Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in the latest release:

• Basic statistics added
• Possibility to have a custom css file outside the plugin directory added
• Support for unlimited protected content on a single page
• wpmudev_wpal function to be used for custom post type templates added
• Deprecated message for PHP5.3 fixed
• Embedded scripts are moved to the footer for W3C and better performance and problems with some themes
• Improvement of UI in post editor and settings page
• Fixed setcookie issue when zero or empty value is entered

Basic Statistics

You will now find a Basic Statistics section near the bottom of your settings page for the plugin. This section will tell  you …

• How many total “likes” you have (this includes Facebook Likes, Google Plus Ones, Linkedin “Ins,” and Tweets)
• The number of “likes” from the four different services (Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Twitter)
• The top “most liked” posts

And here’s what it looks like:

Add a CSS File Outside the Plugin Directory

Another important feature in this release is the ability to add a custom CSS file outside of the plugin’s directory. This allows you to add styles that won’t be overwritten when the plugin is updated.

(Note: If you’re a WPMU DEV member, then you know that many plugins see constant updates and new features. Therefore, if you would like to add your own styles to this plugin, make sure you take advantage of this option.)

There are instructions for what you need to do in order to add your own custom stylesheet at the very bottom of the plugin’s setting page.

You can check out more about the Pay with a Like plugin and download it on its homepage.

Photo: Hand Cursor – Thumb Up from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

Here’s a look the new features in the latest release:

(Note: The API service is only available with a paid membership.)

• Refreshed menu structure and admin screens
• New Pattern Matching functionality to block bots by signup patterns
• New Are You A Human PlayThru game captcha
• New blog and splog creation stats screen with pretty graphs
• Add tags to API call for more accurate classification
• Add splogging command capability to admin toolbar
• Fixed various bugs/notices

While much of the power of the Anti-Splog plugin is necessarily behind the scenes, there are a few new additions from the list above that will be visibly noticeable: the refreshed menu structure and admin screens, the new blog stats screen, and the addition of Are You a Human PlayThru game captcha.

Let’s take a look at the stats screen and the new captcha game below.

Stat Screen

The new stats screen lets you clearly see at a glance how many blogs (as well as splogs) have been created on your site. In the graph below, legitimate blogs are in green (labeled ham) while splogs (labeled spam) are represented in red.

Are You a Human PlayThru Captcha

The Are You a Human PlayThru game captcha is another weapon you may choose to use to stop splogs. It’s one of several captcha options offered in the plugin. (Note: As with a number of the better captcha solutions, this is a free service that requires registration. You will then need to enter your assigned API key.)

The Are You a Human captcha works by presenting the visitor with a little animated drag-and-drop game that they must complete. Below are a few examples:

Anti-Splog Overview

Much of the power behind the Anti-Splog plugin comes from the Anti-Splog API service hosted at WPMUDEV Premium. The API service not only prevents/limits bots, it also identifies human-created spam.

In addition to the API service, there are a number of other methods the plugin uses to shut out splogs before they even get started, such as using sophisticated captchas, changing the sign-up page location every 24 hours, and limiting sign-ups per IP per 24 hours.

For a short overview of the plugin, check out the video below.

You can checkout the plugin in more detail and download it on its homepage here.

Joseph Foley on Google+

Good news for WPMUDEV members – the still relatively new Events Plus plugin has been beefed up yet again with a whole slew of new features.

The Events Plus plugin allows you to create and manage events right on your WordPress site. It also works with BuddyPress and Multisite.

Let’s take a look at the features and add-ons:

•   Event and Next Event Countdown add-ons.
•   Next Event Shortcode add-on.
•   Event Controlled Redirect add-on.
•   Weekly Event Calendar add-on.
•   Avatar replacement for people logging in with Facebook/Twitter.
•   Filling in users first and last name metas from Facebook and Twitter.
•   Support for multiple person attendance for an event
•   Support for registering to website from front end
•   Login with Google account
•   Category-like custom taxonomy.
•   Category filter to upcoming events widget.
•   Defaulting to username if no other names apply for “Guest lists options” add-on.
•   Support for blog local time, instead of server local time
•   Support for WP date/time settings
•   Improvements in Help texts.
•  Recording event metas on posted social messages.

Events Plus Plugin Overview

Because this plugin is still relatively new (first released in February), we’ll give a quick rundown of what it’s about.

