wordpress

WordPress 2.6 out now

The WordPress development blog has announced the release of a new version of the world’s best blogging software.

Some of the big improvements include: the ability to compare versions of posts, wiki-style, tracking who changed what – great for multi-user blogs; a new dynamic bookmarklet to help quick posting; the inclusion of Google Gears to speed up the admin interface; and new theme previews which include your content.

There is a video demonstrating the new version:

[HTML1]

Other, smaller changes include:

  • Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
  • Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
  • Bulk management of plugins.
  • A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
  • Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
  • Plugin update notification bubble.
  • Customizable default avatars.
  • You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
  • Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
  • Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
  • You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
  • Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
  • Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
  • You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
  • A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
  • Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
  • Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

That’s my morning sorted, then.

More online government innovation

There seems to be a head of steam being built up here, folks.

The Department for Innovation, University and Skills – who ought to be good at this stuff, really – has launched a new minisite called Innovation Nation : Interactive. It’s a consultation exercise around the Innovation Nation strategy, but is much more fun than the usual “here’s a PDF and an email address” approach. Here’s how they describe it themselves:

We’d like to hear your views and feedback on the Innovation Nation strategy that we published in March 2008, to help inform the implementation of the strategy. This is an interactive version of the Executive Summary of the document, where you can comment on each paragraph individually, or on sections as a whole.

It runs on WordPress (natch) and the CommentPress theme – one of a new breed of templates that change the way that sites work as well as the way they look. It’s a really nicely put together site.

Steph Gray, the blogging Social Media Manager at DIUS, puts it thus on his site:

In terms of the technology story, it’s amazing how CommentPress transforms a plain vanilla blogging format into such a dynamic tool for analysing a text, and just how easy it is to implement. Inspired by Glyn from Open Rights Group at a TeaCamp a while back, the site was put together in less than a day (though we’ve done less fancy customisation than ORG’s impressive implementation). The project is also one of the first public outings of our sandbox server, designed to be at arm’s length from the corporate site and with greater scope to test innovative tools and approaches online. Finally, we also used the excellent MailBuild email distribution system to help alert key stakeholders and contributors to the initial consultation about the new site via a branded email.

But we hope the bigger story will be the breaking down of the classic consult/deliver dichotomy which we’re challenging policy teams to overcome. We’d love this interactive document to become a place where policymakers, stakeholders and interested citizens come together to help move a policy forward, and we’ll be doing our best to act as a bridge between commenters and the civil servants who are working hard to change things. Don’t underestimate the scale of the cultural challenge here: we’re asking seasoned, busy public servants with a familiar way of working to take extra time and effort to make engagement a continuous process – and to do so in a whole new way.

I certainly encourage anyone with an interest in innovation in the public, private or third sectors to visit the site and leave constructive feedback where you can.

WordCamp UK

WordCamps are fairly unorganised events for lovers of the best blogging platform, like, eva: WordPress. The first one in the UK is taking place in Birmingham next month, and it’s going to be great. Get a ticket here.

Even better news is that Simon Dickson‘s going to be there, and running a session on non-blogging with WordPress. Simon’s also sponsoring the event, in his words:

It’s maybe unusual for a one-man company to sponsor a fairly large conference like this. But virtually everything Puffbox does at the moment is WordPress-based. It’s the content management platform I always dreamed of… and it’s free of charge. It’s time I gave something back.

Besides, it’s in Puffbox’s interests for this gathering to take place. It’ll be an enjoyable weekend of unashamed geekery. I’m hoping to meet some interesting people, learn some interesting things, and help create a support infrastructure for WordPress in the UK. A T-shirt with a big W on the front would be a bonus.

Well done him, a brilliant gesture, not least because Simon has already done more than anyone to progress the use of lightweight, low cost solutions like WordPress in UK government. I last saw Simon at the UK Gov barcamp aaaaaages ago, so will look forward to catching up with him – and a whole host of other top WordPress folk – at the WordCamp.

WordPressers – make your URLs readable!

I’ve noticed that quite a few folk who have installed their own version of WordPress (as opposed to those that use WordPress.com) haven’t got round to making the URLs (the bit that appears in the address bar of a browser) of their posts ‘human readable’.

In other words, they look like http://www.myblog.com/?p=1027 rather than http://www.myblog.com/postsubject.

Why would you want to make your links appear in this way?

  1. It helps in search engine optimisation – if the link says something about the content, Google etc like it
  2. It makes it easier for people to know what they are getting before they follow a link to your site
  3. It probably helps accesibility-wise
  4. IT JUST LOOKS NICER!

That’s enough reasons. Anyway, if you are a WordPress user, changing the way your post URLs – or ‘permalinks’ as they are known – is pretty easy. All the options are in the control panel, just click Settings then Permalinks and choose an option from:

  • Default: http://davepress.net/?p=123
  • Day and name: http://davepress.net/2008/06/17/sample-post/
  • Month and name: http://davepress.net/2008/06/sample-post/
  • Numeric: http://davepress.net/archives/123

I use the second option, day and name. Once you have made your choice, just hit Save. That should be it.

The only complication because of the way a file is setup on your server, called .htaccess. For WordPress to make the changes to your post URLs, it needs access to write to this file. If it, can’t, it will provide you with the code you need to paste into your .htaccess file to get it all to work. Don’t worry, this is pretty simple and you should be able to do it within your web host’s control panel.

Another thing not to worry about are all those links out there on the web linking to your old, number based, post URLs – these will still work!

Drip, drip… more ICELE news

David Wilcox pointed me in the direction of the latest E-Government newsletter from Headstar, and their article about ICELE’s slow and rather painful death:

In the medium term, the government is considering an overhaul of e-democracy policy which could bring into being a new cross-government agency to replace ICELE and draw in elements of similar work currently scattered across the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Progress in that direction will be made following the publication by DLG this summer of a white paper on citizen empowerment…

CLG concern over ICELE’s operations is thought to centre on its spending on staff and management and a failure to achieve its initial broad objectives. However, Ellis told E-Government Bulletin that charges of overspending were “plainly not true”.

Interesting! But also rather messy and unpleasant…

I was giving a little thought the other night to th poor councillors who had started blogging using ICELE’s system, ‘Blog in a Box’, and who might now be a little concerned about where, if anywhere, their platform might be going now.

My advice to them would be to move to WordPress, either by using the free hosted option at WordPress.com or by hosting it themselves with their own install from WordPress.org. If any of you come across this blog and need some help, let me know.

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