In case you haven’t heard, WordPress released another update - called Ella (after Ella Fitzgerald) - that promotes the blogging software up to the 2.1 level. The update includes a number of new feature introductions like autosave, increased use of AJAX and a spell checking function for the visual editor.

According to the WordPress blog, Ella also fixes over 550 bugs, something that’s sure to please enterprising SEO blog hackers. Another area of interest concerning the Ella update has to do with the introduction of a search engine privacy feature. This will allow WP bloggers to determine whether or not they want their work to be pinged to or indexed by the search industry.

Because blog comment spam is a constant worry, any news concerning the Akismet plugin - the favorite WordPress comment spam tool - will be of major interest. Fear not fellow WordPress users, Akismet has also been updated and is bundled in with Ella. According to the Akismet blog, some of these changes include:

- Users can now search the Akismet caught queue
- A new counter widget showing a live count of your spam
- Discard spam that comes in on posts older than a month

Read more about the Akismet update here.

In other news concerning the blogosphere, Lee Odden released another list (Lee Odden and helpful lists go hand-in-hand) detailing what he’s learned while he’s been blogging on a regular basis. As usual, Lee’s post is an enjoyable read filled with insight many bloggers don’t have or don’t consider. Some of the highlights include:

Blogs can serve as a very effective platform for connecting online social networks and offline interactions.

A rushed blog post that is not well thought out can quickly cause the wrong kind of attention or misinterpretation.

Don’t blog when you’re mad, really tired and especially not if you’ve been out on the town.

Blogs can be exceptional tools to boost visibility on search engines as well as social media channels.

Poorly configured, badly optimized and infrequently updated blogs are nothing more than spam magnets.

These snippets are just an example of some of the valuable lessons Lee’s learned during his blogging existence. One of his main points about the benefits of blogging has to do with the social media/promotional value of a well-maintained blog - something we’ve discussed a number of times here.

However, because people still have questions about the value of blogs, apparently this lesson needs to repeated, perhaps even at an ad nauseum level.

Posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am. Permalink