WordPress Plugins for Collaboration Emails

In talking with publishers who are using WordPress as a full CMS for their sites, many folks are eager to enhance the “Submit for Review” feature for Contributors to include email notifications.

Peter Keung of Mugo Web, has created two Open Source GPL plugins that provide this enhanced functionality.

The first is Peter’s Collaboration E-mails:

This plugin enables automatic e-mails to the relevant users at the different post status transitions: when posts are pending; when they are approved or scheduled; and when their statuses are changed from “pending” back to “draft”.

The second one is often used in conjunction to append relevant notes, called Peter’s Post Notes:

Add notes on the “edit post” and “edit page” screens’ sidebars in WordPress 2.7 and up. When used with Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 and up, the notes are sent along with the e-mails in the collaboration workflow. There is also a general and private notes system on the dashboard.

You can download both these plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory along with 5300+ other Open Source GPL plugins: Peter’s Post Notes and Peter’s Collaboration E-mails.

WordPress in Demand on Elance

Elance, a marketplace “where businesses connect with independent professionals to get work done”, has published their latest Elance Online Work Index. In this index they rate which skills are most in demand in their marketplace based on 100,000 new jobs posted on Elance over recent months:

The #1 in demand skill is PHP, followed in the #2 slot by MySQL. The top publishing platform, with an overall ranking of #13, is WordPress, up 2 spots from #15 since the last index. Joomla comes in at #29, previously 18th overall, and the next publishing platform listed is Drupal at #75, previously 46th in the last index.

Since WordPress is PHP/MySQL, WordPress professionals out there are in a great position with the most in demand skills.

You may recall back in January oDesk posted about similar trends in their marketplace as well.

[ Read more on the Elance blog ]

U.S. Army Selects WordPress

Great to see that Army Live, the official blog of the United States Army, is powered by WordPress:

Launched in early April, the blog is maintained by the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, Online and Social Media Division. It’s running a nice clean custom theme, and seeing lots of Gravatars in the comments.

[ Visit armylive.dodlive.mil ]

Thanks to Dale for writing in to let us know.

The “Joy of Working with WordPress”

Michael Ashby of Coherent Methods LLC, published a very thoughtful post about his experience so far working with WordPress and BuddyPress:

I switched from MoveableType to WordPress back in September of last year and it’s been one of the best decisions that I’ve made regarding this blog. WordPress is just so much easier and, dare I say, FUN to use. There’s a richer developer community, more templates and generally more help out there than there is for MT. But my joy with working with WP over MT is more than just skin deep.

Michael goes on to talk about the Six Apart Motion component that works with MovableType:

When I first watched the video for Motion, I kept going “Huh? How am I supposed to use this?” If you take a look at the Motion Demo, you’ll see what I mean … After looking at the demo, the only feeling I’m left with is “Why?” Why would someone want this on their site?

In comparison, the BuddyPress platform sparks this reaction:

Then you take a look at the BuddyPress Demo and there’s a remarkable difference. It’s clearly designed to mirror the FaceBook style of community, but it’s cleaner and clearer as to what you can do and how everything works. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s a better design that FaceBook! I’m currently developing a new community web site and I actually had to stop and think about BuddyPress for quite some time. So at the end of the demo, I’m left thinking “How would I use this?” Not, “Why would I use this?”

Looking forward to seeing what Michael and his team put together with WordPress and BuddyPress.

[ visit mashby.com ]

Sonin.mn Joins WordPress.com VIP

Sonin.mn, a daily digest of Mongolian top newspapers, has joined the WordPress.com VIP program:

According to Sansar Jiimen who runs the site, Sonin.mn reaches over 100,000 daily visitors – a really impressive achievement given that Mongolia is a country with a population of 2.5 million.

The Sonin.mn site was started in early 2004 and has been using WordPress since 2005.  Now that they are on WordPress.com VIP they’ve started to stream popular songs from the former Soviet era days of Mongolia, with plans to bring new video content online soon.

The team at Sonin has also announced that they will be spearheading a new effort to help improve the community-driven WordPress.com translation of Mongolian.

[ Visit Sonin.mn ]

BuddyPress Video

BuddyPress, a set of plugins which will transform an installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform,  is nearing a 1.0 final release  – scheduled for Thursday February 12th.

We’ve received lots of interest about this project, and to help provide more info we’ve produced a short video with a great overview of BuddyPress and a hint as to what’s possible with this great new platform:

Introducing BuddyPress – Create your own Social Network

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[ Visit BuddyPress.org ]

WordPress.tv

For publishers looking for great video tutorials on how to get the most out of WordPress, WordPress.tv offers an amazing wealth of resources:

Our goal with WordPress.tv is simple:
To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations. There’s a quick intro video if you’re curious:

Welcome to WordPress.tv!

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[ Visit WordPress.tv & Read More on the WordPress.tv blog ]

oDesk Reports “WordPress” Fastest Growing In-Demand Skill in 2008

Thanks to Becca for sending in word that oDesk, “an online staffing marketplace and management platform”, reported the other day on the fastest growing set of skills that are in demand on the oDesk platform.  Based on job/project listings WordPress came out on top with a 427% increase since last year :

The numbers in the table below show the number of job postings on oDesk in which the skills were listed as “required,” and their relative increase from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008. You will notice some variance in the numbers between the table and the charts below as the numbers on the charts show keyword mentions in the job post titles, not required skills.

Skill/Experience	Openings Last 60 Days 2007	Openings Last 60 Days 2008	Change
WordPress	37	195	427.0%
Writing*	32	138	331.3%
Excel*	30	118	293.3%
SEO	73	250	242.5%
XHTML	24	61	154.2%
Linux	23	58	152.2%
Drupal	70	169	141.4%
Joomla	157	352	124.2%
CSS	119	250	110.1%
Graphic Design*	20	42	110.0%

*Because writing, graphic design, and excel have small starting points, we believe their change reflects oDesk growth, not a general trend.

The growth in WordPress demand on oDesk has been steady throughout 2008:

If you are looking for WordPress help on projects, in addition to the resources we’ve listed here, oDesk is a great place to check-out as it currently has over 2700 WordPress developers listed in their system.

[ Visit oDesk blog ]

LIVESTRONG Blog on WordPress

The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) has selected to blog on WordPress. The foundation raises awareness and funds for the fight against cancer, focusing on cancer prevention, access to screening and care, research and quality of life for cancer survivors.

Champion cyclist and cancer survivor, Lance Armstrong founded the LAF in 1997 and it has raised over $250 million to date. The campaign began with the yellow wristbands that had LIVESTRONG imprinted on them and now there are over 60 million LIVESTRONG wristband wearers helping to make cancer a national priority.

[ Visit the LIVESTRONG Blog ]

Flokka.com Selects WordPress MU and BuddyPress

Flokka.com a new social blogging network for business women has selected WordPress MU and BuddyPress as its platform of choice.

Flokka represents one of the first sites to use the new BuddyPress social networking platform which is due for an official launch at the end of the year.

[ Visit Flokka.com ]