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Snapshot Backup creates a snapshot backup of your entire website: that’s your Database, current WP Core, all your Themes, Plugins and Uploads. The resulting single archive file is then uploaded to an FTP repository of your choice.

You can use one FTP repository for snapshots from various sites and group them using File Prefixes and Subdirectories to tell your snapshots apart.

If you don’t have an FTP account you can download the file from your local server at the end of the backup.

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Audio Book Pick: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest: The Millennium Trilogy, Book 31

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Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

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BM Shots is a plugin that makes use of WordPress api for automatically creating screenshots of your website.

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Audio Book Pick: Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay

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Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

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WordPress SEO is the most complete SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview that helps you optimize your page titles, meta descriptions and keywords to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.

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Audio Book Pick: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

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Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

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Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

Features include:

• Simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server. Previously provided by WordPress.com Stats.
• The WP.me URL shortener.
• Hovercard popups for your commenters via Gravatar.
• Easily embedded media from popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Vimeo.
• For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.
• A widget for displaying recent tweets. Previously provided by Wickett Twitter Widget
• Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks. Previously provided by the Sharedaddy WordPress plugin.
• Your writing will improve thanks to After the Deadline, an artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker. Previously provided by the After the Deadline WordPress plugin.
• and many more to come!

Plugin Picks is brought to you by: Audible.com. Download your free audio book today at audiblepodcast.com/wordcast

Audio Book Pick: Bossypants by Tina Fey

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Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

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If you manage multiple contributors within a blog, and go back and forth writing articles, the Edit Flow WordPress Plugin” will be a complete lifesaver. Features include…

• Custom Statuses – Create any number of custom statuses to define the stages of your editorial workflow. By default, Edit Flow adds “Assigned”, “Pitch”, and “Waiting for Feedback” to WordPress’ default “Draft” and “Pending Review”.
• Editorial Comments – Threaded commenting in the WordPress admin on every post for discussion about the production of a given piece of content. This can cutdown on long-winded back-and-forth email threads as all comments are conveniently displayed within the Edit Post page.
• Email Notifications – Receive email notifications for new editorial comments or when a post changes status. Notifications are delivered to admins and the post author by default, but any users that comment on posts will receive follow up email notifications.
• Usergroups – Similar to roles, usergroups provice a way to group users that perform similar roles in your organization. At the moment, usergroups can be subscribed to posts so that all members receive post updates.
• Calendar – View all of your upcoming posts on a week-by-week calendar, and filter by post status, category, or user.
• Editorial Metadata – Define custom editorial metadata to be attached to every post. Admins can add editorial metadata like “contact information”, “assignment description”, “due date”, or “location” using the following field types: checkbox, date, location, paragraph, text, or user dropdown.
• Story Budget – View all of your upcoming posts in a more traditional story budget view. Posts are grouped by category, and view can be filtered by post status, category, user, or limited to a date range. Hit the print button to take it on the go.

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Audio Book Pick: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: The Millennium Trilogy, Book 1 by Stieg Larsson

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Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

It’s time for more WordCast Podcast talking Facebook, Google, Lady Gaga, Webby Awards, Watson, WordPress, fake bloggers, the Beatles… did we leave anything out? Hosts Kym Huynh and Lorelle VanFossen talk web publishing and social web news and trends this week without Dave Moyer who decided to go on vacation to sunny California.

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Links and Resources

We covered a ton this week, so here are the resources to help you learn more about what we covered on the WordCast Podcast.

• UN Declares Internet Access A Human Right, But Fast and Cheap May Be as Important as Open | Singularity Hub
• Post Comments Using Twitter and Facebook — WordPress.com
• Rare photographs of the Beatles from a press conference and show in 1964 in the United States photographed by Mike Mitchell were released
• New post says Syrian 'Gay Girl' blogger is a hoax – CNN.com and Another Supposedly Lesbian Blogger Turns Out To Be A Man : The Two-Way : NPR
• The 15th Annual Webby Awards ceremony and our Watson wins for Person of the Year (see IBM's Watson Wins Test Round and WordCast Conversations 19: Stephen Baker, Author of Final Jeopardy Man Vs. Machine on WordCast Conversations)
• Largest data breaches of all time – Infographic by FlowingData
• Bre.ad Launches URL Shortener That Aspires To Be Your Own “Personal Billboard”
• Google Launches Voice Search On Desktop and Google Announces ‘Instant Pages,’ ‘Instant’ Image Search And ‘Instant’ Availability In 32 Languages
• TechCrunch – With 250 Million Downloads Angry Birds Moves Into Magic, Cookbooks, And More
• Facebook Face Recognition:
  • Facebook’s Face-Recognition Tool Stirs Privacy Concerns – WSJ.com
  • How To Block Facebook’s Face Recognition And Tighten Other Privacy Settings | Fast Company
  • Marine finds long-lost half-brother from Vietnam War thanks to Facebook facial recognition | Mail Online
  • Facing Facts: Facebook’s Facial Recognition | PCWorld
  • Facebook fatigue: 6m in US bored with site deactivate accounts amid privacy fears | Mail Online

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

We’re back for one more edition of the WordCast Podcast, and it’s all about Twitter! They’re buying Tweetdeck, they’re launching their own photo and video sharing, and they’re in the middle of a political scandal! We’ll even discuss the latest WordPress development news, and the Yoast/WPMU Dev controversy. All that and more inside!

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Links and Resources

WordPress 3.1.3 (and WordPress 3.2 Beta 2)

Apple's WWDC: iCloud, iOS 5, Lion, and more (roundup) (hear more on Life Plugged In podcast)

Twitter launches own photo-sharing service

Twitter Buys TweetDeck For $40 Million

Audible Pick of the Week: Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales

Did Anthony Weiner Tweet a Picture of His Weiner?

Joost de Valk accuses WPMU DEV of copyright infringement, sends cease and desist | WPCandy

EBay acquires Magento, builds a commerce OS

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

We’re here for the first episode of WordCast’s second hundred episodes, and it’s a big one! WordPress 3.2 beta 1 is here, and we have your inside info on all the new features. bbPress as a WordPress plugin is here in beta. PLUS: Is the CIA tracking Facebook?

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Links and Resources

bbPress the WordPress Plugin Beta 1 is here!

Glenn Beck Launches Groupon Competitor, and what is the future for group coupons?

Audible Pick of the Week: Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by Rob Lowe

WordPress › WordPress 3.2, Beta 1

10 Amazing Hipstamatic iPhone Photos

CIA’s ‘Facebook’ Program Dramatically Cut Agency’s Costs on the Onion News Network

Comments on WordCast Podcast 100

WebVisions on Managing Multiple Bloggers in WordPress

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

It’s the 100th episode of the WordCast Podcast, and we’ve come a long way in the past three years. The whole team’s here to share the good, the bad and the ugly in our special centennial edition.

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Links and Resources

We had a good time looking back at some of our favorite and funniest moments on the WordCast Podcast.

The Very First Episode: WordCast 1: WordPress Weirdos

Kym Flies Very Very Very Solo: WordCast 9: Kym flies solo

Dave Flies Solo with Happy Birthday to Matt Mullenweg: WordCast 42: Happy Birthday, Matt!

Lorelle Takes Over with Her First Appearance on WordCast: WordCast 20: We *heart* Lorelle

The Never-ending Search for What is a Wist: WordCast 35: Typing with Whisks

The WordPress Fairy Blogmother Makes an Appearance: WordCast 29: I’m Your Fairy Blogmother!

The Best Job in the World: WordCast 43: The Bikini Job

Ed Morita of Baker’s Hours gets the first WordPress tattoo live during our show: WordCast 45: Is that WordPress on your wrist?

