If you need to set up a hosted blog service, your best options are WordPress.com and Blogger.com. However if you want to setup a full scale website that requires stuff like forums, guestbooks, photo albums, e-shops, polls, etc. you’ll need a full blown content management system. One particular site that can provide all those features is uCoz, a hosted content management system and website builder.

uCoz is ideal for those who want to create a free web page but don’t have the knowledge/skills or budget to setup a self-hosted website. With uCoz, users have access to a wide variety of modules and full control over the web design programs with the use of HTML templates. For those who aren’t knowledgeable with HTML, there’s a built-in visual HTML editor.

Registration/Installation

Registration is FREE and there’s no installation required as all features, modules and templates are ready to use and implement with only a few clicks. All you need to do is complete the registration process and once you’re done, you can start working and building your website. The user interace is user friendly but it does take

Modules

• Forum (Bulletin Board)
• E-shop
• Site News
• Blog (Web Journal)
• Publisher (Article Catalog)
• File Catalog
• Site Catalog
• Tag Board (Mini Chat)
• Ad Board
• Photo Albums
• Online games
• Web Polls
• Guestbook
• FAQ Service
• E-mail Forms
• Page Editor
• Statistics (Hit Counter)

Screenshots:

uCoz provides FREE unlimited disk space to all its users but if you just newly registered, the initial hosting space is only 400MB. Like Gmail, the disk space and bandwidth gradually increases (every second) so the more and longer you use your account, the more disk space and bandwidth you’ll get. Aside from the modules listed above, uCoz also provides a free domain name (subdomain) and 250 themes or templates as part of the free website design tools. A free subdomain will do, but having your own domain name is better and highly recommended.

Although uCoz is free there are a few issues or cons in the free account – forced ads, no access to PHP, ASP, Perl and other scripts, it is not SEO friendly, it is not open source and accounts are hosted on a shared hosting environment. If you want more features and more disk space, you can avail of their affordable plans which provides users additional features, more disk space and other premium extras.

If you’re looking for a free hosted content management system and website builder, check out uCoz.

The plugin is called the CMS Tree Page View and what it does is it adds a CMS-like tree overview of all your pages which is similar and often found on page-focused CMS.

Features:

• View and organize pages in a simple to use tree view
• Available both on it’s own page and on the dashboard
• Edit pages directly from the tree
• Add pages at any place in the tree
• Drag and drop to rearrange your pages
• Search pages
• See all pages – including private and drafts – or just publicly available pages

Screencast:

Screenshots:

The CMS Tree Page View plugin is easy to install and use. It’s very simple, straightforward and does what it’s supposed to do. To install, just download, unzip and upload the CMS Tree Page View folder to the wp-content/plugins folder and activate it. Once activated, the plugin will add a Pages Tree View widget on your Dashboard. It can also be accessed via Pages > Pages Tree View.

This plugin is intended for admin use only. If you want to share and make the pages tree view visible to the public, then you’ll need the Nice Navigation plugin which is created by the same developer.

Download the CMS Tree Page View plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository.

Anyone tried or are currently using the CMS Tree Page View for WordPress plugin?

WordPress announced earlier today the release of WordPress 3.1 “Reinhardt”, the fourteenth major release of WordPress which is named in honor of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so you’re never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options.

There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

Highlights:

• Internal Linking – click a button for an internal link and it allows you to search for a post or browse a list of existing content and select it for inclusion.
• Admin Bar – contains various links to useful admin screens. By default, the admin bar is displayed when a user is logged in and visiting the site and is not displayed in admin screens for single blog installs. For multisite installs, the admin bar is displayed both when visiting the site and in the admin screens.
• Streamlined Writing Interface – new users of WordPress will find the write screen much less cluttered than before, as more of the options are hidden by default. You can click on Screen Options in the top right to bring them back.
• Post Formats – meta information that can be used by themes to customize presentation of a post. Read more in the article Post Formats.
• Network Admin – move Super Admin menus and related pages out of the regular admin and into a new Network Admin screen.
• List-type Admin Screens – sortable columns for list-type screens and better pagination.
• Exporter/Importer Overhaul – many under the hood changes including adding author information, better handling for taxonomies and terms, and proper support for navigation menus.
• Custom Content Type Improvements – allows developers to generate archive pages, and have better menu and capability controls. Read more in the article Post Types.
• Advanced Queries – allows developers to query multiple taxonomies and custom fields.
• Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme – puts the focus more squarely on your content.

For a complete list of new features/improvements included in WordPress 3.1, head on over to the WordPress Codex.

