Introducing WordPress Jetpack.

What features does it have?

Version 1.1 of Jetpack includes:

• Gravatar Hovercards: Find out who’s commenting on your posts with enhanced information for Gravatars (includes full name, bio, other web profiles).
• WordPress.com Stats: Keep on top of your traffic with powerful and simple to understand statistics for your site.
• Twitter Widget: Keep your readers more up to date by syncing your tweets to your site via a simple widget.
• Shortcodes: Quickly add movies, images, and more to your posts and pages with a single line of code.
• Shortlinks: Automatically creates an easy to copy/paste mini-url for any post on your site.
• : Use the famous markup language to quickly create beautiful mathematical expressions and equations.
• Sharedaddy: Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks.
• After the Deadline: Your writing will improve thanks to this artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker.

Some of these features use the powerful WordPress.com cloud, others are popular features provided for the convenience of not having to install and manage several separate plugin installations.

It’s easy to see that this one plugin, might just replace quite a few plugins that people use everyday.

Which feature interests you the most?

Microsoft has recently launched the ie6countdown.com website to help transition people over to a more modern browser. From a web developer point of view, let us just say: “Three cheers for Microsoft!”.

10 years ago a browser was born.

Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.

This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.

In a recent tweet, they said:

It’s not often that we encourage you to stop using one of our products, but for #IE6, we’ll make an exception

Why is this a good idea?

There are still quite a few people in countries all around the world using IE6, and helping them transition to a newer/better browser not only helps them, but helps advance the web.

To read more about why updating your browser is a good idea, read our recent article Web Browser Dinosaurs Still Among Us. Also, don’t forget to leave a comment below and let us know what you think about the ie6countdown website.

Highlighted features:

• Internal Linking
• Admin Bar
• Streamlined Writing Interface
• Post Formats
• Network Admin
• List-type Admin Screens
• Exporter/Importer Overhaul
• Custom Content Type Improvements
• Advanced Queries
• Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme

New features like the admin bar and internal linking tool will be useful for clients that want to update their own website. WordPress developers and theme creators will find the new Post Formats to be a very welcome addition.

Internal Linking

When you create a link in WordPress you now have the option to choose from existing content on your website. This is a nice feature that speeds up finding internal links within your website when you want to create a link. In the past, you either had to know the URL, or find it on your website and copy and paste it in the old link editing window.



Admin Bar

The admin bar is nothing new to people who use wordpress.com to host their blog, but for a self hosted Word Press website.. this is new. The admin bar appears at the top of your website when you are logged in. It adds tools for you to quickly add and edit posts and pages, and also provides quite a few other tools. The bar is context sensitive, so the tools available to you change depending on what type of content you are looking at.

While the admin bar can be helpful, if you find that you don’t like the new admin bar, you can disable it by going to your personal user settings in your WordPress admin area.

Post Formats

Just like tumblr, the new Post Formats enable theme developers to customize the way different Post Formats appear on the website. Supported Post Formats include: aside, gallery, link, image, quote, status, video, audio, and chat.

tumblr post format

Summary

All in all, the new features in WordPress 3.1 look to improve upon an already great platform. You can download WordPress 3.1 here or update from your WordPress dashboard.

Don’t forget to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the new WordPress.. do you like the changes? or not?

A web browser dinosaur is a web browser that has outlived it’s time. It should be extinct by now, but for some reason it just won’t go away.

We get quite a few visitors here at Power Pix, and we are still surprised by how many people access our website with ancient web browsers. If you really love something, you have to be strong enough to let it go.. now may be the time.

Why do people still use them?

While we have not performed a formal survey on this topic .. (this might be a good idea), there may be a couple of good reasons why people still cling to their ancient web browsers.

• Maybe they have an old operating system that came with an outdated web browser installed by default.
• Maybe they don’t know how to upgrade their web browser.
• Maybe they are not aware that there are other web browser choices.
• Maybe they are just plain “used to it” and don’t want to change.

These could all be legitimate reasons for keeping the dinosaur alive.. but at what cost?

Why should I change or upgrade my web browser?

The internet (web pages/web content) has come a long way since the early days of text based websites with a few blinking marquee banners. (Now we can deliver silky smooth blinking graphics using things like Flash or some other new technology *sarcasm*.) The real point is.. the web is evolving at break-neck speeds and that means the tool that you use to view it, needs to evolve as well.

