A new version of WordPress is available now. This version is released with a over twenty bugs that was in version 2.30. There have been some security issue found in the previous version and it is advisable that user of version 2.30 upgrade their WordPress to version 2.3.1. For a full list of changes made, check out the Trac.

For self hosted WordPress blog:

1. Download the latest WordPress version.
2. Backup critical files such as your themes and plugins.
3. Extract and upload all content of the downloaded WordPress file to your host. Overwrite everything. You can use FTP for easier upload.
4. Login to http://your-domain/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php (this is an example) to upgrade your current Wordpress and follow the instruction to finish the upgrade process (You can skip this if you are upgrading from 2.3 to 2.3.1)

The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin is a very cool WordPress plugin. It allows a WordPress user to automatically upgrade their WordPress installation to the latest version one provided by Wordpress.org. It just takes 5 steps to complete the WordPress installation using the plugin.

Just follow the following steps to complete your WordPress installation.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

Another cool feature of the plugin is that it can also be run in a automated mode where you do not need to click on any links to get to the next step. I prefer to use the step by step though. One thing to note that if you did any changes to the WordPress core files, you will need to update it back manually. It doesn’t copy your changes over but overwrites it. I had my tinyMCE changes all overwritten and need to replace it manually.

Having high traffic? Turn those traffic into cash. XBanners.biz is paying $7.00 for every 10,000 unique views. All you need to do is just paste one single line of code on to your website or blog and you can start to earn money. They have made some adjustments since their start up. The current minimum for payout is $3.00 as compare to previous $1.00. Payments will be made by E-Gold and PayPal. PayPal is their latest payment option. All payments request can be made daily.

You can also earn 10% referral earnings from each person you refer to XBanners.biz. Members from all countries are welcome to join the program but only limited to one account per person. All cheaters will be deleted without warning. So please don’t try to cheat. Well, what are you waiting for? Sign up with XBanners.biz now.

The owner of Text Link Ads and AuctionAds have launched another new ad service, ShoppingAds. ShoppingAds is just like Chitika’s and WidgetBucks where it display products from major shopping comparison sites. The only difference between AuctionAds and ShoppingAds is AuctionAds is based on Pay-Per-Action while ShoppingAds is based on Pay-Per-Click. I’ll talk about AuctionAds in another post and my experience with it.

If you are wondering whether you can place ShoppingAds together with Google Adsense, feel free to do so. ShoppingAds isn’t a contextual based ads therefore it has no conflict with Adsense or other text based ad system. All payments are paid on the first of every month thru PayPal for ShoppingAds. The minimum payout will be placed at $50. As for myself, I would prefer to place a Pay-Per-Click ads than a Pay-Per-Action ads. The chances of generating revenue from Pay-Per-Click is much higher.

For those who are planning to making money or even buying stuffs online, I would suggest using PayPal. I have been using PayPal to accept payments as well as buying items from eBay for quite a while now. Most companies have multiple choices for making payments such as checks, bank transfers and online payment processor.

I would prefer using online payment processor as I hate waiting for the one month period for the check to be clear. There is also the high fees to process overseas checks as well. Since it is so easier and faster to setup a PayPal account, I do recommend it if you are planning to do make some money online.

After you have sign up, make the necessary confirmation of your email, bank accounts and credit cards, you may use your PayPal to receive and send payment with it. Do take your time and browse through your account to learn what you can do and can’t with your PayPal account.

In the most recent news with PayPal, they have now allow more than 26 countries which previous have difficulty in withdrawing money from their account. This is a good news to them as they have been waiting for PayPal to allow them to do so for a very long time.

Those in the listed countries can now withdraw to their credit or debit cards instead of withdrawing to a bank account. Many have written regarding this good news and some even tested out various credit and debit cards to see which ones are allowed to be used with PayPal. With this move, I’m sure more people will sign up with PayPal and use their service.

I was searching on the internet today when i came across a new WordPress Theme Design Competition organized by DesignVitality. If you are a web designer, now is a chance to show the rest of the world how good you are with your design. The cash and prizes for this competition amounts is over $1,5000.

