Blogging On My Mind

Ain’t we all glad that Automattic has just made available WordPress 2.9? This latest upgrade has addressed over 500 tickets, bugs and enhancements, according the official WordPress blog where you can also view a short video of some of the “cool things” about the new version.

Writing in the WP post, founder Matt Mullenweg says this is a major release and that’s why the video was made. If you want to watch it here, you’re welcome.

So what are some of the coolest new stuff on offer with v2.9? Here’s what Mullenweg has listed on the official blog:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.

2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.

3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.

4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

Looking at the new features, I quite like the newly tweaked image editing feature. Now bloggers can crop, scale and rotate images within WordPress itself which is pretty cool although it’s not Photoshop.

The next good thing is that any deleted stuff will move to the Trash where it will still be recoverable if you happened to change your mind and want to retrieve a deleted item.

If you want to know more about the new upgrade, WP guru Aaron Brazell at TechnoSailor.com has summed up “10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.9“.

You will find that the best way that you can drive traffic to your site is by using search engine marketing. If you use the best SEO tools out there to help, then you’ll definitely be on the path to succeed.

To make life a little easier for website owners, SEO tools have been developed in order to allow them to take a lot of the hard work out of optimizing their websites.

Any website owner who wants to improve their page’s optimization can gain a lot of benefit from these SEO tools.

There are a lot of different kinds of SEO tools out there which can be helpful to site owners. Keep reading for a look at the very best SEO tools available which can help your online business to become more successful.

SEO Tool s

Tip #1 – Backlink Checkers

A backlink checker can be extremely helpful in getting more out of your business’ online presence. Backlinks (links which point to your website from other sites) are great for increasing your page ranking and of course, they provide another way for people to find your website.

It can be useful to know who is linking to your site and how many sites link to your own. These tools can even tell you how well your competitors are doing when it comes to backlinks.

Tip #2 – Start Posting in Forums to Increase Traffic

Another of the best tips to keeping mind when it comes to SEO tools is to start posting in forums in order to increase traffic.

Many people actually overlook this SEO tool. It’s easy to join forums where you can post on a regular basis and when you post information of high quality, chances are you can use this to your advantage.

Add a signature file that has your website link on it, and more than likely you’ll begin to drive more traffic to your site in this manner.

Tip #3 – Used Advanced SEO Tools

Last of all, another of the best SEO tools tips you should remember is to use advanced SEO tools if you want to bring in more traffic and reap excellent conversion rates.

Advanced tools and techniques can be used to really begin to make your site successful and lucrative. It’s a top technique that will help you to get your site up there on the search engines, and you may even make it to the number one ranking with this technique as well.

About the Author:  Simon M Skinner has worked in the SEO and internet marketing industry since 2002. He has successfully optimized websites from a wide range of industries. He owns webpositionexpert which markets SEO tools and ebooks. If you are looking for industry leading SEO tools and information then be sure to try webpositionexpert.

This is an alert for WordPress.org users running self-hosted blogs. You may be under attack!

If you’re not using WordPress 2.8.4 you’d better upgrade immediately. Or you’re gonna face a very trying weekend, according to the heads up from Mashable blog.

The Mashable blog got the warning from Lorelle on WordPress today.

According to Lorelle’s warning post there are two clues to indicate an attack:

1. There are strange additions to the pretty permalinks, such as example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”
2. The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize. You will probably be unable to access that account.

Looking back:

On August 12, 2009, the WordPress blog announced the security release of WordPress 2.8.4 saying how they had fixed a vulnerability problem.

I reproduce that post here:

“Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.”

Well, better to be safe than sorry. Upgrade to WP 2.8.4 NOW!