WordPress 3.1 has just been unveiled, with the usual mix of immediately useful changes to the interface and structural improvements that give more options to theme builders.

The first thing you’ll notice on upgrading your site is the Admin Bar at the top, bringing standalone WordPress installations in line with those hosted on WordPress.org. The Admin Bar provides quick access to regularly used functions to any logged-in user with appropriate permissions. Initial reactions to this have been mixed but I like it.

I create sites for clients, many of whom want to update their site themselves and the bar provides a much more obvious and easy to use method to create new posts and pages. The feature can be disabled in your profile if you really don’t like it, but I suspect the next minor update will include an option to disable it globally.

The second major change is the introduction of “post formats”. Not to be confused with custom post types that were introduced in WordPress 3.0 (and went largely unused), this new feature allows you to indicate the purpose of a post so that styling can be applied later. WordPress 3.1 includes a standard list of post formats including images, quotes, status (similar to Twitter and Facebook updates) and video. Bear in mind that this is a change to the underlying code and you’ll need to edit your theme to take advantage.

3.1 also includes much simpler internal linking. If you’ve written blog entries or created web pages with WordPress, you’ll be familiar with the frustration of having to launch another browser instance, navigate and copy/paste from the address bar simply to link to another page in the same site. 3.1 has a search function that means you can find any existing page or post and insert it as a link – the more posts you write, the more you’ll appreciate this.

Other minor improvements include a streamlined look and feel to the writing interface, with fewer fields visible by default. The colour scheme has also been changed, although not necessarily for the better.

I was able to upgrade one of my sites, which uses the Thesis theme, using the one-click install without problems (having backed up of course) but I’m going to leave it a few days before upgrading my clients’ sites so that I can be sure there are no reported niggles.

At the heart of it all is good content that will attract links to the site and, ultimately, buyers. Each blog entry or page should be about one keyword or keyphrase. But how do you come up with these keywords and, therefore, the blog entries? I’m in the process of optimising my candle-making blog and one of the challenges is knowing what to write about.

Most people will be familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword tool but there are many other ways of finding inspiration. Here are five of my favourites:

1. Google Wonder wheel

The Wonder wheel is an attempt to display a mind-map of searches similar to a keyphrase you type in. So, if I type in “candle making” I get a wheel made up of various related keyphrases. I can then click on each and Google will generate another wheel with that phrase at the centre.

To get to the Wonder wheel, type in your keyphrase and click Google Search. You’ll see “Wonder wheel” on the left.

2. Google Related Searches

If, like me, you prefer words to diagrams then check out Related Searches. Search on your keyphrase then click “More search tools” on the left. “Related searches” will appear beneath “Standard View”. Click it and several columns of similar keywords and keyphrases will appear at the top. Interestingly, these tend to be different to those you would see in the Wonder Wheel so it’s worth using both tools. Each of those related keywords is a potential blog entry.

3. Wordtracker Keyword Questions

Your product is the answer to someone’s question (at least I hope it is!) and one way to find out what specific questions your audience is asking is to use the Wordtracker Keyword Questions tool. I recommend keeping your keyphrase as short as possible here to get a large data set. In my case, I typed “candles” to find that by far the most commonly asked question is “how to make candles” – a perfect subject for a blog post. I shan’t be bothering with the fourth most popular “how to make ear candles” however!

4. Wordtracker SEO Blogger

SEO Blogger is a keyword plugin for Firefox. Once installed, clicking the Wordtracker logo brings up a panel on the left-hand side with two parts. The top part is a list of keywords related to the keyphrase you type in. You can then add them to the panel below and this will keep track of how many times you actually use those keyphrases in your blog entry or page. This is the sort of thing that plugins were invented for, pure genius.

5. Wordstream.com

I’ve saved my favourite till last. Wordstream’s free keyword tool presents a list of related keyphrases in a simple interface along with their relative popularity. Again, this results in what is, essentially, a list of potential blog entries.

Remember that with your blog entries or pages you’re trying to achieve two things. Firstly, you want to attract paying customers so you’d certainly want to create entries based on keyphrases that include “buying” words such as “candle making kits” or “cheap candle making supplies” or “candle making supplier”. Secondly, you need to write entries that will be rewarded with incoming links and will therefore result in pages that appear higher up the rankings. For example, if I write a post on how to make candles (almost) for free, this will attract incoming links much more readily than a post about a new product. More people will see it, arrive at the page and, perhaps, go on to become customers (they haven’t cost anything in advertising after all).

SEO won’t entirely replace your spend on advertising but it will supplement and, hopefully, reduce it – after all, cutting marketing costs whilst simultaneously increasing traffic is business nirvana.

Firstly, the MU (multi-user) version is being merged into the mainstream product. WordPress MU enables a single installation to power multiple sites, assuming these sites use the same plugins. MU is the technology behind WordPress.com and is ideally suited to single organisations that want to allow users/members/staff to have their own blogs. The roadmap is clear: soon there will be only one.

Version 3 will include “Custom Post Types”. WordPress currently supports two types, Posts and Pages, but in the new version it will be possible to create any post type you like, with the help of a plugin. For example, let’s say you want to have a Parts catalogue: in 3 it’ll be possible to create a new type of post called “Parts” that will contain the appropriate fields. This will hugely improve WordPress’ capability to support different types of content without fudging. You’ll also be able to create custom templates for each Author in your blog – for example including their signature/picture.

The menu system is being completely overhauled so that you will be able to drag and drop pages, posts and categories in a similar way to the widget management screen.

The existing default theme, a study in boredom, is making way for a much smarter, easily customisable default. It’s long seemed ironic to me that the worst theme I’ve ever seen was the one that was installed by default, so this is a long overdue improvement.

Version 3 includes a number of other more minor changes, including allowing you to change the default user from “Admin” to your choice and easier management of a theme’s background graphic.

I’m a huge fan of WordPress but I don’t believe that this update, useful though it is, does enough to open it up to non-technical users. It ought to be possible to change the design from within the Admin Control Panel without having to fish into the code but, to do this, I currently have to use the paid-for Thesis theme. There’s still a lot to be done to encourage users to customise their blogs more radically and effectively – it’s still all too easy to identify a WordPress site within moments because even simple design changes require knowledge of CSS. Roll on WordPress 4!

The widespread coverage of the IE flaw will be doing Microsoft no favours at a time when it’s struggling to fend off the emerging Google Chrome and the enduringly popular Firefox. Even worse, the pain was entirely self-inflicted.

News of the hole broke on Microsoft’s own Malware Protection Center blog, and while you have to admire the company’s candour, you can’t help but wonder if the bloggers inadvertently spun the threat for more than it was actually worth. 

“Based on our stats, since the vulnerability has gone public, roughly 0.2% of users worldwide may have been exposed to websites containing exploits of this latest vulnerability,” the post read.

“That percentage may seem low,” they said, building the suspense, “however it still means that a significant number of users have been affected.

“The trend for now is going upwards: we saw an increase of over 50% in the number of reports today compared to yesterday,” they concluded, using the kind of meaningless statistic you normally see bandied about by fledgling internet start-ups, who get their PR agencies to spin an increase from two to three registered users over the past month for all it’s (not) worth.  

Microsoft’s open approach to blogging – pioneered by the now-departed Robert Scoble – has definitely helped give the company a much-needed shot of personality. But that blog post would have been a damned-sight less alarmist had it gone through the company’s legions of press officers first. As I’m pretty sure all future posts from the Malware Protection Center will be…