One ultimate thing about WordPress for being loved by several millions is the number of plugins that comes along with it. In recent years, WordPress happens to be a successful platform for open source blogging. WordPress is currently transforming into a commercial platform for eCommerce. With the amazing WordPress plugins being offered by several developers WordPress is becoming even stronger. WordPress plugins are widely offered for free and premium rates. Not all free plugins are trust-worthy. Hence before relying on to a free plugin, ensure that it has been used by other WordPress sites.  And when it comes to premium plugins, there is nothing much to bother about, since they are trust worthy. However, it doesn’t matter more on spending few bucks for building a site that is perfect in every way.

How do plugins improve blog speed?

If ever you’ve witnessed a decrease in your blog traffic, it is just because of the more loading time of your blog. More loading times eventually results in lesser chances to get your blog displayed in Google’s search engine result pages. Javascript, heavy images and unoptimized database might be one of the reasons for more loading time. However, by using the appropriate plugins you can  overcome this occurrence. There are several WordPress plugins that are exclusively meant for improvising your blog speed.

Listed below are the major five plugins, which gives better results for your blog speed.

WordPress Photo Gallery

Apptha’s WordPress Photo Gallery is a WordPress plugin that comes with a Mac Dock effect to upload images. This plugin allows you to create multiple albums and display them in a smooth and elegant slideshow. It includes options for Facebook download, share and comment. You can import albums directly from Picasa, Facebook and Flickr. This plugin doesn’t allow your blog to take much time loading.

WP touch

WP touch allows millions of iPhone and android users to access your blog via their mobile phones. Having installed this plugin on your blog, any mobile user arriving your blog will find your site absolutely tremendous. You can utterly customize your blog for mobile users. With this, your blog appearance vary from web users to mobile users. If you are finding some way to make your blog damn good on mobiles, then this plugin can be the apt choice.

All in one SEO pack

SEO has all to do with the success of a website or blog. It is indeed tough for any business to survive without focusing SEO. All in one SEO pack is the WordPress plugin that enfolds everything that is SEO. Having installed this plugin, you can have your blog SEO optimized, since the plugin automatically generates Meta tags, detects and avoids duplicate contents, and optimizes your blog post titles for search engines.

WP email

This plugin when installed allows your visitors to send posts to their friends by means email. For this, a link is included at the end of every post. WP Email can be said the perfect plugin for your blog to gain popularity with exceeding new visitors.

Google XML sitemap

Google XML Sitemaps comes with a special XML site map. This WordPress plugin allows your WordPress blog to get optimized with search engines like Google, Bing, Ask.com and Yahoo. Each time when you add a blog post to your site, the search engines are notified. All WordPress generated pages and custom URLs are supported by this plugin.

About the Author:

John Christev enjoys writing about technology topics for the web where he can share his knowledge and interest with others. John always encourages the use of a Magento Checkout Module to reduce unwanted checkout process on web store!

This is a guest post by Adam on securing your WordPress Blog. You can read the guidelines for guest posting at our guest posting guidelines page.

Getting hacked is not fun.  Imagine waking up one morning to find your entire blog compromised. All the posts, media and future revenue are gone… and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Fear not. With a few simple tweaks you can make your WordPress blog much more secure. These tweaks may not keep out professional hackers like Anonymous, but it will keep out the riff-raff.

Below are five simple steps to secure your WordPress blog…

Step #1. Delete your admin account.

By default, WordPress creates an admin account with the username “admin.”

Since a hacker needs a username and password to hack your site, failing to delete this username makes it half as hard to hack your site.

Here’s what you need to do: Log into WordPress and click the Users tab.  Then click Add New User and create a new admin with a different username (e.g. “yourname”).

Once the new admin is created, go back to the Users tab, select the “admin” user and delete it.

You will see a page like this:

Image credit: Trekity (Flickr)

If the “admin” user has created posts and/or links, you can have them attributed to your new user by selecting the “Attribute all posts and links to:” option.

Step #2. Move the wp-config.php file up a level.

The wp-config.php file is very important to your blog. It includes all the configurations for your entire site… and if a hacker gets a hold of it, they can completely erase your blog.

By default, the wp-config.php file appears here:

/home/user/public_html/wp-config.php

This location is publicly viewable (which allows hackers to attack the file using scripts and/or bots). Therefore, you need to move the file up a level so it looks like this:

/home/user/wp-config.php

To do this, simply drag the wp-config.php file outside of the public_html folder.

