About a month ago I posted about how fast WordPress 3.0 was being downloaded and there was a terrific discussion about the sheer amount of data that was being grabbed to get at the 3.0 version of WordPress.  We even had some comments as to why it was being downloaded at that scale.

Well as of today the download counter reads that it has been downloaded just over 10.3 million times since it was released last month and the counter keeps rolling along!

So what is it that makes the WordPress platform so popular?  What is it that drives people to download it over 10 million times?

If you had the opportunity to talk to a non WordPress user what would you tell them about it to show that it is worth downloading and putting to use for a website?

What is your favorite thing about WordPress?  What is your least favorite thing about it?  What would you add to it?

The experience of this community is the perfect forum to start a dialog like this so I am looking forward to seeing everyone’s thoughts.

In addition to the above suggestions, I would like to add a few of my own. Please feel free to add others in the comments.

• Make your titles short, sweet and eye catching. Long titles lose their punch.
• Proof read. As Michelle says so well, write for yourself and then edit for your readers.
• Don’t be afraid to type it out and read it aloud. Sometimes a blank slate can be vanquished with a quick swipe of the brush.
• Punctuate and format. Big blocks of text are easy to gloss over and lose interest in.

How much time do you spend on average, on writing a post?

In this mess, we have also had a couple of content generators complain that their videos, hosted on sites such as DailyMotion and YouTube, were used on Weblog Tools Videos without their explicit consent. This got me thinking about the possible ramifications embedding videos on a blog or website. I could not find any permission or license information on the pages where the allegedly infringed videos were hosted and so I assumed that we should remove the videos, which we did.

• If the video page allows embedding, does that constitute implicit permission to post it elsewhere?
• Is there copyright and license information buried within the agreement that users electronically sign on uploading to YouTube? Do the video sites allow distinction between the various types of licensed content?
• If the original content provider is retained (such as using an YouTube embed) and a link is provided to the original video, is that enough? How does the regular user know when not to embed without permission? Should a formal request for permission be assumed in every case unless otherwise noted?

I have tried to find any references to laws, discussions or law suits that talk about the rights of the content viewer and embedder and the best I can come up with are discussions about previously infringing content which are irrelevant in this discussion. Can anyone shed any light on this?

To take this one step further, if you display embed code on your blog or website (think ShareThis), are you implicitly allowing your content (whatever the embed allows direct publish access to) to be republished elsewhere? If you do not allow sharing of your content without permission, are you just displaying certain types of social media tools that prevent wholesale copying of content? I know I personally never factored this into my thought process. Anyone else run into these issues? I wonder what the traditional media with electronic outlets are doing?

Lots of questions without a lot of good answers. If you have some insights, please leave a comment with relevant links and I will update the post for our readers.

The tutorial linked above explains one way to add thumbnails to your related post links in order to draw your readers attention to the links. The method is not as automated as I would like it to be and does require a few bits of code that is provided but I believe it can really help keep readers on your blog longer. I remember when small pictures were added next to AdSense ads and it raised clickthroughs to such an extent that Google had to re-examine their policy and ended up making them illegal. My suggestion is to keep the thumbnail small and relevant. Automated generation of thumbnails would be much more preferred. As part of the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition 2009, George Spyros has also released his Rich Related Posts plugin that might be of interest.

Some of the plugins mentioned in this list are popular such as Role Manager, which is very useful in and of itself. However, there are others that sparked immediate interest in my. The ability to add co-authors to a post would be quite cool, as would the ability to add quick information about the particular author to the various posts. Many of the larger multi-author blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch already do this (I am not sure how, but I assume there are some custom plugins involved) and now you can do the same.

Speaking of multiple authors, are you a passionate plugin picker and a theme tamer? If you are not afraid to speak to thousands of people in an instant, have confidence in your writing abilities and are interested in breaking into the blogging world with aplomb, we would like to hear from you. Tell us what you will do to make this blog better using the Contact form above.

