This handy report was generated for several WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered WordPress.org blogs with moderate to high traffic, and it really is quite nice. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from our report.

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 950,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 17 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

So, with visits from 217 countries world-wide, and the United States, India, and the United Kingdom rounding out the top, we had more visits than 17 years worth of tourists to a small European country. That’s not bad, but we could always do better.

What would you kind folks love to see from us in 2013?

Steve Jobs was and will be one of the greatest influencers in my life. I learned about him in college, started to follow his career and philosophy as a student of his, and became an ardent fan of the man and his career as I learned more about him. He was a brilliant thinker, a fantastic leader and a living legend to me. His commitment to the computing experience is shared by many but is paralleled by few.

Steve Jobs

His death is even closer to home because of personal reasons but I mourn his loss with more heaviness in my heart than I have ever felt for someone I have only known through the media. I can selfishly say that it comes as a huge shock to me. I cannot imagine what his immediate family and his Apple family feel right now. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

Hats off to you Mr. Jobs. A part of you will continue to live in me and everything I do and say. That is a promise.

If you want to share your latest and greatest WordPress plugin and theme with us, stop by the New WordPress Plugins and New WordPress Themes forums and simply post a new topic via the form at the bottom of the page, or email submissions (at) wltc (dot) net with either “[New/Updated Plugin Submission] plugin name” or “[New/Updated Theme Submission] theme name” in the subject.

Before submitting, your plugin or theme must be available for free, licensed under the GPL, and free of sponsored links and advertisements. With all submissions, please include the name of the plugin or theme, the license, a link to a product info page (this could be a blog post, page, WordPress plugin/theme directory listing, etc), and a screenshot (if available). We hate having to turn down plugins and themes simply because they provide nothing more than a direct download link to a third-party file sharing/storage service, but we feel that our readers deserve a bit more than that.

For the benefit of our readers, all plugins and themes are confirmed to work with the latest version of WordPress and certified to be free of sponsored links and advertisements, viruses, and other common exploits before being accepted as part of the next digest.

We encourage you to share your latest and greatest plugins and themes with us, and we appreciate your cooperation!

Within this review, I will provide an objective view on the video-hosting service called VideoPress (owned by Automattic).

Now I will be one of the first to admit that I am somewhat of an Automattic fanboi. I love WordPress, and use several of Automattic’s other services. However, even I was skeptical of what I considered a too-good-to-be-true video-hosting service.

A Little Background

I have been hosting my videos on YouTube for quite a while now. I especially liked their new HD feature and the ability for my screencast software to export directly to the service.

I didn’t (and still, really don’t) care that the YouTube player is branded and shows ads. It worked, and worked well, and that’s really all I cared about it. And best of all, it was free.

However, I ran into a roadblock with some of my videos. The ten-minute time-limit was really started to kill me. Some of my videos ran longer, and as a result, I’d have to re-script them to run in the allotted time, which was frustrating.

I began searching for alternatives.

The Search Begins

First, there was the highly-touted Vimeo. For $59.95 a year, you get an ad-free player with what seems like unlimited bandwidth and ample storage.

However, as I read into the fine-print, Vimeo had several show-stoppers. The first was the limitations on HD video plays. Users are limited to 25,000 HD plays a year. While this may seem like a lot, it’s about 2080 plays a month. If your video suddenly gets popular, you are out of luck (although you can limit your video to specific domains to reduce this effect).

The 2nd show-stopper for me is the lack of commercial content. It doesn’t matter if the video is non-commercial in nature at all. If you host the video on a site that has any commercial attributes at all (banner ads, Adsense, affiliate links), you’re in violation of their terms and you will get canceled with little notice.

Frustrated, I began looking into more “commercial” type hosting. I took a long hard look at Vzaar and Amazon S3. I then checked out VideoPress.

The rest of the review will present a comparison of the three services and I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is worth your hard-earned money.

For the sake of comparison, I’ll make the following assumptions:

• You have 3 GBs worth of video, with each file weighing in at 20 MBs (a total of 150 files).
• You receive about 750 plays a month for a total usage of 15 GBs of bandwidth a month.

Vzaar

For $30 a month (for their silver package), you get what appears to be unlimited storage, HD-quality video, and 15 GBs of video-playback bandwidth a month.

Vzaar also allows you to heavily customize their player, has embed options (for sharing), and several other nice features.

However, the first thing I saw then visiting the site is the $30 a month price ($360 a year) and what I considered very little bandwidth. For the 150 video files we assume we have, I can imagine this bandwidth will be consumed rather quickly. You can increase your bandwidth cap, but that means you will also increase your monthly cost.

I tend to think of Vzaar as kind of the Audi of video-hosting sites. Yes, it’s fantastic. Yes, you will pay up the nose. Is it worth it?

