This past weekend I went down to Orlando to attend the WordCamp there. You’d think for a long time WordPress guy like me WordCamps would be old hat but this was my fist one.

I picked up tons of little tidbits. Here are a few in no particular order.

Forward Looking

The WordPress core development team seems to be very forward looking. While there was some talk about where WordPress has been, the focus of the presentations was definitely on where the platform is going. On the technical side the big focus seemed to be “WordPress as a CMS.” Some of the features that are either planned or were talked about included.

Custom Post Types – To allow custom options beyond the current post, page and attachment. Some examples I can think of could be photo galleries, or data entry forms.

Improved Media Handling – WordPress 2.9 will have built in oEmbed support so you can just paste the url of the content you want embeded (from supported sites) and WordPress will automatically detect the content on that linked page and display the it on your site. Not a good explanation but it will make embedding videos, etc. much easier.

Better Main Navigation Control – There was some discussion about improving the main navigation controls to make it easier to exclude pages, reorder links, and including links to non-page links (on and off site.) Matt Mullenweg asked the users which plugins they were using for that functionality. He said that one big way WordPress adds functionality to the core code is by getting with plugin authors for plugins that already do it.

Google Wave For Collaborative Note Taking

There were two tracks at WordCamp Orlando. Jesse Peterson and I were going to be attending different sessions but wanted to share notes so we could get the most from the conference. I suggested Google Wave might be a good way to do that so I shared an invite him.

In one of the early sessions Matthew Simantov saw us using Google Wave and took it a step further by creating a wave for everyone to share their notes on. It was a good idea and made it easy for folks to have collective notes from the event.

Matt Mullenweg is a Nice Guy

As the founder of WordPress I image Matt Mullenweg gets pulled in lots of different directions. Even so, he manages to do a good job of being a nice guy. I’m glad I got the chance to shake his hand and thank him for all he’s done to steer the WordPress ship. Without him doing what he’s done my company here, SuccessCREEations, Inc. wouldn’t exist.

Not bad for a guy just 25 years old!

We even got him on Google Wave Saturday.

(photo credit: seanosh)

Orlando is a Nice Town

The more time I spend in Orlando the more I want to move there permanently. Everyone I ran into this weekend was uniformly nice. This includes the folks from Voce Communications who sponsored the event and carried through to the ladies at the front desk of the hotel I stayed in Friday night.

Even getting a full dose of the notorious Orlando traffic on I-4 wasn’t enough to dissuade me. I found a radio station that is playing non-stop Christmas music through the holidays to keep my mood up. Turns out they even stream their broadcast too! I’m listening to Christmas music while I type this.

I fully intended on attending the after party Saturday night but in one block walk to my car I realized I was really tired and still had a 4 hour drive back home that night. I decided to plead not-as-young-as-I-used-to-be and just head home rather than to the party first. It was a rainy drive home but very much worth the trip.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I can’t wait until I head up to WordCamp Atlanta next month!

Yesterday someone asked me what’s the best way to get started with WordPress. Good question.

With its free code and famous 5 minute installation, WordPress is a great platform for the do-it-yourself website and folks looking to have a top notch website on a very tight budget. Since WordPress installation is so straight forward should you go ahead, dive in and start using WordPress on your own?

In my opinion it depends.

That’s the way I started years ago. But one thing you should consider is how much time you want to spend figuring things out and searching through the WordPress forums for answers. I’ve spent many hours in that maze finding answers to all sorts of problems.

It really depends on how much time you have available, what your budget is and most importantly what your goals are. The good news is you have options.

Doing It Yourself

The least expensive, most time consuming way is to do everything yourself. It can be a great way to go if you have a very tight budget and lots of time. I see this as the right answer for the hobbyist and people who really want to learn how the back end of WordPress works.

That was me when I installed my first WordPress blog. I had outgrown Blogger so I moved over to WordPress 1.5 and loved the freedom. That was back when WordPress was considered to be just a blogging platform.

