The team over at WordPress are hard at work and have already come out with a new release, WordPress 2.5.1 This release focuses on over 70 bug fixes.

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Another great batch release of WordPress Plugins for you to browse through and download. This time featuring iBox, iShare, Shashin and Branded Login Screen.

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Of all the new features available in the WordPress 2.5 release, I must say one of my most favorites is the all new Plugin Management system. Comparing the old plugin management system to this new one would be like comparing a walkman to an mp3 player.

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We have opened a new area of the site called “WordPress Plugins”. This has been done to better organize the WordPress contents featured on our site. To kick things off we have a great bunch of new plugins for you to check out and try out if you’d like.

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If you have not yet updated your WordPress blog to version 2.5 and are waiting for a “good reason” to do so, how about your ranking and your sites indexing? It has been announced that Technorati will be un-indexing blogs that are vulnerable to spam or hacking attacks.

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You may have heard the name Gravatars quite often lately and wondered what its all about. I’m going to explain this morning about Gravatars, how they work, why you should use them and how to enjoy them on your own WordPress blog.

What are Gravatars?

Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars

How do Gravatars work?

With Gravatar you can participate in blogs and forums all over the net and never have to upload an avatar. With Gravatars you simple join for free with your email address at http://www.gravatar.com/ and upload or choose your favorite avatar. Thats it! Now whenever you take part in a discussion on a Gravatar enabled site your avatar is fetched for you. No more uploading to your profile at all the sites you visit, you don’t even need to login as long as your email is used your Gravatar will be fetched for you. Since the release of WordPress version 2.5 Gravatar support is now built in to all WordPress sites.

Why use Gravatars?

Your comments and ideas are you own, so leave your mark with your Gravatar.
Use your sites logo as your Gravatar to help promote your site.
Its so simple and convenient why wouldn’t you use them.
Did I mention it was free?

How do I use Gravatars on my WordPress blog?

As I mentioned above, starting with 2.5 Gravatar support is built in. Simply go to your admin area and activate them. Admin > Discussion > Gravatars

Now pending on your theme you may or may not have the correct code to display the Gravatars. Not to worry its very easy to add. See my post about adding avatars to comments.

Quite often WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks can sound too confusing and complicated to even be bothered with. However, you would be surprised how simple they really are to use. The great thing with WordPress is that the system itself does the work for you.

The idea of trackbacks and pingbacks are to let other sites know you referenced a post of theirs and to let you know when other authors have referenced your posts.

If you read someones WordPress blog and like, dislike or want to comment on their post on your own WordPress blog you would add a link in your post, to the other sites post.

What happens next is WordPress will send a note in the form of a comment letting the author know you have linked to them. A linkback is then posted in on the authors post page pointing back to your post.

You will see trackbacks that have been made to this site at the bottom of posts pages after the comments.

Example:

Site One writes a post about WordPress
Site Two also writes a post about WordPress and adds a link to the post made by Site One
Site One is then sent a trackback and notified that Site Two has referenced their post.
Site One (normally) approves the trackback and a link pointing to the post on Site Two is displayed below the post made by Site One

If all of this sounds like too much don’t worry about it, you have WordPress on your side and this is all done for you automatically if both blogs are running WordPress.

Now in the event you want to reference a post made on a site that is not run by WordPress you will want to look for the posts “trackback” url. This is normally posted at the end of a post and would look something like: http://www.stcfx.com/2008/04/06/wordpress-25-trackbacks-pingbacks/trackback/

So now when you write a post that references another post you will add the trackback url on your write a post page in the Trackbacks field.

Send trackbacks to: http://www.stcfx.com/2008/04/06/wordpress-25-trackbacks-pingbacks/trackback/

WordPress will then do its magic and send a notice to the blog post you are referencing.

If you would like to try this out on your own WordPress blog simply write a post and add a link to this post.
http://www.stcfx.com/2008/04/06/wordpress-25-trackbacks-pingbacks/

Then come back to this post and look at the trackbacks. Note: you may not see your trackback right away as I have to approve it first. Also be advised that spam will not be tolerated.

Recap

1. Trackbacks and Pingbacks are used to let a blog know you have referenced them on your blog.
2. WordPress takes care of this for you if both blogs are WordPress driven.
3. You can send trackbacks to blogs that are running WordPress by adding the trackback url on the write a post page.

After my previous post about the Enhanced WP-ContactForm breaking the visual editor I contacted the plugin Author to ask about addressing the situation, however I have yet to hear anything back. So I decided to look for an alternative. I found a similar plugin written by Douglas Karr called WordPress Contact Form.

The plugin is currently running and causes no problems with the visual editor. For those of you with out a contact form due the the same issues I would recommend Douglas’ plugin. You can also edit any css attributes for the contact form in the admin. Very nice!

Some of you may be having issues with images in posts using the new WordPress 2.5 image upload. If you find that your theme isn’t placing the images correctly you will want to take a look at your current themes style.css file to make sure the alignment rules have been written.

Note: Always, always and yes .. always make a backup before you go messing with things.

Admin > Design > Theme Editor > Current Theme > style.css

You will want to look for the following or something similar:

.alignleft {
float:left;
padding: 4px;
}

.alignright {
float:right;
padding: 4px;
}
.aligncenter {
float:center;
padding: 4px;
}

If these css rules (alignleft, alignright, aligncenter) are not currently in your style.css file simple copy and paste them in at the bottom. You can make changes if you would like; add a border etc.

I do believe there are plugins available for this but really I don’t think its necessary. You can quickly add your own “About the Author” or “Author Bio” box to your blog posts with only a few lines of code. It should take you maybe 2 minutes to complete this task. Super easy stuff. This is a nice addition to any blog and helps to promote your blogs contents by associating your site with real people - and it just looks good!

Note: Always, always and yes .. always make a backup before you start messing with things.

Open your current themes single.php file
Admin > Design > Theme Editor > Your Current Theme > single.php

Find the following:

<?php the_content(’Continue reading »’); ?>
<?php link_pages(’<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ‘, ‘</p>’, ‘number’); ?>

Now right below add this:

<h3>About The Author</h3>
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), $size = ‘50′ )?>
<p>Written by <?php the_author_link(); ?>
<BR>
<?php the_author_link(); ?> is <?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
<p>Other posts by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></p>

You can change the above to get things looking how you would like. The above example will give you a similar look to what we have here on STCFX.

The Author description is taken from the user profile area. Whatever is typed there will be displayed in this area.