If you haven’t come across the service yet, here’s how the Automattic crew describe it:

VaultPress is a subscription-based protection, security and backup service for WordPress blogs and sites. It’s built on the same Automattic grid that reliably serves over 11 million WordPress.com blogs and 250 million monthly visitors. #via

Even in beta form the service is very slick: It’s easy to install, the interface fits right in with the WordPress dashboard (to be expected) and it just works. We can’t wait to start introducing it to clients once it’s out of beta.

After a couple weeks catching up with family and road trippin’ through Outback South Australia and New South Wales we’re back on deck.

In the mean time here is a selection of some of the great new sites we’ve been helping out with:

• Daylight Design
• Omigoddess
• Viking Books
• Kosciuszko Alpine Way
• Tender Bytes
• Webby Clare
• Supersmile Superdontist!

• Global undo/”trash” feature;
• Built-in image editor;
• Batch plugin update and compatibility checking;
• Easier video embeds; and
• Lots of new hooks and filters for the techies out there.

Head on over to WordPress.org to download your copy now. And remember…do a backup before upgrading!

“WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is a landmark for us, as it is the first time we’ve won this award, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from blog software to full-featured CMS. No small contest, the Open Source CMS Awards received over 12,000 nominations and more than 23,000 votes across five categories…

Every day thousands of new people are embracing WordPress to power not just their blogs but entire sites and communities without compromising on usability or scalability (as would be the case with a legacy CMS). Every member of the WordPress community, from core developer to beginning user, should be proud to be part of this momentum: congratulations to us all!”

It’s great to see WordPress and the awesome team at Automattic getting some well deserved recognition for providing such a brilliant product. If you haven’t tried WordPress yet – scoot on over to wordpress.com to get up and running with your own free hosted version in next to no time.

What is RSS?

RSS (most commonly referred to as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as WordPress posts in a standardized format.

RSS and web feeds are typically indicated on websites by orange, rectangular buttons such as the image to the left which link to a websites’ feed.

That’s nice…. but how do I use it?

You may have noticed that when you try to click on one of the orange, rectangular buttons (or a text link indicating a feed), you sometimes just get a scary looking page of code. That’s because RSS is written in XML (Extensible Markup Language), similar to html.

That’s all fine and good, but why can’t I read the feed? Well, that’s because you need a Feed Reader to make it work.

A Feed Reader (sometimes referred to as an aggregator) is an application that works like an automated e-mail program, constantly (or at set intervals) checking for updated content. Feed readers also format the scary looking code into something more readable.

When the reader notices that one of your feeds has been updated they typically notify you there is something new to read or view.

Feed Reader Choices

Feed Readers may be online (like a webmail account) or offline/desktop based (like an application installed on your personal computer)

Offline or Desktop Based Feed Readers

Offline or desktop based feed readers download web feeds to your computer system.

There are many offline feed readers available, including (but not limited to):

• Feed Demon; and
• RSSOwl.

There are also a number of email applications and web browsers that handle web feeds that you may already use or have installed, including (but not limited to):

• Outlook 2007;
• Internet Explorer 7.0 / 8.0;
• Mozilla Firefox;
• Mozilla Thunderbird;
• Opera; and
• Safari.

Each of the above applications handles web feeds slightly differently so it is best to check the documentation provided with the software in order to make best use of its Feed Reader capabilities.

Online Feed Readers

Online Feed Readers are slightly different their desktop based cousins in that they are only accessible online using a web browser (like using Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail to send/receive your emails).

There are many online feed readers available, including (but not limited to):

• Google Reader;
• Bloglines;
• Feed Show; and
• Newsgator Online.

What you’ll need to be able to use RSS

Once you have picked an RSS reader (be it online or offline) the only piece of information most Feed Readers will need is the link to the RSS feed you wish to subscribe to.

By default WordPress sites offer a number of feeds you may wish to subscribe to:

• Latest Entries or Posts – http://your.com/?feed=rss (or http://your.com/feed/ if using permalinks)
• Latest Comments – http://your.com/?feed=comments-rss2 (of http://your.com/comments/feed/ if using permalinks)

Simply follow the instructions for adding a feed to your chosen Feed Reader and when it asks for the feed address insert the address.

For example if I wanted to subscribe to the Finding Simple latest entries I would use “http://findingsimple.com/feed/” as the feed address.

Some plugin developers haven’t had the chance to catch up just yet – for example we have found that both the Ad-minister and cformsII plugins have a few issues when creating widgets in 2.8.

So… to help everyone out that uses these plugins (ourselves included) we have thrown together a couple of very simple widgets  as temporary fixes until new versions of the plugins are released.

Please note: There is nothing fancy about these widgets, they are just temporary fixes and have no warranty or support what-so-ever and are only compatible with WordPress 2.8.x

Ad-minister Widget

This plugin adds an additional widget called “Ad-minister Widget” that lets you select (from a drop down list) the ad position that you would like to display.

As it is using the new API you can use as many of the widgets as you want. Please make sure you have ad-minister already installed and ads created before using the widget.

Works with Ad-minister 0.6

To install: unzip and copy the downloaded php file into your plugins directory and activate through the WordPress plugin interface.

Download here: Ad-minister Widget (881)

cformsII Widget

This plugin adds an additional widget called “cforms2 (fs)” that lets you enter a title for the widget and the number/id of the form you would like to display.

Please make sure you have cforms installed and forms created before using the widget.

Works with cformsII 10.5.2.

To install: unzip and copy the downloaded php file into your plugins directory and activate through the WordPress plugin interface.

Download here: cformsII Widget (364)

• 2.8 is way faster to use
• You can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click
• CodePress editor which gives syntax highlighting to the previously-plain editor
• Completely redesigned widgets interface
• New Screen Options on every page

Overall there are over 180 new features.

Searches for ‘wordpress’ have been steadily increasing over the last 4 years and over the last few months appear to have exceeded searches for ‘joomla’. I expect that this trend will continue as awareness of and interest in wordpress as a CMS grows.

Interesting to see that Tassie is the top ranking state for searches for ‘wordpress’ (this is based on the ratio of searches for ‘wordpress’ coming from the state divided by total Google searches coming from the same state, rather than total search volume).

After using the software for a little over a day, we’re pretty pleased. The things we like best..

• it has a super-easy user interface – you can just jump in and start creating mock-ups without having to learn a thing!
• it comes with 75 pre-built controls (browser windows, menu bars, scroll bars, buttons etc) and you can download more at Mockups To Go – a community site for sharing ready-to-use UI components and design patterns built using Mockups.
• the mockups intentionally have a ‘hand-drawn’ look, so that people don’t get attached to “that pretty color gradient” or think that your mockup has actual code behind it and is “practically done”.

Experimenting with Balsamiq Mockups

Paul Arden has some great comments on why rough layouts sell the idea better than polished ones in his book ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be‘, so we’re looking forward to seeing how clients respond.

NB. The story behind Balsamiq is worth a read. It’s always great to hear about highly-talented developers producing solid, simple software and enjoying commercial success.