Dave Explains the Titles of WordCast: Special Feature: The Titles of WordCast

The 50th Episode Featuring the Voices of WordCast: WordCast 50: Our Semi-centennial!

Honoring Derek K. Miller: The last post

How Far WordCast Has Come and Grown in Three Years: WordCast Plugin Picks, WordCast Conversations, Bitwire Media Productions, Stories of Our Journeys, Life Plugged In, and more.

You can learn more about the history of WordCast on our About Page and learn more about the brilliant minds behind WordCast.

Say Thank You, Gracie: The WordCast team must thank the wonderful people who make this happen, without whom the last three years would not have happened, nor survived without their giggles and twisted sense of humor and commitment to this project.

Dave Moyer, Kym Huynh. Lorelle VanFossen, Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Liz Strauss, Beth Skinner, Matt Mullenweg, Jane Wells, Jeff Chandler of WP Tavern, Andy Staines, Vladimir Prelovac, Brian Gardner, Tara Anderson, and everyone we’ve ever abused, cheered, or praised.

We’d also like to thank our mothers, per Kym’s request, and our fathers, as they rarely get the recognition they deserve.

Finally, we’d like to thank you, the audience, for all your incredible support over the last three years. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for a great hundred episodes, and here’s to even more.

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Facebook adds yet another button to your website, Twitter is filled with sex and dating (what else is new?) and Amazon takes down half the internet! PLUS: Yet another celebrity presser!

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Links and Resources

The Send Button, Because Sometimes It’s Private – Facebook Developers

Twitter.com’s Top Tweets Link to Adult Dating Spam? #NSFW – F-Secure Weblog : News from the Lab

Official Google plugin automates the website verification process

Audible Pick of the Week: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

Amazon EC2 Outage Shows Risks of Cloud – PCWorld Business Center

Why Amazon EC2's Titanic went down – Apr. 22, 2011

Multimedia Reporting Tool Storify Now Available to Public

Celebrity Pressers: Dan Ariely

SOBCon 2011: The Must Attend Online Business Conference

WordCamp : Developers | Vancouver, BC | May 5, 2011

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Welcome to another edition of Around The Community. Today’s post features tips and tricks, snippets and hacks, all about WordPress. A great guide on WordPress and Facebook, some freebies and how to make the most out of your spare time. Enjoy the links!

20 Snippets and Hacks to Make WordPress User-Friendly for your Clients

If you’re doing WordPress jobs for your clients or friends, consider these 20 tips, which makes it easier for them to manage their own website, without having to bug you when they accidentally do something wrong (like change their theme, or disable a plugin).

The Complete Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Site for Sharing on Facebook

It’s all about social these days, and justl ike the title of this post suggests, it’s a great guide to dealing with Facebook, making sure your submitted posts get the right thumbnails and covering the new Facebook Send button too!

9 Ways of Showing WordPress Plugin Authors our Gratitude

So who doesn’t use WordPress plugins? We all do, and here are 9 great ways of showing love to the plugin authors, who spend days and nights building great (or not always) stuff for free!

21 Productive Things Designers Can Do with Down Time

Got some free time? Check out these tips on how to spend that time effectively and actually earn some cash out of it rather than just let it pass by.

Freebies: A Simple & Social Icon Set (GPL)

If you’re a WordPress theme developer and you’re into creating free themes for the WordPress repository, then this GPL-licensed social icon set may come in handy, PSD download available.

WP Troubleshooting Tips From the Trenches

A great post by Dan Sheehan covering Google Webmaster Tools, linking strategy, anti-spam plugins and more. Good article for beginners and a list of handy plugins to troubleshoot your WordPress website.

That’s all for today, folks! Join us again next time and don’t forget to follow our Twitter account to stay up to date with what’s happening around the globe of WordPress. Have a great weekend!

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

If you install, move, add WordPress Themes, Plugins, or just rearrange things on your server, you are going to run into the challenges associated with file permissions with WordPress. If you are concerned about security, protection from hackers, viruses, and other evil, get familiar with file permissions in WordPress.

In general, file permissions are variables set on server files to control access and usage of the file for individuals, browsers, code, and programs. Consider them the firewalls to your WordPress website, dictating who can do what with each file and folder.

All these folder and files permissions can be confusing in WordPress. Recently, I had a site offline for three hours, going through a variety of tests to figure out what was causing the problem. It boiled down to a single folder being set to the wrong permissions. I had to go through every file and folder to figure out which one was set wrong, so take care when changing file permissions.

There are three levels of access: Owner, Group, and Public. There are three options under each level to fine tune the control and access, read, write, and execute, and you can set these in a variety of combinations. Permissions can be the same or different on folders and files both.

There are key files and areas of your WordPress installation which must be “writable,” able to be edited and changed. If you’ve ever used permalinks or the built-in WordPress Editor for Themes or Plugins, you may have encountered a warning “that said changes could be made if this file were writable.” This means that these files or folders are set at a permission level that doesn’t allow access to make changes. In order to change from from within WordPress, you must set their permission levels to be able to be edited.

Among the writable files and folders in WordPress, some must be writable by the user account, others with less restriction such as the folder to which you upload images.

Luckily, WordPress is fairly easy. All folders must be set to 755, and files set to 644, except for wp-config.php at 640, and all files you need to be writable, like WordPress Themes, need to be set to 666 if you wish to edit them from within WordPress. If you edit them through FTP, then you can set them for tighter security levels.

What this means is that when people or bots try to access these files, they will get a forbidden error, keeping them safe from intruding viruses and malware.

There are many ways to set file permissions on your server. The easiest way is through FTP access. Depending upon how your FTP client program works, usually selecting the folders and/or files and right clicking to select Properties or File Permissions will get you to the file permissions menu. Select or type in the file permissions, select whether or not to apply to folders or files or both, and apply.

For those used to direct access, you can use chmod to set file and folder permissions.

We’ve put together a chart of recommendations for the various files and folders for setting the permission levels with WordPress. You can change these at any time to accommodate work you may be doing on the server. For example, if you need full access to a set of files, can set it to 777 or something slightly less secure. Remember to reset them for maximum security on your site.

There is one caveat to WordPress file permissions. Not all web host servers are equal. Some have dedicated security levels that can protect your files almost no matter what permissions you set, while others are not quite as locked down. Check with your host for specifics on what they recommend to be sure your files are set at the highest level of security and access, while still allowing WordPress to function.

For more information on WordPress file permissions, see:

• Changing File Permissions – WordPress Codex
• Hardening WordPress – WordPress Codex
• WordPress Security Lockdown – Digging into WordPress
• How To Secure Your WordPress Blog – Martin Gardner

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Mozilla recently announced that the Mozilla Firefox 4 Release Candidate for Windows, Mac and Linux is available for download. You can download yours now for testing, experimenting, and just enjoying the latest update to one of the most powerful browsers in the world.

We’ve talked about how Firefox 4 could be a game changer, with over 8,000 bugs fixed and powerful new features. To date, the Mozilla Firefox Counter reports almost 60 million downloads as well as bypassing the number of downloads of the recently released Internet Explorer 9 by three times, and continues to out distance Microsoft’s browser.

As we’ve described previously, the following are the final features for Firefox 4.

