Data Circle

If you’re running any blogs on WordPress, you should be aware that version 2.2.1 is now available. As well as a number of small bug fixes consisting mainly of cosmetic changes, the release also fixes three security vulnerabilities and so is a required upgrade. I’ve already upgraded one of my blogs without any problems and it was a fairly simple process, although I do wish there was an automated way of doing this, especially for people like me who have multiple blogs (I haven’t got round to trying WordPress MU yet).

I was having a look at Google Labs when I came across their Google Extensions for Firefox page. There are the obvious ones listed that most people will already know about, including the Google Toolbar, but the one that caught my attention was the Blogger Web Comments Extension.

Basically what this extension does is allow you to see what people are saying on their blogs about the page you are currently looking at. It does this by querying Google Blog Search, so it’s not limited to only supporting blogs hosted by Google on Blogger accounts. Provided a blog is indexed there, comments from it related to the page you’re currently looking at should show up. You can also post a comment about a page directly to your blog, although this feature only works with Blogger accounts, and you have to be running Firefox 1.5 in order to install the extension (but of course you’ve all upgraded your browser anyway, right?).

I’ve just installed the extension on my copy of Firefox and it produces some interesting results, although I don’t know if I’ll use it very often. It’s a little bit obtrusive at first, but you can always close the comments box it shows and from then on there’s just a little icon near the bottom right of the window, so you’ll barely notice it. For anyone who’s interested in blogging in general, or just receiving some commentary on the pages you’re browsing, the extension is definitely worth the thirty seconds or so required to download and install it.

The official site of WordPress appears to have been redesigned. I’m a little surprised at this, because usually I’d expect something to appear in the RSS feed for the site (I’m subscribed to that, and it shows up in my admin panel on all my WordPress blogs), or a mention on Photo Matt.

Anyway, the new design looks good, although I never had any major gripes with the old one. I suspect the design is a work in progress, as some of the links don’t lead anywhere yet, but I like the fact that there are a couple of screenshots displaying the admin panel on the front page, as well as prominent links to articles supporting new or potential WordPress users. No doubt there will be a few glitches here and there that need ironing out, but so far I’m very impressed with the new look.

WordPress 2.0 Release Candidate via Photo Matt

WordPress, the popular blog software that powers this site and most of the others on the network that I’m building (with the exception of Rogue Tory, which uses a custom blogging system that I wrote from scratch), has reached the third release candidate in preparation for version 2.0. A lot of WordPress users seem to think that this may be the final RC before 2.0 is officially marked as “stable”, although I’ve not yet plucked up the courage to upgrade any of my main sites yet for fear of losing data or having to reverse the process or restore from a backup if things goes wrong. However, I am planning to give the latest version a whirl tonight when I install it on one of the domains that I’m not currently using, so expect a post later on about how 2.0 stands up to the 1.5.x release line.

WordPress.com Open via Photo Matt

If you’ve ever wanted a quick and easy way to set up a blog with a relatively catchy URL, no advertisements (at the moment anyway, though I don’t know how long that’s going to be the case) and a fair simple user interface, then WordPress.com is probably the best place to go. You used to need an invite to get an account – I managed to get pwaring.wordpress.com fairly early on – but now sign ups are available to everyone, though personally I expect them to close at some point once the demand for accounts becomes too much.

Having said that, WordPress is ridiculously easy to set up on your own server, as all you need to know are the database connection details. I run several sites powered by WP and it takes me no more than fifteen minutes to set up each one, and that includes creating a new database user for each site (yes I’m paranoid like that), plus tweaking a few configuration options and installing the themes that I like to use. So if you’ve got your own server, even a shared one, you might want to try installing the code yourself in order to get more flexibility and a better URL than myname.wordpress.com, but for beginners just starting out in blogging WordPress.com is great news.