I spent hours and days figuring out the best ways to set things up and get things done with WordPress. While WordPress does a pretty good job “out of the box” with things like SEO, it turns out there are a whole bunch of things – settings and plugins, etc. – that can be adjusted behind the scenes which make a big difference in how effective your site is at attracting traffic.

It was my hobby and I loved it. Unfortunately most people don’t have that kind of time available to get their website up and running as effectively as possible.

Middle Ground

The next step up I recommend is to hire a reputable service to do the basic installation and setup for you so you know it’s done right. They take care of the stuff that’s left out of the “5 minute install” and make sure those important back end settings are optimized.

Then you are free to focus on creating content for your site because that should be one of your top priorities. The content on your website is the biggest attractor to bring people into your site. Too many website owners starting out get caught up in the aesthetics of their sites and don’t leave themselves enough time to create quality content. And then they wonder why they have so little traffic!

Hint: Pretty does not attract the audience. It’s nice sure. But mostly it’s, um, pretty.

If you are looking for a good cost effective way to get your WordPress site up and running quickly one service I recommend without reservation is The Website Habitat by Dawud Miracle. I’ve know Dawud and his work for years and he really knows his way around WordPress. I know he sets his client’s sites up the right way.

The only down side to a middle ground solution like this is that in order to keep the cost down you typically have a limited selection of choices on how your site design. It’s not a big deal for many, especially if you are looking to get your site up, running, and optimized as quickly as possible.

The Full Monte

The other alternative is to hire a firm like SuccessCREEations to create a custom solution for you. Our New Media Hub is a the answer for people who need a completely custom website that showcases their business and draws in traffic from all their social media outposts.

Of course the most valuable part of that package is access to my years of knowledge and experience with the things it takes to make your website a success. It may not mean much coming from me, but the truth is I’m really good at this WordPress stuff & I can equip you to make your site much more effective so it brings in more business and you make more money.

What’s the best way to get started with WordPress? Depends on how important earning money from your site is to you.

It doesn’t matter whether you develop lots of WordPress sites for clients like I do,  are just getting started with WordPress, or are somewhere in between you are going to fall in love with the power, flexibility, ease and control that the Headway premium theme puts at your fingertips. Headway makes complex design changes – things that until now have required messing with html, css, php and all that complicated stuff  – as easy as clicking and dragging with your mouse.

Combine that with its power Search Engine Optimization (SEO) control and I’m confident your competition will soon be using Headway even if you’re not.

Why Listen to Me?

First here’s a little background about me before I get into this review so that you can decide if I know what I’m talking about or not.

I’ve been working with WordPress for going on 4 years and it’s been a significant part of my full-time income for over a year and a half. In addition to consulting on new media strategy and training I have built dozens of websites for clients with WordPress, WordPress MU, and BuddyPress.

If you Google the term “WordPress support” (as of this writing at least) you will find our WordPress Support page on the first page of results. Pretty much the only pages that rank higher are for the various WordPress help forums and the like, which means that SuccessCREEations is about the first place listed where someone can pick up the phone and get personalized help to with their specific WordPress problem. And trust me, we do get calls!

My recently launched all-video site ChrisCree.TV is gaining attention as a go-to source for folks to learn about how new media can help them grow their businesses. I speak at national conferences and have contributed to books and periodicals as an author on new media and blogging topics.

I have worked extensively with, and am an affiliate for, several of the most prominent premium WordPress themes and regularly recommend the most appropriate one directly to my clients depending on their specific needs. I know several of their developer/owners and consider them friends. And of course I am using an affiliate link to Headway in this review.

For those of you who don’t know me, reviewing a premium WordPress theme is not something I usually do. Look through the three years of archives here at SuccessCREEations and you will not find blog post reviewing any other premium WordPress theme. Not even the ones with higher affiliate payouts. That’s how impressive I think Headway is.

But enough of my credentials. Feels too much like bragging anyway. On to the review.

A Theme Framework

The first thing that struck me when I saw Headway is that it is much more than just a WordPress theme. Headway is an entire theme framework that makes it easy to quickly build vastly different looking sites.