Thanks Thrive Creative Group via WeblogToolTips

Smashing Magazine has listed 10 Useful WordPress Hook Hacks in which they do some useful things by using the hook functionality. Many of these are already being performed by various plugins and by itself serves no new purpose. However, as a learning tool or as a catalyst for plugin authors to try new things, this list can be very useful. For example, the “Get entire post or page in a PHP variable” is similar to the technique used by Matt’s asides and later replicated in various Asides plugins written for WordPress.

I see two different audiences of the Codex and thus the two separate polls. Comments are also appreciated. Let us know if you want to help with the Codex or if you would like to help with WordPress documentation.

As I blog, I want to do certain things with my blog. When I first started with WordPress, my Sortable Nicer Archives plugin (Please do not use it, it has gone by the wayside. The plugin lives on in hacked form on our archives.) was a necessity for me because I wanted a cleaner form of archives. I scratched my itch and hacked together something that worked for me. I also needed a way to backup my WordPress database automatically and thus the WordPress DB Backup plugin was born. At one time there were plans of including it in the core but the functionality was better suited in plugin form. When I noticed that a lot of people were searching for similar content, I put together a plugin/hack that allowed me to keep track of searches and then provide a heat map of searched words. I frequent Amazon and I really liked their related purchases section and I ended up emulating that in a plugin (this one is updated, can be used). I recently hacked up a breadcrumbs plugin when I was inspired by a tutorial I found on the web to build Apple like breadcrumbs with CSS (you can see them on action on the blog in case you are reading this from a news reader).

Today as I blog, I still come up with plugin ideas. But I cannot hunker down with code as much as I would love to. I do however, have access to a wide array of wonderful resources with which I can provide the incentive and the platform for developers to get their hands into code that can enhance the blogging experience with WordPress. Thus the WordPress Plugin Competition was born.

Getting back to the original idea of the title. What would you, my readers, like to see in a plugin? Do you need the ability to paste pictures on the WYSIWYG interface? Would you like to arrange pages with a simple drag and drop? Would you like to synchronize your posts with your Flickr pictures and display them simultaneously? Would you like to display your Kindle reading list and be able to post reviews? How about a plugin to edit your blog from the Kindle 2? Would you like your blog to display a disclaimer to every visitor from Google? Would you like to display single ads on each post?

Approximately two weeks are left in the Plugin Competition and I am hoping to spark off some new ideas.

Publish Post Box

A couple of Twitter questions posted to @weblogtooltips (are you following us yet?) about publishing posts in the future with plugins make me think that some users of WordPress might not know about the cool features that are built right into the admin panel. (yes, WordPress does that)

As the screenshot to the left shows, the publish box in WordPress holds a couple of hidden gems that might not immiediately be apparent. You can do one of two things with the fantastic post you just wrote (beside just posting it outright):

• You can make your post public and make it a sticky on the front page or you can choose to password protect it or make it completely invisible to people that are not logged in to your blog. This option is available on your “Add New Post” page under the Publish box. You have to click on “Edit” next to “Visibility: Public” to see these settings. Just change the settings, add a password if you want it protected and click Publish

• You can also setup your post to be published in the future. You can access this setting by clicking on the Edit link next to “Publish immediately“. Just set the date/time you want your post to be published (future dates result in future posts, past dates result in posting in the past) and Voila, it gets scheduled for the future. You can also use this feature when editing a post to move posts around chronologically on your blog, though I suggest against it. Posting in the future does not require any other setup of any kind. If your server’s time is set correctly and your timezone is set correctly for your blog (under Settings tab->General, shows a useful example), your post will appear automagically on your blog on the scheduled time.

Remember that just clicking on “Publish” publishes your post even if the Status is set to draft. There is also a “Pending Review” feature under the “Status: Draft” section that can be used to differentiate between true drafts and articles that are complete but need to be reviewed. This option might be useful for multi-user blogs or just to keep track of articles that are complete and those that still need work.

Tips from that page that got me thinking (things that make you go hmmmmm?) include moving your wp-content directory, increasing your memory limit, changing the autosave interval, turning on debugging and finally the ability to specify a log file for errors. All of this through the wondrous wp-config.php file. The list is quite exhaustive.

