Netanyahu edges towards coalition deal

Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu has picked up tentative support that could give him the inside track on forming a coalition government and becoming Israel’s next prime minister.

Kyrgyzstan votes to close key U.S. base

Kyrgyzstan parliament has voted to close a base the U.S. military uses as a route for troops and supplies heading into Afghanistan, a government spokesman said Thursday.

Channel won’t air Dubai event over player ban

The Tennis Channel has canceled plans to broadcast a tournament in Dubai because an Israeli player was banned. Shahar Peer had qualified to compete in this week’s Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships but was denied a visa by the United Arab Emirates.

U.S. to push for more NATO help in Afghanistan

Having just upped the ante in Afghanistan by 17,000 troops, the United States will look for greater commitments from its NATO partners this week, but isn’t expecting much of a response.

Drug violence spins Mexico toward ‘civil war’

Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, is undergoing a horrifying wave of violence that some are likening to a civil war. Drug traffickers battle fiercely with each other and Mexican authorities. The homicide rate reached a record level in 2008, and indications are that the carnage could be exceeded this year.

U.S. protests diplomats’ expulsion from Ecuador

The State Department called the expulsion of the second U.S. diplomat from Ecuador in just over a week “unjustified,” rejecting charges the diplomats meddled in Ecuador’s internal affairs.

New and Improved Plugins Directory Search

One of the biggest problems and most frequent complaints we’ve had with the WordPress.org Plugins Directory is the horrible, horrible search results.

No longer.  We’re now using Sphinx (a “free open-source SQL full-text search engine”) to power search on the Plugins Directory both from the website and from within your blog’s admin (Plugins → Add New).

It works much better. There are a few oddities floating around (our fault not sphinx’s) that we’ll be cleaning up shortly, but we’re happy enough with it on the whole to start letting everyone else use it

Currently, the search only indexes the plugin’s title and description/installation/FAQ/etc. (from the plugin’s readme.txt file), but we’ll be adding things like authors and tags soon.

WordPress 2.7.1

2.7.1, the first 2.7 maintenance release, is now available.  2.7.1 fixes 68 tickets.  You can automatically upgrade from 2.7 to 2.7.1 via the Tools → Upgrade menu, or you can download the package and upgrade manually.

You may have noticed that we went much longer than usual to release this .1 update. We’re very proud of this fact because it’s a testament to the testing all of you contributed prior to the release of 2.7 which helped make it the most bug-free release we’ve had.

Consult the list of fixed tickets and the  full set of changes between 2.7 and 2.7.1 for details.

Finally partly due to the stability of the 2.7 we’ve decided to push back 2.8 a few more weeks so we can bring in a few more speed optimizations, taxonomy enhancements, and new theme features. We also need to figure out which jazz musician to name the release after.

Thank a Plugin Developer Day

WordPress by itself is very simple — what makes it compelling for most of its users is the wide array of plugins (and themes) available for WP. The average WordPress blog has about 5 plugins installed! Today we just passed 4,000 plugins available in our plugin directory. (Which is also embedded into everyone’s WordPress 2.7 or above.)

I declare January 28th our official “Thank a Plugin Developer” day. To celebrate take a look at the plugins you use and love, visit the author’s site, find their contact form, and drop them a note thanking them. (Or Paypal!) Look for the links in the plugin directory to “author homepage” and also to donate directly if they’ve specified a Paypal address.

Thank you to everyone who has ever written a plugin for WordPress, and here’s to the next four thousand.

WordPress.tv

Today we’ve switched on WordPress.tv, your visual resource for all things WordPress.

On WordPress.tv, you’ll find tutorials for both WordPress self-installs and WordPress.com to help you get blogging fast and hassle-free. We’ve kicked things off with the basics — now you can shape what comes next. Just drop us a line and let us know what you’d like to see added.

WordPress.tv is also now the place to find all that awesome WordCamp footage that was floating around the web without a home. See the presentations you missed and get a peek at behind-the-scenes action. We call it WordCampTV.

You’ll also find slideshows of presentations made by WordPress gurus, plus interviews I’ve done with the media and fellow bloggers.

I hope you’ll consider WordPress.tv not just a support resource, but also a place to hang out and keep up with all the geeky goodness going on in the WordPress community. Tune in regularly for fresh content and updates to the WordPress.tv blog. Lots more is on the way.