There will be three winners and they will get as below.

1. Grand Prize Winner will receive $1,000 in PayPal money.
2. The First Runner Up will receive a New 4GB Apple iPhone OR Nintendo Wii
3. The Second Runner Up will receive 2 years of Free Web Hosting.

For the rules and how to enter for the competition, please refer to DesignVitality.com website.

This blog currently uses the latest WordPress 2.3 version, named “Dexter”. There are many cool stuffs added this time as well as some things being removed. I am using the WYSIWYG editor for all my posting. The new visual editor has some changes, both good and bad. I believe there used to be a video and flash icon on the editor where we can add videos and flash. Now these two icons are gone from the visual editor. However, they have included the button to toggle the Advanced Toolbar which is located at the end of the visual editor. I have made my own modifications and added emotions in as well to the visual editor. I’m still thinking of whether to add in creating tables capability to the visual editor. Perhaps when I need it, I’ll add it during that time.

If you wish to edit your visual editor, you may do so yourself. It is quite easy to mod it and remove unwanted stuffs from the visual editor.

Steps

1. Go to “../wp-includes/js/tinymce/”.
2. Located the file “tiny_mce_config.php”
3. At line 28, add in “emotions”

before : $plugins = array(’inlinepopups’, ‘autosave’, ’spellchecker’, ‘paste’, ‘wordpress’);
after : $plugins = array(’inlinepopups’, ‘autosave’, ’spellchecker’, ‘paste’, ‘wordpress’, ‘emotions’);

4. At line 32, search for ‘wp_help’, ’separator’. Added in ‘emotions’ with the quotes after ’separator’.
5. Save the file.
6. Now go to TinyMCE website and download the TinyMCE release.
7. Unzip the content and go to “../tinymce\jscripts\tiny_mce\plugins\emotions”.
8. Copy the whole “emotions” folder to “../wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins”.
9. Reload your visual editor and you should see the emotions appear on your visual editor.

WidgetBucks is a new Pay-Per-Click method of making money with your website or blog. You can see it in action on my sidebar. Since this is new, I’m still testing this out and see what are the earnings like. If you do know about Chitika’s eMiniMalls, it does have some resemblances to it.

Anyway, WidgetBucks is paying publishers or bloggers by CPC which means anytime someone clicks on and ad, you will earn some money. As part of its promotion to encourage sign ups, they are giving you $25 for that. Do note that the minimum payout is at $50 but don’t worry, you are already half way there. Payments are made by Check and PayPal. You can select which option you like in your account setting panel.

With WidgetBucks, you can choose what products to appear there. There are 13 main categories which you can select from. If you can’t decide what to category to use, you can let MerchSense to crawl your page to find relevant products to be inserted into your widget. I tried the MerchSense but it doesn’t work well here yet as I haven’t posted much post yet. Those product or gadget sites and blog will benefit from WidgetBucks a lot.

There are 5 types of ad size which you can choose from. Not too much of a choice yet but I believe they will add more in future. According to their FAQ, there is no limit as to how many of these WidgetBucks widget you want to add on your site or blog. Oh, did I mention that you can earn a 10% referral fees as well for a total of 12 months for each referral?

This blog will be using Theme Leia which is made by Kapikua. This theme is really nice and simple with plenty of headers that you can change from including Christmas headers. There are other themes from Kapikua site which you can download. The only thing is the site isn’t in English.

However this theme doesn’t support the popular widget function. I have customized this theme with widgets and added in widget 3 widgets control for now. There are Leftbar, Rightbar and Postbar. The LeftBar and RightBar is just like the normal widgets for sidebar. The Postbar will be located right at the bottom of the post.

I have already added the AuctionAds which is made to float to the left inside the content container. I haven’t added any plugins yet. Currently the only plugin I’m using will be Akismet. There will be more customization to this theme more when I have the free time to do so.

This will be my new kaching! ching! blog. Whatever ways that was successful with me in generating extra kaching! ching! will be shared. No obligations to sign up. Give comments where you feel is right.