Step #3.  Backup your database daily.

OK, this isn’t technically a security issue, but it can save your blog if you do get hacked.  If your site gets completely erased, having a backup lets you re upload all your existing content.

Fortunately, this is very easy to do.

WP-DBManager automatically backs up your database every day and emails you the file. It only takes a minute to install and could one day save your blog.

Step #4. Regularly update WordPress and all plugins.

Every new version of WordPress includes fixes and improvements on previous versions. By using an outdated version of WordPress you may leave yourself open to attacks through known security loopholes.

There are two solutions to updating WordPress: manual and automatic. I recommend updating manually (be sure to backup everything beforehand!) so you can test your site immediately after to make sure nothing broke. If you’d like to update automatically, you can do so from within WordPress.

Updating plugins is important, too. However, I usually wait a week or so to update my plugins, as this gives time for the developer to sort out any bugs.

Step #5. Change your database name and password.

If a hacker accesses your database, they can access all your other databases… if you use the same password.

To prevent this, you’ll need to change your password with your hosting company. If you don’t know how to do this, give them a call and they’ll walk you through the process.

So there you have it: five simple steps to protect your WordPress blog from hackers. Any other tips? Let us know in the comments below!

About the Author:

Adam Costa is the Editor in Chief of Trekity.com, a killer new travel website and is the co-founder of the Travel Blogger Academy. If you like to travel, follow him on Twitter for updates on the world’s greatest travelers.

My WordPress blog was hacked a few days back. There was nothing unusual about it, because this happens to thousands of WordPress blogs around the blogosphere.

Wondering what this blog post is all about, if that was normal?

First let me explain the entire incident.

I wanted to add a code to the header section in my theme. I hence logged into the theme editor section and opened the header.php file. I observed something very strange in the file. There was some code added to every line that started with <?php. It looked like a base64 code to me, but I was puzzled as to how this code was added to the theme, when originally I had no such code.

That was enough for me to conclude that it was the act of a hacker.

About 3 weeks back, I had received an alert from Hostgator, saying they suspected a security infringement in my hosting and that they had cleaned everything. They also asked me to change my passwords, which I very smartly decided to ignore.

The consequence was evident in less than 3 weeks.

WordPress blogs are the most sought after by hackers and many a times they are successful in hacking it too, not because of a problem with WordPress. Instead because of sheer ignorance on the part of the blogger, primarily because most blogs lack a robust WordPress backup and security.

In one of my earlier post I had spoken about another attack on my WordPress blogs (that was more than a couple of years back). My hosting provider was as lazy as me and had not put enough security measures in place. They did not even have a good backup mechanism…Consequence, I lost all my content of about 19 months and had to restart from scratch.

I learnt my first lesson; Choose a good hosting provider who has

• start of the art protection from spammers and hackers.
• Has a scheduled backup mechanism in place.

This is how I ended up with Hostgator because they were the best in the industry when it came to hosting you websites, especially WordPress websites.

(You can get a discount on your first month at Hostgator – Use the coupon code:DKSPEAKS10)

How to Secure your WordPress Installation

If you are running a WordPress blog, it is extremely important to ensure that you keep your installation secured. WordPress is an extremely robust platform and the creators ensure that they keep upgrading their files to ensure that they are out of the reach of hackers.

You might want to look at some of the below tips to ensure that you blog is protected.

Update your WordPress Installation to the latest version

WordPress keeps releasing updates from time to time. It is extremely important that you update your blogs to latest version. These upgrades are to plug any loopholes that may exist in earlier versions. The WordPress team ensures that you are informed of these upgrades by displaying it on the dashboard of your blog.

Ensure that all plugins are also updated

Plugins too are very prone to attack. There are a lot of plugins that are outdated and are no longer support by the creators. Periodically check your blog for such plugins and uninstall them.

Also update all other plugins to the latest version.

If you are somebody like me who run multiple installations, keeping a track of updates and updating your blogs could be a tiresome task.

I found a very simple software that can do this for you. This software can update your WordPress installation and you plugins as well at a single click. I have created a video that can show you how this software does all this. Read the post here.

You can check out WP Update Robot for more information.

Protect your WordPress Database

If you have installed your blog using the Fantastico installation in your hosting account, then this is for you. All such installations create databases with simple names like xxxxxx-wrdp1, xxxxxx-wrdp2 etc. where xxxxxx is your hosting login.

