The December 2008 Issue of ‘The ActiveBlogging Report’ is now ready.

Topics:

What’s New With ActiveBlogging.

WordPress 2.7 – A Brand New WordPress? This month marks the release of WP 2.7, a major change in how WordPress works. The changes, what they mean for you, and what you should do about upgrading all all discussed.

Manage Comments Automatically With Dave’s Easy Comment Killer Plugin For WordPress. Comment spam is the bane of bloggers everywhere. Here’s a plugin that lets you trim it down to size, silently and automatically – and …

In discussing security, one topic always comes back to passwords – those problematic keys to your digital ‘houses’.

Key to security (sorry, couldn’t resist), passwords are a paradox – the best, most secure passwords are random and hard to remember, but then they make it hard to remember for the owner, too. In the end, a hard to guess password is TOO hard, and they have to be stored somewhere or written down (which makes them perfect for ‘social engineering’, otherwise known as snooping or dumpster diving). Once a scrap …

WordPress 2.7 will be out shortly, but I’ve been playing with an advance copy.

It’s a RADICAL change.

Hype?

Nope – here’s a screen shot of the Admin Dashboard:

Not only is the menu moved to the left (and vertically), but the grayscale display is very professional looking. Yet it stays backward compatible (for example, ABTheme works with it without changes).

And the update issue? That’s the other biggy for this version – built in updating/upgrading of WP – so no extra plugins, just login and press a …

I was reading a Joe Vitale book today, where he talks about the power of fear in selling.

No better example is in WordPress security products.

Depending on who you talk to, WordPress is either doing fantastic, or the single biggest scourge of online software that ever existed (and only one step above a virus or worm). Or something somewhere in between.

The fact is, WordPress is a tool – and a very good one.

BUT…

…I’m going to let you in on a secret that few people will discuss: …

With the hacked WordPress 2.6.4 recently, a few people have been questioning if they can or can’t do that same thing – offer another WordPress version.

The answer is Yes – mostly.

Because WordPress is Open Source (GPL) license, all source code must be made available to others. Permission is given for anyone to rework that code and offer it themselves – in effect, cloning WordPress and offering it as their own (copyrights need to be included of course).

So why there aren’t there WordPress-enhanced products out there (say …