Here are some of the new announcements from the WordCamp Dallas 2008 event here in Frisco Texas.

Not only is WordPress.org getting a refresh, but WordPress 2.5 was also released today.

Media Management:

Media upload is totally redesigned with the ability to upload multiple items at one time.

Image Handling:

You can tag your images on your desktop and then upload them to WordPress and it will pull out the image information automatically so you don’t have to re-enter the information.

Plugins:

Plugins can be automatically updated without the need to manually download the files and upload them to your server. Whether this works or not will depend on your server settings.

Pluggable Features:

WordPress 2.5 has several interesting new pluggable features. Everything from color schemes to post creation tool bar buttons is pluggable in WP 2.5.

Hacking Prevention:

All WordPress 2.5 passwords are now salted and stretched to prevent hacking. Before the security was a straight MD5 Hash. What hackers used to do was to hack an old WordPress blog and then download the user database so that even if the blogger updated their WordPress instance, the hackers could still get back in. So, update to WP 2.5, keep your blog updated, and just for good measure, always always change your username and password if you get hacked. Hopefully the new WP security will help prevent hacking.

WordPress 2.6 Future Vision:

The growth of WordPress since 2006 has been virtually exponential. Both the user community and the develop community continues to grow and as it does we can only expect for it to become more entrenched in the lexicon of publishing online. WorPress is being used as The blogging platform of choice and it’s being used as the foundation for CMS systems.

Updating from WordCamp Dallas 2008,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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You may have heard about the South By SouthWest event down in Austin Texas. It was a week long event that has historically been a music related event, but has added topics around blogging and media.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but I heard a lot of popular blogging names were there. It would have been a great chance to mix it up with other motivated people because getting to know people face to face will always be a great way to build solid long term relationships.

I really enjoy talking with focused like minded people so, you can imagine how excited I am about attending WordCamp this weekend in Frisco, Texas. The blogging event has been on my calendar for a couple of months now and at last glance, 130 bloggers are registered to attend.

In case you haven’t heard of the event, it is a two day WordPress blogging event that focuses on blog reader and developer topics.

Over the two days we are scheduled to talk about topics like WordPress 2.5, how to handle content theft, building blogging influence, seo for bloggers, the business of blogging, and testing with WordPress.

Lorelle VanFossen is scheduled to deliver some of the material related to WordPress Power Tips. Her blog has been a great source of information for me as I’ve tweaked my WordPress blog from it’s original template to what you see today.

Her blog was especially helpful when I upgraded to WordPress 2.3, so I’m hoping for an opportunity to personally thank her for the great information she provides on her blog.

Overall it promises to be a great two days. I plan to report live from the event and I’ll be posting pictures to the Open Source Marketer Community. So be sure to look for those starting this Saturday.

If there is an event in your area or a major event that you can plan to attend, then I highly recommend that you plan to be there. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and make friends with people that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise by attending events. Even free events have been a good source for making contacts.

For the most part people are very open at these events because they are there to meet other people and share information too. So, if you’ve ever wondered how you can meet people within your industry, attending events is a great way to make those connections.

If you’re in the Dallas area this weekend and would like to attend a blogging event, then there’s still time to register. If you already plan to attend, then look me up while you’re there and we can sit and have a coffee together. I hope to see you there.

Going to camp,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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Do you ever wonder why some bloggers seem to enjoy greater success while exerting what seems like less effort than other bloggers who work twice as hard and only seem to get half as much done? Well, in this post I’m going to show you how the successful bloggers cheat the daily clock to get more benefit out of their efforts.

No matter what you might think, blogging is hard work. Blogging it’s just about writing a few paragraphs and going outside to play. There are search engine rankings to optimize, articles to tag, comments to respond to, rss feeds to promote, mailing lists to promote and manage, and ads to manage. So with all that to do, anything you can to reduce your labor is a good thing.

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