• Streamline look for tabs and menu bar, and improved ability to switch tabs from the address bar, and have app tabs.
• Firefox menu access is now through the Firefox button above the tab bar.
• Tab management features built-in for drag and drop tab groups.
• Online Identity Portal to make Firefox your one-stop-shop to the social web.
• Improved sync capabilities for passwords, bookmarks, history, open tabs, and other customization across multiple devices, “taking Firefox with you wherever you go.”
• New add-on and extension management, similar in some ways to Chrome, but tabbed to breakdown customization features and preferences.
• Firefox is faster than ever with the new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine, reporting six times faster than previous versions.
• Support for HTML5, CSS3, and SVG images.
• Support for WebM and HD Video, as well as interactive audio with HTML5.
• WebGL integration for 3D graphics.
• Support for multi-touch, touch screen interaction.
• Support for OpenType fonts.
• Improvements in Firefox Personas and Themes.
• Control over website permissions, one click logins, and one click overview of user/site relationships such as passwords, cookies, geolocation, add-ons, popup blocking, etc.
• Improved security on the site side, as sites can keep attackers from “intercepting sensitive data while accessing the site” instructions Firefox to automatically switch to https.
• Improvements for web apps with Websockets.

The two things most people want to know are will their favorite Firefox extensions still work in the new version, and will the Firefox versus Flash crashes end.

According to Mozilla, currently 70% of all official Firefox Extensions and Add-ons report compatibility with the new version of Firefox. Use the Add-on Compatibility Reporter to test the compatibility of your extensions. If a favorite hasn’t been updated, check Ghacks’ Methods to force Firefox Add-on Compatibility. It might not work with all add-ons, but it could with the one you can’t live without.

Mozilla’s team worked overtime to improve crash protections in Firefox 4, especially for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight Plugins. Most of those programs have also updated recently to make them more stable, but this is fantastic news for Firefox fans waiting over two years for this issue to be resolved. If a plugin freezes or crashes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Similar to Chromes recent improvements, only that page will crash, not the entire browser.

What You Need to Know About Using Firefox 4

In general, if you are familiar with old versions of Firefox, you should manage fine within the new version, with a little learning curve. If you are familiar with Chrome and how it hide control and customization options, then this will be a breeze.

However, there are some things that will take a bit to get used to with Firefox 4 and you need to be ready for them.

First on the list is how to access the menu area to make changes and see toolbars. Right click in the “empty space” in the menu bar between the address bar and the back and forward buttons, or on the right side on the same line as the address bar to access the right click menu. Right clicking in the title bar will not work for access to these functions. When I refer to “right click on the empty space” that’s what is meant.

Status Bar: Think UP

For those web savvy folk used to relying upon the Status Bar to verify where links go before clicking, tracking page loading information, and other goodies typically found in the Status Bar at the bottom left corner of the browser window, you’re going to have to think UP instead.

The Status Bar information on link hovers is now in the Address Bar. I have to admit, my eyes got very tired automatically looking down, remembering, then bouncing up to the top. Since my eyes were already at the top or midway on the screen, it’s less work to look up, however, many years of ingrained habits might make this physical switch take a little while to relearn.

A side effect of moving the link information up to the Address Bar also means it has to share with the page URL. If you are working with a low screen resolution or small window, most of the link information will be cut off or not visible.

We’ll cover how to customize this and other menu functions and features in the next section on the orange Firefox button, your new control panel for Firefox.

Access Through Firefox Button

The menus and controls of Firefox 4 have been streamlined similar to Windows Office where everything you really want and need is under a single button. It’s the Firefox button, an orange drop down button at the upper left of the screen. Click it to open up the familiar menus, though a few things have been moved around.

If you don’t see the Firefox orange rectangular button, right click on an empty space in the menu bar area of the browser and deselect Menu Bar. Reverse that to get the familiar look back.

Along with the minimized menu interface through the Firefox button, the Bookmarks button replaces the entire Bookmarks menu option or toolbar. To get it back and visible, right click and choose Bookmarks Toolbar to enable.

Some of the other losses many people are missing in Firefox 4 are the Feed Subscribe icon, Reload, Stop, and Page Title.

People like seeing the title of the web page and site they are viewing at the top of the browser. The loss of this in the menu minimization is one many feel strongly, as it was a touchstone, a security device to verify what page you were viewing. You can put it back with a Greasemonkey script, Firefox 4: Bring the Title Back, or through the Firefox 4 UI Fixer, along with the other missing pieces.

To manually add back the Reload, Stop, Subscribe, and other missing buttons, right click on any empty area in the menu bar and choose Customize, then click and drag the buttons to wherever you want them to appear. Reload and Stop are now built-into the far right end of the address bar, and choosing to add the buttons to replace it will remove it from the address bar. Or try RSS Icon In Awesombar Add-on for Firefox to restore the Feed Icon and Status-4-Evar add-on, a Firefox extension that puts the status bar back where it belonged.

To totally restore the look and feel of Firefox 4 back to Firefox 3 and earlier versions, right click an empty area in the top section of the browser and select Menu Bar, and repeat it to deselect Tabs on Top. Or dig in deeper by going to Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout and change everything around. The Personal Menu extension allows you to customize exactly what appears under the Firefox orange button, rearranging them to your preference.

More Firefox extensions to help you customize the look and feel of the Firefox menu navigation or go back to what it was are Custom Tab Width, Vertical Toolbar, and Movable Firefox Button.

While we’re on the subject of fixing things now gone, some installations of Firefox changed the default search engine to Bing. GroovyPost has tips on changing it back.

Bookmarks and History

For those who like to preserve their open tabs as bookmarks, the feature has moved from the Bookmark toolbar to a right click on a tab, Bookmark All Tabs, speeding up the process nicely.

To manage all those bookmarks, Firefox has kept the same look and feel for organizing your bookmarks, however, access and naming has changed to Firefox button > Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks instead of Organize Bookmarks. The functionality of viewing bookmarks and opening bookmarks in tabs has remained the same.

Browsing History hasn’t changed much, though access is also through the Firefox button. You can now clear all history directly from that menu as well as see recently visited and closed tabs and windows.

Tab Control on Overload

People are dazzled at my “average” open tab count: 200. Yes, that’s an average of 200 browser tabs open at one time. I’ve tried to stop, really, but I work on so many projects, I live for my tabs. I’ve tried just about every tab manager add-on for Firefox over the years, as do many suffering from the same affliction. The new Firefox may change all that. For power users, tab controls are the biggest and most welcome improvement.

Tab rows now have two options. You can view them below the address bar or move them above the address bar with the Tabs on Top feature found on the right click in the address bar area. The customization option allows changing the different navigation and interface elements the way you want.

There are now two types of tabs in Firefox, a regular web page tab and an AppTab. An AppTab is a tab you want to preserve and not lose when you close the browser or get carried away closing tabs. Right click on the tab you wish to preserve and choose “Pin as AppTab.” This will cause the tab shrink in width to the size of the favicon of the page and sent to the left of the tab bar. While the name is odd (compared to the early “sticky tab” moniker), this is a great way to keep your blog comments, email, feed reader, and other tabs you return to often open and ready all the time.

Frustrated with Open in New Tab being lower in the right click list and not on top, a commonly used option for power browsers and bloggers, Firefox has moved it to the top of the right click menu for faster access and clicking, winning grateful cheers from Firefox power users. For those accustomed to moving down a rung or two in the right click list (and not using a hack or add-on to fix the right click list order), be prepared for a few surprises until you can break the mouse movement habit.

Tab grouping is now built-in, allowing you to group related tabs together such as content related to a specific article or blog, favorite web apps, favorite pages, or a group for each of your favorite hobbies or interests. However, the tab group button, originally called Tab Candy or Panorama, can be difficult to find. It’s under the minimize, maximize, exit buttons on the tab bar, following the > to move through the open tabs, and + to open new tabs, you will see a small drop down arrow.

The small arrow will drop down a list of all the open tabs in the order that they were opened. Click at the top of the list on Tab Group and the browser becomes a giant popup screen. Depending upon the Firefox theme you choose and your setup, the background of the screen “box” maybe semi-transparent or a solid color. All your open tabs are in one tab group box. To create a new group, click and drag a page into the blank area outside of the large tab group. Want another to join the collection, drag it in and it will automatically resize. You can rename the tab group boxes by clicking on the edit symbol on the top left of the box.

