I always think I’ve seen everything, until something even crazier comes along. Foreclosure.com, a site that lists nationwide foreclosure data, has released a WordPress plugin that adds foreclosure listings to their Web sites.

The WordPress Foreclosure Listings Plugin delivers a complete real estate search and navigation environment quickly and easily by querying the Foreclosure.com database in real-time. Once a partner activates the program, the plugin will automatically create a WordPress page and a search widget.

This has got to be one of the most depressing plugins in existence. Profiting from people who are getting kicked out of their homes seems cruel. We know banks do it, but banks are cruel so it suits them.

When the vultures hover like this, it makes me think that maybe we are heading towards a recession, and maybe it really has already hit the US. Scary.

This post was originally published at When a WordPress plugin for foreclosures is released, you know it’s a recession on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Our little baby is turning 5! WordPress has come a long way in five years, from a little snippet of code to a full fledged blogging and CMS system!

Yes, WordPress is going into kindergarten, and boy it’s come a long way. I’ve only known WordPress for about two years, and even in that short while it’s gone through so many permutations. The constant effort to improve WordPress, while at the same time simplify, is tribute to the fantastic energy and innovative spirit of the Automattic team.

Let’s reminisce a bit, shall we?

• Remember when WordPress added the Pages feature? That was just groundbreaking.
• Remember when WordPress allowed us to easily set one of our Pages as the home page? That was a huge step in taking WordPress from “just” a blogging platform to a handy CMS system.
• Remember when tags became part of WordPress? How much easier our lives became, how much more SEO friendly WordPress became.
• Remember when WordPress redesigned the admin, and then redesigned it again?
• Remember when WordPress launched their Publisher blog?
• Remember when WordPress was translated into Kazakh?
• Remember when WordPress started selling their cobalt blue no-tipping mug?
• Remember when the first WordCamp took place in San Francisco, and the first major non-US WordCamp took place in Israel (and Lorelle joined us)?

If you’re in the San Francisco, make sure to go the official WordPress party. The Israeli WordPress community is trying to set something up too, so we’ll see if they manage to get anything together in such short notice.

Ah, good times, good times. May we have many more years of WordPress goodness, and congratulations to Matt and the whole team for taking a tiny bit of code and bringing it to where it is today!

Happy Birthday! Mazal tov!

Update: Ran Yaniv Hartstein, the guy in charge of WordPress’ Hebrew translation, has written a fantastic post that goes through the various changes made to WordPress since it started out as version 0.7, complete with screenshots. He even takes a look at the differences between b2/cafelog and WordPress. It’s in Hebrew, but I think even non-Hebrew speakers will get a sense of the changes with the screenshots. Check it out!

This post was originally published at Happy 5th Birthday WordPress! on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

This has got to take the cake: now all those die-hard Obama supporters can get their very own, free, beautiful Probama WordPress theme, thanks to Darren Hoyt and his pals at Category 4.

I have to admit that I find Americans’ devotion and passion for political candidates to be unusual. I mean, political candidates are just people, and even worse, they’re politicians. Being a politician means making sweeping, glorious promises to solve world hunger and give free health care to every person who sets foot on American soil, and then breaking all those promises once they get into office since a) They can’t possibly keep these promises which are unrealistic and not based on anything but their ability to say whatever they want and b) They may know this and actually have no intention of fulfilling these promises.

In any case, you’ve got to give it to Obama who really has managed to capture the hearts and dreams of so many Americans. From the outside, it almost seems like there are only two candidates: Clinton and Obama, and from the outside Obama really does seem more inspiring. I mean, the guy’s gotten people to write songs for him.

And now he’s got his very own WordPress Theme. While this theme is only really useful for the small percentage of world citizens who love Obama so much that they’d build a site for him, the theme is really beautiful. The header and background image are great, and the layout and structure are eye-catching and have a lot of potential.

Probama Theme for non-Obama sites

So for those of us who aren’t Obama devotees, this theme has a lot of potential for use as a general blog or news site. The YouTube, audio and flickr sections on the home page are great, as is the four column footer. I like the list of recent articles at the end of the home page too, and the drop-down menu is fabulous. The details like the flourishes in between posts, the date style, and even the button styles all add up to make this an eye-catching and useful theme.

On a side note, the markets are predicting that Obama’s going to win, and apparently the markets predict outcome better than polls. Take a look at how the Obama stock is doing vs. the Clinton stock on Intrade:

Probama WordPress Theme

P.S. Did anyone notice that one of the singers in will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” video is speaking in Hebrew? Watch a bit, and then a woman with long hair says “Ken, anu yecholim,” which is Hebrew for “Yes, we can.” Anyone know who she is?

This post was originally published at Like Obama? Get your Probama WordPress Theme on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Trends are fun and fascinating, both online and off. I came across Google Trends a while ago, but I never used it. So recently I decided to see how WordPress measures up against its competition.

First, I compared WordPress to what I figure is its most direct competitor: Movable Type. Since 2004, WordPress has skyrocketed in search volume, while a gradual decline is visible for Movable Type:

(blue is WordPress, red is Movable Type

Then I decided to see how WordPress is measuring up to another Open Source software that’s been around for a long time: Joomla. Here’s the surprise: Joomla is way up over WordPress in search volume!