Such databases can be easily broken into by hackers. Hence it is important that you change the database names for your blogs to something that is not that easily de-codable.

Periodically backup your blog using a Good WordPress backup plugin

It is important to always backup your wordpress blog. This was one of the mistakes I did when my blog was first hacked and consequently I lost all my content.

Set a schedule to backup your blog. If you publish posts very frequently, then you should backup your blog at least twice every week. There are numerous plugins that can do the job for you.

WP-Backup is one the best free plugins that I found. You can also schedule these backups and get them emailed as well.

I prefer Backupbuddy in addition to the above said free plugin. Backup buddy is the best when it comes to backup and restore. It has numerous customization options and restoring your wordpress, if at all it goes down is a matter of a few minutes.

Order your copy of Backupbuddy today.

In addition to all this, it is also important that you host your wordpress blogs with a good hosting company.

Don’t forget to let us know how you keep your wordpress installation secured.

WordPress blogs are search engine friendly. However, adding and changing elements can render the site very search engine unfriendly. Here are tips on how to press for top rank, not just avoid being ranked low. By far the simplest method of implementing many SEO best practices for a WordPress blog is by using plugins, and plugins of note are referenced herein. If you do not have a WordPress blog this is a good time to start one, or transfer an existing one. Transferring is simple. The fastest way to transfer a website from one server to another is via secure shell. Making good use of tips and tools, like link popularity and SSH web hosting, WordPress is at the forefront when it comes to SEO.

Duplicate content

The default setup leaves a bit to be desired when it comes to search engine optimization. Content from pages is labeled duplicate by search engines because that content displays in the RSS feed. The same content is also present in three other pages, category, monthly archive and posts unique. Choose the “Summary” option under Options, Reading, Syndication Feeds to eliminate duplicate content in the RSS feed.

One can also use robots.txt, disallowing search engine spiders access to the RSS feed and trackback, avoiding duplicate content. Changing the robots.txt file can result in unexpected behavior for some. Backing up the file prior to altering its contents is a good safety measure. The file can be used to stop spiders from crawling the RSS feed, category and archive pages.

Have a static sitemap

A sitemap indexes important pages, and there are plenty of online sitemap generators that make building a static sitemap ridiculously easy. Two of the more noted sitemap generators are the Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress, and the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

Unique content matters

Visitors do not search for duplicate content at your site; they want new ideas. Regular updates of fresh, interesting information or entertainment is what keeps users coming back. It also urges them to alert friends who enjoy that type of content, whatever it may be. Fresh articles or posts keep a site “alive.” Search engine spider algorithms detect regurgitated content and those infractions impact ranking negatively.

Separate title tags and post titles

In a word, the free WordPress plugin SEO Title Tag does the heavy lifting. The plugin is free under the GPL, by the SEO specialists at Covario. SEO Title Tag allows for greater control over meta tags, and effectively stops the interchangeability of title tags and post titles for every title tag on the site. It is important for search engines to crawl as much of the site as possible. Proper navigation among links aids this end.

Linking effectively

Higher ranking sites linking to yours is the kind of linking that matters most. Great content is a big factor in generating a positive online reputation. WordPress takes care of the rest by using trackbacks, pingbacks, and blogrolling tactics to help build an online reputation.

The WordPress Plugin Directory contains 13,806 plugins at the time of this writing. They can be sorted by newest, recently updated, and most popular. Downloaded over 7 million times, the “All in One SEO Pack” is a favorite. It generates meta tags without fuss, and sports a built-in API for extended usefulness. Beginners can use this plugin easily. Advanced users can tweak each and every setting to their hearts’ desire.

In summary, being noticed by search engines is a must for thriving in cyberspace. WordPress makes this task easier with the Plugin Directory, which contains thousands of tools. Reputable sites linking to yours effectively boosts rank, and displaying fresh, interesting content with regularity generates buzz. Watch out for duplicate content mishaps via RSS, and trim code where you can. See you at the top of the search engine results.

Automattic  – the creators of WordPress released their thirteenth major release code named as “Thelonious” and otherwise called as WordPress 3.0.