To open any group, simply click on a web page thumbnail in that group. App Tabs are featured down the side of each tab group box for fast access to the tabs you use the most. To move a tab into an already created tab group, right click on the tab and choose Move to Group and select the group name.

There are a few new extensions coming out to add customization and increased functionality to Tab Groups. New Tab King is one that helps you theme and speed up tab groups. Mozilla Labs: Lab Kit is another stuffed with tab and interface control goodness worth exploring.

For serious power browser users, tab keyboard shortcuts have been preserved, so you can quickly move to the first tab in the queue at the far left with Ctrl+1 (through 9), close the active tab with Ctrl+F4 or Ctrl+W, open a new tab with Ctrl+T, and move from tab to tab with Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+ Page Up or Page Down.

Better yet, to switch to a tab you already have open from anywhere in your tab queue, type in the domain name in the Address Bar and Firefox will offer a “suggestion” to Switch to Tab. This is a power tab user’s dream.

You Own Your Browser – No Matter Where You Are

Many who move from one computer to another, or from desktop to laptop or tablet, have long been frustrated with the inability to just keep working as if you never left your browser. Many used sync bookmarks add-ons, but they didn’t quite do the job except with bookmarks.

Firefox 4 brings the consistent experience of maintaining your browsing experience as you move from one machine to the other. Firefox Sync, formerly Labs/Weave, goes beyond syncing bookmarks to track open tabs and browsing history as you migrate from machine to machine.

To use the built-in feature:

1. Create a Sync account: Firefox Button > Set up Sync.
2. Provide email address and password.
3. Connect your devices:
• For an iPhone:
  1. Download and install Firefox Home for iPhone.
  2. Choose setup and a single-use synch code will appear.
  3. Copy the code.
  4. Go to Firefox > Preferences > Synch > Activate New Device.
  5. Paste your Synch code.
• For your mobile device:
  1. Swipe to Tools > Preferences > Setup Synch to get your sync code.
  2. Write the code down or copy it.
  3. Go to Firefox > Preferences > Activate New Device.
  4. Enter your sync code.

Once you are synced with another device, all bookmarks, passwords, history, and preferences are in their usual place, and open tabs can be accessed through the History menu or Tabs in Other Computers from the Tab List menu in the tab bar.

Unfortunately, for us power users, the dream is short lived. There is a server quote of 5 megabytes. With far fewer tabs open than normal, I hit that limit within the first 30 minutes of upgrading.

When activating Firefox Synch, you are given the option to choose another server and not use the Firefox server. However, there is no way to change that option easily. You must deactivate that account and run the setup again, this time clicking on “I don’t have the device with me.” This will take you to the option to sign in and change the server option and bypassing the 5 megabyte limitation. The custom server setup requires server and programming familiarity. I was hoping I could easily store the sync data on my JungleDisk or Dropbox, or on my own website servers, but it will take a bit of reading and programming and there is much more to play with on Firefox first.

Greasemonkey Scripts Live!

Power bloggers and web surfers thrive on Greasemonkey and Greasemonkey scripts from Userscripts, giving you precision control over what you see and how you interact with a page.

Greasemonkey now alerts you to updates when you land on a page that triggers a script using a lightbox technique. Scripts are updated quickly and easily, allowing you to move fast through what you were working on.

If you aren’t familiar with these, check out my article on Power Blogging: Web Browser Blogging Tips.

Pushing Video and Gaming to the Hilt

With the adoption of HMTL5, WebGL, and an HTML audio data API, as well as JaegerMonkey, Mozilla’s enhanced JavaScript engine, expect web pages and apps to tune up to the next generation of visual and audio presentation on the web. Firefox is ready to bring the best visual effects to you.

The new HTML5 audio and video tags combined with Firefox’s audio data API can help you experience audio in a variety of ways from raw-data numbers, audio wave visualization, abstract 3D animation, or something similar to the traditional equalizer look and feel.

Visually, with built-in graphic hardware acceleration capabilities to push your computer’s hardware, expect gaming and web page visuals to move into HD and 3D quality soon as the browser is ready for them.

Pushing the Web Browser Forward

Mozilla Firefox has long been a trend-setter, setting the standards that other browsers race to match. Firefox 4 has been a long time coming, and while most will be happy to surf the web without having it crash multiple times a day, what’s under the hood is very powerful and it holds its own against the competition again.

Web o’ Wonder, or “Web Open Wonder,” demo which puts Firefox 4 through it paces, best explored with the new browser.

What else do you need to know? According to ConceivablyTech’s interpretation of Mozilla’s announcement that they now intend on shipping twice as many browser versions starting this year than they did in the past, we could be seeing Firefox 4.5 or 5 or higher by the end of the year, with more improvements, greater focus on cloud computing and mobile access, even more security improvement and social web interactivity, as well as taking on more of the power that HTML5, WebGL, and HD has to offer with the interface. Check out the Firefox Roadmap for more details on what’s in store for Firefox.

Updating Firefox

I read that a new update was released soon after the stable version of Firefox 4, yet I couldn’t find an update button or access point. Firefox has hidden it well.

Traditionally, updates are found under the Help menu. In Firefox 3, go to the orange Firefox button > Help > About. Firefox will automatically check for updates and display them or the note “Firefox is up to date” to let you know if there are updates available. If there are, there will be an addition notice to update Firefox.

Learning More About Firefox 4

We’ve put together an extensive list of reviews, tips, and tricks for helping you learn more about what is becoming one of the most popular and powerful web browsers in the world.

• Blazing fast Firefox 4 beta 7 impresses – Arstechnica
• A Quick Guide to Firefox 4. | Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog
• Fasten Your Seatbelts – Firefox 4 Beta adds new JavaScript power and faster graphics :: The Mozilla Blog
• Firefox 4 Thoughts and Review ~ Chris Pirillo
• Firefox 4 gets much, much faster – The Download Blog
• 10+ great add-ons that only work with Firefox 4
• Firefox 4 Friday: 25 million downloads, anti-aliasing, and how to make it look like Firefox 3 – Download Squad
• Firefox 4 Beta 2 Adds App Tabs for Keep-Open Sites
• Peek at Firefox 5′s Social Sharing, Identity Management, and File Previews [In Brief]
• Firefox 4 Gets Web Sockets Support – Mozilla Links
• Firefox 4: A Game Changer? – WordCast
• Firefox Next Release to Fix Flash Crashes – WordCast
• Firefox 4 Beta 9 Released. Stable for World-Wide Testing – WordCast
• Mozilla: Firefox 4 Is Faster Than Chrome – ConceivablyTech
• Firefox 4 Beta 5 brings GPU acceleration for Windows – Engadget
• IE9 vs Firefox 4: Which is Safer? – esecurityplanet
• Hands on Firefox 4 Beta – Computer Chips & Hardware Technology – Geek.com
• Firefox 4 UI Fixer, Modify The Firefox 4 User Interface
• How to Change the Default Firefox 4 Search Engine
• Firefox 4 What You Need To Know
• Firefox 4 Beta 5 Gets IE9-Style Hardware Acceleration – PCMag.com
• Firefox 4 Tip: Put the Reload Button Back Where It Belongs – PCWorld
• Firefox 4 Tip: Put the Tabs Back Where They Belong – PCWorld
• Firefox 4 tips: Bend the new browser to your will – PC World Australia
• Mozilla’s Plans for Firefox 4: Faster, Sleeker Interface & Better Privacy Controls
• First Look: Firefox 4 Preview Delivers Speed, Revamped Interface – Webmonkey

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Darren Rowse of Problogger has a fascinating new article on “Overcoming Blogger Fright.”

