hello! Blogger

2.8 Beta 2 is out now and is available for download. Find out more details.

A new Wordpress is available for testing. You can download it here. You can see details about it here.

You know, as much as I like Wordpress, there are some things to me that should just natively be part of it without having to add plugins. IMHO, plugins are overhead and well, if they could be implemented natively into the code I just think things would flow a lot better. One thing was just recently, which is to make a post “sticky”. This was such an about time thing that I am hoping they implement the other things in the future:

1. Subscribing to comments via email. I know that in many cases this is not desirable. Especially on high traffic sites where you get over a 100 comments in a day. However, if there was an option for it, I would just love that instead of having to have a plugin to do it. Also, natively having this I think would make management so much easier.
2. Support for Multiple blogs. Honestly. This would put the nail in a lot of other CMS/Blogging tools. If this was possible, then I would be a very happy man. Let me explain. Supporting multiple blogs would entail one admin control panel being able to post to any number of websites. Please, this should happen.
3. Top Commentators widget. I use this on hello! yoshi, and I love it. But I think it should be something that’s native. Part of a stats widget if you will. I think this would be awesome.
4. Polls. I think polls should be included. I know it’s really an unnecessary thing but perhaps you can have it load/not load as a preference.
5. Rating/Karma. Finally, I think some kind of comment and entry rating system should exist. Again, if you didn’t want it, you could disable it and it wouldn’t load.

So there you have it. Do you have anything you’d like to add to the list? Or perhaps you want to say that there is no need to add them because the plugin works fine and doesn’t require much. Let me know your opinions!

Expression Engine 1.6.7 has been released, and all users should upgrade to the new version. With this release is news of continued support for Expression Engine 1.x. Did we ever have a doubt? Of course not. I think they even still support some pMachine sites out there.

They’ve added the {parent_id} tag to the categories tag, which is pretty exciting, since it was a feature request! Yes, they do listen to EE users!

Other than that, there are of course bug fixes and security updates. All users are encouraged to update.

Wordpress releases Wordpress.tv, your visual guide to everything Wordpress. This site seems to be more than just a conglomeration of how to videos about wordpress, but also puts together in one place all the Word Camp videos, and well, everything else that even relates to wordpress.

It’s very well put together, and looks really easy to navigate, just like the original Wordpress website.

I must say this is a great way to get to learning how to use wordpress if you’re not proficient already. Bravo guys. The Introduction video pretty much sums up the website. 

So there’s been an update about Expression Engine 2.0, and apparently at this point, it’s on “feature lockdown”, meaning no new features will be added anymore. This is a good sign of it coming out soon!

Another exciting update is the jQuery module is getting completed. I don’t know about anyone else but this really excites me because this will make a lot of great things so easy to do!

It’s said the next update will be coming on January 30-ish. Totally can’t wait!

You can now download Wordpress 2.7 beta 2. Here are just some fixes, visit the site to find more. You can also update your beta 1 via tools -> update as well. But it might not work so be prepared to download it manually.

* The Upload button didn’t always show. Fixed.

* JS on the Dashboard broke for blogs with no comments, causing several UI elements to “freeze”. Fixed.

* Recent Drafts Dashboard module didn’t show correct times. Fixed.

* Various Autosave fixes.

For those of you who have been looking forward to trying out the latest and greatest in Wordpress, 2.7 beta 1 has been released for everyone to download. Remember that it is beta, so you will not want to use this on a live production site. (Unless you are daring like me)

I have not tried this out just yet, and I am looking forward to seeing the vast changes in the visual design. 

This release of Wordpress is set to squash out the bugs that have been annoying some people, and also is a security fix related to open registration that has not been made public yet. If you’re using 2.5, you’re urged to update. There are apparently over 70 other fixes in this update as well. Including fixing the flash media uploader for IE 7. Unfortunately for myself, it doesn’t fix the issue I’m having, which is most likely because of all the stupid stuff I’ve installed since I moved to wordpress in the recent past.

I tell you, upgrading and upgrading your installs of any software will eventually make it do things you’ve never thought would happen. I’m about this close to converting my personal blog back to ExpressionEngine. But no, I won’t do that. Yet.

I’ve been throwing around the idea of having pop up comments on this blog. I’d just like to get a poll going on which you prefer. Pop-up comments or non-pop-up comments which basically go to a separate page to do comments. I’d love to hear any feedback on this because it’s been one of those things that have been bothering me.

While on one hand I really hate pop ups, there are reasons why pop-up comments could be a good thing. The biggest reason is pretty obvious for Expression Engine users, mainly because you don’t have to have a separate page for comments as a permalink. It gets kinda annoying when you have 2 pages that are essentially permalinks, and yet only one has comments on it. The popup comments would always be on every permalink page, which would essentially become one page now instead of two.

The disadvantage of course, is with a popup comment window, when people reply to a comment and they get the email notification, the comment page they are going to becomes the popup comment. This can get really annoying. But there are ways around this, to direct the person to the permalink page instead of the comment page.

So please, take a vote, let me know what you think!