It is indeed worth the upgrade and the options of upgrading should already be available in your blog admin pages. So what is new in WordPress 3.0. Let’s take a quick look at it -

1. New Default Theme (Twenty Ten): One of the most refreshing changes is that Kubrick is gone and there is a new default theme called as the Twenty Ten theme. This is to go with the new theme APIs. Twenty Ten is a more modern and flexible theme that takes advantage of a lot of the new features.
2. A Newer and Lighter Admin Interface: WordPress 3.0 comes with a new administration interface. The new interface has contextual help on every page and has a light feel to it.
3. WordPress MU Merger: WordPress MU has now been designed into the wordpress administration in WordPress 3.0. This will let users create multiple blogs from a single installation.
4. WordPress URL shortener: URL shortening can now be done from within your blog as WordPress 3.0 has integrated support for URL shorteners including their own wp.me.
5. Choice of Admin name: You can now choose an admin name when you install a new blog and will not have to rely on the default “admin” username any more.

There are many other important updates in the new WordPress. You can watch the below video to learn more.

One of the major bugs that I found after upgrading to the new version was with the plugin “DB Cache Reloaded”. WordPress now has integrated a few new plugins which are probably conflicting with DB cache and producing the below error -

“Call to undefined method wpdb::get_blog_prefix() in /home/xxxx/xxxx/xxxxx.com/public_html/wp-includes/user.php on line XXX“

The easiest resolution to this error is to deactivate the “DB Cache Reloaded” plugin.

In conclusion I should say that WordPress 3.0 will change the way people blog. It is a welcome change – the admin interface and the contextual help and everything else. Upgrade and enjoy.

A few days back, I published a guest post at daily blog tips about WordPress blog backups. You can read that post here.

I thought I would follow it up with this post here, though I am a bit off-schedule and a bit too late to follow up that post.

Blogging is a phenomenon that has changed the way business is done on the internet. It started as a mode of expression of thoughts and feelings of an individual, and went on to become one of the most preferred forms of marketing. Blogging has changed its appearance since it first started and WordPress has changed the way people blog.

WordPress is one of the most preferred platforms for blogging and most of the successful bloggers prefer blogging on WordPress because of the sheer customization options that it offers them. Over the past few years, WordPress has added to its features by constantly upgrading and add to it numerous third party plugins that are either free or, paid.

And that happened….

I was super excited when I first started my blog. As I graduated from a free blog at WordPress to a self-hosted wordpress installation, I bought my own hosting plan from a not so well knows hosting company. Why a not so well known hosting company? Because my cash resources were limited and I had to manage with it.

But I was happy with the service that my hosting company provided and everything went fine for almost a year and a half until one day when I found that my blogs were not working. When the situation did not improve for more than 2 days I wrote to my hosting company to understand the reason. I felt as if my world came crashing down when I got a reply from them. Their servers were attacked by a hacker and they had lost everything that was installed on their servers. When I checked with them for a copy of my blog, I got no response. I kept writing to them but the result was the same.

My worst fears come true…

I had no backup of my blog and with every passing day my desperation grew. My blog had more than a year of content which meant almost 400 posts. Since my blog was a single author blog, it was all my own hard work. I had no clue what to do.

Finally after about 4 days I got a reply that the hosting company could not revive from the hacker attack and that they were closing down. Regarding the backup for my blog, they informed me that they were sorry for the inconvenience and that they had no backup to give me.

The most ignored aspect in Blogging

There are thousands of enhancements that we do to our blogs and there are thousands of plugins to do this. Plugins to drive targeted traffic, to optimize them for the search engines etc. But one of the most ignored aspects in all of this is creating a backup for your blogs.

Almost all servers that are compatible with WordPress installations provide an option of creating a backup for your database. Since WordPress is a blog platform that works entirely on a MySQL database, keeping a backup for your database is good enough. There are other options as well which help in creating a backup, yet most of the blogs today focus the least on creating one for their blog and prefer relying solely on their hosting companies.

Why?

It is because we have so much to do in blogging that we do not find enough time to creating backups. The thousands of courses and e-books available on the internet that claim to teach blogging focuses the least on maintaining backups for your blogs.

The easiest option for a backup

WordPress has a lot of extremely useful plugins that can do the job of creating a backup automatically for you. In addition to the two plugins that I have written about at dailyblogtips.com, the following five are a few other good plugins that I have experience with and which according to me are indeed the best are:

1. WP backup by BTE – This simple plugin takes a copy of all plugins, theme and upload directories and copies them into a directory under wp-content as a zip file.  This zip file is then sent out via email to your preferred email address.
2. WP-DB-Backup – This is a plugin developed by skippy.net and does pretty much the same thing as wordpress database backup. You can download it from http://skippy.net/wordpress-database-backup/.
3. Wp2blosxom – This plugin exports all your posts into a zip file that contains a blosxom style directory hierarchy of posts
4. DBC Backup – DBC Backup uses the wp-cron system to create daily backup of the wordpress database.
5. myEASYbackup – This is by far the best backup plugin available. This plugin creates a backup of both the code and the MySQL tables and also helps you restore the wordpress installation with a single click.

