WordPress 3.2 is Here: Born on the 4th of July

WordPress 3.2, dubbed Gershwin, has arrived and is ready for download, coinciding with the American Independence Day. Nice little touch for GPL software, isn’t it? ;)

What’s New and Exciting in WordPress 3.2?

If you’ve been following WordPress 3.2 development, then you know it’s packed full of goodies. The major new features include:

• Refreshed dashboard design
• Fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme with optional rotating header images
• Distraction-free writing or zen mode
• Retiring support for PHP4, older versions of MySQL, and legacy browsers like IE6
• Performance updates to make WordPress significantly faster on all hosting platforms
• More shortcuts to your most commonly-used actions in the admin bar
• Comment moderation screen includes the new approve & reply feature to speed up conversation management

Here’s a quick video introduction to WordPress 3.2, courtesy WordPress.tv:

Fancy, isn’t it? I know you’re probably itching to upgrade at your earliest opportunity. I think I’m more excited about Twenty Eleven than I was for TwentyTen. However, if you’re running BuddyPress on your site, you’ll need to be aware of a few extra things.

WordPress 3.2 and BuddyPress 1.2.9: Upgrade Together

WARNING: If you’re using BuddyPress, it’s advised for you to update both WordPress and BuddyPress at the same time. You’ll experience a few funky jQuery issues if you don’t. They MUST be updated together. BuddyPress 1.2.9 dropped today to ensure full compatibility with WordPress 3.2

For a full list of everything that’s new, check out the codex page on WordPress 3.2.

Also, if you’re drinking and celebrating today, I don’t advise you to update until tomorrow. ;) You’ll want to make a decent backup of your WordPress site first and then continue on with the automatic or manual upgrade.

Enjoy WordPress 3.2 and Happy Independence Day!

Get Campaign Monitor Integration for MarketPress E-Commerce

WordPress plugin developer Lee Willis has released a cool add-on for MarketPress. His new MarketPress / Campaign Monitor Integration plugin allows you to integrate MarketPress purchasers directly on to a Campaign Monitor list so that you can quickly build your email marketing list with your e-commerce customors.

If a customer opts-in, he will automatically be added to your chosen campaign monitor list, which you’ll also be able to view through the WordPress dashboard. MarketPress / Campaign Monitor Integration is just $10 – a small price to pay for the ability to keep your email marketing list up to date with customers who believe in your products. Download it from Lee Willis’ plugin store today.

WordPress Has Dropped Support for IE6 – Who Can Blame Them?

WordPress 3.2 is dropping this week and, for the first time, it will not have support for IE6. Those of us who have struggled to support IE6 at the expense of modern browsers’ capabilities when building with WordPress are jumping out of our seats to wave goodbye. WordPress 3.2 will be pushing users to upgrade their browsers through the Browse Happy campaign.

There’s really no excuse to support IE6 anymore – absolutely no reason. It’s insecure, unbearably slow, and dismally outdated. Upgrading to a modern browser is free. Even Microsoft is glad to see it go. Their IE6 Countdown site tracks the slow but steady demise of IE6 across the globe.

Who Else is Dropping Support for IE6?

Many major companies are making an aggressive push towards modern browsing in 2011. As of August 1st, Google Apps will no longer support Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3 and all of their predecessors. Amazon dropped support for IE6 last year. 37signals actually phased out support for IE6 across all 37signals products in October of 2008. There are very few companies remaining who are still taking a stand for IE6.

Goodbye IE6 – Hello WordPress 3.2

WordPress developers and site administrators can now rest easy. You’re no longer obliged to support the dusty 10 year old browser. Fair warning has been given, so if you need to get the word out to your clients, now is the time. Rest in peace IE6. We loved you ten years ago but it’s time to move on.

Does WordPress’ move to dump IE6 make you rethink how far back you’re willing to cater to when it comes to browser compatibility? How many of you will be toasting its demise when WordPress 3.2 is released?

Daily Tip: Get bbPress Forum Updates in the WordPress Dashboard

Ryan Imel has written a handy plugin that lets you quickly review your bbPress forum activity from a widget on your WordPress dashboard. The new Dashboard Forum Activity plugin essentially gives you a bird’s eye view of recent activity in your forum.

Here’s what the default widget looks like in your dashboard:

Currently the plugin is set up only to show in the dashboard for admins or those who have manage_options capabilities. In the future, Ryan plans to add basic hover over actions similar to those that the Recent Comments widget has (Edit, Spam, Trash) as well as the ability to reply to topics and replies. You can download the Dashboard Forum Activity plugin for free from the WordPress repository.

Daily Tip: May the Force Be With You

As much as site admins love working with WordPress, sometimes it’s nice to have a little extra fun, a bit of diversionary entertainment. How about random Star Wars quotes in the admin dashboard?

