As many of you may know Wordpress has just released it’s version 2.6 which you and I will need to upgrade to (as soon as we can all find some time of course!). The new version of course comes with some new features as well as many improvements. Here’s the video of the brief tour for Wordpress 2.6:

Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits

This is basically a new feature that tracks content changes made to any posts or pages, similar to the way MediaWiki content management system works. This comes in extremely handy for those who run collaborative blogs with multiple writers.

Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web

They developed a Press This bookmark you can add to your toolbar that provides a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog

Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging

In this release Wordpress stuck to using what’s called a “Local Server” to cache or keep a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds

Theme Previews: See it before your audience does

Now when you select a theme it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content, instead of immediately making it active on your site. This is great for just test driving themes before making a switch over publicly, and it is also helpful when you are developing a theme and need to test it but don’t want everybody to see your ongoing development.

And the rest of Wordpress 2.6 Features & Improvements

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

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Yahoo Small Business is currently selling domain names for only $1.99 right now. I’m not sure how long this is going to last, and it is also for new customers only! Of course the way around that is you could create a new account if you needed to. The $1.99 price counts for only the first year, and it’s $12.95/year after that. I’m using this as an opportunity to purchase any domain names that I want to test out, and if they don’t work out for me i’ll just bag them after the first year!

The way I located this discount was by first doing a Google search for ‘Yahoo Domains’. Then you click on the PPC ad on the top of the listing, not the organic listing. The PPC listing redirects you to a special landing page where you can get the $1.99 discount! As i’m writing this i’m realizing that this only will work for your first domain name! But anyhow, it will save you some cash for a .com and you can get a domain name for something you want to try out. In my case, i’m creating a new affiliate website that I wanted to test out the market on first. So if it doesn’t work out for me, i’ll just bag it when my 1 year is up.

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What? Really? After all of that effort of “secluding” CATS open source applicant tracking system from the Open Source world, it appears that CATS is making an attempt to repair it’s relationship with it’s former Open Source community. Including me! I was very open in criticizing CATS for bailing on Open Source after relying on it for the building of it’s software. CATS is reopening it’s Open Source Forums, so that community members can support each other in enhancing the open source side of the application.

They are however not releasing and supporting any open source versions of their software. They are just simply giving an avenue for those who still work with the open source versions. Although they are not going back fully to open source, they are giving effort to rebuild their reputation a little. You have to give some credit. But not full! This is however a big time for those CATS open source users and supporters out there.

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I keep an eye on this open source project every once in a while. Xoops CMS was the first open source content management system that I was introduced to several years ago. They are now in their 7th year of existence and going strong with a large community still to this date. In checking on them recently I noticed that they had just released Xoops Version 2.0.18.1. Looks like an IP Address!!!!

My biggest concern with Xoops is whether or not it can keep up with basic SEO (search engine optimization) fundamentals. Joomla CMS seems to have difficulties with things such as Rewriting URL’s. What seperates Drupal from everyone else is the multiple SEO friendly features it has. Does the new version of Xoops have these things? They did not before and that is why I found another CMS to work with. That being Drupal. Xoops has a lot of good features, but it needs to keep up with Drupal and Joomla in some of the basic needs we all have of a CMS.

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The new version of WikyBlog has been released as release 1.6 with some improvements in the attachment namespace, improved plugin handling, improved javascript enhancements and new blog preferences. In case you don’t already know, WikyBlog is an open source content management system that combines blogging and wiki into the same system. Basically like a mashup of the two content management concepts. You can read the article I wrote late last year about WikyBlog called ‘A Blog and Wiki Hybrid!’.

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Are people getting the “Open Source” message? Are you getting it? It seems that over the past year and as we have begun this new and exciting year of 2008 that many people have forgotten what Open Source is all about. Much talk is being discussed about several open source projects leaning more and more towards being a proprietary software. In case you don’t know, Proprietary is the complete opposite of Open Source. They don’t work together. They are enemies! Never to be mingled or intersected in anyway.

If you read my blog often you have probably seen a couple times in the past year where I have called out an open source project who is trying “strong arm tactics” to sell their software in a proprietary way. More and more companies are using the term “Open Source” like a perfectly healthy person uses a handicap sticker in their car. They are not supposed too! This is a huge problem.

The Problem 

Open Source faces a huge danger. The trust that exists in open source communities that everyone can share with everyone is being taken advantage of in many ways. The delicate balance that Open Source exists upon cannot be intruded. If it is, contributors lose trust and run away. If their are no contributors, open source projects lost their effectiveness!  It is very possible that a small number of people could ruin it for everyone! And this fantastic overall Open Source community that has been created by thousands upon thousands of generous people will all go away.

The Solution 

Project founders need to find more creative avenues of revenue streams with their open source products. The easy non-creative thing to do is to sell the software in what many are calling a “commercial version”. This is so easy to do. But the founders who look to invent new and more creative avenues of revenue streams are the ones who will get the most revenue at the end of the day.

The Open Source Message

Before businessmen intruded and began to capatilize on the open source market with their greedy fingers and stuffed wallets,  open source projects of all kinds were progressing at astounding rates. Solutions of all kinds were being invented. Open Source has much more to do with than just software. It’s a mentality. A way of doing business. A way of creating opportunities for yourself, but for thousands of others at the same time. A way to give back! A way to combine your skills with hundreds of others and solve problems. Not only software problems. Even world problems.

We cannot lose sight of what is truly Open Source. We have to work together to keep the “commercialism” out of open source in order for it to continue to grow. I hope we can all work together to continue to make this happen.

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