Though I’m taking today and tomorrow off to spend with my wife, two children, and our extended family, I wanted to take a moment to wish our readers here in the United States a Happy Thanksgiving!   For the rest of you around the world that don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, today is a day where we spend time with our families and typically reflect on the positives in our lives.  We’ve all got our problems, so having a day to recognize the good things is important in my opinion.

In order to tie this post to this website, I’d like to acknowledge WordPress as one of the things I am most thankful for in my “online life.”   In addition to making a great blogging software, it has also served my needs when it comes to building a Content Management System (CMS), creating basic static pages for other websites, etc.   WordPress has helped to make my online life better, so I’d like to thank the WordPress team for all the hard work they do, and the WordPress community for all the themes, plugins, and other contributions users make to help improve my WordPress experience.

What are you most thankful for this holiday season?

It seems like every time WordPress gets close to a new release, I praise the WordPress team for integrating popular WordPress plugins into the WordPress software and I get several of the same responses…”If it already exists a WordPress plugin, why waste time installing it into the software?”

Unfortunately, just because a WordPress plugin exists, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t better off having it built into WordPress.  Here are a few reasons:

• Security Vulnerabilities – Improperly coded WordPress plugins can cause security vulnerabilities.   Now, this can obviously happen with the WordPress software, but it is more likely to be coded correctly or caught and fixed quickly when it is integrated into the WordPress software.
• Wasting Database Resources – Poorly coded WordPress plugins can waste a lot of database resources.   Unneeded database queries can cause slow loading times, etc.
• Everyone Has Access – Although we all know about WordPress plugins, I’m sure there are a number of users who don’t understand what they are, how they work, how to install them, etc.  Having it built into WordPress ensures that everyone has access to these features.

It is with this thought process that I always try to use as few WordPress plugins as possible on my websites, and I rejoice every time popular WordPress plugins are built directly into WordPress.

With WordPress 2.7 coming out soon, we’ll be getting a bunch of new plugins built into WordPress.  What plugins would you like to see built into WordPress next?  Keep in mind that the plugin would need to be something that would benefit most (if not all) WordPress users in order to be considered (not situational plugins).

The five I would like to see built into WordPress next:

1. All-in-One SEO Pack (or at least some parts of it) – This is very basic stuff and everyone who uses WordPress would benefit.
2. Google XML Sitemaps – This is one of the most popular WordPress plugins and for good reason.  A sitemap.xml file should come standard with any blogging software.
3. No Self Pings – Why does WordPress send pingbacks internally?  I think this one would be easy to integrate and people would love it.
4. Popularity Contest – We have recent posts, recent comments, etc.  Who wouldn’t want this as an option on their WordPress theme?
5. Database Manager – It would be nice if there was a way that you could easily backup and restore your database without the use of a WordPress plugin.

Share your five most wanted in the comments!

For those of you who have an IP-based virtual server running on Apache 2.x, the WordPress team has recommended that you immediately upgrade to WordPress 2.6.5, or at least upgrade the wp-includes/feed.php and wp-includes/version.php files. 

Other changes mentioned:

2.6.5 contains three other small fixes in addition to the XSS fix. The first prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision. The second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types. The third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests. For a list of changed files, consult the full changeset between 2.6.3 and 2.6.5.

Oh, and in case anyone else noticed, it looks like they skipped releasing WordPress 2.6.4 completely.  I assume this is due to the fake WordPress 2.6.4 release, which was released by someone pretending to be the WordPress team and contained a trojan horse virus.   Smart move as this should help avoid confusion.

Because I’m such a big fan of WordPress, I am always looking for great ways to help out or to give back to the WordPress community.

Awhile ago, one of my ideas was to create a WordPress resource page to spotlight a number of the top WordPress resources available.  Within that list are a quite a few other WordPress blogs, websites, or other WordPress resources which do a lot of the same stuff as we do here at WordPress Hacks.   My hope was that this page would help draw attention to the great work many of those sites are doing and in turn help the WordPress community to grow as a whole.

A few weeks ago, after I announced our new WordPress Forums, I decided the next project I wanted to tackle was to expand this resource idea out into its own stand alone website.   It was with that thought that the WordPress Nexus was born!

What is a Nexus?

According to Wikipedia:

A nexus is a connection or the center of something.

What is WordPress Nexus?

For some reason I’ve always loved the word “Nexus” so I have to say I was really excited when I realized it was the perfect word for the WordPress resource site I wanted to build.

WordPress Nexus is a hub or directory of all the top WordPress resources found around the internet.   Or at least I hope it will be in a few months.    The way it is currently setup, anyone can submit their WordPress resource to the WordPress Nexus directory to get their site included in the index there (it currently does require a reciprocal link).

Why Should I Submit my Resource to WordPress Nexus?

If you’re wondering why you should submit your WordPress blog, forum, business website, etc. to the WordPress Nexus directory, here are a few reasons:

• Make Your WordPress Resource More Findable – The way the website is setup, it will receive a lot of targeted traffic.  This means people will come looking for something specific.   Having your link included will get more of this targeted traffic over to your website over time.
• Quality Inbound Link – Though the site is new right now, over time WordPress Nexus will likely gain a high Google PageRank, making for a quality inbound link to your WordPress resource.

What Type of Resources is WordPress Nexus Looking For?

If you are wondering if your blog or WordPress-related website qualifies to be included in the WordPress Nexus directory, here is what we are looking for:

• WordPress Blogs – Do you run a niche blog that covers WordPress?  If your blog is dedicated to covering WordPress, or primarily devoted to covering WordPress, you’ll want to submit your blog in this category.
• WordPress Designers – Do you offer custom WordPress design or custom coding services?  If you are looking for work, you’ll want to make sure your blog is listed in this category.
• WordPress Forums – Have a WordPress-related forum?  If so, you’ll want to submit your forum to this category.
• WordPress Resources – Have a WordPress resource that isn’t a blog?   You can submit your resource to this category.
• WordPress Social Networks – Have a WordPress voting site or some other type of social website?  You can submit your site to this category.
• WordPress Themes – Are you a WordPress theme author?   You’ll want to list your business website or blog in this category.   It includes a separate section for people offering free themes and people offering premium WordPress themes.

Any other questions about WordPress Nexus?  Feel free to ask them in the comments.  Otherwise go submit your link!

If you are a visual person that prefers to learn through watching rather than reading, there are a huge number of great WordPress tutorials all over the internet which you can use to learn a variety of WordPress-related things, ranging from very basic stuff to some more advanced tutorials.

A copule of months ago I shared with you some nice WordPress video tutorials from YouTube, which seemed to get a pretty good responase.   Because there seems to be an interest, I wanted to pass this along to our readers.

It looks like more recently, Speckyboy went a step further and published 100+ WordPress video tutorials from a large variety of sources, including the popular iThemes tutorials.   If you are a visual person, I recommend you check this post out in all its glory!