While you are there, make sure you subscribe to the blog. Chris and Jeff are putting out some good stuff!

I could go on forever. Are you a WordPress Geek?

Mobile Statistics

We use MoFuse on this blog and I must add it is somewhat successful. The mobile pages are decent, the pages load relatively fast and the statistics are nice. But the admin pages are painfully slow and MoFuse injects their own ads to the browsed pages. To offload the hassle of course, is priceless. The following list is a short rundown of the most popular ways to build a mobile version of your blog on WordPress. Please add yours in the comments if I have forgotten one or if you have an opinion about any of these.

• WordPress Mobile Edition is a fantastic plugin from Alex King’s Crowd Favorite that builds a mobile version of your blog and even adds a commenting interface. Their mobile demo on the Carrington theme is quite attractive indeed. Smaller screens do not display this as well as the iPhone does.
• WordPressMobile.mobi (I just noticed the WordPress in the domain name) A WordPress mobile plugin by Andy Moore that provides a mobile version of your WordPress blog. The site does not provide any screenshots or details, just a forum. Looks like a very popular plugin with lots of installs.
• WordPress Mobile Pack by James Pearce is a well liked set of plugins that creates a mobile environment for your WordPress blog including the admin panel. Screenshots are included on the extend pages.
• Mobilize is another plugin that renders your WordPress blog via Mippin and even allows the user to insert their own ads. The plugin touts to be configuration free. Clean and tidy.
• WordPress PDA and iPhone is a simple, straightforward plugin that renders a simple version of your blog on a PDA. Output screenshots on the plugin page.
• MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes. The plugin also allows specific themes for specific devices / mobile browsers, such as iPhone, Opera Mini, Windows CE Mobile and other generic handset browsers. Nice site, good screenshots, simple install.
• WPTouch is a mobile plugin and theme combination for WordPress that adds a sleek WordPress theme for iPhone visitors.

There are various other plugins on the WordPress Extend that extends the mobile functionality to your WordPress blog. Choose one that fits your needs and wants and just let it run. You have nothing to lose but a lot of new readers to gain.

What mobile plugins have I missed? Do you read blogs over your mobile phone?

This perception of “reaching the end of WordPress” is somewhat common. At a recent WordCamp, I had the distinct feeling (after talking with a bunch of the attendees and from feedback) that they were looking for cool things to do with their WordPress blog to accomplish various ends but were held back because they either did not know what to look for or did not know where to look for it and who to trust.

I would like to use this opportunity to increase awareness and provide answers to some of these questions. I would like to know what WordPress can do for you. Please use the group forums on the WLTC Community to post your questions and needs and find your answers. We will choose the best requests for regular posts on Weblog Tools Collection and plan to use them at WordCamps if given the opportunity.

Here are the questions that my friend had for me and my answers to them (edited and modified for content). Please leave a comment if you have a different answer or will benefit from these.

1)  Have found no good way to create “hidden” pages that do not show up on the menus

The following Plugin solves the problem: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/

2) Have not found a way to embed videos in blog posts and have them displayed on a skinnable Flash video player. The only way is to embed code from other video services such as YouTube which looks unprofessional.

The following Plugin provides a nice embeddable Flash Video player where you upload your own videos: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flash-video-player/

3) I have not figured out a good way to embed a forum onto a “page”  so that customers can have discussions. The best concept I have came up with so far is using an embedded frame and a 2^nd domain.

I would suggest a plugin such as http://www.intensedebate.com/ which provides most of the forum like features with very little overhead or risk of mangled code. Some people (such as the SlickDeals blog) integerates vBulletin with WordPress, but that includes more than just a plugin download.

So what can WordPress do for you?

If you want to publish your blog on Kindle, you can do it too! Be sure to let us know what you think of the experience if you choose to publish your blog on the Kindle. The Kindle forums are a little sparse at this time and the whole publishing page/venue is in beta so you might have some trouble. It was a breeze for us. Thanks to BloggingPro for the idea.