The Events Plus plugin lets you create and manage meet-ups, parties, dinners, fundraisers, or any other type of event you can think of – be it online or off – right from the comfort of your WordPress site. It also works with BuddyPress and Multisite.

Here are some of it’s features:

• Integrates with PayPal. Sell tickets to your event and accept payment in any major currency.
• Hassle-free interface. Creating your event is as simple as adding a new post to your WordPress blog.
• Facebook and Twitter login. Guests can RSVP with their social media profiles – no WordPress account required.
• Integrated Google Maps. Simply insert Google maps with built in direction features for attendees by using our Google Maps Plugin.
• Widgets included. Easily display event attendees, upcoming events and most popular events in any widgetized area of your site.
• Compatible with any WordPress theme. Looks great out of the box or customize the style and layout to fit your site.
• Keep tabs on who’s coming. Monitor the guest list from your WordPress dashboard, with the option to display public RSVPs on your site.
• Works perfectly with Multisite and BuddyPress. Beautiful BuddyPress integration, including groups support
• New features: Recurring events, auto-scheduler, limited capacity events, ‘my events’, e-newsletter integration, front page editing, guest list options and more…

And of course don’t forget all the new features in this latest update.

You can check out or download the plugin here.

Photo: Event Ticket from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

While the plugin was already loaded with features, the ability to segment audience by country is a game-changer for those who could benefit from catering to different visitors around the world in different ways. Here are a few examples of what’s possible with this new feature:

• Show a pop up only to visitors from the U.S. but no one else.
• Show a pop up to only visitors from the U.S. and Canada but no one else.
• Show one pop up to visitors from the U.S. and Canada, but show a different pop up to visitors from the U.K. and yet another pop up to visitors from Australia. Show everyone else either a completely different pop up or no pop up at all.
• Show a pop up to visitors from every country around the world except visitors from the U.S. and Canada.

Have the wheels in your head started turning yet?

Take a look at the country function in action.

Here is the complete list of upgrades and fixes in the new version:

• Added Geo IP rules to allow restriction of popover showing based on visitors country (using hostip.info’s API)
• Added IP cache so that the API isn’t hit repeatedly for the same IP address
• Added configuration option to allow the API used to be changed easily.
• Added configuration option to allow defaulting to a specific country if the API is down.
• Fixed IE bug that left dark background in place when dismissing popover.
• Fixed issue with internal referrals condition when domain mapping is active on a blog.

If you haven’t yet checked out the pop up plugin, you really should. It’s packed with controls that will let you do practically anything you like. Along with controlling how, when, and where the pop up displays, the plugin lets you show a pop up (or not) based on the following conditions:

• If the visitor is logged in
• If the visitor isn’t logged in
• If the visitor has never commented
• If the visitor came from a search engine
• If the visitor came from an external link
• If the visitor came from a specific referrer
• If the visitor has already seen the pop up X-number of times
• If the visitor is on a specific URL
• If the visitor is not on a specific URL
• If the visitor is in a specific country
• If the visitor is not in a specific country

And here’s a look at the display controls.

You can download the new version on its homepage.

Photo: World map from BigStock

Joseph Foley on Google+

How does it work?

The Pay with a Like plugin lets you leverage the power of social currency in order to give access to content or a download. You know your content is share-worthy, but how do you get those lazy visitors to take a minute to share with their friends? Make them pay with a Like on Facebook!

Content becomes visible after a user pays by sharing your post. And it’s not just for Facebook Likes – users can also pay with a Tweet, a Google +1, or a share on LinkedIn.

The plugin is also very easy to use. It comes with a built-in button to protect specific content within a post through use of shortcodes:

Of course, Pay with a Like is also fully compatible with WordPress Multisite if you want to run it on multiple sites across your network. You can even make it a premium upgrade for blog owners by using it with our excellent Pro Sites plugin.

Pay With a Like gets your visitors promoting your posts through major social media channels before they can have access to your exclusive content. Since social networking websites account for the largest amount of overall internet activity, your content will have the chance to spread like wildfire across the web. If your business model includes marketing of any kind, then this plugin can cut out the middle man and give your site the extra push it needs to go viral. Kickstart social sharing on your site today with the Pay With a Like plugin from WPMU Dev.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

We’ll go over some of the new features first, and then for those who aren’t familiar with it, we’ll give a brief overview of the plugin as a whole.

