Are you launching a new company built around WordPress? Have you created a new free or commercial plugin or theme? Want to get the word out about a service you’re enjoying or send us a hint on a secret coming soon project? Click the “Submit News” button at the bottom of the page and drop us a note. We’ll try to send some traffic your way and help you get the word out!

Sarah Gooding on Google+

Special shout out to Tammie and Ve, who have been the force behind it and had to put up with a *lot*, especially from me :)

The all new front page

It’s hard to know where to start in terms of the improvements, but I’ll give it a crack nonetheless.

Responsive design!

Oh yeh, time to visit WPMU.org on your Android, iPhone or iPad… we think you’re going to like it.

Oh yes :)

Navigation-tastic

We’ve made the front page a far, far easier experience when it comes to browsing the latest stories, and the category listings are pretty darn lovely too.

All of our BuddyPress stories in one nice spot

Comment, comment, comment

We’ve developed a brand new plugin called Comments plus, that we’ll shortly be releasing for free, that powers our comments section.

Yep, complete Google, Twitter and Facebook integration.

Test it out, experience the love, leave a comment on this post :)

Readability, content is king

We’ve, hopefully, made our posts much more readable, especially when it comes to tutorials or detailed content.

And really, that’s just scratching the surface.

So, whaddya think?

Let us know how we can make it even better, any bugs you encounter and – of course – if you’d like to know how we did anything.

Featured pic CC Paladin77

James Farmer on Google+

On the other side of the WordPress job field there are the countless skilled developers, designers and coders looking for work. Here are a dozen excellent resources for helping match the need to the skill. I’ve included job boards that focus solely on WordPress as well as others that usually have a steady stream of WordPress-related work.

Customyze Me

Customyze.me

WordPress Jobs

WordPress Jobs

WPMU DEV Job Market

WPMU DEV Job Market

Woo Jobs

Woo Jobs

WP Hired

WP Hired

Smashing Jobs

Smashing Jobs

Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs

GetACoder.com

GetACoder.com

WordPress Freelance

WordPress Freelance

Krop

Krop

oDesk

oDesk

Simply Hired

Simply Hired

Sarah Gooding on Google+

Both the free version and Chat Pro include full WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress compatibility so that your community website can host its own chat rooms. Here’s what it looks like in action on your site:

The WordPress Chat Lite version features:

• Add a site-wide chat in the bottom corner
• Add a chat window to any post or page in WordPress through a button added to the built-in editor
• Easy to integrate with your theme – you have full control over the colors and sizes of your chats
• Built-in support for avatars

Check out how easy it is to use:
This is a great plugin for WordPress Multisite networks, as it doesn’t require the use of messy shortcodes. Adding a chat window is built right into the WYSIWYG editor!

WordPress Chat Pro has many more features:

• Allow any Twitter user to join the chat
• Allow any Facebook user to join the chat
• Select which roles are moderators
• Easily change chat colors
• Disable avatars
• Enable emoticons
• Change chat update interval
• Archive every chat – You’ll always have a record with timestamps on hand to refer back to when needed.

The WordPress Chat plugin gives you a way to instantly connect with members of your community or potential customers. Use it to offer support, handle sales questions, or promote your products and services. If you have a lively blogging network or BuddyPress community, you can use the WordPress chat plugin to keep your members connected to each other. Offer them more opportunities to interact and you’ll find that your site will become a hub of social activity.

Download the WordPress Chat plugin for free and test drive its features today.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

There are two steps to making language selection available at signup. First, download our Languages for WordPress MU pack, which contains 36 languages. It includes both .po and .mo files so you can edit and improve them as much as you’d like. Create a a new wp-content/languages directory and drop the .mo files in there. Then drop the Select Language at Signup plugin into wp-content/mu-plugins/. Congratulations! You now have language selection at signup on your WordPress Multisite network.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

This directory is now also referred to as the Must-Use plugins directory and you can find a new codex page in the works at:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins

This page explains the basic features of the mu-plugins directory:

• Always-on, no need to enable via admin and users cannot disable by accident.
• Can be enabled simply by uploading files to the mu-plugins directory, without having to log in.
• Loaded by PHP before normal plugins, meaning API hooks added in an mu-plugin apply to all other plugins even if they run hooked-functions in the global namespace.

It is important to bear in mind that the mu-plugins directory should only be used for plugins that have been written to be multi-use compatible. However, all WordPress sites are able to take advantage of autoloaded plugins, whether you have MU/Multisite enabled or not. Please note that you may need to create the directory itself, as it is not auto-generated by WordPress.

Another important thing to remember is that update notifications will not be shown for these plugins, so you’ll be responsible for finding out when these plugins can be updated.

If you’re considering adding a plugin to the mu-plugins directory, make sure to thoroughly check and test its compatibility before deploying on a live site.

More Helpful Resources…

If you have anything to add, please jump in and help to make the Must-Use Plugins page a better reference. You can also find quite a bit more information in our WordPress and WordPress Multisite Manual. The section titled: Introduction to Using Plugins on WordPress and WordPress Multisite is particularly useful and contains many practical tips for uploading and testing plugins in a multi-use environment. Make sure to bookmark these references for the next time you need them.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

Membership’s Gorgeous New Settings

Integration with WordPress Roles

This is a pretty sweet new feature. You can now create new members for your site and instantly assign them to a WordPress role.