Usually it is pretty obvious when sites have the same theme. With the exception of different colors, headers, and a few other relatively minor changes they often look a lot alike.

But Headway makes modifying page layouts so simple that it is really easy to quickly create a very unique design for your site. For example, compare the front page here at SuccessCREEations with the Headway site, Legal Practice Pro, and John Haydon’s site and you’ll find 4 very different looking web sites.

Yet all of them are Headway sites.

Now I routinely take premium WordPress themes, modify the CSS style sheets and images for a custom look and feel. But Headway makes it easy to change nearly everything right from the WordPress dashboard without needing CSS skils.

Total Control

Headway gives you total control over the look and layout of your site from the WordPress Dashboard. Here are just some of the things you can change on the fly:

• Website width
• Header
  • image or text
  • and placement
• Main Navigation Position
• Breadcrumbs
  • turn them on or off
  • adjust display position
• Post Meta Data is fully customizable
• Featured Posts
• Excerpts
• Comment Avatars
• Font Types and Sizes – for 13 different site elements
• Colors
  • for 37 site elements
  • by hex, RGB, or slider
• Navigation Customization
  • Link Order
  • Which Pages Included
• SEO
  • Page & Post Title Tags
  • Keywords
  • Descriptions
  • NoFollow options
  • NoIndex options
• Native Post to Twitter

The list goes on.  Headway has a section to add custom scrips to the header or footer, assign an rss feed url (great for Feedburner), designate a favicon, and add an affiliate link back to Headway if you happen to have one.

And that doesn’t even get to the best part of all…

Of Leafs and Tables

Headway introduces truly simple-to-modify modular content areas between the header and footer.

The analogy they use to describe what they do is a dining room table. Most of our dining room tables have the ability to make them bigger when you have guests. All you have to do is add a leaf or two and your table gets bigger so you can seat more people.

In the same way, Headway has a Layout Editor where you can add more page elements by adding more “leafs”. Just click the “Add a Leaf” link in the Headway Layout Editor and a menu pops up with the option to add any of 8 different kinds of leafs to you page layout.

Simply choose the one you want based on the type of content you want displayed in that page element and click the “Add” link. Headway adds that element to the page for you.

Then you can click the “edit” link on the leaf to customize the exact content within that leaf.

On each leaf you can also use your mouse to set

• Width
• Height – exact height or fluid
• Alignment – left or right

Either with a click, or simply by dragging an edge of the leaf in the layout editor.

You really need to watch the page layout demo video on the Headway site to appreciate how much they have just simplified layout design for WordPress users with this feature.

The first time I saw it my jaw dropped.

Because Headway allows you to have a completely different layout for each page of your WordPress web site if you want. All managed right in your dashboard. No more messing with php files, css and html.

Just click and drag your mouse and you’ve got a brand new layout – in seconds!

Sidebars Made Simple

Did you notice in the image above that one of the leaf options is for a widget ready sidebar? With Headway you can now add sidebars on the fly. No more need to go edit your functions.php file to get a new sidebar.

So now you can add a widgetized area to your website pretty much any size wherever you want. And you don’t need any programming skills to make it happen.

Skin Your Headway

They’ve built in the ability to add skins to customize your Headway theme. I haven’t had a chance to play with the skins yet, but the theme is set up so that you can download and install a skin for your Headway theme and have your own customized look in no time.

That’s going to be really attractive to users who want a little more customization but lack the time or ability to do the little bit of css work involved. Plus I can see a secondary Headway skin market for designers to create custom Headway skins.

Who is Headway For?

Obviously Headway makes creating custom layouts easy for people of modest technical means. WordPress beginners will love the ability to make their site look exactly the way they want without having to pay a designer to make the customized changes they want.

But I completely see how Headway will be perfect for someone like me too. Sure I can do everything that Headway does manually. But I can’t customize layouts anywhere near as quickly manually as I can with Headway.