The following have been added or updated:

• Added field reordering to Custom Fields
•  Added Required fields
•  Added Date Picker
•  Added Datepicker themes
• Added Datepicker date formats
•  Added individual date formats for each created field
•  Added shortcodes for Taxonomy [tax id="tax" before="your before text " separator=", " after=" your after text"]
•  Added shortcodes for Custom fields including metadata [ct id="field id" property=" title | description | value "] or leave out property entirely for default value.
•  Enabled shortcodes in widgets
•  Change embed codes to style for better error trapping. The old style still works so old templates aren’t broken.
•  Corrected CP_PLUGIN_URL for SSL
•  Fixed double display of options on Radio buttons
•  Fixed Group checkbox problem
•  Added class exists exclusions
•  Verified function as a direct sub module for Classifieds, Directory etc.
•  Added stripslashes_deep on $_POST to handle apostrophes properly.

Below are a few screenshots of the more graphically obvious additions.

Date Picker

Date Picker Themes

Date Formats

Make a Field Required

Reorder Fields

CustomPress Plugin Overview

The CustomPress plugin helps you transform WordPress into a full-blown CMS by allowing you to add your own post types, fields, and taxonomies. In other words, it’s ideal for helping you set up posts that need more than the typical editing screen, categories box, and tag box.

Below are a few examples of content that would be better served by having special posts types, fields, and taxonomies.

1. Movie Database
2. Book Database
3. Real Estate listings
4. Design Galleries
5. Restaurant Reviews
6. Recipes
7. Celebrity Database
8. Etc., Etc., Etc.

An Example

For example, below is a screenshot of custom post type screen for a movie database. Notice how it has been set up with special “custom fields” for typical elements found in a movie database: release date, review 1-10, MPAA ratings (G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17), stars of the move, director, etc.

To get a more complete understanding of custom posts, custom fields, and custom taxonomies, see our three part series on how they’re different and how they work together.

You can find the CustomPress plugin and more info here.

Joseph Foley on Google+

Hot!

Drag and Drop Media Uploader

One of the things that people are really excited about on 3.3 the new drag and drop uploader. As someone who uploads a lot of media onto a WordPress website I know what a pain-in-the-ass the old uploader was. Now it’s possible to just drag and drop from my desktop into WordPress. Super-sweet.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/chriscoyier/status/148877602575224832"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/tobexmastermind/status/149230619363258368"]

Adding images and videos from my computer is so much easier with the new WordPress 3.3 drag and drop functionality. I can drag images or videos directly from my computer desktop and drop them inside the box of dotted lines. It will automatically upload files. You can drag and drop as many files as you want. It will upload them sequentially directly below the box. If you are old school, you can still click on ‘Select Files’ to upload files.

CMS Mind 

Uploading is now made easy, simple and fast no more the painful up-loader, like 1st clicking the type of upload (Image , video , others etc.) and then wait to upload. Is now very easy and simple with the drag and drop multiples uploading process or you can also try the browser upload if you feel any problem. That’s really cool step.

Mybloggertricks 

Improved Permalink Performance

Anyone who uses /%postname%/ for their permalink structure will have been taking a hit on performance. This has been particularly problematic for large websites. You can check out this post for more information.  Of course, that post is now history as the permalink issue has been fixed which is going to make a lot of people happy!

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/mindanaoan/status/146470218997309441"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/JHutch2k/status/146392414398066688"]

For as long as WordPress has been around, if you had a large number of pages / posts and were using /%postname%/ as your permalink structure, you were suffering a pretty big performance hit. When users accessed your pages, and when you published or edited your pages, there was a bit of waiting to do. The problem only got worse the more content you had. Luckily, the WordPress team have sorted this issue out, and there are now “massive performance gains” to be had with this update if you’re using that structure.

Wp.tutsplus 

Responsive Layout

2011 has been the year that everyone in the WordPress world has been talking responsive design. Responsive design is a design practice that uses liquid layouts and media queries to ensure that a website looks gorgeous on every device. We’ve really seen this taking off, with an explosion of WordPress themes using the latest responsive design techniques. If you followed my series on building a WordPress website on an iPad then you’ll know the difficulties that I came across using the WordPress dashboard. The latest WordPress update is the first move towards a responsive WordPress admin. The new media uploader, along with responsive design, go a long way to solving this problem.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/scottkclark/status/147150813700173824"]

It’s so much easier to edit posts or create new posts with WordPress 3.3. If you have a long list of Categories, you can select a category and scroll up/down to find additional categories to add. The new responsive admin page reflows content to fit the screen you’re using. The only gripe I still have about the mobile admin is that I still cannot add widgets to a sidebar by dragging and dropping. That still needs to be worked on. Below is a screenshot from my iPhone accessing my WordPress admin.

