proceed with caution.