WordCampSF was great fun. I spent the day with other WordPress users and developers and saw a lot of people using iPads to follow the Twitter feed and check out the speakers’ websites.
The big news is the imminent release of WordPress 3.0 which will have many new features, see
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/new-theme-twenty-ten/
Take a look at the new default theme “Twenty Ten”
http://2010dev.wordpress.com/
Download the latest beta version http://wordpress.org/development/
There was a lot of talk about keeping your blog secure and safe from hackers. While all my students created blogs on WordPress.com which takes care of security, those with self-hosted blogs may be interested in making it secure.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
Here is The WordPress.com story
Michael Slater of Webvanta points out that hosted content management systems, like WordPress.com, are much more secure for a variety of reasons:
* The code that runs on the server is tightly controlled.
* There is no direct file access, which often allows a single compromise to affect many sites on a shared server.
* There is a team of experts responsible for running the service, and it is their job (not yours) to stay on top of security patches.
* Since all sites share a single code installation, a single update immediately applies to all sites.
* If a hack does succeed, there’s a professional team in place to fix things up.