“I don’t think I have what it takes to put myself ‘out there’ every day.”
“Who would want to read what I have to say?”
“Do you ever get used to the fact that strangers are reading what you write?”
“I don’t think I have enough ego to do this!”

These statements—and others like them—are pretty typical sentiments that I hear from many new bloggers whose main barrier to blogging comes down to self-doubt, shyness or … Blogger Fright.

I remember having similar feelings myself. The thought of writing something and having complete strangers read and comment upon it was something that took me a little time to come to grips with, particularly as a relatively shy and private person.

He offers tips on how to “get over it,” how to find your voice on the web and embrace blogging. While this seems like an insignificant issue, having taught people around the world how to blog, I face this constantly in my own work, as do many in the blogging and social web industry.

His recommendations are to take your time, start small, know your boundaries of what you will and will not publish, write what you know for people you know, and blog with a friend. I’d like to add a few of my own time-learned lessons I offer my own students.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions: “I didn’t do it because I didn’t know how.” I hear this a minimum 5 times in every workshop and class I teach, even with clients. Even if they have been given the instructions, their fear blocks their ability to comprehend the answer, leading to “I don’t know” frustrations. There are no dumb questions, only dumb people who don’t ask questions. Ask. Ask me, ask your guide, ask other people, ask Google, just ask. Answers are everywhere.
2. Be Bold: Face it, taking to strangers and going new places is tough. Change is hard. You’ve heard it a million times, so what’s one more: Fortune favors the bold. Take a chance. Risk it. Open WordPress.com and sign up for a free blog. It’s free. The only cost is your time. And the return on that investment of time can bring the most amazing riches.
3. Integrate Blogging Into Your Life: Unless you find a way to integrate blogging and social media into your life, it won’t last. Remember that diet you were all excited about 30 pounds ago – not in your favor? What about the outfit you just HAD to have (or geeky gadget for those of us wearing pajamas to work)? Is it still your favorite toy? Unless you integrate the process of writing a blog post a couple times a week on a regular schedule, tweeting or facebooking regularly, blogging will end up in a closet with those shoes you were once so desperate to have. Yeah, you know the ones.
4. What Are You Really Afraid Of?: Honestly, what are you really afraid of when you say you are afraid to blog. Is it the “putting yourself out there” risk? Is it being visible? Is it about your privacy? Is it that you really don’t have anything to share? Or is it the work? It’s hard work, trust me. Maybe it’s the comments? A lot of people fear getting a response to what they publish. Really look at what you are afraid of and pin that down. Is it really something to fear or an excuse? Either way, we can deal with both.
5. Nobody Will Care: I hear this often. “No one will read what I write.” “Nobody cares what I have to say.” Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you might be surprised at how many people will be thrilled to find someone with a similar way of thinking, with ideas they want to explore and learn. You might find an audience immediately, or it might take time to be “discovered.” There are ways to improve your discovering process, but unless you can be found, those connections won’t be made.
6. If You Can Talk About It Every Day for a Year, You Can Blog About It: I subscribe to the “blog your passion” school of advice, but let’s put it into reality. There are 365 days in a year. If you can write down 300 blog post titles or ideas within the next hour, you have something to blog about. If you can’t come up with 20, you don’t have much to say on the subject, so tweet and leave the blogging of that subject to the experts.
7. Know That You Have Value: When people find out I’m a writer, they often tell me that they “have a book” in them. That their life should be a book, movie, or television show. Everyone has a story, which is why we at Bitwire Media started Stories of Our Journeys, to help people share their stories. If you have a story worth sharing, from your memoirs, experiences, or expertise, you have something worth publishing. You have something of value to share. You have value. Share it.

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

With the brand new Jetpack, Automattic is bringing more WordPress.com features to WordPress.org self-hosted blogs than ever before.

Currently, eight popular WordPress.com features are being offered for free, with more free and paid options coming soon. Let’s take an in-depth look at what you get with Jetpack.

After The Deadline Spelling and Grammar Checking

After the Deadline was acquired by Automattic in 2009, bringing its spell, grammar, and style checking features to WordPress.com blog posts and comments. It’s also available for OpenOffice, Google Chrome, and Firefox.

Learn more about After The Deadline >>

Sharedaddy Social Media Sharing

WordPress.com’s social media sharing feature has long been available for self-hosted blogs with the Sharedaddy WordPress Plugin, and it’s now included in Jetpack. Though other social media sharing WordPress Plugins exist, many love Sharedaddy’s customizability.

Learn more about Sharedaddy >>

WordPress.com Stats

WordPress.com’s Statistics has given services like Google Analytics competition, offering complete integration with the WordPress administration panel. It’s been so popular, in fact, that it’s already available as a WordPress Plugin for self-hosted blogs.

Learn more about WordPress.com Stats >>

Twitter Widgets

The WordPress.com Twitter widget gives users a well-designed alternative to Twitter’s official colorful JavaScript widgets.

This functionality is currently more or less available with WordPress Plugins like Wickett Twitter Widget and Twitter Tools.

Learn more about WordPress.com Twitter Widgets >>

Gravatar Hovercards

Gravatar, Automattic’s service providing a globally recognized avatar, offers Profiles for further biographical information. Last year, WordPress.com introduced “hovercards”, displaying this information in a visual business card format upon hovering over an avatar.

Learn more about Gravatar Hovercards >>

WP.me Shortlinks

Sites like bit.ly and TinyURL have chopped down long URLs for years. However, many have been wary about their sustainability. WordPress.com’s service, wp.me, will be available as long as WordPress.com itself. (Already integrated into the WordPress.com Stats WordPress Plugin.)

Learn more about WP.me Shortlinks >>

Shortcode Embeds

Jetpack takes full advantage of the Shortcode API to bring the full benefit of shortcodes from WordPress.com, including sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, SoundCloud, and many more. The WordPress.com instructions on shortcodes offers details on how any customization options available for these sites, too.

Learn more about WordPress Shortcodes >>

LaTeX Mathematical and Scientific Notation

Teachers, scholars, programmers, scientists, and engineers have struggled for ages to publish equations and formulas on the web. The LaTeX project has long been a standard for writing complex mathematical formulas, and Jetpack brings it right to your blog.

Learn more about LaTeX in WordPress >>

What features do you want to see in Jetpack down the road? Post in the comments below!

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

In working on my new ebook, Social Media for Crafters, I spent months searching for crafting podcasts. There are a lot of craft podcasts. While only a few last past the first year, there are some treasures to be found in their valuable archives.

The ones that last, some getting close to their 200th episode soon, are delightful and often have huge communities of fans. Their enthusiasm explodes across the audio and video waves as they share their passion for their craft.

CraftyPod with Sister Diane, aka Diane Gilleland, just released episode 126, Planning Your Holiday Season, with My Mom!. The Savvy Girls Knitting Podcast with knitting sisters Melanie and Deborah is delightful and entertaining. Their latest is By Force of Habit. The Knitmore Girls Podcast is up to episode 141 with Cardboard cutout.

Some of the podcasts have a theme beyond the craft such as parenting, recycling, and saving money. It's a Purl, Man is a podcast about “a guy from Boston with yarn issues,” a fun and lively show. CogKNITive calls itself “a Knitting + Psychology Podcast.” Quilts ‘n Kids combines kids and quilting. Math4Knitters is unique as it is published regularly in the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and focuses on knitting patterns and craft projects that focus on the specific techniques involved. Splintered Board Podcast is a podcast dedicated to woodworking as a newcomer to the hobby, teaching fans how not to do as he has done. Ravelry’s Torah Threads is a combination podcast Torah study group for fiber artists hosted by a female rabbi and fiber enthusiast who spins, knits, cooks, and farms and shares her passions with those of like mind.