Headway is perfect for smaller design and WordPress customizing shops, single designers, etc. because it speeds up the design and layout process so we can be more productive and more profitable. Just create a skin for your client and you are ready for delivery.

And here’s another juicy tidbit. The good folks tell me they are already working on a WordPress MU compatible version of Headway. That’s got me really excited. To be able to truly manage all my client sites in one place and give them completely completely different custom websites from within the same theme framework will make my life so much easier!

Bottom Line

Headway is a fantastic new theme. I’ve said before that it’s a game changer & I completely believe the bar for all WordPress premium theme developers has been raised a little higher with it’s release. Their price point is competitive with other premium WordPress themes out there now. Bottom line, Headway is a bargain that is sure to give the other custom themes a run for their money.

WordPress is an amazing web publishing platform with tremendous capabilities right out of the box. But what truly makes WordPress my platform of choice is the dizzying array of plugins that you can download (for free, mind you) to customize things exactly the way you want.

Plugins are simply bits of code that you can add on (or “plug in”) that can do all sorts of things beyond the basic program.

As of this morning, WordPress had 5,546 plugins listed in their Plugin Directory that had been downloaded a total of well over 35 million times. That’s a whole lotta code!

Yesterday Rober Hruzek asked me which plugins I recommended. Well the short answer is, “It depends on what you want it to do.” But then he came back and asked if there were any “must haves” in my book.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that for me I’m a fan of things that make my life easier. So, with that in mind, here are 21 WordPress plugins that I have found make my life easier. I’m guessing they’ll do the same for you.

I don’t mean this to be an exhaustive list by any means. Heck, I’ve got more than twice that many installed here on SuccessCREEations alone. And not every one of these will work on every blog. Some of these are very popular plugins and some are more obscure.

Here’s my list:

Spam Protection

1. Akismet – [download]

Pretty much the gold standard of WordPress spam protection. Akismet comes from the creators of WordPress and is one of 2 plugins bundled with WordPress when you download it.

2. Defensio – [download]

Defensio is the spam protection plugin I prefer to use on all my own sites. The way Defensio displays spam in the spam folder makes it easier for me to review more quickly.

Actually I keep both plugins installed and updated (though only activate one at a time). The reality is tech stuff breaks and both systems have occasional outages where spam gets through. That way, if I see a problem with the one I’m using I can deactivate it, activate the other one, and never miss a beat. It’s all about making it easy in my book.

Utilities

3. Google XML Sitemaps – [download]

Having your site rank well in the search engines is paramount. Once it’s set up the sitemap plugin will take care of keeping the major search engines abreast of what your site is up to.

4. WordPress Database Backup – [download]

Servers crash from time to time. (Did I mention tech stuff breaks?) Having a recent backup of your database will prevent that sickening feeling of loss should you experience one. This plugin can automate that process for you. Oh, and don’t forget to back up your theme and upload files too!

5. All in One SEO Pack – [download]

WordPress is inherently SEO friendly, especially when it is set up correctly. That said, the All in One SEO Pack can supercharge your performance in the search engines and help you bring in more of that search traffic.

6. Page Link Manager – [download]

Do you have pages on your site that you don’t want cluttering up your main navigation? Page Link Manager creates a list where you can check which pages you want included and leave the others out.

7. Exclude Pages From Navigation – [download]

A twist on the plugin above. Instead of creating a master list, this plugin puts a check box on the edit screen when editing pages where you can select whether or not you want the page you are writing to be included in the site navigation. You probably only need one or the other of these two.

8. Executable PHP widget – [download]

Have you ever downloaded a WordPress theme because it had some cool functionality in the sidebar only to realize that if you added any widgets to that sidebar it disappeared? You can’t add PHP to the standard Text widget. Good thing you can add it back in with the Executable PHP widget. Very handy for making managing sidebars easy.

9. FD Feedburner – [download]

One of the great things about using Feedburner is that you can track how many people are reading your blog. It also gives you a ton of different ways to customize your feed. The trouble is, when you set up a Feedburner account and point all the links on your page to that feed your plain old WordPress feed is still discoverable. And you will have some folks subscribed to that feed that you won’t know about. FD Beedburner will redirect your WP feed so everyone gets subscribed to Feedburner.