Amazon S3

Another video-hosting service I considered was Amazon S3. However, hosting on Amazon S3 is not for your average Joe. It’s fairly complicated and I would argue not for the average WordPress user.

The prices are reasonable ($0.150 per GB of storage and $0.150 per GB of bandwidth). Using our assumptions, this works out to be roughly $5.40 a year for storage (3 GBs * $0.15 *12). Using our 15 GBs of bandwidth will set us back $27 a year (15 GBs * 0.15 * 12). This brings us to $32.40 a year compared to Vzaar’s $360 a year plan.

However, with S3, you are the video host. You must deal with the uploads, the video crunching, the Flash player, the permissions, embed capability, etc.

For me, personally, the complexity wasn’t what turned me off. I didn’t like how “variable” everything was. I wanted one flat bill that I would have to worry about once and forget about it afterwards. With Vzaar I wasn’t getting that. With Amazon S3 I wasn’t getting that.

VideoPress

When I first looked at VideoPress, I was skeptical, especially after looking at other video-hosting sites.

VideoPress provides HD-quality video with 3 GBs of storage for $59.99 a year.

Its main audience is WordPress.com users, who can use the service to upload any type of video they like, as long as it doesn’t violate their Terms of Service.

The end result is a mostly unbranded player with unlimited (yes, unlimited) bandwidth.

Compared to Vzaar, here’s what VideoPress doesn’t have:

• An unbranded player
• A highly customizable player
• Watermarking
• MailChimp integration
• Unlimited storage
• And several others

However, VideoPress does have:

• Full integration with WordPress.com
• Full integration with self-hosted WordPress installs through its VideoPress WordPress plugin.
• Can upload videos as much as 1 GB
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Can automagically re-size itself to fit your content’s width

And if 3 GBs of storage is not enough for you, you can purchase more at a fairly reasonable price.

So How Does VideoPress Work?

Well, the first thing you’ll have to do is create a site through WordPress.com.

From there, you must purchase the VideoPress option through a WordPress.com upgrade.

Now I know a lot of you who have self-hosted WordPress installs might cringe at the prospect of creating a WordPress.com account. However, this is one of those set-it-up-once-and-forget scenarios. Once the site is set up with VideoPress, you can log out and forget about it (unless you want more storage).

From there, you would install the VideoPress WordPress Plugin on your self-hosted install. After activating, you’ll see a video camera icon when writing a post (next to your other media options). If you click on that, you’re asked to sync with your WordPress.com account. From there, you can start uploading and inserting your videos (via shortcode).

If your video’s dimensions are over 1280×720, VideoPress will provide an HD version of your video.

Who is VideoPress For?

Well, for my purposes, it’s for me: a commercial plugin author wanting a reasonably-priced video hosting solution that I can share with my customers without violating some obscure TOS and worrying about bandwidth caps.

However, for you non-commercial folks out there who like sharing videos of, well, anything, this service is for you as well. The 3 GBs of storage should be plenty, you don’t have to worry about the sometimes spicy ads that free services provide, and you especially don’t have to worry about bandwidth limits. You also don’t have to worry about losing your videos by putting ads or referral links on your site.

Conclusion

In this review I compared Automattic’s VideoPress with two commercial video-hosting sites Vzaar and Amazon S3.

I’ll leave it to you to decide which hosting solution is right for you and your budget.

With WordPress 3.0 in the horizon and the many tools, plugins and themes being released every week, Weblog Tools Collection is looking for passionate WordPress enthusiasts to bring these to our readers. Please contact us using the form above or leave us a comment if you are interested in exploring the possibilities.

With so many articles about not using WordPress plugins, it just begs the question: “What’s wrong with WordPress plugins in the first place?”

I personally love my installed plugins. I have 25 installed on my personal blog, and I couldn’t live without a single one of them. If you venture off to Jeff Chandler’s site, he has 31 installed. Are we freakin’ nuts, or what?

So what’s the deal with all these “without a plugin” posts? I mean, you don’t see plugin authors posting, “How to accomplish ‘xyz’ without a WordPress theme” do you?

Okay, I’m slightly kidding, but this question needs to be asked: “What benefit is there to integrating a plugin into a theme?”

Does the theme load faster? Will there be support for the extra functionality? Will the plugin be better integrated as far as appearance?

Granted, there are many good reasons to integrate some plugin functionality as part of a WordPress theme (breadcrumbs anybody?).

The problem I foresee cropping up, however, is the user becoming too reliant on the theme for functionality that a WordPress plugin should ideally provide. As a result, that user may be ‘locked in’ to using the theme, whereas others can easily change out their theme without sacrificing functionality (if you’re like me, you go through 2-3 themes a year).

