We just upgraded the bizroof blog to wordpress 2.6 with the K2 theme 1.0-RC7.

And here is a list of wordpress plugins we are currently using:

1. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (Reason: promote blog)
2. Akismet (Reason: stop spams)
3. FeedBurner FeedSmith (Reason: redirect blog feeds to our FeedBurner)
4. Google XML Sitemaps (Reason: inform search engines whenever blog updated)
5. K2 Disable Widgets (Reason: integrate the K2 theme)
6. WP Google Analytics (Reason: track bog statistics)

Give us a shout if you think we missed any great plugins.

Matt

The bizroof blog has been upgraded to wordpress 2.5.1 which is the latest version to date. I documented what I’ve done here in case someone needs a quick guide on this:

1. BACKUP all your current files.

2. DEACTIVE all your plugins, and change the theme back to the default one.

3. DELETE all your files in the root folder.

4. DOWNLOAD the latest version wordpress.

5. COPY back your wp-config.php file to the root folder.

6. RUN the upgrade programme. simply type http://example.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php in your browser.

7. COPY back your plugins and themes to the wp-content folder and ACTIVE the plugins. Also, select your favourite theme.

8. (Optional) COPY back your robot.txt file or .htaccess file to the root folder if they are in use.

9. (Optional) LOGIN wp-admin, go to the Design section, and click edit theme, and then put your favicon back. After that, you can spend some time on update the css files to get the perfect look and feel.

Also, I spent some time customized the css files to give the blog a new looking and feel. Looking at the blog now, I still think it is not pretty enough, and myself, is definitely not the type of person with a sense of style. So, could anyone will me some suggestions on how to improve please?

Meanwhile, the plugins I am using are AddThis social bookmark (Help my visitor promote the blog) and Google Analytics to help myself monitor the site traffic. I would be really appreciate if you can suggest me some other plugins which helps SE0 and usability.

Yesterday, I installed wordpress on the server where my website hosted, and I decided to show several of my latest posts on my home page in order to let my visitors know my roadmap in real-time. Also – since I am using smarty templates to to facilitate the separation of application code from presentation, I don’t really want output (echo) the post data directly onto the page. After playing with the loop process for a while, I finally got this sorted out. Here is how I did it:

<Step One> Include the wp-blog-header.php file.
require('blog/wp-blog-header.php');

<Step Two> Collect all post data as required.
query_posts('showposts=4'); //Show latest 4 posts
while (have_posts()) //checks if any posts collected
{
static $blog = 0;
the_post(); //prepare for the iteration of the loop
$title[$blog] = the_title('','',0); //the_title function has 3 parameters, including 'start', 'end' and 'output or not'
$url[$blog] = get_permalink(); //post link
$date[$blog] = the_date("M d, Y", '', '', 0); //the_date function has 4 parameters, including 'date format', 'start', 'end', and 'output or not'
$blog++;
}
$numberOfPosts = $blog; //$numberOfPosts will be assigned to the loop number in the smarty template file.

Note – I created 3 arrays to store the relevant post information from the blog, including $title, $url, and $date, and then I use smarty template to display all them onto my home page (Demo Page)

Have Fun!