10. WordPress Mobile Edition – [download]

More and more people are accessing the web via mobile devices. WordPress Mobile Edition makes it easy to accommodate viewing your WordPress installation on mobile devices.

Stats

11. WordPress.com Stats – [download]

WordPress.com Stats is probably the easiest basic stats package to implement on a WordPress blog. Like the Akismet anti-spam plugin above, you will need an account at WordPress.com for WordPress.com Stats to work.

12. Google Analyticator – [download]

Google Analytics is considered by many to be the gold standard of stats tracking packages. It gives you a ton more info than WordPress.com Stats does. There are several plugins for integrating Google Analytics into your WordPress site. Google Analyticator is my choice because it combines some good features and is easy to use. Keep in mind that Google Analytics only updates once a day.

13. Woopra – [download]

If you are looking for more extensive real time stats then you should consider Woopra. Their WordPress plugin integrates their stats into your WordPress Dashboard. And they have a desktop application (for both PC & Mac. Yay!) where you can see what people are looking at on your site right now.

Fun Stuff

14. Wp-Cumulus – [download]

I’m sorry, but WP-Cumulus is just about the coolest plugin I’ve seen. It’s what powers my tag cloud. And it even comes with a sidebar widget that you can see over on the bottom of my sidebar there.

15. What Would Seth Godin Do – [download]

A little bit of marketing here. This plugin shows a customizable message to anyone visiting for the first time that doesn’t get seen by returning visitors. You can get creative how you use it.

16. TweetMeme Button – [download]

There are a whole lot of Twitter plugins for WordPress. In my desire to keep life easy, I like the TweetMeme Button. It simply adds a button at the bottom of the post. Makes it easy for people who like your post to tweet it.

17. Subscribe to Comments – [download]

The rumors of the death of email have been grossly exaggerated. There are still a good many people out there who like to get updates and notifications via email. If you allow your readers to subscribe to your comments some of them will. And it might just bring them back to your site more.

18. TD Word Count – [download]

There was a time, back in the day, when WordPress didn’t have the little “Word count:” number at the bottom of the edit window. And if you’re a little, um, focused (a polite way of saying anal) like me you might want to know how many words you were typing. (This post is well over 1200 so far. Did I mention I’m a tad on the wordy side?)

Anyway… The TD Word Count plugin gives you all kinds of word related stats. Like, for instance, I’ve got over a quarter million words here on this blog. Yeah. Wordy. And focused.

And… I just noticed that this plugin hasn’t been supported since, well a long time. Since WordPress version 2.1 in fact. That being the case you might want to skip this one. Did I mention I’m focused?

Niche

19. NextGen Gallery – [download]

NextGen Gallery is the preeminent photo gallery management plugin. I’ve seen sites that have thousands of photo galleries all running along seamlessly with NextGen gallery. Here at SuccessCREEations I’ve got one.

20. WP Super Cache – [download]

For high traffic sites, WP Super Cache will dramatically reduce the server load. This is a very powerful plugin and installing it is not for the feint of heart. Nevertheless it is phenomenal plugin that can probably reduce your server costs if you are bumping into bandwidth issues.

21. Podcasting – [download]

If you are into podcasting then you’ll probably want to take a look at, well, the Podcasting plugin. It makes managing your attachments and integrating with iTunes easy.

Well there you have it. 21 plugins that will make your life easier. And it only took me 1,427 words to tell you about ‘em!

We all like to see pictures of ourselves. It’s part of how we’re wired. We’re visual creatures. Somehow just seeing an image of someone else makes it easier for us to communicate with them and have a stronger connection.

Not only that, but using a consistent image to represent yourself around the web can help improve your branding. Using a Gravatar is an easy way to do that. Easy and free (I like free!)

