Hurrey..!! Process, Schedule (tentative) and Scope has been fixed for WordPress’s new release 3.1. Today they posted below list for upcoming release 3.1 on their WP Development Updates Blog.

Features:

1. Polishing features introduced in 3.0 can be one umbrella task. BUT — this means spit and polish ONLY, not adding features to features.
2. New feature: Mark Jaquith is committed to getting in some advanced taxonomy queries stuff, which already has some movement in trac via scribu.
3. New feature: Internal linking. This is my pet user feature for this release. It has been requested from users for years, got the most +1s on the wpdevel post last week, and is a missing piece of true CMS functionality. Since we likely won’t have Andrew Ozz for this release, Daryl Koopersmith is going to take a stab at this, with backup from Austin Matzko if needed.
4. New feature: The ajaxified admin screens that scribu did for GSoC, with some UI cleanup applied. There was also a GSoC project by Matt H on comment moderation that needs to be reviewed for inclusion.
5. New feature: Admin Bar. Connect the back end to the front end. Most useful for people on multisite installs, but still useful for single-site users in providing 1-click access to dashboard, new post form, etc. We’ll be looking at both the original Viper007Bond admin bar plugin and the wordpress.com revised admin bar recently done by Andy Peatling. Note: there was some resistance to this being in core rather than a plugin. A compromise of making it optional was discussed.
6. Cleanup: UX/UI cleanup across the application, including multisite. This could turn into a ton of new dev, so we need to restrain ourselves. The UI group will do a review and come up with a list. Jane Wells and John O’Nolan will manage UI contributions from the group so that approved UI makes it into tickets.
7. Ongoing maintenance: Bug fixes. Peter Westwood is all over bug fixes. Anyone and everyone invited to submit patches for known bugs.
8. New feature: Separate network dashboard from the site dashboards (in multisite). Ryan started on this over the summer, and all agreed it would be great. Needs some UI love. Ryan also looked at doing a personal dashboard to replace the wonky global dashboard you get in multisite when someone has an account but no site. This might be a better 3.2 candidate, but we’ll see if we can get it to a reasonable place in time for 3.1.
9. There are some small fixes to the custom post types API that ought to be made, while staying within the ‘no big API things’ guideline. Nacin is taking charge of this.
10. New feature: Post templates/post styles. Ryan will be handling this one.
11. New feature: Making QuickPress a template tag, so it can be used for front-end posting. Aaron Jorbin will be handling this.

Schedule:

Mid-December, preferably no later than December 15, so that the holidays won’t interfere with the release. To that end, here is the current plan:

1. September 9 – Confirm planned scope.
2. October 15 – Feature freeze; no new features added after this point, so that testing can begin on a stable-ish product (including usabilty testing of new features).
3. November 1 – Primary code freeze; any last adjustments based on testing after feature freeze should be finished by now and the focus shifts to fixing bugs to get to a stable beta.
4. November 15 – Beta period beings; from this point on, no more enhancements, only bug fixes.
5. December 1 – String freeze; translators rejoice.
6. December 15 – Release WordPress 3.1

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to making your website easily accessible to search engines, and helping them understand and read the content so that they can rank it high up in their index.

SEO is a huge topic and I won’t go deep into it. This article is primarily targeted to people who own and operate a WordPress blog. Some of the tips mentioned are of course general SEO methods used on all kinds of sites. Other tips and tools focus on WordPress, which has become the preferred blogging tool in the past few years.

Let me know if I’ve missed something by adding your comments. These tips primarily focus on how to search engine optimize WordPress installations, as opposed to off-site SEO (getting and building backlinks).

SEO Factors

1. Title tag

Title tag or the article title is one of the most important SEO parameters. That is what appears as the title of the post in search engine result pages (SERPs) and hence you should make sure that it’s relevant, has keywords, is neither too long nor too short, and accurately conveys what the content is all about.

2. Meta description

The meta description for your blog or a blog post is a short description that appears below the content title in SERPs. If the description is precise and informative, a user is more likely to click on the post title and hence end up on your site.

3. Content

Content, obviously, is the heart and soul of SEO. Great content can attract attention and links, and hence search engines would prefer showcasing it too. Plus, it is what your readers would like to read, isn’t it?

