Wordpress 2.7 has been released Wordpress 2.7 Review

Wordpress 2.7 Review

Wordpress 2.7 was just released, and I am happy to say that they did it right.  I upgraded one of my smaller wordpress sites using the automatic upgrade plugin and dove in. Here is my review of Wordpress 2.7.

I'm glad to say that the water's fine.  First of all they rearranged the interface. Now the navigation menu is in the left sidebar. It uses JavaScript (probably AJAX) to give expanding sub-menus so it takes fewer page reloads to get to specific items.

New Color Scheme

The new color scheme uses different shades of gray and a light blue link color. That light blue link color makes my eyes sore with my flat panel display, but I suppose it looks good on CRTs.

Menu Icons

WordPress now has icons for each item in the sidebar navigation.

Write Posts/Pages Fixed

I don't know about you but I was so ANGRY when WordPress moved the category list from the right sidebar to below the post write area. I was so upset that I had to scroll down just to select a stupid category, something you have to do every post!  Thankfully, the category selection box is back to where it belongs in the right sidebar and above-the-fold.  It took a while, but I'm glad it is back  They also put Tags there which also makes sense.

They also added back the Preview button that had been removed a few versions ago.

New Screen Options

For those who are looking for a more minimalistic Wordpress, their prayers have been answered.

You can now click on "screen options" which is in the upper right part of WordPress, and you get some check box that you can check/uncheck (or "tick") to show or hide different parts.

New Quickpress

Quickpress is a nice option for people who want to just log in and start posting. In your Dashboard page (the page you go to after you log in), there is a Quickpress box which lets you just type a post title, content, and tags then save as draft or publish.

The only problem with that is that there is no way to select a category. I may not need all the bells and whistles, but I think the category is just as essential as the title. Hopefully they'll fix that or someone will make a plugin to put that there.

Plugins Page NOT Fixed

One change I didn't like with WP-2.5 was how they got rid of drag and drop widgets. This was especially useful when you had 2 or 3 sidebars defined. Unfortunately the drag and drop widgets are still gone. You still have to click on "add" and you still have to select the sidebar in a drop-down menu.

Add (install) Plugin Feature

Now, you no longer have to download a plugin and upload it via FTP to your server. I'm sure I'll love this feature because I have many websites (most use Wordpress MU and I don't know if Donncha will let us yet. He said to check the trunk or the current beta, so that is on my to do list.), but for the few regular wp sites I have, this will save time.  Just search for the plugin by term or if you've downloaded it to your computer, you can select it and upload it through the webpage. You're still uploading, but you don't have to extract the folder and move it over, you save plenty of steps either way.

Core Wordpress Upgrade

Finally, you can upgrade your core installation files. No longer do you have to go through the drudgery of downloading-extracting-copying-uploading-via-ftp to update WordPress to the most current version. Go to Tools-Upgrade and it will give you the uption to update online or

Updated Comments

You'll need to update your WordPress theme to use the new features. Comments now are threaded. Visitors can reply to a comment and it will be a thread instead of just having the new comment at the bottom like before. This is great for people who have good reader participation. It will be much easier to see what is happening.

Did I miss any changes in WordPress 2.7 that you think are worth mentioning? Please add a comment.

Affiliate Marketers (and Merchants) Beware of Parasites!

Recently it has come to my attention that affiliate marketers not only have to compete with each other, but also with affiliate networks that directly compete with them though loyalty affiliates, software affiliates, incentive affiliates, and toolbar affiliates. In almost all such cases, they should be called parasites!



They are parasites because they get paid commissions for doing absolutely nothing. The idea behind affiliate marketing is that a marketer promotes a product or service and gets paid a commission for their time and effort involved. Merchants get more name recognition and sales leads sent to their websites.

Parasites don't do any of that. They don't promote the merchant at all, but they get paid a commission on every sale made when the visitor making a purchase has the parasite's web browser toolbar installed. The toolbar overwrites the affiliate tracking cookie (for referral use) and gets credited for the sale.



What about that hard working affiliate who actually sent the visitor to the merchant site? He gets nothing at all even though he might have spent plenty of time working on adding the content that got the visitor interested in making a purchase.

Ok, perhaps you're a merchant and you don't care if the affiliate gets credited or not. You lose money too! If an affiliate tracking cookie isn't set when the visitor arrives, but they have a parasite's toolbar installed, the parasite sets a tracking cookie with their affiliate id and get a commission.  No, they didn't earn it at all. There wasn't any benefit for your company at all, but you lost money.

It hurts the affiliate marketer as well as the merchant. The unbelievable thing is that several affiliate marketing networks allow and even encourage parasites!  Some parasites have even gotten awards and are called "super affiliates" for their high "sales".

Merchants might be wondering why this is a big deal if the big affiliate networks allow it. It is a big deal because most affiliate marketers work very hard and very long days. Every commission counts.  Affiliates will put less time and effort in promoting a merchant on a pro-parasite affiliate network than on a merchant on an anti-parasite, pro-affiliate affiliate network.

If you are a merchant you need to actively go through your list of affiliates and remove parasites. They are often the "super affiliates" at the top of your list that you are losing thousands of dollars a month on.

If you are an affiliate marketer, give preference to affiliate programs on the shareasale.com affiliate network. They remove parasites as they find them because they care about affiliates and merchants.

Merchants looking to start new programs should start them on either of these great networks. It will save some hassle. Yes, a merchant will still need to look for parasites since they try to sneak in, but it will be much less work and the affiliate program will be much more successful over the long term.

Which networks do I enjoy working with the most as an affiliatemarketer?

I have had the pleasure of learning affiliate marketing through trial and error over the last 12 months and that includes several affiliate networks.

Of all of them, I highly recommend two through personal experience. Both gave excellent customer service and both have good tools for using datafeeds, text links, or banners.

• ShareASale

ShareASale is general purpose, but is economical for merchants and have a great system for reporting and viewing stats. It isn't hard to get datafeeds by ftp either. You just need to insert your affiliate id when you use the feed. I do like how SAS's datafeed has more fields.