The name Gravatar came from Globally Recognized Avatar. An avatar is simply an icon or an image that represents a computer user. Using Gravatars is really very simple. Since version 2.5, Gravatar support has been built into the core WordPress functionality.

And even though the service is owned by Automattic (the same company that develops WordPress) it is fairly easy to implement in all sorts of other platforms too! Check out the Gravatar Implementation page to see how to use Gravatars with platforms like Blogger, MovableType, Drupal, Joomla, LiveJournal, Ruby on Rails, Cold Fusion, Pearl, Python, ASP… And the list goes on.

Gravatar as a Commenter

The easiest way to use Gravatars is as you are commenting on Gravatar enabled blogs. Simply go to the Gravatar website and click the link at the top to Sign Up.

The site will ask for your email address which you will have to validate. Once you do you can add your image from either your computer’s hard drive, web cam, or a web URL where your image is already online.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will want to crop your image to be square, which you can do after uploading the image, to keep it from distorting when it is displayed as a square image around the web.

Your Gravatar will then be married to your email address so that whenever you use that address on any Gravatar enabled web site your image will be shown automatically. That’s all you have to do. Piece of cake.

If you have multiple email addresses, you can even set up a different image for each one. Then choosing which image to use is as easy as entering a different email address.

Displaying Gravatars in Your Blog’s Comments

Displaying Gravatars in your blog’s comments is easy too with WordPress versions 2.5 and later. The first thing you will want to do is make sure they are turned on.

To do this click on the “Settings” menu and then choose the “Discussion” option.

Then scroll down the page to the “Avatars” section to adjust your settings.

Here you can turn your Avatars on or off, set what rating to show and choose the default Gravatar to display on your blog. The three “Generated” default Gravatars will generate a random image based on the email address the user inputs.

Don’t forget to click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom after you have the settings the way you want them.

If your WordPress theme is Gravatar enabled then that’s all you need to do and you are good to go.

Getting Technical

(The rest of the post gets into coding and php. If you are not familiar with all that, feel free to stop reading and don’t feel bad. Most users won’t need to mess with any of this stuff anyway.)

WordPress will automatically call up the Gravatar as part of the wp_list_comments function. For example, if you wanted to just list comments (without trackbacks or pingbacks) with a Gravatar size that’s 48px square your comments.php file should have the following code in it:

<?php wp_list_comments('type=comment&avatar_size=48'); ?>

You can adjust the size to fit your theme or omit the type if you like.

Displaying Gravatars for Multiple Authors

If you have a blog with more than one author you can display the author’s gravatar as an easy way to let your audience know which one wrote any given post.

There are a couple of different ways you can do this but they both use the get_avatar WordPress function.

Since Gravatars are tied to email addresses you can use the author’s email to display the Gravatar with this bit of php code in your loop:

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), '80'); ?>

Where the number ‘80′ is the size of the Gravatar. Simply change that out with whatever size fits your theme.

You can also use the author’s ID number that is assigned by WordPress in the get_avatar function instead of the author’s email if you’d rather. Here’s how that code looks:

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_ID(), '80'); ?>

Either way should give you the same results.

Styling with CSS

The other piece needed to display Gravatars correctly, whether in the post area or in the comments is some styling. WordPress automatically adds a couple of classes to the html output to make things easier for you.

These classes are .avatar and .avatar-$size where “$size” is whatever avatar size you have set to display. So in the examples above the second class would be .avatar-48 and .avatar-80 respectively.

Using different size avatars for the author images in the posts and for the comment Gravatars can be one easy way to style them differently because of the different classes that WordPress assigns to the different classes.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is Gravatars are a very simple way to add a bit of personalization to your blog that can help foster conversation and build relationships.

With WordPress it’s nearly automatic these days and because the Gravatar system is so simple it is even easy to impliment in other applications beyond WordPress. Since it Gravatars are so easy to use, using them seems like a no-brainer to me.

On Tuesday WordPress released an update version 2.7.1. This release is being called a maintenance release and addresses 68 bugs and enhancements that were pointed out by users to the 2.7 release.