4. Keywords

Having a general understanding of keywords (words, sentences, or phrases) relevant to the content on your site and how to use them properly always helps.

5. Web host

The web host is what your site calls home and where the Googlebot comes knocking on the door whenever you publish articles. Hence, be careful while choosing a host for your site.

6. Site loading speed

Site loading speed is something bloggers recently started focusing on when Google announced that it would be treated as one of the ranking factors. The faster your site loads, the better.

7. Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a text file on your server that tells search engine bots what to index and what to skip. It’s better to create one and place it in your root directory. Here’s a guide to create a simple robots.txt file.

8. Sitemaps

A sitemap is basically a list of pages or URLs that the search engine’s crawler can access. Ideally, you should have both XML and HTML sitemaps on your site. WordPress users can use Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create an XML one.

9. Permalinks

The default permalink structure in WordPress isn’t that good. You can customize permalinks according to your preferences and for better search engine optimization.

10. Headings and Post Slugs

Headings and sub-headings in an article are important for readers as well as for search engines. Use them wisely. Regarding post slugs, you should make them short and keyword-rich (don’t overdo it though).

How Much Should You Focus on Search Engine Optimizing?

If you are newbie when it comes to WordPress and SEO, you might find all this a bit overwhelming. Well, SEO is a time-consuming process so I won’t say that you could get it done quickly. But here’s the thing: Don’t consume your days tweaking your site just for the search engines. You should instead focus on producing great content and building relationships.

While SEO is important, it depends on the content and not vice-versa. If the content is good and you can promote it well, it will attract links automatically.

My Other articles on SEO:

1. http://arpitshah.com/top-5-seo-extensions-for-google-chrome/
2. http://arpitshah.com/buzzzy-com-search-engine-for-google-buzz/
3. http://arpitshah.com/all-in-one-seo-pack-vs-platinum-seo-pack-wordpress-plugins/

Read full article here.

Boomerang for Gmail lets you control when you send and receive emails. Scheduled sends. Get email when you need it. No more cluttered inbox.

Link: http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/

It is a Firefox / Chrome plugin that lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages. It works for Gmail accounts and Google Apps / Hosted Gmail email accounts.

Whether for personal use or business, Boomerang is simply a great idea. Here are some instances where Boomerang might just make your day:

• Paying bills on time
• Scheduled email in other time zones
• Send a birthday message while it’s on your mind
• Reminding yourself to follow-up with a client

Video:

Now who cares of Google Undo-Send option??

Download link: http://bit.ly/webmaster-pro

If you are a webmaster you probably heard of Google Webmaster Tool. Both Yahoo and Bing have their own versions called Yahoo SiteExplorer and Bing Webmaster Central. With them you can check how your site is indexed (Webmaster Tool), get detailed statistics (Analytics Tool), earn money (Google AdSense) and more.

This plugin allows you to easily integrate them with your blog. It has option to add Google, Bing, Alexa, Blog Catalog, Yahoo’s Webmaster and Analytics code (meat tags). Single click sitemap submission to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask. In addition to that it has option to add tracking code for Clicky, Quantcast, Compete.com, SiteMeter.com analytics!! Site-Verification-Option, Google XML sitemap submission. There are more to come in next releases. Stay tuned.

NEW in All in One WebMaster PRO Plugin
================================
1) No branding and advertisement
2) Most popular StatCounter analytics option
3) Option to Exclude login user’s click/hit to get accurate analytics

Features
=======
1) Sitemap Submission Option to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com
2) Manual HTML Header / Footer section added
3) Now no need to install more plugins. You can just copy the code of any services in a textarea. No more things to do.

Webmaster Option for
=================
1) Google
2) Yahoo
3) Bing
4) Alexa Ranks (new)
5) BlogCatalog (new)
6) Facebook Insights

Analytics Option for
===============
1) Google
2) Quantcast (new)
3) GetClicky
4) Compete.com (new)
5) SiteMeter.com

* NEW: Updates the Asynchronous Tracking snippet to the latest version provided by Google
* Warning/Success/Failure messages added

Home Page & Screenshots: http://arpitshah.com/plugins/all-in-one-webmaster/