The first official WordCamp Seattle is now open for registration and you can save on registration fees before September 1, 2009.

WordCamp Seattle is September 26th, 2009 and there’s already an impressive line-up of speakers.

WordCamps are informal conferences where you can learn about the world’s most popular blogging platform, WordPress.- WordCamp Seattle

I’ve registered – if you’ll be there and want to connect, contact me.

More details at www.wordcampseattle.com

Edit: I’ll be giving a 5 minute Ignite presentation at WordCamp Seattle entitled “5 Free Ways to Bulletproof Your WordPress Site” – hope to see you there.

While working on a redesign of our WordPress-powered business site, I endeavored to find a way to make WordPress’s search results more relevant and robust.

Relevanssi - WordPress Search Reborn

I’ve never been crazy about WordPress search, often preferring to use Google to search a site, rather than use WordPress built-in search. This goes for WordPress.org too – it’s always much easier for me to find answers in the WordPress Codex using Google searches.

WordPress search is intended for the average blog and it works alright, but when constructing a more fully-featured site, or using WordPress as a CMS, the simple, unweighted, reverse-chronological results that WordPress search provides just don’t cut the mustard.

I tried several different plugins and hacks before finding Relevanssi, a plugin by Mikko Saari, which singlehandedly fixes WordPress search, providing more relevant search results and several options to tailor result presentation.

Since I began using Relevanssi last month, Mikko has been actively developing and improving the plugin with some help from the community, and it’s quickly become one of my top five WordPress plugins. Heck, I’m even using Relevanssi on sewmyheadon.com, if you’d like to give it a try.

Relevanssi is an indispensable WordPress plugin and I encourage anyone using WordPress to try it and support its development. Trust me, you’ll never go back. 🙂

WPTouch Plugin

Being an iPhone user, I’m always happy to find sites that have mobile-friendly versions.

Despite the Safari browser that comes with the iPhone and iPod Touch,  I find many websites difficult to navigate using such a small screen.

Looking into some WordPress iPhone plugins, I installed and configured WPtouch, which automatically displays a mobile-compatible version of a WordPress site for users browsing with iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android Touch devices.

Looks alright on my iPhone. :)  Let me know what you think.

Automattic has just released WordPress 2.7 and it’s had a complete overhaul to the administrative interface based on lots of user testing and feedback.

I’ve been using the betas for a while and have grown to love it, especially:

• the design and increased usability of the admin interface (backend)
• upgrading WordPress from within WordPress
• adding new plugins from within WordPress

Download WordPress 2.7

I use WordPress as a CMS for many websites and I’m a big fan of reusing code where it makes sense. So, I’ve pieced together some simple markup and styles, which are a basis for the footer in some of my WordPress themes.

Read more…