An argument for plugin integration is that of WordPress frameworks. Since frameworks typically rely on child themes for the appearance, the user doesn’t need to change the theme; The user is afforded the functionality of built-in plugins, and the flexibility of changing out themes.

An Exercise for the Reader

Okay, you’ve heard my spill on plugin integration. As an exercise for the reader, please consider the following and join me in the comments section:

• What types of plugins should be built into themes?
• What benefits do built-in plugins provide for you?
• How far should theme frameworks go to limit the need for plugins?

And lastly, are plugins evil?

Over the holidays, Dreamhost encountered a fairly large network failure. This happened just before they conducted their largest data center move to date. The network failure caused a number of sites to go offline, including a number of Dreamhost official sites. However, as mentioned in a recent ZDNet article, the nightmare is still ongoing for a few customers, especially those running WordPress who are running into 500 errors. ZDNet published a list of directions from a Dreamhost customer service rep that should get your site back online.

Were you affected by either of these mishaps during Thanksgiving?

Now, I don’t mean plugins, or themes, or anything external like that. I mean the core of WordPress itself. Sometimes it seems WordPress just comes up short. It can be anything from a simple little inconvenience to a total show-stopper.

I think hearing peoples gripes about WordPress would be a nice contrast to the almost constant good things you hear about it. It might also help to get more attention on the issues. Don’t forget that someone may come across this post, read a gripe, and possibly provide a solution. We can all help each other!

So, lets get it started…

One of the issues I always seem to run into has to do with the way some core functions output their code. A lot of the functions in WordPress provide a method for either outputting the code (echo) or returning it for you to handle and probably eventually echo yourself.

Unfortunately not all functions currently in WordPress are like this. Some only allow for echoing the code. This can be quite the inconvenience for some of us. The only way to usually get around this is to capture the output with a buffering function (ick!) or to copy what the function does into a function of our own to do what we need. However, this is less than ideal. What if the core version of that function changes some time in the future? That leaves us in a situation where we have to also update our version of the function. That’s not very nice…

An easy fix? Probably… Will it be addressed in future versions of WordPress? I hope so! Is it a critical issue? No. But, not all WordPress gripes are. This is just one of those things that has bugged me for some time.

So, how about you? What bugs you about WordPress?

From the list of sponsors, the list of attendees and the list of speakers, the enthusiasm for blogging and WordPress in India is not lost on me. If you have not checked out the Delhi Bloggers Group or one of the many other blogging groups and partnerships mentioned and you are an Indian blogger, you might be missing out. I am hopeful that the turnout will be fantastic and I hope to see some of the presentations on WordPress.tv

I am jealous that Matt and Om were able to visit the Taj Mahal because it appears that parts of the Taj might be restricted to visitors. Om has an interesting take on the Taj and Apple Computers and Matt has some nice pictures posted.

A few things are still broken (find any?) and the internal code and the SQL queries that run the plugins are still being tweaked. We might end up re-writing a few of the plugins to make them more efficient and introduce caching. Our overall goal was to make the blog feel fresh and be able to highlight the various aspects of our community that helps generate and produce and news and the articles for this blog. Needless to say, we stuck to our basic tenets of minimal advertising and ease of use while sticking with a light (on the eyes and on the bandwidth) and minimalist theme.

If you only read this blog in a news reader, I welcome you to check it out on a browser. A lot has changed and there are a lot of new features. Since themes and plugins form a large portion of what this blog is all about, there are theme and plugin news sections now on the front page. We also highlight the most visited posts of the day at the top of the blog. We have also added lists from WordPress Jobs, General WordPress News, PressItFor.me and Weblog Tools Videos. The single page design is cleaner with emphasis on the actual content of the article and the comment threading (which form the meat and potatoes of any blog). The advertising has been spread around and neatly tucked away to not be obtrusive and yet provide a good value to the advertiser. Regular visitors see fewer ads and never see AdSense ads.

The change has not gone unnoticed and reactions have ranged from absolute distaste to glorious commendations, with the meter tilting towards the latter. The one browser bug with the search form is really bugging me (try visiting this blog in IE or in Safari) but overall I am pleased with the result.

What are your impressions?

Our little blog grew slowly but steadily in the last year and our editors, authors and well wishers have made it possible for us to not only provide you with the most useful and up to date WordPress news, but we have been able to organize and support our Annual WordPress Plugin Competition, have been able to visit a couple of WordCamps around the US and have started a couple of new services around WordPress. If you want to know what the team is up to, be sure to check out the Weblog Tools Collection Crew LifeStream.

As always, we have been trying to improve our content, add more features and services, be good citizens of the WordPress world, all the while trying to increase our readership and our distribution.

