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Congratulations to our long time friend Melanie Duerkopp on her new WordPress powered blog!  Melanie is a talented photographer who specializes in weddings and portraits.  Check out her work- here and her blog- here

This is a just a quick reminder to all of our friends using WordPress.  Make sure you update to the new version- 3.1.3.   This will likely be the last version before 3.2.  It has several security fixes.  One of the most common reasons for getting hacked is having as outdated (and vulnerable) version!  Here are some of the updates that were made:

• Various security hardening by Alexander Concha.
• Taxonomy query hardening by John Lamansky.
• Prevent sniffing out user names of non-authors by using canonical redirects. Props Verónica Valeros.
• Media security fixes by Richard Lundeen of Microsoft, Jesse Ou of Microsoft, and Microsoft Vulnerability Research.
• Improves file upload security on hosts with dangerous security settings.
• Cleans up old WordPress import files if the import does not finish.
• Introduce “clickjacking” protection in modern browsers on admin and login pages.

We just helped Sophos law in Seattle update and customize a new WordPress theme for their blog The Neighborhood Entrepreneur .  If you are a startup, entrepreneur or are looking for insight into the world of business law I would bookmark this valuable source for information.

We have a few videos that we show to clients from WordPress.tv to help them understand the WordPress admin.  They serve as a precursor to our one on one walk-through of a client’s website and also to help the client decide if WordPress is the right CMS for them.
Intro to the WordPress Dashboard

Moderating Comments

Editing a post in the WYSIWYG

Adding photos, video, and other media, to your site

We just finished launching the website for the Martha Lake Townhomes. This is a result of our latest effort to reach out to more real estate developers and provide them with simple and effective websites to show their properties.

I read a great article at Smashing Magazine about the key differences between WordPress and Joomla.  It really highlights the advances the 3 main CMS platforms have achieved.  Only 2 years ago your choice of using WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal was dependent on the project specs and the limitations of the platforms.  Now for the most part the choice is really up to the developers preferred method.  We have always preferred wordpress because we feel that it is easiest for the end client to use.  The last thing we want to deliver is a CMS that is intimidating to the client.

We collaborated with the talented designers at ARTJOCKS in Los Angeles to develop a custom blog for multi-talented artist China Brooks.  The blog serves as a mouthpiece for her spiritual teachings and services.  Take a look at the site and enjoy!

Take your spell check to the next level with After The Deadline for Firefox.  If you are like me, you type fast and often.  I don’t have much time to proofread my material between the blogging, coding, meetings, and family activities that make up my day.  After the Deadline doesn’t just spell check your work, it considers the context of your phrases and even helps you avoid common writing mistakes.

Bloggers and web pros alike are buzzing about this open source endeavor called Buddypress. Buddypress is an add on to your WordPress MU (multi-user) install that adds a dynamic, extensible, and robust social networking aspect to your site. You can have user profiles, feeds, commenting and many of the other fun goodies that come along with a social media site. I can see this as being a very powerful tool for small groups and associations who want to keep in touch online. For now Buddypress is still in Beta but it is already a powerful tool in use by some very interesting groups. I am excited to see where it will go and how I can use it in future projects.

Here is a video of Andy Peatling- the leader of Buddypress giving a presentation of Buddypress in action:

If you are a design agency or webmaster with a lot of clients using WordPress this is a great plugin.  The plugin allows your clients to contact you for support inside the Wordpess admin.  This is a great way to stay connected with your clients and encourage a line of communication with them!