CMS Mind 

Responsive design — that is, using liquid layouts and scaling media to fit any screen size — is moving into the mainstream in a hurry. The past year has seen several high-profile websites relaunched with responsive designs, but WordPress 3.3 is likely the most widely used site yet to embrace responsive design.

Webmonkey

Shiny Contextual Help Menus

Part of making a product easy and intuitive is providing great documentation to ease people through it. WordPress have made that a whole lot simpler with the redesign of the contextual help menus. And theme developers are already leading the way with using the new contextual help menus – check out the new help menus on Chip Bennett’s Oenology.

It’ll be interesting to see how different developers put this new functionality to use. Check out this info from Otto on how to set them up.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/chip_bennett/status/147145828702748672"]

The Help Tabs has a bit of a facelift and better organization. Feature pointers and contextual help Feature pointers give you support for help, which is great, you don’t have to go to another place to find out what a certain thing does. Similarly contextual help is more useful to people learning on the fly.

Think Around Corners 

Widget Joy

Ever set up a theme, got all your widgets in place and then thought “actually, I don’t like that theme afterall”? And so you change the theme, go to have a look, and all the widgets have disappeared. Sadness! :/ They’ve left your sidebar and moved to the inactive widget section. This will happen no more with WordPress 3.3, making quite a few people happy.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/satya61229/status/146890356225605632"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/madebyivor/status/146743518671540225"]

One of the most annoying things about changing themes was that sometimes the widgets would vanish. Actually, they got moved to the Inactive Widgets sections and you’d have to manually drag them back to the sidebar. Now they stay put.

Best Affordable web hosting 

Lukewarm

Flyout Menus

As someone who spends every day faffing around in the WordPress dashboard, I am a big fan of the new flyout menus (unlike the hover menus on Google’s new look, which I HATE). They took me all of half a day to get used to. I do see a bit of a contradiction between the move towards responsiveness and the inclusion of UI features which don’t work well on touch devices, but whatever. They go swoosh-swoosh and I can get to stuff easily. Still, despite my enthusiasm the reception to them has been mixed. Even while WordPress 3.3 was in beta this battle raged on the support forums. If you want to keep them expanded check out this tutorial on WP Beginner about how to do so.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/SiobhanPMcKeown/status/148808569859477504"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/andyjmeyer/status/148164602046316544"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/darthvadur/status/149367967879147520"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/calinative/status/146921711063932928"]

Flyout menus! This has to be my favourite update, anyone that has a WordPress website with multiple plugins and add-ons will be used to having a few menus open and needing to close them to navigate easily (I usually have Settings, Appearance, Plugins, Pages and Posts open).

Blokes on the blog 

In a nice aesthetic improvement, the side menus now pop out. When you roll over a menu item, a nice side menu pops out. Another cool thing: when you click on a menu to open it the regular way, once you click on another menu item, the previous one will close. So you don’t have this long list of open menus. Nice!

Best Blogging Tips Online

Old menus were working great, this is more a regression considering also accessibility problems for disabled users or users with touch screen devices. Not to mention that you will need more time to get to the panel you need. In any case, it will take some time to get used to it, but in the end, you have to get used to flyouts, I doubt that they will be removed in next version.

Dev4Press

Tooltips

Again, I think the tooltips are a cool addition. They’re a great way for theme and plugin developers to give their users some additional help with their product. Having installed WordPress on quite a few local installs now they are beginning to grate on me though. I wish there was some way that WordPress could telepathically sense whether the person at the computer knows about WordPress or not, and then turned them on or off accordingly. Seriously, is that too much to ask?

The Buzz

On the subject of new user experience, there are some neat feature pointers that help users navigate new features. You can bet this feature will be advantageous to theme developers as well.

Gabfire Themes 

Admin pointers are the small boxes that are displayed when user selects a menu/link. Comprising of all relevant information regarding the new features, these little display boxes are genuinely of great help.

Webtablab

Pointer should help with introduction of changes and features. While they look nice, after few days and several test installations, I find them extremely annoying. I expect that when plugins start using pointers it will make a mess on the page after upgrade. And I expect that we will soon get plugins to always disable pointers.

