WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” is finally here, and not a moment too soon. There are some pretty major new features involved in the release, including a slick new default theme called “Twenty Ten.” Theme editors have all new APIs which help them easily add in custom backgrounds, headers, menus, post types and shortlinks.

Developers and net admins alike are going to love the integration of WPMU and WordPress. This creates a new multi-site functionality that makes it possible to run just one blog or ten million from the same installation… such as we have on Lockergnome. This is something I have long waited for, and I believe it’s going to make things a whole lot easier for our community bloggers – and myself.

Users will love the new interface, I think. It’s lighter and has contextual help on every single screen. There are more than a thousand bug fixes and feature enhancements. Also, we now have the ability to “bulk update,” allowing you to upgrade all of your plugins at once with a single click.

The team at WordPress won’t be getting to work immediately on the next release. In their blog, they stated that “Over the next three months we’re going to split into ninja/pirate teams focused on different areas of the around-WordPress experience, including the showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, wordcamp.org… the possibilities are endless.”

• iPhone trade-ins are skyrocketing.
• Life is what you make it…
• Do you think that pre-ordering items is a waste of time and money?
• Will motion-based sensors for gaming consoles catch on?
• Would you buy a refurbished laptop if the price was right?
• Could Android and iOS be long-lost twins?
• Which movie or television character would you want to be?
• Rock legend Ozzy Osbourne will be genetically decoded.
• Will HP and Yahoo be spamming select printers?
• The recent OS X update includes a vulnerable – and outdated – version of Flash.
• Which photo-sharing site do you prefer to use?
• Twitter has started rolling ads into the trending topics.
• Verizon refuses to block P2P file sharing.
• What types of RSS feeds do you subscribe to?
• How bad IS Comcast, anyway?
• Are you nothing more than one of America’s “small people?”
• What do you do when a tornado warning has been issued nearby?
• Do you regularly use more than one browser?
• Which WordPress theme is your favorite?
• What is Samsung’s response to the iPad?
• How do you update your iPod Touch and iPhone to iOS 4?
• Are you having issues with the GPS in your iPad?
• Does Apple need to relax their software limits?
• Are you a teen Geek?
• Do you believe in the 2012 conspiracy theory?

Be sure to stop by our software center to check out the latest apps and software for all of your devices.

Could WordPress 3.0 Revolutionize the Internet?

A startling announcement came today from the Ning network. Only one month after appointing a new CEO, the company has major reorganization plans in the works. In addition to laying off approximately 40% of its staff, the company is killing off all free accounts. Free account users will have the option to either change over to a premium membership, or move their network to another platform entirely.

As I read this news, I breathed a sigh of relief that both Geeks and Gnomedex are hosted on premium Ning accounts already. As of today, we have more than 27,000 members, 14,000 blog posts, 19,000 forum threads and countless photos and videos that all of you have contributed. That is a LOT of information sharing, folks.

In his message to staff members, CEO Jason Rosenthal stated in part that “So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy.”

They want to make us extremely happy? That’s excellent news for our community. There are several things that we hope to see in the very near future. These are very basic things that will help our little slice of Ning continue to thrive. One of the most important things we need to see is a better way to control members. Currently, we have the ability to freeze or ban a member posting spam or other unwanted information. However, there is no way to ban a user by IP address. This is a HUGE problem.

Several times in the past few weeks, our site (along with many other Ning sites) was bombarded by a porn spam bot attack. We’re talking hundreds of posts being made in under an hour. Every single “member” came from the exact same IP address. Whoever was behind the attack knew full well that Ning doesn’t ban by IP. If they did, this attack would have been stopped in a matter of seconds… instead of taking over an hour.

There are several other smaller details that we would like to see worked on by the Ning team. I am happy to talk with them at any point in time in order to help contribute feedback and ideas. For the most part, I am happy with Ning and the features we have (although, half of what makes it a functional community are the “hacks” that had to be put in place). There is always room for improvement, though.

Then again, Ning has never really understood how communities work – and their platform strategy only reflects the lack of insight from the top down.

One large concern I have is the fact that many of our members have free Ning networks of their own. Most of them will not likely have the resources to convert their account to a premium one. What’s to happen to their communities?

Well, unless developers and designers put their collective heads together… Ning communities will remain stranded on a mostly-closed platform. There are ways to export Ning network data, but no translation tool to take those relationships elsewhere. What about a tool to import a Ning community into a WordPress 3.0 / BuddyPress installation?

Heck, I’d host a WordPress hackathon at my house over the weekend for the start of that – would there be any developers and designers interested. I live in the Seattle area, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t work remotely with capable individuals.

Inevitably, we’ll have community hosting set up under Lockergnome’s Premium Services. Signing up now will get you a domain name, WordPress installation and hosting, includes many popular plugins, and Free / Premium themes. Packages start at only $12.77 per month (which includes the domain registration), and there are no contracts. You can cancel anytime you like. This is classic WordPress at the moment, but I’m making moves to go into full WPMU / BuddyPress / WordPress 3.0 hosting.

Sometimes, you get what you pay for – which is to say that freeloaders should probably stop whining.

The Future of Ning Communities

So, yeah… we’ve been fighting a few server burps over the past few days. I don’t even know where to begin – but I do know where we’re headed, and that’s up. Sean and Chris Brunner have reverse engineered an awful lot to get us to some level of stability, and there’s still much work yet to be done. I’m told that we need to locate a MySQL guru, too? We are adding a few more modifications to WPMU, but have stumbled into a better plan along the way – more on that soon. Essentially, I’m going to be starting my first Open Source project.

Server Problems