WordPress has just given a great, new feature to the over 10 million blogs it hosts on WordPress.com. The new feature, called PuSH, short for Pubsubhubbub, is a protocol to speed up RSS feeds and new posts.

From now on, when new blog posts are published, they are “pushed” to RSS feedreaders like Feedburner, instead of waiting for the reader to “ping” the blog.

Once again, apologies to the veterans, because chances are you already know what I’m about to say.  But this is a tip for the new folks, a group we never want to ignore here at Slyvisions.  Again, though, please do share your experiences down in the comments.  It’d be very helpful.

That having been said, new guys and gals alike, listen good, because the veterans are being nice and forbearing right now so I can get you this tip.

The one thing you should absolutely do before you even SIGN UP on Blogger or Wordpress or wherever is BUILD A BACKLOG OF POSTS.

No matter what kind of update frequency you’re looking at, you should have your first month or more already written before you even start posting.  Let’s face it, folks–life has a way of getting in the way.  And you’re not going to want to have to tell your burgeoning readership (maybe all five of them when you first start) why you can’t update because Gramma Rose just took ill or the car broke down or anything like that.  You need your posts ready to go, so the worst thing anyone can say is that you were a little late one day.

And really, that just looks petty.  A schedule should be adhered to, as strictly as you can, but if anyone’s expecting your posts to show up the same hour of every day they’re expecting WAY too much.

This goes to establishing your credibility, AND your reliability, as a blogger.  That’s something you don’t want to miss.

Ever had a pet peeve about WordPress? Anything specific like having to click inside the text box to type, or having to scroll down to find the photo you like? WordPress has a feedback tool that allows users to input any of their complaints about the software using Kvetch!.

Be sure to check out the official WordPress community as well, where you can submit your ideas without actually complaining. Any of these ideas could be used in future WordPress versions, and your input could make a huge difference in future versions.

If you’ve suddenly noticed that your WordPress login has been reset, this may be due to a newly discovered exploit for the platform. A single line of code entered in your browser address bar could reset your WordPress administrator login. The newly reset password is then sent to the administrator e-mail.

Fortunately, a fix by ProgrammerFish solves the issue by replacing a line of code. If you’re not so sure about editing anything that you don’t know about, a new WordPress version (2.8.4) has been released today. It’s really important that you update to the latest security release or at least use line fix, as trolls can reset your password all the time, and it can become very cumbersome.

Having spent a lot of time and effort into putting together a well thought out blog post, how annoying would it be for you to find that someone just came to your blog, highlighted the text and copied it and then reposted it as their own?

What if they just right clicked and copied the images as well. If you write good content then this is something that you will face at some point in your blogging career. For users of Wordpress there is a plugin that will help you prevent this from happening.

Called WP-Content Protector it provides you with the ability to control how your content is used. Through the settings you can decide to turn off the ability for images to be “right-clicked” and the ability for a reader to highlight text. These can be selected individually.

I think this is a great start to protecting your content, and considering the amount of time you probably put into it why wouldn’t you want to protect it? One more thing about this plugin that adds to its recommendation, it is already Wordpress 2.8 compatible.

Have you ever had your content stolen?

One of my only complaints about WordPress is the image upload process. I personally find the uploaders, both the javascript and browser versions unnecessarily cumbersome.  The lack of ability to upload multiple images is also a major drawback for some posts on more image intensive sites.

Thankfully there is a plugin that will change all of that for you. Called Faster Image Insert, this plugin is compatible with version 2.8.1 of Wordpress and has the following features:

• No thickbox, using metabox with zero interface blocking, quite similar to the uploader in WordPress 1.5
• No hacking, default upload interface is not affected, only enhanced.
• Insert multiple images in gallery & library mode, without using shortcode; can also insert images in reversed order, and even control spacing between images.
• Mass info editing, change title/captions in one-shot.
• Smart switches: set default uploader, disable captions & toggle all items.
• Initial load time is still limited by server, because the default media manager is not fully client-sided.

If you use images in your posts I would strongly recommend using this plugin.

Managing direct purchase ads can be very time consuming and if you are not setup properly can cause you real problems.  If you want to be able to offer your advertisers a seamless process, allowing them to select the type of ad, pay for it and submit their content without too much intervention from you then OIOpublisher is the way to go.

This WordPress plugin really does do almost all the work for you. It costs $47 but if you are realistically thinking of selling ads on your site then you will recoup this cost very quickly, if nothing else in time you don’t spend trying to manage your ads.

I definitely recommend you taking the demo at the OIO website to see all the things that this plugin will do for your blog site.

The popularity of the iPhone continues to grow, while I am personally not a fan of it, I recognize that it has gained global acceptance and right now is the number one touchscreen phone in the world. One of the things that has given it such a lead in the world is the variety of applications that are available for it.

One that cannot be ignored is the Wordpress application. This application allows full access to your Wordpress blog. While this might seem a little overkill, after all the iPhone screen isnt that big why would you want to blog from such a small screen.

However, for certain types of blog, the iPhone and for that matter other smart phones make the perfect blogging tool. if you are a blogger writing about public events for example, the fact that it has a camera built in and therefore allows you to not only write about an event but also take and upload pictures to the post really does mean that blogging on the go is here.

With the latest release of the iPhone having video, I can see the move toward mobile blogging gaining real momentum.

Would you blog from a phone?