Wordpress have just released version 2.8.1 with handful of bugs fixed; Notable issues that are fixed in beta 1 include :

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.

You can automatically upgrade to 2.8.1 by changing in version.php

$wp_version = '2.8';

To be replaced with

$wp_version = '2.8.1-dev'; 

Wordpress 2.8 come already with lots of improvements in speed, widgets interface, new syntax editor for themes, new themes interface similar to plugins, in addition to the new Screen Options on every page. More information and download http://wordpress.org/.

Posted by Hatem at 12:41 PM to Blogonews | Permalink | Comments (0)

BuddyPress 1.0.1 have just been released, a great solution to transform WordPress MU into a social network platform. A great suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature and allow social interaction between members.

All BuddyPress plugins can be themed to match your own style, in just the same way as a WordPress blog. The BuddyPress plugins are bundled with a default theme to get you going out of the box.

This point release fixes a number of security issues in the 1.0 version so it is a critical upgrade for everyone currently running BuddyPress. There is also a number of other bug fixes so please review the release history for more information.

Advanced BuddyPress features include :

- Extended Profiles
- Private Messaging
- Friends
- Groups
- The Wire
- Activity Streams
- Blog Tracking
- Forums

BuddyPress is already used by many websites such Volkswagen TDI Tank Wars, GigaOm Pro, Wanna Network?, Flokka ... and many others. You might check the online demo at http://buddypress.org/demo/. More information and download available at http://buddypress.org.

Posted by Hatem at 7:12 AM to Blogging Network | Blogonews | Software | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shawn Nafziger have just launched BlogRolled, a new service to help bloggers monetize their Blogroll and make even more money. The concept is very easy, you register as a blogger and then you select one of the blogrolls available and related to your website. Place piece of code in your pages and you are done. Every month payment is made to your paypal account and you can find a detailed report on your payments.

For advertisers BlogRolled aims to help with search engine optimizations. Advertise choose from one of the available categories of publishers, and once they purchase a link it will be automatically available within 48 hours, sounds very long but you should expect great results depending on the bloggers that are sharing their blogrolls. Interesting idea to monetize blogrolls and benefit from Natural Search Benefits, User Friendly and Benchmarks.

Posted by Hatem at 6:08 PM to Monetize your Blog | Permalink | Comments (0)

PhobosLab have just released the first stable 1.0 of Asaph, a new microblogging solution. Asaph focuses on collecting links and images from other pages. It allows you post content directly from any page you are on. Asaph is not a full blown blog and it does not aim to be one - it just does this one task, but it's pretty good at it.

You can watch the screencast (~5Mb) to see what Asaph looks like. The solution come with two predefined themes, require PHP5 and MySQL and is available for download under the terms of GPL v3. For more information check Asaph project's page.

Posted by Hatem at 8:32 AM to Software | Tools | Permalink | Comments (0)

• Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
• Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than their WordPress Address
• Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
• Link importer fixes

So good luck to upgrade to the new version ! Even with the number of solutions available to help upgrading easily, it still a real mess !! Just wondering why there isn't a version like everybody to upgrade from 2.3 to 2.3.1 including only files that changed ? Is it that difficult to automate ? If you are upgrading from an older version be sure to remove the utf-8 from DB_CHARSET in your config file, this will save you lots of time looking around : "where these special caracters are coming from ? "

Posted by Hatem at 6:30 AM to Blogonews | Tools | Permalink | Comments (0)

BusinessWeek have an interesting article on how top bloggers earn money and there are many known figures on the list from BoingBoing, ShoeMoney, Kottke, TechCrunch, Mashable, Problogger... others that I don't know at all, but probably you'll recognize some of them. But what I find interesting on this article is not the "how" top bloggers earn but the "how much".

Many bloggers I estimated they earn much more than the numbers announced, such Problogger ($100.000 a year) and this is probably due to the nature of topics Darren is used to blog about on problogger beside his photography blogs, which I bet provides the highest revenue for him. I don't think this is the real list of top bloggers on earning, since many don't reveal their real revenue. $5.000 per month is a good revenue, but not that high ! But you will notice how all of them used to vary their revenue sources.

From cat pictures and celebrity gossip to tech news and politics, the stars of the blogosphere earn plenty of dough, regardless of subject. Some bloggers start their sites intending to make big profits. But most of the bloggers we talked to had more modest expectations, and saw their blogs unexpectedly turn into businesses as traffic picked up and ad dollars rolled in.

Posted by Hatem at 7:11 AM to Blogonews | Permalink | Comments (0)