Matt’s jokes aside I very much believe that the direction WordPress is heading in will naturally make it’s .com arm a competitor of sorts, if not directly, to the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world as the single user and multi-user codebases merge and BuddyPress matures.

There are already a growing number of alternative WordPress driven offerings to AutoMattic’s WordPress.com springing up such as incsub‘s blogs.mu and wp.mu which allows users to set up there own branded multi-user WordPress offerings without having to deal with installation and configuration of WordPress mu on their own server. I think we are also going to see an explosion of smaller independant, and potentially connected, niche social networks built on the WordPress/BuddyPress platform due to the unprecidented level of flexability, accessability and control and with far greater customisation potential via Plugins and Themes than any of the current solutions out there such as Ning and Virb.

Gravatar, already used extensivly across the various WordPress properties, and other AutoMattic offerings such as Intense Debate and PollDaddy will also likely be key elements in the social evolution of WordPress.

With over 5 million WordPress.com blogs and 5.5 million wordpress 2.8 downloads (and counting) simply connecting all those blogs together makes for a pretty sizable social network right off the bat… it’s no Facebook for sure but it’s going to interesting to watch over the coming months.

I’ll be watching with great interest to see what WordPress 2.9, 3.0 and beyond do in the social space… I see a bright, fun filled and SOCIAL future for WordPress!

I’ve been so busy on other projects for the past couple of months that I haven’t been able to be as involved with the BuddyPress community as I would have liked but with this milestone I’m itching to get back in there and try out all the new stuff and finally get BabbleLounge up an running! The only thing I would like to have seen in this release would be the inclusion of the Photo Albums feature that has been slated for late 2009 (and there isn’t much “late” left).

To find out all the cool new features of BuddyPress 1.1 go read the release announcement, try the demo site or download it for yourself.

Well done Andy and all the contributors for this awesome platform!

A site, that in an ideal world I would be able to take advantage of, called WPMU DEV Premium is just about to hit the milestone of having 100 plugins, themes and videos for use with WordPress MU and the BuddyPress.  As with so many it seems, I can’t afford the outlay for a membership as none of my projects are profit bearing. If I could justify the cost however there is one plugin in particular that I see real value in:

Supporter

The Supporter plugin provides a seemless way to integrate a paid upgrades feature similar to the wordpress.com upgrades system, in fact WPMU DEV Premium also offer a plugin called Upgrades that does EXACTLY what the wordpress.com system does using a system of credits as opposed to supporters paypal $ based system. This is a feature which with the exception of Supporter has been sorely missing in the WPMU world so this definately fills a significant gap in the market. The only thing that would make this plugin a complete no-brainer for me would be support for BuddyPress and I’m sure that’s not far away!

Now if I could just find the money for a subscription perhaps I could start monetising some of these projects!

Congratulations James and Andrew on reaching the Ton!

After a search of the WordPress extend repository I came across Smart Archives Reloaded by Scribu, an evolution of the original Smart Archives by Justin Blanton and while it didn’t quite achieve what I was aiming for I could see the potential to get where I was going… so I rolled up my sleeves, put my php hat and started coding.

The new fancy archive is built using a multi-level implementation of the jQuery.Tools tab control and also adds post categories and dates to the list of output tags available. After a couple of days of tweaking and testing I got in touch with Scribu to present “Super” Smart Archives Reloaded. Needless to say he loved it and offered to roll it into the core plugin.

So from version 1.7 of Smart Archives Reloaded you too can now take advantage of the “fancy” archives option and enjoy the smartest archives on the web!

You can see the archive in action here or go download it and try it for yourself… it’s as simple as upload, activate and view, and it even comes with a simple default style!

This is only my second WordPress plugin and my first to see the light of day and it feels great to give something back to the WordPress community. Thanks to Scribu for including my work in the plugin.

Xero, the company I work for, is a Premium sponsor and while it sux to be giving up my weekend with the family I am looking forward to hearing all the latest news in the WordPress world and attending some of the unconference activities on offer. It’s going to be a great opportunity to hear from Ma.tt, who is doing a “Town Hall” style Q&A after lunch on Saturday (although I was a little disappointed to hear he wouldn’t be doing his stock State of the Word speech) and others on subjects such as bbPress forum integration, building community and e-commerce. I was hoping for some BuddyPress related presentations but I guess we’ll have to wait until next year when I think that will really have become HUGE!

If you’re not already coming, take a look at the schedule and get your tickets here.

• An interview on “The Way I Work” with Matt in Inc Magazine
• Another interview with Matt on WebLogTools Collection
• And finally Matt’s “State of the Word” keynote from WordCamp San Francisco

The most interesting take home I got from the Inc interview was this:

Music helps me when I’m coding, which is still my priority. When you’re coding, you really have to be in the zone. I’ll listen to a single song, over and over on repeat, like a hundred times.

I’ve found myself doing this a lot lately and was starting to think I was a bit weird, so it’s good to know that at least I’m in good company!

No.1 on my wishlist for speakers/topics I’d like to see covered would be Andy Peatling of BuddyPress fame as I think this is the single most exciting development in the world of WordPress right now.

For updates and info follow @wordcampnz on Twitter or visit the WordCamp NZ site.

While I haven’t been posting here on ConceptFusion I have been managing the occasional post on my family blog and in leu of posting here I have been working hard on some other, soon to see the light of day, WordPress related things.

In the mean time I’m gonna try to get back on the blogging wagon. As always, stay tuned… you might be surprised!

There’s been plenty of discussion within the WordPress community around rolling out another major UI update on the back of the what was already a pretty radical change in WordPress 2.5  earlier in the year but I’ve got to say, I really don’t have a problem with the approach Automatic have taken here.  With 2.5 the admin UI was desperately in need of an overhaul, as evidenced by the many plugins around that did just that, and it was indeed a vast improvement over its predecessor. But let’s be honest, it wasn’t “great”… it’s already starting to look a bit tired and there are plenty of frustrations, like the number of clicks required to perform the most common tasks like as writing a post.

What had to happen next was a more robust process of evolution, which is exactly what HAS happened. Weather you agree with or like the result or not, a process of testing and user feedback has happened since WordPress 2.5 that has resulted in an even more radically different UI that this time reflects what the majority of users (at least those that spoke up) want and offers a far better, more scalable platform for further evolution going forward. And I for one love it!

Some of the new admin features include:

• More concise, vertical, navigation menu’s that can also be minimised to just icons with hover dropdowns and a new quick links menu for easy single click access to common tasks.
• Updated dashboard with draggable, configurable panels and a clearer overview of the current status of your blog.
• “QuickPress” simple post entry from the dashboard.
• Manage and reply to comments directly from the dashboard comments panel or comment list.
• “Screen Options” configuration settings for most pages that allow you to configure the interface to include only the elements you actually use.
• Directly browse for and install plugins from the admin interface replacing the need to manually download plugins and upload via ftp.
• Update WordPress itself without the need to download files and upload via ftp.
• Cleaner, more functional lists for posts, pages, comments etc. with Quick Edit and bulk actions.

It’s not all in the admin though… there’s plenty of new juice in the front-end too with sticky posts and threaded comments (additional plugin required).

Overall WordPress 2.7 feels more like a mature, professional, REAL web application. It is clean, simple and makes performing common tasks easier and from my experience at least, seems considerably faster than previous versions (another popular gripe among users).

I’m more “Super Pumped” about this release than any before it and I for one can’t wait to start getting my hands grubby tinkering with all the new toys at our disposal.

Rock-on WordPress!

Note: While the post title says “the good, the bad and the freakin’ awesome”, in writing this post I was unable to think of anything BAD… perhaps later.