To make sure that a website renders correctly for everyone, many web developers are forced to use “tricks” and “hacks” to make a website look and work right. This adds extra bloat and slows the website down just to accommodate older browsers.

What choices are there?

When it comes to browsers that are trying to support web based standards, and help advance the web.. here are some good choices:

• Google Chrome: Google Chrome has a lot going for it. It is fast, VERY secure, supports many web standards, and also supports add-ons/extensions.
• Fire Fox: This is also a good choice as it is quite speedy, supports many web standards, and also provides extensibility through add-ons.
• Opera: Fast, supports many web standards, provides extensibility through add-ons.
• Safari: Fast, supports many web standards, provides extensibility through add-ons.
• IE 9 Beta: Should be faster than previous versions, increased web standards support, provides extensibility through add-ons.

Just for fun..

Try out the following tests on your current web browser and see how well it does. If your using a dinosaur, you may be in for a surprise.

• HTML5 Test: HTML5 is currently under development, as the next major release of the HTML standard.
• CSS3 Selectors Test: CSS3 is also under development and contains some very exciting tools for website development.
• Acid3 Test: Tests how well your browser supports the DOM (Document Object Model) and JavaScript.
• Chrome Experiments: See how well your browser deals with the experiments on this website.
• Internet Explorer Test Drive: Even more entertaining tests for your browser to perform.

We hope that you found this information useful and will help us move the Web Browser Dinosaurs into their rightful place .. the museum.

“Wait.. did you say block traffic.. that sounds crazy right?” Not necessarily.

• There is good traffic (potential customers, people who are interested in reading your content..)
• There is bad traffic (comment spammers, image hot linking, spoofed links on other sites linking to yours..)

To block a certain domain or domains from accessing your website, you can edit your .htaccess file with the following:

<Limit GET HEAD POST>
order allow,deny
deny from annoyingdomain1.com
deny from annoyingdomain2.com
allow from all
</LIMIT>

Just change out the domain (or domains) that you want to block, add the code to your .htaccess file and upload to your server. Those domains should now get a 403 (forbidden) error when attempting to access your website

If you use WordPress (you don’t have to be using WordPress for this to work), the WordPress codex contains a very useful article about combating comment spam and blocking access.

They recommend using:

SetEnvIfNoCase Via evil-spam-proxy spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer evil-spam-domain.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer evil-spam-keyword spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Via pinappleproxy spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer doobu.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer poker spammer=yes

Order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from env=spammer

Hope you found this tip useful!

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Advertising

Noahs Classifieds

Noah’s Classifieds V8 is a Great PHP, MySQL based highly customizable classified ad application that allows users to post advertisements to unlimited categories and subcategories. This new and Hot Web 2.0 Look , Feel and Performance Features: easy install, image upload for categories and advertisements, custom fields for advertisements, customizable email notifications, category locking, pending ads, ad expiration, template and stylesheet based, most popular ads, and more. Noah’s Classifieds has been a top download for those who are serious about their Classifieds Website since 2003. Try the All New Noah’s Classifieds V8 (Just Released May 2008). Nice URL feature, new template system, HTML notifications, multiple picture upload per ad, automatic updates and much more

OpenX

The free, open source ad server trusted by more than 30,000 web publishers in over 100 countries around the world. OpenX is a powerful ad serving solution that puts control over online advertising back in the hands of publishers.

Blogs

BlogEngine.NET

BlogEngine.NET is an open source .NET blogging project that was born out of desire for a better blog platform. A blog platform with less complexity, easy customization, and one that takes advantage of the latest .NET features.

dasBlog

dasBlog is an ASP.NET 2.0 blogging application. It runs on ASP.NET 2.0, (all versions 1.9x and prior run on ASP.NET 1.1 & ASP.NET 2.0) and is developed in C#. dasBlog is an evolution of the BlogX weblog engine initially written by Chris Anderson and contributors.

Geeklog

Geeklog is a PHP/MySQL blogging tool that enables you to set up and manage a fully functional dynamic Web site.

Lifetype

LifeType is an open-source blogging platform with support for multiple blogs and users in a single installation. Writing articles is comfortable with the included state of the art WYSIWYG editor. Adding pictures and sound files (for Podcasting) is just a matter of browse and click. The Dashboard provides you with all the information you need every time you log in. Recent articles, comments and trackback as well as brief statistics get you updated about your blog immediately.

reBlog

reBlog is an open source web-based RSS aggregator which allows you to filter and republish content within one application.