• We have brought back the Spanish Version of this blog. It was originally started as a small side project along with a German version but we found it difficult to find human translators for them. This new version is translated by a paid translation service called ICanLocalize and is using their custom designed WordPress plugin which we helped test and implement. I have to say that after having had such a hard time with translators in the past, I was very apprehensive of any such relationship. But Amir Helzer and his team of translators have not only been helpful, but they have shown dedication and care that is rare in this world of online business. The service is completely automatic and both comments and posts are automagically submitted for human translation through the plugin. Though the service is not cheap, it gives our blog a nice edge. So if you would like to read this blog in Spanish, please head over to WeblogToolsCollection Español and subscribe.
• We have made some changes to the advertiser requirements on this blog, much of which drastically reduces our revenue. We now require that all our advertisers who want to promote WordPress plugins and themes, release their themes and plugins under the GPL or a GPL compatible license to be eligible to advertise on Weblog Tools Collection and related properties. Existing ads will be forced to expire and will not be renewed. We will also not link to any work from Premium Theme and Plugin authors that do not release their themes and/or plugins under a GPL or compatible license.
• Jeff Chandler has restarted his WordPress Weekly podcast under the auspices of Weblog Tools Collection and judging from the download numbers and the listener particpation numbers, it has been a resounding success. You can subscribe to WordPress Weekly via iTunes. Jeff has had put together some fantastic shows for us already and we are excited to see what the new year holds in store.
• Ajay is re-starting his “A Plugin A Day” or APAD WordPress Plugin Reviews which is always a lot of fun and is received well by our readers. We have received hundreds of applications to be considered for APAD and will be starting to publish them very soon.
• We will hold another WordPress Plugin Competition this year. But in addition to the Plugin Competition, if advertising picks up, we would also like to start a Weblog Tools Collection College Scholarship to promote WordPress development and help students dip their toe in WordPress. Stay tuned for further details.

For all of us here at Weblog Tools Collection, our little endeavor is a painstaking labor of love. We love the attention but also love to receive feedback. To all of you who have sent us your comments and suggestions, we say thank you. We have paid close attention to all the suggestions and have tried to incorporate them into our world as best we can.

We would also like to say thanks to our readers for making us your Number One source for WordPress and blogging news and to the WordPress team for producing this fantastic tool for us to use and enjoy.

We raise our imaginary glasses in a toast to another great year of blogging with WordPress.

Here are the results from the survey

1. Where did you first hear about Weblog Tools Collection?
   1. WordPress Dashboard 76.2%
   2. WordPress Planet 4.8%
   3. Google Search 11.9%
   4. Link from Another site 4.8%
   5. User Suggestions/Discussions 2.4%
   6. Other (please specify) 0.0%
2. Are you subscribed to Weblog Tools Collection to receive daily updates?
   1. Subscribed via RSS 25.0%
   2. Subscribed via Email 0.0%
   3. Already on Dashboard 50.0%
   4. Read it on the web 23.8%
   5. Subscribed via other means 0.0%
   6. Other (please specify) 1.2%
3. Satisfaction ratings for Weblog Tools Collection
   1. Overall satisfaction: 60% voted satisfied, 26% very satisfied
   2. Content: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied
   3. Design: 35% voted somewhat satisfied, 28% satisfied
   4. Format: 45% voted satisfied, 35% somewhat satisfied (leaning towards somewhat satisfied)
   5. Frequency of posts: 50% voted satisfied, 35% very satisfied
   6. Features of blog: 65% voted satisfied, 20% somewhat satisfied
4. Advertisements
   1. Are they usable? 45% Undecided, 35% No
   2. Have you ever clicked on any of them? 65% No, 35% Yes
   3. Are there too many ads? 45% No, 35% Undecided
   4. Are you an advertiser? 95% No
5. Site Features
   1. Did you know that we offer a news forum? 55% No, 40% Yes
   2. Did you know that we have a video site? 50% No, 40% Yes
   3. Did you know that we have offer translations in 9 languages? 50% Yes, 35% No
   4. Would you participate in future surveys to help us make the site better? 90% Yes
   5. Did you know that registered users see far fewer ads? 80% No, 13% Not Important

The final question asked how we could improve the user experience on Weblog Tools Collection and about a quarter of the respondents sent us comments. Many of the answers were critical of our design. One simile in particular to a web 0.1 site made me shiver. There were comments on removing some of the ads and suggestions on how to make our posts better with more plugin reviews and more articles on design, development and WordPress technology. The primary sentiments expressed in the polls were also reflected in the detailed comments. We appreciate your feedback. Your opinion matters to us and helps us make the right decisions.

Now where is that designer?

Just send me an email or a twit or use the Contact Form above if you would like to get together.

[EDIT] Suggestions and SF advice much appreciated.