If you are a knitter, crocheter and yarn lover, you can get lost for days in the list of podcasts featured on Ravelry. Some are podcasts themselves where the discussion is hosted on Ravelry, and others are hosted offsite with a Ravelry community discussion page. I’ve included many of these in the list below.

I found podcasts on quilting, sewing, woodworking, stitching and embroidery, crochet, scrapbooking, and a lot of general crafting podcasts. Most are audio, but there are a lot of video podcasts and video channels on YouTube and other video hosting services. Video is great for showing tips and techniques. While a few are professionally presented with photographers and videoographers, like Alex Anderson Quilts Podcast and ThreadBanger D.I.Y Fashion & Style, most are fun and informal and still of great value even if the audio and video quality might be lacking a bit.

A trip through YouTube opens a world of learning. I wish YouTube had been around when I was struggling to learn how to tat from my 83 year old grandmother-in-law!

Many crafters release video and audio content on their site randomly. These don’t qualify as podcasts in the strictest sense. I tend to think of them as “specials” compared to podcasts which are regularly scheduled programs. Podcasts are a multimedia form of publishing, creating audio or video tutorials and episodes.

Podcasts are another way of building a strong online community and audience. Crafters are highly visual people, so video podcasts are extremely popular, and, if done right, are excellent to help guide the viewer through a particular process.

List of Crafty Podcasts

The following are video and audio podcast samples from around the crafting industry. Some of these are popular and updated regularly. Others were stopped for a variety of reasons, but they still hold valuable interviews, tips, and techniques.

Instructions on how to subscribe to a specific podcast are found on their websites. If you wish to interact with the podcasters and their community, pay close attention to their recommendations on how to proceed. Some host their own sites with open comments. Others host their podcasts on libsyn, PodBean, and others, and the conversation happens on their Facebook, Ravelry, BurdaStyle, or other social networking community.

Quilting Podcasts

• Alex Anderson Quilts Podcast
• Bonnie McCaffery
• Canton Village Quilt Works
• Daily Lineup QuiltersTV
• Driven To Quilt The Podcast for Today’s Quilter
• Hip to Be a Square Podcast
• Kaye Wood
• Mirkwood Designs Adventures in Creativity!
• Nonnie’s Quilting Dreams
• Pat Sloan’s Quilters Creative Talk Radio
• Patchwork and Pacifiers
• QNN TV: Quilting Television on the Internet
• Quilt Cabana Corner
• Quilt Out Loud
• Quilted Cupcake
• Quilting The Kaye Wood Way
• Quilting with Rosie Radio
• Quilting…for the Rest of Us
• Quilts ‘n Kids
• Simple Arts Blog and Podcast
• Simply Quilts: Home & Garden Television
• Stash Resolution
• Sterling Fiberarts
• The History Quilter Podcast
• The Naked Scrapper
• The Off-Kilter Quilt
• The Pioneer Quilter
• The Quilt Show
• The Quilter’s Notebook
• Within A Quarter Inch

Knitting, Crochet, and Yarn Lusting Podcasts

• BarknKnit Podcast
• Cast On — a podcast about knitting
• Crochetville Podcast
• The Crochet Crowd
• CogKNITive–A Knitting + Psychology Podcast
• Destiknit the Podcast
• Getting Loopy with Mary Beth Temple
• Hoxton Handmade
• It's a Purl, Man
• KnakedKnits
• Knit Picks Blog Podcast
• Knit Science
• Knitting Rose: An honest Texas perspective
• Knit Together
• Knit Views A Podcast of Knitting Reviews
• KnitCast with Marie Irshad
• Knitty Gritty Videos
• Let’s Knit2gether YouTube Channel
• Manic Purl Podcast
• Never Not Knitting: Podcast
• Ready, Set, Knit!
• Round the Twist
• Spin Control knitting and spinning crafts podcast
• Stash and Burn Podcast All Things About Knitting
• Sweaters for Dragons Podcast
• Socks in the City
• Sticks & String
• Stitch It!! Podcast
• TheKnitGirllls
• The Knitmore Girls Podcast
• The Knit Wits
• The Savvy Girls Knitting Podcast
• Yarn Thing: Crochet and Knitting
• YarnCraft
• Yarnspinners Tales’s Podcast

Ravelry Podcasts and Podcast Communities for Fiber Lovers

• Ravelry: At the Kitchen Table Podcast
• Ravelry: Barknknit Podcast Listeners!
• Ravelry: Brass Needles
• Ravelry: Brown-Eyed Mom: The Podcast
• Ravelry: Doubleknit Podcast Fans
• Ravelry: It's Spelled P.U.R.L Podcast
• Ravelry: Knit Sibs Podcast Listeners
• Ravelry: Knitting Pipeline
• Ravelry: Knitting Rose Podcast
• Ravelry: Math4Knitters
• Ravelry: Podcast Junkies
• Ravelry: She-Knits Podcast
• Ravelry: The Anatomy of Knitting Podcast
• Ravelry: The High Fiber Diet Podcast
• Ravelry: The Knit Wits Podcast
• Ravelry: The Yarn Thing Podcast
• Ravelry: Torah Threads
• Ravelry: Twisted Strands Podcast
• Ravelry: Y Knit
• Ravelry: YarnGasm Podcast
• Ravelry: Yarnings Podcast
• Ravelry: Yarns From the Plain Podcast

Scrapbooking Podcasts

• Scrap Time with Christine Scrapbooking Video
• Scrapbooking Scrapbook Podcast
• Scrapbooking Video Tutorials
• Scrapbooks, Rubber Stamps and Crafts OH MY!
• SCRAPcast

Beading and Jewelry Podcasts

• Bead Java Handcrafted Beads and Jewelry Podcast
• Handcrafting Beaded Jewelry podcast by Marissa Newman
• Hardwood Video Podcast
• Read and Bead
• The Bead Workshop by Harwood

Sewing and Stitching Podcasts

• Grandma’s Sewing Cabinet
• GreenStitch: Sustatinable sewing, knitting, and textile work
• Sew Chick: Art Quilt Adventurer
• Sew Forth Now
• Sew On TV
• Sew Stitch Create!
• Silly Chick Designs
• Stitch It!! Podcast
• Stitching n Junk
• The Material Mama Podcast
• ThreadBanger D.I.Y Fashion & Style
• WholeLottaSinger’s Blog
• YouTube TreadleLady’s Channel

Woodworking, Woodcrafts, and Workshop Work Podcasts

• DIY Home Improvement Podcast by The Handyguys
• Garage Woodworks Podcast
• High Rock Woodworking
• Logan Cabinet Shoppe Podcast
• Matt’s Basement Workshop
• Sandal Woods – Fine Woodworking
• The Sawdust Chronicles – beginnger wwoodworking
• Splintered Board Podcast
• Stu’s Shed Woodworking Podcast by Stuart Lees
• The Renaissance Woodworker
• The Wood Whisperer
• Upper Cut Woodworks
• Woodsmith Podcast
• Woodworkers Resource
• Woodworking Online Podcast
• WoodworkWeb Woodworking Videos

Crafts in General Podcasts

• Craft Cartel
• CRAFT CRAFT Video Podcast
• Craft Culture Podcast: A Podcast for Crafty Thinkers
• CRAFTCAST: with Alison Lee
• CraftSanity
• Crafty Chica Podcast
• Crafty Gemini
• CraftyPod
• Craftzine DIY Projects Magazine, Podcast, Videos
• Curbly DIY Design Community
• Hello Craft
• I Can’t Believe I’m – video classes and video podcasts
• iMake
• Museum of Contemporary Craft Podcast
• The New Toginet Radio Creative Mojo

This is just a sampling of the many ingenius crafting podcasts out there. I’m sure I missed a few. Do you have a favorite?

