Over the past 10 years, the MySQL database has become incredibly popular on the Web. Every WordPress blog is driven by a MySQL database, which contains the blog’s posts, settings, comments and much more.

While plug-ins and even coding hacks can solve some problems and achieve some tasks, sometimes you don’t have any other choice than to execute SQL commands in phpMyAdmin or directly to the database via SSH. Let’s take a look at 8 useful SQL hacks for WordPress. Each section of this post presents a problem, suggests a solution and provides an explanation to help you understand the solution.

Source: 8 Useful WordPress SQL Hacks

We have just published a post about the release of WordPress 2.7 few days ago. Significant features and redesigns was added to WordPress 2.7 to make blogging on the new Dashboard Panel more valuable than ever.

You may find your Themes no longer work the way you are used to. It could be that they might be broken, because something in WordPress that was fundamental to them changed, but it’s also possible that you can get them working again by updating some settings, or maybe just a small edit.

Noupe has published a post of “Mastering Your WordPress 2.7 Theme & Admin Area: Tips and Tricks“. The post will highlight WordPress 2.7 HOW-TO get your theme working again by updating some settings and represent some of the best and significant features added to your Administration Panel.

Source: Mastering Your WordPress 2.7 Theme & Admin Area: Tips and Tricks

The first thing you’ll notice about WordPress 2.7 is its new interface. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7. The new dashboard can let you arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen.

If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen.

Last, but certainly not least, this may be the last time you ever have to manually upgrade WordPress again. Now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.

Source: WordPress 2.7 Coltrane

RSS is one of those technologies that are extremely simple yet extremely powerful. Currently, RSS is the de facto standard for blog syndication, and it is used widely in both personal and corporate settings. Let’s take a look at 10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress.

Each section of the article presents a problem, suggests a solution and provides you with an explanation of the solution, so that you can not just solve some of your RSS-related problems but also understand what you are actually doing. Thus, you can make sure your WordPress theme remains under your control and is not bloated with some obscure source code.

Source: 10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress

Mashable has presented their best discoveries of the Best Mac Apps for Bloggers. Most bloggers today are familiar only with services designed for use with their choice of web browser. If you edit a WordPress.com account or WordPress.org installation, chances are you login and publish your material through the cloudware provided.

The same goes for Blogger and TypePad users, and as well as options like MySpace and Vox. But if you’ve grown tired of those standard frontends, and would prefer to utilize software to blog for work or for personal enjoyment, there are alternatives that you should know about. For Mac users in particular, there are several that prove as useful, powerful, and visually worthwhile as any comparative webware.

Source: 10 of the Best Mac Apps for Bloggers

Would you like some of the best WordPress Video Tutorials? Speckyboy has collected 100+ Basic to Advanced WordPress Video Tutorials. All of these tutorials range from basic learning for the beginner, to advanced for the expert who wants to learn new techniques. Basically everyone can take something from these tuts.

Source: 100+ Wordpress Video Tutorials, from Basic to Advanced

Have you ever thought of installing WordPress on your local machine? In the article of “Installing WordPress Locally” from WebDesignerWall, you will learn how to install WordPress on a local computer. By doing so, it will save you time from updating and previewing files (so, you don’t have to frequently upload files on every change). You can also use the local version to test new plugins, themes, and upgrades. This tutorial is intended for beginners who want to learn how to run WordPress locally.

Source: Installing WordPress Locally

Vladimir Prelovac has published “WordPress Optimization Guide” which is is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site. If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you. The followings are the main points of the article.

1. Check the Connection
2. Check your (Vista) System
3. Check the Plugins
4. Check your Theme
5. Optimize Database Tables
6. Turn off Post Revisions
7. Implement Caching (WordPress Cache, MySQL Optimization, PHP Opcode Cache)
8. “MySQL server has gone away” workaround
9. Fixing posting not possible problem
10. Other reasons for slow posting

Source: WordPress Optimization Guide

Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?

Those days are quite rare though, and most people seem to have a hard time gaining even a small number of new RSS subscribers consistently. Is there anything you can do about it? Any way to efficiently attract more RSS subscribers?

Sure there is. Many people wrote about this topic in the past, but DailyBlogTips wanted to give his take on the issue too. He wrote “50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers” as they were coming to his head, as briefly as possible. Apparently, Blog Perfume are doing most of the them now. Therefore, we have successfully gained over 2500 readers in the past months.

Source: 50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers

The WordPress Codex says that “WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines“. Well, that may be true … to a certain degree, but there is more than enough work that you’ll need to do after you’ve installed WordPress in order to get it playing nicely with Google (and other search engines).

Nathan Rice has published “The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Theme Search Engine Optimization” which is a list of tips for bloggers that will help them embrace the natural flow of good SEO in the form of a well optimized theme. This guide can’t guarantee you first page rankings, and certainly can’t get you quality links, but it will teach you every step you must take to ensure that you’re site is completely search engine optimized. The post has been divided into the following topics.

• Generating a sitemap for Google
• Getting your site indexed by Google
• Getting Google to index and follow the right stuff
• Using Keyword-Rich Permalinks
• Optimizing your  <title></title>
• Optimizing your header tags
• Using META descriptions
• Using META keywords
• Keyword Density
• Deep Linking

Source: The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Theme Search Engine Optimization