Dev4Press 

Not Hot

Decreased Overall Performance

Unfortunately this is a biggie :( Dev4Press have carried out a performance benchmarking test of four major WordPress releases since WordPress 3.0. They noted that while WordPress 3.2 saw some excellent improvements in performance, in WordPress 3.3 admin performance has gotten worse. Many users who use /%postname%/ will actually see a performance improvement on the front end. While the methodology did come under question by various people in the comments, the same tests were carried out on each version of WP and there has been a decrease in performance in the latest version. Anecdotally, I’ve spoken to WordPress users who have noticed a decrease in performance.

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/crspence/status/148249996993642496"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/TastyPlacement/status/147048975936143360"]

I am sure that some developers will say that these results are not important. I agree that half a second is not much in terms of speed and that most users will not even notice the difference, but it shows that current development of WordPress is not done right. Adding new features and sacrificing speed and resource usage is not a good way to go.

Dev4Press

Toolbar / Site Admin Header

The admin bar got a whole lot of crap when it appeared, and plenty of people were shimmying over to their user options to switch it off (I like it, and I like the new toolbar, but sometimes I am in a minority…). But now the admin bar has been transformed into the toolbar and it’s not longer possible to remove it from the dashboard. Also, WordPress have added a whole bunch of links back to WordPress to the toolbar – nice for hardcore WP users but not so nice when building client sites. There is, however, a hack you can use to remove the toolbar. Check out this tutorial from WP-Tutsplus for help.

What I don’t like so much about the toolbar is that the site title on the admin page has been wrapped up in it. I can see the logic behind it (see Jane Wells’ discussion on this thread) but that doesn’t mean that I find it fun. I miss my site title! I spend 8-10 hours a day on WordPress and I wants it back. Phil, one of our support guys, missed it so much that he went and made a plugin. You can install it to make yourself happy :)

The Buzz

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/expiscornovus/status/147978234330497024"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/ntsalter/status/146987917607321600"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/jan_dembowski/status/147792965891399680"]

All looks good apart from that awful Toolbar (Admin Bar/Header) thing, and the lack of any facility to hide it. Pre 3.3 we had a “hide” option, now we don’t. WordPress used to be about user-options but it seems that they’re in recession now too.

BG on WP Tavern

Plain and simple, this is a change for the worse. This is the first time I have been tempted to hack core to make a change – there’s no reason whatsoever that I should be forced to modify core WordPress files, especially to bring back a single option that was removed for what still seems like very shaky logic.

Sick Hippie on WP Support Forums 

The Burning Question

And so, we get to the most important question:

I’ve not covered all the features here, just the ones that people have been raving about/hating on.

What features of WordPress 3.3 do you think are hot? Which ones do you absolutely hate? Have you got a broken site? Do you love the new update? Tell us all about it in the comments! 

WordPress 3.3 has been named after saxophonist Sonny Stitt. Check out the video from wp.org:

(Sonny Stitt is a pretty good choice but I’m still holding out for a WordPress version named after cosmic-jazz-lord Sun Ra. Since it’s unlikely, here’s his version of Pink Elephants on Parade which is one of my favorite things on YouTube:

(never thought I’d get that into a blog post ;) )

ANYWAY, you’re probably couldn’t care less about which jazz musician WordPress is named after (did you know, though, that BuddyPress is named after pizza shops? I learned that off Paul Gibbs last week I did. That’s a good piece of trivia for you). You’re interested in the new features.

Okay, I guess I can tell you what they are:

• New tooltips for newbies (with lots of potential for plugin and theme devs to take advantage of)
• Drag and drop uploader
• Hover fly-out menus for navigation
• Improved toolbar (previously the admin bar)
• Tumblr importer (yes plz!)
• Improved co-editing support
• Revamped help tabs
• Improved dashboard experience for iPad users
• New editor API
• New jQuery version
• Improved performace on post-name only permalinks (yay!)

You can check out the improvements in detail on the WordPress Codex. And no doubt we’ll be posting about them over the next few weeks.

We’re all excited! Thanks to all of the WordPress crew who put together our favorite piece of open source software.

I don’t know why you’re still here. I thought I would have lost you at upgrade, and definitely by the time I got to subjecting you to Sun Ra. Go upgrade! I’m going to bed now….

The fact that it fixes the bloody menus, finally, yay!

Check out the (admittedly quite extreme) 3.2.1 and 3.3 menu examples below:

Now, if you work with WordPress a fair bit, you surely have to like that :)

Have you played at all with WordPress 3.3? If so, what’s your favorite improvement?

James Farmer on Google+