Post your thoughts in the comments below, or on Facebook and Twitter!

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Reports from around the world show few issues with upgrading to WordPress 3.1, and fewer than previous releases. This is fantastic and kudos to the WordPress Development Team for taking the extra time to test this release throughly.

However, due to the multitude of complex installations, server configurations, and WordPress Plugins and Themes in the wild, there will be issues.

Ipstenu has started the Troubleshooting WordPress 3.1 – Master List on the WordPress Support Forums. It is a list of how to resolve issues you may encounter with the WordPress 3.1 upgrade.

Here is a quick overview of some of the issues, explained more fully in the WordPress 3.1 – Master List, and from other resources we’ve found.

Remember, BACKUP FIRST. And if you have a cache Plugin installed, clear the cache first and consider turning it off during the process to keep things clean and fresh. You can re-enable it afterwards.

WordPress Plugins Can Bite Back

If you have a complex installation, customized or older WordPress Plugins, do not use the one click upgrade feature of WordPress.

If you have created a mirror site, test it there first. If not, the following should work.

1. Use the Automatic Plugin Upgrade feature to upgrade all WordPress Plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
2. If a WordPress Plugin you are using is not updated nor released through the Plugin Directory, go to the source to check for the latest release or information on issues and solutions for using it with WordPress 3.1. If you can’t find information, either trust it or consider finding a replacement.
3. From the WordPress Administration Panel, turn off all Plugins. You can do this manually or by temporarily renaming the WordPress Plugin folder under wp-content on your server.
4. Upgrade WordPress by downloading WordPress 3.1 to your hard drive and installing it manually through FTP or with the one-click automatic upgrade. Note: With Plugins disabled, the likelihood of a successful upgrade is much improved.
5. Test the site and the WordPress Theme.
6. Activate the WordPress Plugins one by one (rename the folder to its original name and activate the Plugins from the Administration Panels) and test the site for errors or issues.
7. If there is an issue, you will know immediately which Plugin is involved and can proceed from there to resolve the issue with the Plugin author or through the WordPress Support Forums.

The WordPress 3.1 – Master List has a growing list of WordPress Plugins found to have compatibility issues with WordPress 3.1, and this information should be updated in the WordPress Plugin Directory for those Plugins.

Hotfix WordPress Plugin

Mark Jaquith and others have been working on the Hotfix WordPress Plugin to fix some of the issues around WordPress 3.1.

As the Plugin instructions note, this is not a complete fix, but one that will “get you by” until the next release of WordPress. The goal of the author is to reserve this Plugin for similar updates in the future, to get you by in the meantime.

Currently, it resolves:

• Taxonomy Query Manipulations such as excluding categories.
• KSES fixes to keep the kses.php file from stripping images and advanced HTML from comments.

Expect more fixes to be added to it as they are found and fixed, and update the Plugin accordingly.

Strange Permalink Structures, 404s, 500 Errors, etc.

Some server setups are causing problems with permalinks, resulting in strange permalink structures, like /index.php/index.php, 404 Page Not Found and 500 Errors.

Last fall, Chris Cheney, Nick Schalk, Michael Szczepanski, and Mark Jaquith got together to resolve this issue with the Permalink Fix & Disable Canonical Redirects Pack WordPress Plugin.

The issue appears to be confined to IIS and Concentric/XO Communications and IIS servers on shared hosting platforms, as well as for those running URL Rewrite or permalink-related WordPress Plugins. The REQUEST_URI variable settings aren’t working right causing “infinite redirects.” The Plugin ensures that the variable is set during the initialization and install or upgrade of WordPress, clearing the permalink structure so it will work properly.

At a minimum, if you are having problems, try clearing your .htaccess file first and resetting your permalinks. The code for setting your permalink structure in the Permalink panel should match the code in the .htaccess file. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, try the Plugin.

For more information, see this discussion on the WordPress Support Forums, If Pages Return a 404 After WordPress 3.1 Upgrade, and WordPress 3.1 infinite redirect after upgrade on Windows server.

Administration Panel Confusion

While there have been some minor changes to the WordPress Administration Panels, there are some odd bugs and glitches you might encounter.

• Screen Options on posts and Pages may be missing or hidden. See WP Quickie Metaboxes for the solution or the Master List for an alternative.
• Content with links pasted in from other websites are not edible. You can try to edit it in the HTML editor or paste the link (and fill in the appropriate titles) using the HTML link button on the Visual Editor. Or consider pasting the content into the HTML editor and adding the link manually there.
• Some browser issues have been found with Firefox and Chrome. The issues with Firefox can be resolved by upgrading, which will resolve a lot of Flash crash issues as well. The issues with Chrome are related to some small AJAX issues with comments. Several browsers are having issues with the switching from Visual to HTML editor without a page refresh. They are looking into these.
• Adding an image in the Visual Editor then resizing it by clicking and dragging creates a long list of line breaks and paragraphs with non-breaking spaces character codes. Switch to the HTML Editor to remove the extra spaces, or live with the size of the image or change it through the image Media Library until a fix is released.

WordPress 3.1 Post Formats Confusion

Our WordPress Post Formats Tutorial should help you through the process of adding WordPress Post Formats to your WordPress Theme, but here is more help to avoid the confusion around the new post formats.

If your WordPress Theme continues to be supported, contact the Theme author for the updated version or information on how they recommend adding post formats to their Theme.

If your WordPress Theme has not been updated, here’s what you need to know.

While the feature has been much touted, it is designed to add design options to your WordPress Theme, not change anything from the Administration Panel side, unless the Theme has been modified to change the Post Panel. Everything will look the same on the backend. It’s what happens after you hit publish that changes things with post formats.

For instance, if you wish to publish a video and have all posts with videos look different, maybe with a black background to frame the video, when you select the post format for video, the post will add the CSS style for format-video to the published post which will use the assigned CSS styles. The same applies to a Quote post format. Maybe you want to feature a big quote mark in the corner of the post. When published, the format-quote style will be added to the post and the assigned CSS styles will be applied to all quote posts only.

You don’t have to use this feature. It’s an option to style your WordPress site to visually frame specific types of content.

Until Theme or Plugin developers offer custom post templates for the various post formats, the Post/Edit panel will look the same as it always has. As many Theme developers have added custom post templates for Custom Post Types, expect this to move into the post format options soon.

While the WordPress 3.1 Post Formats Tutorial takes you through the process step by step, if you choose to do this yourself:

1. You will have to edit the functions.php to add the post formats feature to the Post panel, adding the type of posts you wish to use.
2. You will need to edit the index.php, single.php, category.php, and other multiple post pageview template files within the WordPress Theme to add a conditional tag statement to the WordPress Loop, in order for the post formats to be set properly.
3. You will also need to add the post_class() to all of these template files in the post DIV HTML tag in order to automatically generate the post format type CSS Class identifier.

If you are using a Child Theme, try adding these first to the Parent Theme per the instructions. If that doesn’t work, you can add it to the Child Theme instead.

Post Formats offer challenges to the WordPress Theme and design community. First, they must race to upgrade their Themes accordingly. Second, think of all the possibilities! WordPress Themes can now be designed extensively around various content elements, opening up the door to amazing design options.

WordPress Multisite or Blog Networks Issues

WordPress 3.1 introduces the replacement for the Super Admin. The change has made it hard for people to find access to the new area. Look on the top right of the Administration sidebar column to find the access to the Super Grover Admin toolbar.

Other issues facing WordPress blog networks include:

• BuddyPress must be updated to the latest version.
• Be aware that if you choose to manually upgrade, all members on your site must be notified of the downtime, and you may wish to either use a Maintenance Mode WordPress Plugin or static page to alert visitors and members.
• Check ALL Plugins, network, must-use, etc. for updates. Some are often overlooked.