Serendipity

Serendipity is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain an online diary, weblog or even a complete homepage. While the default package is designed for the casual blogger, Serendipity offers a flexible, expandable and easy-to-use framework with the power for professional applications.

WordPress

WordPress is a semantic personal publishing platform (i.e., blog) with a focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. It supports multiple users, categories, comments, bookmarklets, RSS syndication, several APIs, and weblogs.com ping, among other features.

Content Management

anyInventory

anyInventory is the Web’s most flexible inventory system. Features include categories and subcategories, user-defined fields, file uploads, and advanced search functionality.

DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is an open-source Web Application Framework ideal for creating and deploying projects such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, online publishing portals, and custom vertical applications.

Drupal

Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to set up scores of different kinds of web sites.

Joomla

Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Mambo

Mambo is a full-featured content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications.

MODx

MODx is an open source PHP Application Framework that helps you take control of your online content. It empowers developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores.

Moodle

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) – a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.

Nucleus

Nucleus is a content management tool that enables you to set up and maintain multiple blogs. It supports multiple languages and includes a commenting system and search feature.

SilverStripe

SilverStripe is an intuitive content management system atop a powerful programming framework.

Tandem Server

Tandem Server CMS is a website management solution for small businesses and personal websites. Our intuitive online publishing tool makes updating your website a snap for anyone. Tandem Server is free to use and requires only a basic window’s hosting plan to run so give it a try.

Xoops

XOOPS is a content management system (CMS) that allows administrators to easily create dynamic websites. It is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more. It can be installed on an Internet host with a PHP-capable web server (e.g. Apache) and a database (e.g. MySQL).

eCommerce Solutions

nopCommerce

nopCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution that contains both a catalog frontend and an administration tool backend. nopCommerce is a fully customizable shopping cart. It’s stable and highly usable. From downloads to documentation, nopCommerce.com offers a comprehensive base of information, resources, and support to the nopCommerce community.

nopCommerce is new but very popular open source e-commerce solution. nopCommerce is available for free. A solution with comprehensive features that is easy to use for new online businesses, yet powerful enough for the most demanding e-commerce expert. It’s a secure, scalable and extendable e-commerce platform.

Create and manage a professional online store with nopCommerce. Built-in shopping cart, catalog management, credit card processing, shipping calculation, template customization and other powerful tools come standard.

osCommerce

osCommerce is the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution. It offers shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores.

Zen Cart

Zen Cart™ truly is the art of e-commerce; a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.

Galleries

4Images

4images is an image gallery management tool. Visitors can register and post comments about pictures in your gallery.

Coppermine

Coppermine is a photo gallery tool that enables you to arrange pictures in categories and albums, create thumbnails of images, search for pictures, and view slideshows.

Gallery

Gallery is the next generation of open source photo sharing Web applications. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own Web site whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Gallery to create personalized photo albums on their Web sites.

Message Boards/Forums

phpBB

phpBB™ (“PHP Bulletin Board”) is the world’s leading Open Source forum software. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free software, developed by volunteers from around the world. phpBB is used on over 2.4 million commercial, non-profit, social networking and community websites in over sixty languages.

Simple Machines Forum

SMF is an advanced community software package that enables you to set up and manage online community forums.

Vanilla Forum

Vanilla is a free lightweight and extensible open source forum software using PHP scripting language and MySQL database management system.

YetAnotherForum

YetAnotherForum.NET (YAF) is a Open Source discussion forum or bulletin board system for web sites running ASP.NET. The latest version is ASP.NET v2.0 with a Microsoft SQL Server backend. The full C# source code is available licensed as GPL.

Other

OpenDB

OpenDB (Open Media Lending Database) is a PHP/MySQL inventory application that allows you to easily catalog different media types such as DVDs, VCDs, CDs, VHS tape, games, books, and laser disks.

OrangeHRM

OrangeHRM aims to be the world’s leading open source HRM solution for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing a flexible and easy to use HRM system affordable for any company worldwide.

phpFreeChat

phpFreeChat is a free, simple to install, fast, customizable and multi languages chat that uses a simple filesystem for message and nickname storage. It uses AJAX to smoothly refresh (no flicker) and display the chat zone and the nickname zone. It supports multi-rooms (/join), private messages, moderation (/kick, /ban), customized themes based on CSS and plugins systems that allows you to write your own storage routines (ex: Mysql, IRC backends …), and your own chat commands!