WordPress 2.7 Changes Everything

If you still haven’t updated your WordPress installation to the 2.7 series that was released before the holidays you are missing out on a whole new blogging experience. The back end dashboard has been completely overhauled and greatly improved.

WordPress spent a pile of money on usability studies. They conducted several polls of the user community on a variety of things like navigation options, favorite features, and even icon preferences.

As a result of all that community input WordPress 2.7 is the best version yet. If you haven’t upgraded you really should.

And check out this video WordPress put out showcasing the new features.

Automated Update

I am still not a fan of the “one click” automated update yet that is now available.

My inner geek is not comfortable with the idea generally speaking because it can be hard to recover if there is a problem during the auto update. Since you really don’t know where in the process the update was should it hang up, it could be a challenge to “undo” the process.

I have used the automatic update for plugins with good success. With most plugins I figure that even if there is a problem it shouldn’t be a big deal to recover from them. Even so there are some more advanced plugins that I still update manually just to be safe. SuperCache and NextGen Gallery are a couple that come to mind.

I did attempt to update SuccessCREEations to the new version 2.7.1 using the automatic update function build into WordPress. Sure enough it hung up on me. So I had to go in and update the software by manually copying the files to my server via FTP anyway. Fortunately this update is fairly minor so I didn’t have any issues with my database as a result.

Backup Everything

Which brings me to a key caution. Regardless of whether you use the automatic update or update manually be sure to back up your database and your files before you update. That way, should the worst happen, at least you will be able to revert to the old version and try the update again.

WordPress gave us yet one more security update to version 2.6 before the long anticipated major release of version 2.7, which is expected in the next few weeks.

The new WordPress version 2.6.5 addresses a security vulnerability as well as a few other very minor improvements. There are a total of five files modified in this security release. You can simply replace these five core files to expedite the upgrade process.

However performing a full normal upgrade to the new version is probably the easiest way to go if you are only upgrading one or two blogs.

The security fix is critical for WordPress installations on virtual servers and these should be upgraded immediately. Other users may elect to hold off until the new version 2.7 comes out, but again prudence dictates updating to the current version is best practice.

Fake Spoof Version of WordPress

Another reason I suspect the good folks at WordPress decided to issue a security release for version 2.6 so close to the anticipated release of the major update in 2.7 is that there is a fake, spoof version of WordPress out there.

Apparently someone bought a domain name just one character off from the official WordPress.org site and put up a rough copy of the WordPress.org site. They downloaded a copy of version 2.6.3 which they modified to potentially allow hijacking of affected blogs, and then said it was 2.6.4.

But the truly evil part of these cretians diabolical plan was when they hacked into the dashboards of some blogs running older versions of WordPress to put up a fake security warning urging users to “upgrade” to the bogus version and directing them to the bogus site. Craig Murphy explains that whole thing.

As I’ve said before, like any software older versions of WordPress are vulnerable to hacking. Keeping your WordPress blog version current is a critical step to keeping your site secure from hacker.

Because of this incident WordPress is skipping verion 2.6.4 in their official release line to avoid confusion.

Andrew Cunningham recently asked a good question about getting started using WordPress.

Can any of you guys recommend good, simple resources for learning how to use wordpress?

How do you get started? It’s a great question that deserves some more attention.

Your Objectives

Ultimately the best way for you to get started depends on what your overall objectives for you website are. It’s the place I start with all my clients because if you don’t begin with the end in mind you will likely waste a whole lot of time and/or money working on things that don’t move you towards your real goals.

Some possible objectives include

• Raising brand awareness
• Increasing personal profile
• Driving product or service sales
• Improved search engine visibility
• Put a more personal face on your business
• Providing a personal creative outlet

Obviously the possibilities are nearly endless. But until you take the time to work out exactly what you want to achieve with your web site and write it down, you will likely be painting yourself into corners that may be difficult (and expensive) to get out of later.

Get Your Own Domain

Once you’ve got your objectives thought through, you are most likely going to want to get your own web domain. If you are planning to conduct any business via your website having your own domain is a must.