The May the Force Be With You plugin will give you exactly that. It’s based on Matt’s Hello Dolly quote generator and duplicates the cheery functionality, replacing lyrics from the hit musical with memorable quotes from a galaxy far, far away.

Download it for free from the WordPress plugin repository.

Daily Tip: Add a Honeypot to Contact Form 7 to Prevent Spam

If you’re a fan of the popular Contact Form 7 plugin but don’t like using ugly CAPTCHAs, you may want to consider adding the new Honeypot for Contact Form 7 plugin. It introduces an additional field in the form that, when filled out. will cause the form not to validate.

The idea of a Honeypot is that it provides an irresistable trap for the bots. Bots are stupid and they will attempt to fill in all of the form fields with their junk. The Honeypot for Contact Form 7 plugin catches them red-handed.

Download the plugin for free from the WordPress repository. The next step is to choose “Honeypot” from the Generate Tag dropdown within your contact form. Change the Honeypot ID and insert the generated tag anywhere in your form. Click save and you’re set!

WordPress for webOS Brings You a New Way to Blog on the Go

WordPress announced a new free app today for HP TouchPad owners. WordPress for webOS offers a totally new blogging experience with sliding panels, a full featured WYSIWYG editor, localization, and support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs.

The sliding panels make it easy to write blogs on the go, while switching between creating, editing and managing your content. Essentially, you’re not “stuck” on one page while writing your blog or managing comments.

WordPress for webOS currently only works with the HP TouchPad, but support for other webOS devices will be offered in the future.

Although I don’t know too many people running webOS, they’re certainly going to enjoy a snazzy WordPress experience.

What do you think? Do you like it better than WordPress for iOS? Apples and oranges? :)

Theme Force: The WordPress Standard for Restaurant Frameworks

If you’re thinking of using WordPress to build a website for a restaurant, then you need to check out the Theme Force Framework, created by Noel Tock.

Theme Force is 100% GPL framework for developing WordPress sites for restaurants. The framework is open for anyone to use and improve through contribution. It focuses on four core areas, as displayed in the graphic below: Events & Food, Business Essentials, Relevant Connections, and a Strong Backbone.

You can see that this is far more than just a simple theme with a restaurant design. It’s packed full of powerful features that help to get restaurant sites found on the web and connected to industry-relevant 3rd Party SaaS (ie. Groupon, Yelp, Twitter, etc.)

One of the most remarkable features of the framework is the ease of creating a beautifully designed menu for the restaurant directly within the WordPress dashboard. It even provides support for multiple menus and the ability to add/edit/remove food items. Many restaurants rely on PDFs for menu display and site developers often just slap the PDF up on the website. This does nothing for SEO and mobile users who will want to access the restaurant’s menu. Theme Force changes all of this and makes menu creation an easy process.

The framework includes everything you need to create a full-featured, successful restaurant site with WordPress. Theme Force prioritizes the end-user, so that restaurant owners and managers can administer their own CMS.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, check out the commercial themes available for the Theme Force framework.

The Theme Force service is currently accepting requests for Beta invites. If you can’t wait to get started and want to start building your own theme based on the framework, you can download your copy of the Theme Force Framework from Github: https://github.com/themeforce/framework

Theme Force: The WordPress Standard for Restaurant Frameworks

If you’re thinking of using WordPress to build a website for a restaurant, then you need to check out the Theme Force Framework, created by Noel Tock.

Theme Force is 100% GPL framework for developing WordPress sites for restaurants. The framework is open for anyone to use and improve through contribution. It focuses on four core areas, as displayed in the graphic below: Events & Food, Business Essentials, Relevant Connections, and a Strong Backbone.

You can see that this is far more than just a simple theme with a restaurant design. It’s packed full of powerful features that help to get restaurant sites found on the web and connected to industry-relevant 3rd Party SaaS (ie. Groupon, Yelp, Twitter, etc.)

One of the most remarkable features of the framework is the ease of creating a beautifully designed menu for the restaurant directly within the WordPress dashboard. It even provides support for multiple menus and the ability to add/edit/remove food items. Many restaurants rely on PDFs for menu display and site developers often just slap the PDF up on the website. This does nothing for SEO and mobile users who will want to access the restaurant’s menu. Theme Force changes all of this and makes menu creation an easy process.

The framework includes everything you need to create a full-featured, successful restaurant site with WordPress. Theme Force prioritizes the end-user, so that restaurant owners and managers can administer their own CMS.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, check out the commercial themes available for the Theme Force framework.

The Theme Force service is currently accepting requests for Beta invites. If you can’t wait to get started and want to start building your own theme based on the framework, you can download your copy of the Theme Force Framework from Github: https://github.com/themeforce/framework