Project Management

Brim

Brim is a personal information manager which provides online management of your bookmarks/favorites, your calendar, tasks, notes, recipes, passwords and much more!

dotProject

dotProject is a web-based project management application, designed to provide project layout and control functions. dotProject aims to provide the project manager with a tool to manage tasks, schedules, communication and sharing.

Mantis

Mantis is a free popular web-based bugtracking system.

phpCollab

phpCollab is a collaboration and project management system that enables you to set up and manage a projects and share files.

PHProjekt

PHProjekt is a modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and documents via the web.

Social Networking

elgg

Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy, and because the engine handles common web application and social functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea. Elgg is open source. That means, when you use Elgg, you have the benefit of being part of a large developer community, with the security and stability that hundreds of eyes can provide. It’s also headed and used by Curverider and its partners, so you can be assured that it’s in commercial use and will cope with the demands of a popular application.

Website Add-Ons

PHCDownload

A file content management and manipulation system unlike any other available on the market today, with unique innovations, tools, and design, customizing and producing your database is made easy.

phpMyFAQ

phpMyFaq is a multilingual, database-driven FAQ management system that you can use to create and manage a FAQ on your Web site.

phpmyvisites

phpMyVisites is a free and powerful open source (GNU/GPL) software for websites statistics and audience measurements. phpMyVisites gives a lot of information on websites visitors, visited pages, software/hardware utilization, etc… The GUI Interface is fun and practical. Statistics are very complete and use many clear graphics to present data. The web analytics software is translated in more than 30 languages!

WebCalendar

WebCalendar is a PHP-based calendar application that can be configured as a single-user calendar, a multi-user calendar for groups of users, or as an event calendar viewable by visitors.

WWW Paint Board

WWW Paint Board (Wpb) is a tool where users can draw dynamically on the web with VML (Vector Markup Language) technology.

YOURLS

YOURLS is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service. You can make it private or public, you can pick custom keyword URLs, it comes with its own API. You will love it.

There’s a WordPress^® plugin available for YOURLS, making integration with your blog a snap: create short URLs and tweet them automagically as you publish blog posts.

Wikis

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis.

PmWiki

PmWiki is a system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. Pages created with pmWiki look and act like normal web pages, except they have a link that makes it easy to modify existing pages and add new pages into the website.

TWiki

TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Users without programming skills can create web applications. Developers can extend the functionality of TWiki with Plugins.

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Learn More…

MySmartSpace lets you access and organize all your online favorites in one place. Keep an eye on the local weather, get the latest scores from your favorite teams, follow your friends on Twitter and Flickr and more. Best of all, you can do it from any PC – no software required; only a Web browser.

Simply start with three pre-built Spaces, then create your own:

• My News Space: Top stories, sports, business
• My Social Space: Photos, Twitter
• My Entertainment Space: TV, movies, gossip

With MySmartSpace, you have a single control panel for creating your own corner of the Web AND for keeping up with everything you do online!

Learn More

Features:

• Image Search
• Advanced Image Search
• Drag and Drop images right into your edit window.
• Easy to install and use.

Licensing:

The images provided by this plugin use the Creative Commons License with a few conditions:

• Attribution – Each image has a small watermark and a caption with a link.
• No Derivative Works – You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

From our testing, the plugin appears to work as expected, but does seem to conflict with a few other plugins that enhance the edit window in WordPress.

Give it a try, you just might like it!

This service is an opportunity to inform your visitors unobtrusively to switch to a newer browser.

Many internet users are still using very old, out-dated browsers – most of them for no actual reason. Switching to an newer browser is better for them and for you as a webdesigner.

Advantages and features

Subtle

The user will be notified only once, and won't be bothered any more. The notification bar is very small and won't affect the browsing experience negatively.

Informative

Tell the users that they are using an out-dated browser and that your website looks even better with a newer one.

Idealistic

Help evolve the web! Support the standards-based web! Support Open Source software projects! Help your visitors! Help increase security awareness! Support your favorite webbrowser!

Low maintenance and up-to-date

If there come more browser versions which won't be supported by the vendor in the future, exhibit security gaps or have been very old for a long time we are going to add them to our list automatically.

Customizable work in progress

You can customize the browsers and versions to notifiy.
In future releases you can also customize the text that should be shown, the frequency of the bar to appear and many other things.

Localized

The message is automatically displayed in the user's language.

Statistics work in progress

You get statistics about which browsers your visitors are using and how much users got proselyted: How many users updated or changed their browser through your advice.