By having your own domain I mean purchasing your own .com name. There are other possibilities besides .com but for most folks, especially in the US, .com is the right way to go.

Having your own domain for your website will do a number of  things for you. The biggest ones that come to mind are

• People will take your business more seriously
• You have more control of your site

That second one is huge. Because there is no way to know what the future will bring, you want to give your self the flexibility to make changes later.

Ultimately your web site is yours, right? So you should have as much control over your site as you can.

I get all my domains through www.GoDaddy.com and I’ve got dozens of domains with them. They are the world’s largest registrar of domain names and for good reason. They are really good at what they do.

It is a good idea to register your domain for a minimum of 2 years for better search engine rankings because spammers tend to buy short lived domains and then abandon them quickly. I also recommend most of my clients get GoDaddy’s “Deluxe Registration” because it bundles some features that can be valuable for business owners.

One note about GoDaddy. They are a bit aggressive on the up-selling. Just be careful not to add on a whole bunch of stuff that you don’t need and you’ll be fine.

Web Hosting

Another critical piece of the puzzel is good reliable web hosting. And there are a ton of different providers and options out there. It can be a bit overwhelming.

Again, www.GoDaddy.com provides web hosting that works for many folks. Some find it easier to keep all their web expenses in one place.

Another web host provider that I highly recommend is Host Gator. Their service is reliable, inexpensive and supports WordPress sites just fine.

Personally I use a hosting provider right here in Georgia called A Small Orange. When I was first looking for my own web hosting, top notch customer service was one of my big criteria and A Small Orange got high marks in that department. I’ve been with them for years and am very happy with their customer service.

Learning WordPress

Once you get your domain and web hosting sorted out the next thing you will probably want to do is learn about WordPress. That was Andrew’s original question, after all.

Obviously I prefer people to come to my company for their WordPress needs. Not only do we get WordPress websites up and running for our clients, but we also provide personal training for them. We simplify the learning process by focusing on the important things first and then expanding into more advanced features. Our clients get up and running with their sites quickly.

Of course, not everyone has the budget to tap in to our services here at SuccessCREEations. I get that.

Fortunately, the good folks over at WordPressTutorials.com have put together some great video training aids to get the do-it-yourselfers up to speed quickly with WordPress as well. So if a custom training program isn’t in your budget, go check them out and learn how simple and powerful WordPress can be.

Yesterday WordPress released a security update in Version 2.6.3. According to the WordPress development blog this version update corrects a vulnerability in the Snoopy Library.

Now unless you want the Red Barron to be able to cause havoc with your blog you will probably want to either update the two files that are changed in this version or update your entire install.

Version 2.7 Coming Soon

The good folks at WordPress are working hard on the next major revision to version 2.7 and which will reportedly be released in the next few weeks.

Version 2.7 will take another leap forward in usability improvement on the back end with the dashboard and all of the administration panels getting a thorough going over.

Last month they conducted a survey to get user input on what changes to prioritize and user preferences on how the dashboard menus should be organized. (Yes we participated in that survey. So if you don’t like the new changes after they come out I guess we are partly to blame for it.)

If you want, go take an early look at the changes. Seems like they are making an already great platform even easier to use.

WordPress Support Services

If you’re behind in upgrading your WordPress installation, please be sure to take a look at our WordPress Support services. And if your project is a little bigger in scope, take a look at some examples of our work here at SuccessCREEations, Inc. to see if we can meet your needs.

As always feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

And on that note I’ll leave you today with a little Snoopy vs. The Red Barron to enjoy.

Version 2.6.2 release announcement on the official WordPress blog.

I woke up this morning and see that WordPress released a new version yesterday. The new version 2.6.2 is a security release.

It looks like the security exploit they patched is a fairly low probability complex hack involving randomized password generation and a bunch of technical blah, blah, blah.

Even so, you probably should think about upgrading your WordPress installation to this version fairly quickly. Upgrading is especially important if your blog or web site has a higher profile, PageRank, or traffic levels.