WordPress version 2.9 is expected to be released this year. The beta is expected to be available at the end of October, and if everything cleans up well, the final release is expected around early December.
What to expect in 2.9? Some pretty cool stuff is being promised:
- Dedicated thumbnail images on posts. A separate image you can upload for use as a thumbnail.
- Trash function for deleted items. Pages and posts that are deleted will go to “Trash can” and can be un-deleted rather than lost forever.
- Basic image editing built-in. Uploaded images can be rotated, flipped, cropped and resized inside WP.
- Widgets outside the sidebars. New functions will allow widget placement anywhere on the page.
Fun stuff! As usual, we don’t recommend our clients (or their clients) rush out and upgrade as soon as 2.9.0 is released. Let other people find the hidden bugs, and keep your site stable until 2.9 has been patched a couple of times.
After that, we think 2.9 will have some great new features that both WP developers and WP users will enjoy.
Many businesses wonder what the benefit is of adding a blog to their site. How is a blog different then the content I currently have on my site. The truth is, that to the outside world, it isn’t all that different. The main difference is the timeliness of the content. A blog allows you provide a constant flow of content to your site. Although, in order to do this, the content will probably not be as high of quaility as what you may be used to. For this reason, most blogs are written in first person and the author is identified in the post. It’s easier to compose content in first person and allows you to worry less about the composition and more about the content. When you are able to focus wholly on the content then you are able to contour your content around your keywords that you are wanting to be found under. The other element involved in blogging is the comments that you allow on your blog posts. Comments and ping-backs show the search engines that site visitors are interested in your content and gives you more credibility for the topic of that particular blog post. There are many different platforms on which you can blog, but the best system for SEO and customizable flexibility is WordPress. As you think about blogging, here are a few tips to go by. 
Combing your website’s unique content with the popularity of social networks and social bookmarking sites can drive a lot of new traffic to your site. There are many applications out there for doing this, but the most convenient and well established is the ShareThis application. It is a customizable javascript that you can place on your site manually or through a plugin that allows visitors to easily share a link to your page on a wide variety of social networking services. The benifits of this should be pretty obvious. Here are a few tips on integrating a ShareThis bug on your site. 