Communicate Easily

You can now send automatic communications to your members. So when their subscription is about to expire you can email them to persuade/beg/threaten them to stay. Like so:

No Access Page

Got some sneaky members trying to visit URLs they shouldn’t? Redirect them to your No Access page.

Account Page Settings

Insert a shortcode into a page and let your members edit their account details right in your website:

Improvements to the Payment Gateways

We’ve now added a single payment PayPal gateway, as well as adding upgrade and cancel capabilities to Paypal gateways. The single payment system now means that a developer can now add any payment system as you no longer have to rely on a subscription service.

URL Groups

Ultimate Flexibility! You can now include/exclude users from URLs, or even parts of URLS! The possibilities are endless.

Ping System

The new ping system is great for developers who want to send data about their members. Easily add and remove users from external services such as forums and mailing lists.

Upgrade and Renewal Functionality

Let members easily renew and ungrade their subscriptions.

Quick Start Guide

Feeling indimidated by WPMU DEV’s Behemoth of a plugin? The new quick start guide will help to ease you through.

And that’s not all

• Persistent configuration utility
• More hooks and filters for customization
• Define checks to override signup/subscription/renewal/account pages
• Override standard WordPress register and account pages to redirect to Membership ones

All that is soooooo nice!

To celebrate this update I’m going to put together a few tutorials that’ll show you some of the great things that you can do with this huge plugin.

It’s available now for WPMU DEV members, or at the princely sum of $39 for unlimited use of the plugin and one month of upgrades and support.

We have some amazing members here in the WPMU.org community and are absolutely stoked by all the entries into our recent Lifetime Membership Competition.

I gotta mention we had lots of fantastic entries with a massive response from all of our fellow procrastinators in the last 24 hours of the competition.

So, needless to say we jumped into action scribbling names and email addresses down onto post-it notes and putting them into a large sorting hat on loan to us from Hogwarts (ok, so maybe we used google docs and the free randomizer here: http://www.random.org/lists/).

Regardless, without further ado, I give you our 3 Lifetime WPMU DEV Members:

1. Jim Nelson – and his review: http://wpmu.tripawds.com/2011/03/15/what-makes-tripawds-run/
2. M.K. Safi – Another solid review: http://winkpress.com/membership-plugin/wpmudev-membership/
3. Taryn Hayes – Great stuff here as well: http://www.hayesfamily.co.za/blog/?p=9064

So our sincerest congratulations to all three and welcome (2 of you) to WPMU DEV!

For the rest of you: disappointed you weren’t among our random winners?  Why leave it to chance?  You can get a FREE membership to WPMU DEV with a little bit of elbow grease and by loving thy fellow member.  How do you do it?  In our forums our members can accumulate reputation points. If you reach 1,000 we’ll give you a lifetime membership!

Details of how to enter are here: http://premium.wpmudev.org/1000-rep-points/

Thanks again to all who participated and look for more exciting competitions to come :D

Not every site within your network is going to have the same plugin needs. The ability to activate additional functionality on a site-by-site basis can be very valuable. Also, mass activation and deactivation of plugins can save you tons of time, especially if you have thousands of sites on your network. Adding new features can become tedious if you don’t have mass activation capabilities.

Current Features of the Multisite Plugin Manager Include:

• Select what plugins sites have access to
• Choose plugins to Auto-Activate for all new blogs
• Mass activate/deactivate a plugin on all sites in your network (Very Handy!)
• Assign special plugin access permissions for specific sites in your network
• And as Super Admin, you can override all these to activate specific plugins on the sites you choose!
• Removes the plugin meta row links (Version, Author, Plugin) and any update messages for blog admins

The very cool thing about this plugin is that it integrates with the WPMU DEV Supporter plugin so that you can charge for access to certain plugins, very similar to the way WordPress.com does! Once you install both plugins, the options to charge for access to certain plugins will appear in the dropdowns.

Why would you want to integrate with the Supporter plugin? It’s one of the powerful keys to building a successful and lucrative multisite network. Selling premium upgrades to users is a tried and proven way to monetize your network.

The Multisite Plugin Manager is available for free from the WordPress plugin repository. Download it today and add it to your network toolbox.

Sarah Gooding on Google+

But Just What Can I Do With My WPMU DEV Membership?

An important question – and easily answered.

• Plugins: With more than 100 Premium Plugins you’ll never find yourself lost for a plugin again. And you can be sure that we’ll be making our developers work hard over the next sixty years to build you hundreds more.
• Themes: We’ve got a great selection of WordPress, BuddyPress and Multisite Themes. We’re particularly hot on our front page Multisite themes, like the one we use at Edublogs.
• Support: A lifetime of pestering Mason and his support team – worth more than you can possibly imagine.
• And, of course, we’ve got manuals, white-label videos and you’ll get to be part of one of the biggest WordPress communities on the web.

All of that, for the rest of your life.

OMG!!!! I WANT IT! How do I Enter?

1. Write a post on your blog or website about which WPMU DEV plugins and/or themes you find most useful or which ones you would like to use.
2. Submit your review using the form on this post or email contact@incsub.com and wait to see if your name is drawn.

That’s it.

But you’ve only got twenty-four hours so you’d better get your blogging hat on if you want a chance to win.