Wordpress 2.5 Stable Released

Going through my feeds this morning, i noticed that Wordpress 2.5 stable is official available! Not only that. but Wordpress.org has also received a much needed facelift. I think they have done a great job and i find the new site to be a lot more inviting than its predecessor. I guess at the end of the day it comes down to a matter of opinion though :0)

I downloaded a copy of the RC1 release last week and was pleasantly surprised. I was a bit put off at first when i heard that all the hard work that had been done on Shuttle Project had been ditched. That being said, i think the new admin interface is pretty slick and super user friendly. (more…)

Tags: Wordpress

MarkItUp – A lightweight, powerful and flexible editor engine

Whilst doing my usual rounds on the web this morning, I stumbled across a real gem.

This particular gem is a simple (yet incredibly powerful) Markup Editor. You may be thinking that this is another WYSIWYG Editor (What You See Is What You Get), but it is a bit different. With a true WYSIWYG Editor it is exactly that – what your seeing is how your content will look. You don’t actually see the markup (code) that constructs the html output. In the case of a Markup Editor, when you select one of the easily recognizable buttons for H1, H2, H3, Image, Link, etc – it actually outputs the code. You will recognize this behavior from many Forums, which often use BBCode.

A brief history.. (more…)

Tags: development, jquery, plugins, tools of the trade

Moourl – The web’s cutest URL shortening service

Who’s got a tiny what??

I’m talking about TINY URL’s (universal resource locator). I am sure that many of you are familiar with the various url shortening services out there (such as the original tinyurl.com), but for those who don’t here is a quick summary:

“TinyURL (tinyurl.com) is a web service created by Kevin Gilbertson that provides short aliases to redirect long URLs. Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 because he wanted to be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.“

In essence what this is doing is taking a really long (hard to remember!) url and turning it into a super short (easy to remember) url.

An example of this could be taking a long url like this:
http://www.joomlajunkie.com/extensions/professional-joomla-extensions/ultimate-joomla-blogging-package.html and turning it into this http://tinyurl.com/2b3zgd. By clicking the short “tinyurl” the user is automatically redirected to the full url.

Why would anyone want to do that, you say? (more…)

Tags: tools of the trade

Read me!!!

We’ve all seen the ReadMe.txt files that come with software. How many of them have you ever read? Probably only a couple and then after the software didn’t work as you expected. A case of “when all else fails read the instructions”.

The point I’m trying to make here is that commanding someone to read something doesn’t work. The same is true of your website content. Just because someone has arrived at your site doesn’t guarantee they will read what you have to say. That’s why you need to either know the rules of web content or employ someone who does – a professional web or seo copywriter.

I’ll try to cover some of the rules in the next few posts so you can try them out on your new “you-beaut!” JoomlaJunkie template site.

Great copywriting + a cool JJ template! What a combination!

Tags: Copywriting

Joomla 1.5.2 Released

For those of you have aren’t already aware, Joomla! 1.5.2 was released on Sunday. Its nice to see the dev team are set on releasing frequent updates to address outstanding issues. Though it is only a maintenance release, it still takes us one step closer to 1.6!

From Joomla.org:

“The Joomla! community is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla! 1.5.2 [Woi]. This is a normal maintenance update. It has been eight weeks since Joomla! 1.5.1 was released. The goal is to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla! end user community containing the latest bug fixes and minor enhancements.”

Instructions

• New installation
• Upgrade from an existing Joomla! 1.5 version
• Migration from Joomla! 1.0.x

Download Joomla! 1.5.2 and update packages

Want to test drive Joomla!? Try the online demo. Documentation is available for beginners.

Click here to read more on Joomla.org

Tags: Joomla