In addition to using these plugins and maintaining backups for your blogs it is also important that you ensure that you protect your WordPress installation from hackers and spammers. Constantly upgrading your WordPress installation to the latest version is one of the best ways to keep your blogs secure.

Are you using WordPress for your blogs?

WordPress is an amazing CMS and publishing platform especially if your are into blogging. No Content Management Solution is as smooth and easy to use as WordPress and add to it the numerous functionality that WordPress offers and you have a killer tool to publish.

But it is not uncommon for any tool to get stuck up at times and that too at silly things and you then have a recipe for frustration. Most of the responses  for any such small issues and snags with WordPress can be found at their support center, but there are still some issues that you will not find an answer to.

If you are not a high investment blogger, you might not want to spend money on hiring a web developer just to resolve such issues. I have come across numerous such instances and that is where the thought of delving into troubleshooting steps and solutions to problems with WordPress came to my mind.

One such common problem that people encounter with their newly installed or, just upgraded blog is a problem with “image upload”. You might come across an error saying “Unable to create directory /wp-content/uploads”/ The last line in this error will ask you to check the permissions of the parent folder in which you are uploading the image.

This is how you can resolve the problem.

First of all check if the uploads folder in your WordPress installation has a write permission. This is normally called as CHMOD in the Linux language. Your “upload” folder should have a permission 777. In order to do this just login to your ftp client and right click on your “upload” folder. Select “permissions” and enter 777 under CHMOD. Don’t forget to check the “recurse into sub-directories option” as well.

Once you have set the permissions for your “upload” directory, login to your WordPress blog’s dashboard. Go to “Miscellaneous” under the “settings” tab. Against the field saying, “Store uploads in this folder” enter “wp-content/uploads”. Note that there is “/” before “wp-content”. It is extremely important to remove this “slash”.

Now try uploading your images and things should be alright.

Don’t forget to tell me if this worked for you.

Do you really need to secure your WordPress Blogs?

Funny question, ain’t it?

At least I thought otherwise and hence never bothered to secure my blogs. I felt that my blogs were invincible and that nothing could happen to them.

I was mistaken. Terribly mistaken….!

For those of you who are regular visitors to my blog, you would have noticed that my blog was down for almost 3-5 days. And when it came back online, there were a few articles that were missing.

This was the status with my other blogs. A few were even worse. There were entire articles that were gone and my blogs went back almost a year back in time.

It was a simple server hack that happened to the hosting servers where I was hosting my blog. My hosting company could not recover from the hack and came back to me showing their helplessness at restoring the data back. All that they needed were a few words to explain their helplessness, but what I lost was my efforts of a lifetime.

But, was it really their fault? No it wasn’t. It indeed was my fault. I never backed up my blogs or, their data. Consequently I lost everything that I had built over a period of 3-4 years.

WordPress Backup :-

How can you backup your wordpress blogs? All it requires is understanding the capability of the WordPress blogging platform. The enhancements that WordPress offers, in itself is sufficient for creating a backup of your blog. When I say, enhancements, what I mean is “Plugins”.

Let take a look at these few plugins that can help your backup your blogs:-

1. WP-DB-Backup – This is by far the best and  easiest of backup plugins that I have used till now. It helps you back the primary tables in your blog database and also provides you an option to choose the other tables that you want to backup. It also provides you an option to automatically email a copy of the backup to a preferred email of your choice.
2. WordPress Automatic Online Backup - Another very useful plugin. This plugin offers you the facility to create a free account with wordpressbackup.com, and let’s you store your wordpress blog’s backups at their servers. The setup is a bit difficult, otherwise the plugin is extremely good and feature rich.
3. Secure WordPress – This is not a backup tool. Still it is very important to secure your wordpress installations. Of the rest everything that it does it also removes error information on login page; adds index.html to plugin directory and removes the wp-version.
4. WordPress Backup – This is a plugin by the Blog Traffic Exchange team. Once again the installation is a bit difficult though it is not rocket science, but the plugin is extremely useful in creating a backup of your themes folder, plugins folder and your database.
5. DBC Backup – This plugin is similar to the one above, but it works on cron jobs. You need to have the basic knowledge about working with hosting servers to install this plugin. But once installed, this can come in very handy.

