Hi,

I am a big believer in Wordpress as a platform for web designers to build off of … why only give your clients a simple static site, when you can for the same price, provide them with all the bells and whistles that a Wordpress based site can give you:

• built-in search.
• ability for non-nerds to upload images and add new pages.
• built in password protected pages.

… And man, there is much more.

Anyway, you ought to learn how to use this blog engine (like creating Wordpress templates) … or any other, if you want to beat the competition these days. Other Wordpress like blog engines/CMS’ you may want to consider include:

- Drupal
- Joomla
- Movable Type

… There are many others out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I chose Wordpress a few years back because it was powerful enough for my needs and it had a huge community to lean on – and it still does.

Wordpress 2.9 just released

The nerds in charge of Wordpress seem to have no lives … they just keep coming out with new versions it seems like almost every three weeks! OK, it is isn’t that often but it still is moving along at a pretty faced pace.

Some of the new features in these release:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.

2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.

3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.

4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

You can read more about it at the Wordpress site.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook