The New York Times Develops a WordPress Collaboration Plugin for Editors

by Joe Foley June 6^th, 2012 7 Responses

Earlier this year, the New York Times released a WordPress plugin that will help sites that use editors to proofread and edit others’ posts or sites where writers collaborate on the same post. The plugin, called Integrated Content Editor (or ICE), allows changes to a post to be tracked and then accepted or rejected, much like the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word.

Here’s a glimpse of the plugin in action:

In an interview with Poynter.org, Chief Technology Officer Marc Frons from the Times explained why the paper first had the tool developed for their own use.

Plugins

Enhance YouTube Videos with Annotations, Social Engagement, and More

by Joe Foley June 5^th, 2012 2 Responses

Embedding YouTube videos on your site, be they yours or someone else’s, can help increase engagement. And the EmbedPlus: YouTube for WordPress plugin can help you enhance those videos to optimize engagement even more.

Below are some of its more useful features:

Timed Annotations (i.e. pop-up up comments)
Scene Markers – Allow viewers to jump to the next scene
Set Start and Stop Times
Instant Replay
Looping
Slow Motion
Movable Zoom
Social Reactions – Let viewers see what others are saying about the video on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Digg

How It Works
Getting all this to work is really very simple.

Plugins

Reduce Number of Images on Your Server with this WordPress Plugin

by Joe Foley June 4^th, 2012 3 Responses

When you upload an image to WordPress, you aren’t just storing that one image on your server. In WordPress, a number of different images of various sizes get created automatically. And so instead of one image, you may be storing as many as five images for every one you upload.

This is done to give you a number of different image size options. And while that’s a nice idea, the truth is you probably won’t use most of those images. And so they just sit there on your server, taking up space.

News

WordPress for BlackBerry App Version 1.6 is Out with New Features

by Joe Foley June 2^nd, 2012 Leave a comment

Version 1.6 of WordPress for BlackBerry is now out and updated with new features. We’ll run through some of the more important ones below.
Dashboard
The Dashboard will be the first screen you see when you launch the app. It allows easy access to writing new Pages and Posts, publishing photos, moderating comments, checking stats, and more.
Action Bar
The Action Bar sits at the top of the screen and lets you move between your blogs, as well as refresh Posts, Pages, and Comments.

Quick Photo Button

News

WordPress Joins the Internet Defense League

by Joe Foley June 1^st, 2012 3 Responses

WordPress, along with the likes of Reddit, the Cheezburger Network, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and others, has joined the newly formed Internet Defense League – an organization whose mission is to broadcast a kind of “bat signal” that will “mobilize the planet to defend the internet from bad laws & monopolies.”

No, seriously.
The History

News

Radical Changes Coming for WordPress, Says Founder Matt Mullenweg

by Joe Foley May 31^st, 2012 1 Response

“One of the things I’ve been working on a lot the past few months is sort of a radical simplification of the WordPress interface,” said WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently at the paidContent 2012 conference in New York.

“WordPress it’s a complex tool. It’s like the back of a digital SLR. It’s got a lot of buttons, a lot of powerful things you can do. But that doesn’t work on your phone. … You really have to radically reimagine.”
Pivoting WordPress
Mobile, of course, is changing our world. And it looks as if it will be changing WordPress as well.

multisite

[Interview] WordPress Multisite Business – Mark de Scande from BlogLines.co.za

by Joe Foley May 30^th, 2012 15 Responses

Today we continue our semi-regular series of interviews with WordPress Multisite owners.

The following interview is with Mark de Scande, who runs BlogLines.co.za with his wife Charissa. BlogLines is a freemium-style site (free blogs with paid upgrade options).

Mark became a lifetime WPMU DEV member not long ago, and so if you hang out in the WPMU DEV Community, he may be familiar to you.

He is based in South Africa.
BACKGROUND:
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself before you got into running your site? What is your background in?

News

WordPress iOS Apple Mobile App 3.0 is Now Out

by Joe Foley May 29^th, 2012 1 Response

WordPress has announced the release of its latest app for Apple mobile devices – Version 3.0.

The main difference most will notice will be the new “Swipe to Moderate Toolbar” for comments. When you pull up comments, you can now swipe over them to activate a simple options bar that allows you to choose Approve, Trash, Spam, or Reply.

In addition to the new comments bar, a number of bugs were fixed, and translations were added for Chinese (Taiwan), Hungarian, and Polish.

It is available through the iOS app store.

(See below for future release plans.)

Coming in the Next Release

News

WordPress 3.4 Release Candidate Now Available

by Joe Foley May 28^th, 2012 1 Response

WordPress has announced the first release candidate for WordPress Version 3.4.

A “release candidate” is the final test version before mainstream public release. In other words, the current release candidate is pretty much what the final version will look like. Unless some major surprises pop up, there is only the crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s at this stage.

In order to get the current release candidate, you can download the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or download the release candidate (zip file).

A few highlights of what’s new follows (from the WordPress Codex):