We’ll keep updating this post for more information. If you find new issues, please let us know. Check @WordCast and our WordCast Facebook page for updates, too.

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

As blogs continue to shift from text-only articles to multimedia publications, alternate display options for video, audio, pictures and other types of content are becoming more important than ever. Sites like Tumblr led the charge, allowing users to select what kind of content they were publishing to format the articles appropriately. Now, the same functionality is available in your own WordPress blog.

As of version 3.1, WordPress includes post formats, which gives users this flexibility. In this tutorial, we’ll take you step-by-step through the use of WordPress Post Formats, and how to get started with them on your WordPress site.

WordPress Post Formats

As of version 3.1, WordPress supports the following post formats:

• Aside – Typically short pieces of content, published without a title.
• Image Gallery – A collection of pictures in a gallery format.
• Link - A single link.
• Image – A single image.
• Quote – An inspirational or noteworthy quote with a citation.
• Status – Status updates, similar to Facebook and Twitter updates.
• Video – A single video.
• Audio – A single audio clip, like a song or a podcast.
• Chat – An instant message transcript.

In order to keep things uniform across different WordPress themes, these are the only options. It is not currently possible to add your own post formats, though themes are not required to support every single format – developers can pick and choose. WordPress core developer Andrew Nacin suggests that those wanting custom post formats should implement them with custom taxonomies.

Adding Post Formats to a WordPress Theme

In order to use post formats on your WordPress blog, you must add the theme support in your WordPress Theme’s functions.php template file using the following code:

add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array( 'aside', 'chat', 'gallery', 'image', 'link', 'quote', 'status', 'video', 'audio' ) );

This line of code will enable all possible post formats, though you only need to include those you require, or expect to use. Once added, the “Formats” box will become available in the WordPress Post editor.

If you are using a Child Theme, add the code to the child theme after the after_setup_theme set of functions in functions.php. Currently, if you add it to the Parent Theme, it will not appear when the Child Theme is activated.

Changing Post Display Based on Format

In The Loop of a WordPress Theme’s code, which displays posts, we can use the conditional tag has_post_format() to add and remove HTML and PHP template code based on the selected post format.

As an example, let’s say we want to display a special icon for video posts:

<?php if(has_post_format('video')) { ?>
<img src="path/to/afancy/icon.jpg" alt="Alternate Tags are Important" />
<?php } ?>

As another example, to not display the post title for asides:

<?php if(!has_post_format('aside')) { ?>
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<?php } ?>

REMINDER: These examples are modifications to make to your existing loop structure, not simply things to copy in. If you simply add the second example instead of changing with your existing title format, you’ll end up with two titles!

Some themes may also use these functions with additional code to automatically include the first links, images, or videos in a post and formatting them appropriately.

For more information on PHP conditionals, if/else statements and comparisons, check out this tutorial from W3Schools. For more examples of how to use this function, check out Lisa Sabin Wilson’s reference.

Styling Post Formats in a WordPress Theme

The easiest way to style posts based on their format is using WordPress’s post_class() function. This handy function outputs HTML code to give elements various CSS classes based on a post’s categories, IDs and formats!

Here’s an example:

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>

…might output:

<div id="post-454" class="post post-454 category-4 category-dancing format-image">

Using this function, we can add styling for post formats with the automatically generated classes like .format-image, .format-aside, .format-audio, etc.

Need Some WordPress Post Format Inspiration?

Check out WordCast’s showcase of smart and sexy uses of WordPress post formats to get yourself kick started.

More WordPress Post Formats Articles and Resources

• Post Types and Formats and Taxonomies, oh my!
• On standardized Post Formats
• Post Formats vs. Post Types
• WordPress 3.1 Post Formats Reference
• Smarter Post Formats?
• My First Post Format
• WordPress Post Format Examples

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

WordPress 3.1 is here, bringing the much anticipated “post formats” option to sites around the world. You will now be able to specify what type of content you want to publish whether it be a standard text article, image, video, audio clip, quote, link, and more.

Get excited. This will not only increase the functionality of publishing posts, it will revitalize the entire WordPress Theme community.

Here at WordCast, we couldn’t wait to show off some of the innovative ideas that designers around the web have come up with. We’ve compiled a showcase of designs for WordPress and Tumblr that are taking advantage of post formats in unique ways. While many aren’t yet using the extremely new post formats feature, their ideas will apply beautifully.

Current WordPress Techniques

Matt Mullenweg has long been a fan of asides, creating some of the first on his early WordPress blogs. We’re sure that he is embracing the latest version of WordPress to convert his old category-based asides to the new post formats.

Given that Matt mixes his posts up with links, quotes and short – medium blog posts, it would be nice to see differing designs for the different post formats, really showing off the new WordPress 3.1 feature. Come on, Matt, show off a little!

ma.tt by Matt Mullenweg

Custom Styling of Post Formats

Link posts in Digging Into WordPress’s theme are styled with a chain link background image and darkened to contrast this site’s standard posts.

Digging into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr

Taking Tumblr Post Formats and Styles Seriously

The Wumblr WordPress Theme emulates Tumblr by offering 9 different post formats: general, notes, video, image, gallery, quote, audio, link, and status. The result? A colorful presentation of WordPress post formats which take advantage of styling by giving each post format its unique look.

Wumblr Theme by Themify

Simplified Tumblr Styled WordPress Theme

The Auld WordPress Theme is another great example that demonstrates the customizability of post formats. This theme replicates the style and functionality of Tumblr.

Auld Theme by WooThemes

Show Off the Post Type with a Graphic

Why not promote the type of post with a graphic image to designate video, images, links, etc?

LightBright Theme by Elegant Themes Salju Theme

Tumblr Techniques

Let’s take a look at how Tumblr theme designers are using post formats, to see where WordPress post format-compatible themes might be heading in the future.

Solaris Theme by matthewb

Esquire Theme by Matthew Buchanan

Digital Moleskine Theme by Sid05

Graphthemuseum Theme

Theme by Ben Delaney

Theme by Jarred Bishop

Theme by Max and recycled by Dave

Theme by Simon Fletcher

Scaffold Theme by Mike Harding

Cheshire Theme by alterimaging

Shelf Theme by The Theme Foundry

When WordPress Tumbles, It Tumblrs Well

The WordPress theme community has a little catching up to do but it won’t take long for some stunning designs to surface. Have you found any great examples we’ve missed? Post in the comments below!

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast

The more content you write, the more you find yourself repeating things you’ve already said. Bloggers are constantly linking back to published posts for reference and backstory for readers. It’s always been a time-consuming experience, hunting within the WordPress administration interface, or Googling around to find your own content.

WordPress bloggers rejoice! Gone is the painful and time consuming experience. No more the hunt for old posts. WordPress 3.1 now includes internal linking, making it easy to cite those references to posts of old.

Using AJAX and jQuery instant functionality, the Link function in the Visual editor now includes a search through your post content to find that internal link and quickly add it to your post.

Using the Visual Editor (internal linking is not currently available in the HTML editor):

• Type the link text.
• Highlight the word or phrase.
• Click the Links toolbar icon to activate the link options.
• Type in the search terms for the internal link to bring up a list of post titles from within your blog.
• Choose the post.

The result is a well formed HTML anchor tag. Hurray!

There are only two drawbacks to the new WordPress 3.1 internal linking feature. First, it is not available in the HTML editor, frustrating power users who shy away from the Visual editor to blog with more speed and control.

Second, it requires you remember the right keywords to bring the right post up in the list to choose from. Those prone to “senior moments” may suffer from side effects in using this new feature.

Find more Blogging, Social Media, WordPress and Web Publishing at WordCast