Do these results mean anything? Could this be suggesting that Joomla is primed to be the next favorite Open Source software, or that it already is?

This post was originally published at Google trends on WordPress, Movable Type and Joomla on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

If you’re a true WordPress fan, you’ve already got your WordPress hoodie which is keeping you toasty on these cold winter days. But alas, a very important part of your life, your daily cup o’ joe, is being encased by a generic mug with no meaning.

Well, those drinking-coffee-in-generic-mug days are over. You can now order your very own WordPress mug. It comes in cobalt blue and is emblazed with the WordPress logo. It also features “a sturdy footed base to help prevent those accidental spills,” which I guess is kind of like Akismet for coffee.

Buy it here

via boren.nu

This post was originally published at Have a nice steaming mug of…WordPress on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

I think that dnScoop.com is more of a vanity tool than something really useful, but it’s fun anyways. According to the dnscoop.com About page, “dnScoop.com attempts to estimate a value for an established website or a domain name by using factors such as:

• Links pointing to the domain
• Popularity of the domain
• Age of the domain
• Pagerank of the domain
• Traffic to the domain
• and more…”

According to dnScoop, WordPressGarage.com is worth $12,669. Yeah right, but it’s a pretty number anyways. Here are the stats that this figure is based on:

• The domain is over 11 months old.
• The current PageRank is 4.
• Total number of inbound links is 4951. They provide a link to browse all these incoming links.
• Alexa Rank is 140,220. You can also click there to see traffic details from Alexa.
• This site is sitting on a server with 489 other sites! That is definitely eye-opening.
• A single text link ad on WPG would cost $10 a month. But we all know that text link ads are a big no-no now.

Pretty fun, no? So be a little vain and go see how much your site is worth.

This post was originally published at Find out how much your domain and site are worth with dnScoop.com on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

As many of you may know, writing a blog on a regular basis can be challenging. On the one hand, the stats and feed statistics tell you that people are reading, but on the other hand, you can sometimes feel like you’re shouting out into the darkness, and you’re not sure that anyone is really listening.

Commenters and people who write to say thank you help me know that you are indeed out there reading. So first of all, thank you to my commenters, and a special thanks to Ryan Hellyer, who is by far the most prolific commenter on this site. Getting feedback on posts helps me keep going, because I know that someone is paying attention, and that it’s helping them.

Also, every once in a while I get a letter via the site’s contact form thanking me for the blog. I just got a great letter from a guy who told me he spent two hours (!) scrolling through and reading each of my posts! He says he found the site via StumbleUpon, so thank you to those of you who felt posts here were Stumble-worthy, and are helping others find this blog. Thanks Mike!

Why I write WordPressGarage.com

I write this blog for two reasons: 1. To help me and my company keep track of the many WordPress developments so that we can hopefully build the best WordPress sites and blogs possible for our clients; 2. To give back to the WordPress community. I still haven’t written any plugins, but I hope that this blog can be my contribution to the vibrant WordPress Open Source community.

The content on this site is free, as it should be. But if you want to compensate me in some way, just leave a comment, or write to me to tell me what you think. Getting concrete feedback is the best way to help me keep going. Basically what I’m saying is: a simple thank you is worth a million!

So thank you all for reading, and I hope that this blog will continue to grow and help WordPress users around the world!

Miriam

This post was originally published at Thank you to my readers! on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

It seems, but I’m not 100% sure, that the guys at WordPress might want us to vote for them in the Crunchies. At least, I think that’s what the big banner at the top of every page on WordPress.org with the word “Crunchies” in huge letters and a hand on a vote now button means. Or maybe they’re just hungry and they want some chips. I’m all for chips.

But anyways, that category is a bit strange. Companies most likely to succeed? Aren’t the companies listed there ones that already are succeeding? I mean, what’s bazillions of users + millions of investment dollars, if not success?

This post was originally published at Could it be that WordPress would like us to vote for them in the Crunchies? on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

It seems like this WordPress plugin is not a joke, although it took me a while to figure that out. CO2Stats claims it will detect how much electricity is being used to power your site, and “offset” the emissions by investing in renewable energy projects. Who pays for these investments?

Our offsets are funded by advertising sponsors who are selected because they are committed to making the Internet more environmentally friendly.

Is “green” blogging the next trend? It’s so hard to keep up.

CO2Stats»

This post was originally published at Offset your blog’s emissions with CO2Stats WordPress plugin on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.

Not to be outdone by WordPress.com’s announcement that users can add falling snow to their blogs until January 2 in honor of the holidays, widgeo.us has “whipped up” a falling snow plugin (who whips up a plugin?) for self-hosted users of WordPress.org. This plugin can be used as long as you like – one of the benefits of the control you get having a self-hosted WordPress blog!

So if you’re yearning for some gently falling virtual snow on your blog on this Christmas day, Santa has fulfilled your dream!

(we don’t get much snow here in Israel…)

This post was originally published at Let it Snow WordPress plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs on WP Garage - WP Garage - wordpress tricks, hacks, and tips.