Use one or, all of these plugins as per your requirement and protect your blog. A slight carelessness from you could cost you, about a couple of years’ efforts.

In addition to all this, always ensure that you upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest version in order to keep it secure.

Don’t forget to comment on which of these plugins you like the most and which is the one that you have installed in your blog.

Photograph courtesy Carl Silver

Are you new to the blogging world?

In case you are, then let me ask you to rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on your skills with WordPress. Read on as you rate yourself.

You may even take the vote that you see here.

[poll id="2"]

When I started blogging about 3 years back, I first set up my blog at blogger.com, which I believe, is one of the favorite platforms for all bloggers. But as you season as a blogger, your interest changes shores to WordPress. This is exactly what happened with me. After blogging for almost about 8-9 months, I learnt about WordPress and the extendability that it offers to a blogger. I was so amazed and awed at the potential of WordPress that I straightaway headed over to a hosting company and bought a domain and installed my first WordPress blog. The story doesn’t end there….!

WordPress offers a world famous 5-minute installation process, which ensures that you are up with your blog in minutes. This statement is where I started my blog installation. But……It took me about 2 days to get my blog up and running. If your start-up was better than me then I should say that you are a much better player than me.

Let me tell you the points where I got stuck up:-

1. My hosting was not compatible for a WordPress Installation.
2. I couldn’t figure out how to import my blogger blog into my new wordpress blog.
3. My theme would not install properly because of some stupid permission problems.
4. My database would not install properly.
5. I did not know how to configure my config.php file.
6. I couldn’t install the plugins that was required.

These were just the problems with my startup. The hiccups extended on until about 5 months into my launch by which time I had gained a fairly good understanding of php and MySQL, probably because I had an interest in it.

I had been on the lookout for a course that could offer the initial assistance required to any blogger starting off with WordPress and gradually handhold them until they could popularize their blog and earn from it. I had even thought of starting a WordPress Master course. While I was playing with this idea, I stumbled upon another course by a good friend of mine who was heading the Max Blog Press team. This course is called WordPress Wizard. Though it is not a membership course, it offers an indepth study into WordPress and WordPress blog management.

You might want to check out this course in case you are really keen towards launching a WordPress blog or, even bettering the blog that you are currently running on WordPress.

Have you upgraded your blog to WordPress 2.8?

If not, then it is time that you do so. If you are still wondering as to why should you upgrade then read through a few of the features in the latest version of the world’s favorite blogging platform and you will be convinced.

You can find much more information about the Version 2.8 at the official page at WordPress.

A few of the highlights of the latest version is as follows:

1. WordPress 2.8 sports a new drag-and-drop widgets option in your admin interface. All you now need to do is just drag the widgets that you want to display in your sidebar and drop it. No need to even save it after dropping the widget.
2. The theme editors and plugin editors have a new feature. It now highlights syntax for editing and also has a built-in function lookup option.
3. In all the earlier versions, installing the theme meant that you have to have an FTP application installed. In WordPress version 2.8, all you need to do is just browse the theme directory and install themes directly from the admin.
4. Now the dashboard widgets can be arranged in upto four columns thus making it easy to navigate and use your dashboard.
5. WordPress 2.8 now supports timezones and even automatic daylight savings time adjustmentdirectly from your admin panel.
6. You can also configure the number of items to show on the management pages with an option in the Screen Options.
7. The best part of the latest version is that it supports IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module, which has known to create problems in the earlier versions.

There were multiple reasons why I was eagerly awaiting the release of WordPress version 2.8. But the most impressive of these is the fact that

- You can now easily install themes from your admin panel directly. This was always a challenge for me and I has always wanted WordPress to implement this feature in one of their releases.

- Widgets on you sidebars was another aspect that seemed interesting to me. In all the earlier versions, you had to first select a sidebar from the drop-down menu (this is, if you had multiple sidebars in your theme), then click a widget to select it for your sidebar. After all this if you forget to save the changes, all your changes were gone. In the latest version, all this is got rid off. All that you need to do is drag and drop your favorite widgets onto the sidebar of your choice.

Go ahead and upgrade your database, if you haven’t already.