Although, it’s always recommended to run the latest version, WordPress 3.1 doesn’t include any security fixes so you don’t have to rush and upgrade your system. Make sure you go through the release notes and check your current installed plugins for any incompatibility issues. I’m looking forward and can’t wait to try out WordPress 3.1 but for now, I’m gonna put the upgrade on hold and wait a couple weeks to see if there are any issues or problems that may be encountered with this release.

If you’re ready for WordPress 3.1, you can download it manually from WordPress.org or do it automatically via the WordPress admin panel – Dashboard > Updates.

Anyone already upgraded and are using WordPress 3.1? How was the upgrade process? Did you encounter any problems or issues? What new features/improvements do you like the most? Any other feature or issue that you want to be addressed for the next release of WordPress? Please share your thoughts.

If you’re planning to put up a WordPress-powered online portfolio and you’re still on the lookout for a theme, this theme I’m reviewing today might just be the theme that you need. wpFolio is a 2-columned, widget-ready free WordPress theme created by the folks from WordPress Feed that’s designed to be used as a portfolio theme.

We are happy to announce our new free theme for wordpress. after 2 premium themes wpShow, wpBlog and our first wpStore free theme here comes wpFolio – A free cms / portfolio wordpress theme with a help document included.

Basic Features:

• 5 color schemes
• Theme Options Page
• Twitter feed
• Jquery featured carousel
• Easy Portfolio Management
• Blog Section
• 3 page templates
• CMS functionality
• Widget ready
• Well Documented
• Well designed text replace for a nicer font
• Valid XHTML
• IE6 + & Google Chrome Compatible

Screenshots:
Homepage

Blog Section

Portfolio

My Take:
The wpFolio theme is another great free WordPress theme. It has 5 different color schemes to choose from – black, blue, green, purple and red. It also includes a theme options page where you can configure the Intro Text, social networking links, homepage info, More About Me text and your contact info that are displayed on the homepage.

The homepage section displays the Intro Text – which is a short introduction of site, More About Me – a little background about you, the author, Contact Info – your address, location, phone number and email address (displayed as an image) and your recent tweets. It also has a cool javascript-powered featured post slideshow or carousel that displays featured posts and gives the user an option to browse through those featured posts. The homepage also displays excerpts of the recent blog posts.

The wpFolio theme is designed to be used as a portfolio theme so there’s a dedicated section to display your recent work in the form of thumbnails. This theme would be ideal for a web designer or photographer’s blog/portofolio site. I haven’t installed the theme on my sandbox so I wasn’t able to test it thoroughly so I’m not sure how the portfolio section works. Based on the demo site, clicking on the thumbnails brings you to a page that displays a short description of that item but doesn’t display the screenshot or thumbnail.

The theme download file includes fonts that are used for the header logo and a user manual in PDF format to help you with the setup and installation of the wpFolio theme. This theme is well documented so users won’t have a hard time installing and configuring it.

Aside from the features and options I’ve already mentioned, the wpFolio is also widget-ready, XHTML compliant and compatible with IE6 and Google Chrome.

To sum it all up, the wpFolio theme is a cool WordPress theme, ideal for a web design or photography blog/portfolio site. It is highly customizable, has a theme options page that lets you configure different areas of the theme, widget-ready and has different color schemes to choose from.

Preview or Download the wpFolio WordPress theme.

On a positive note, I have some good news for the loyal readers/visitors of JaypeeOnline. But I won’t be talking about it here. I’ll be doing a separate post about it, so just watch out for it. Anyways, hope you folks enjoy this week’s edition of the Weekend Roundup.

Blogging

• What You Don’t Know About The New FTC Rules On Disclosure
• 3 Reasons to Blog About Your Personal Experiences
• The Art of Getting a Backlink
• 31 Reasons Why WordPress Works As A CMS

Gadgets

• HP shows, details Envy 15 Beats edition notebook
• Samsung Giorgio Armani Windows Phone Preview
• Asus Eee Top ET2002 review
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 Review

Technology

• Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services
• Future Phones Dazzle With Design
• Four different ways to sync your cellphone with the cloud
• Google, Microsoft Court Twitter as Service Suffers Outage

Pinoy Blogs

• First Impressions with Google Wave
• Amazon Kindle finally coming to the Philippines
• Google Helps Hurricane Ketsana Victims in the Philippines
• 10 Blog Lessons I Did Not Learn From Darren Rowse

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• Watch the 2009 Philippine Blog Awards LIVE Online
• WP Theme Review: Milano
• Feedly: Magazine Style Homepage
• FTC Implement Tougher Guidelines for Blog Endorsements/Disclosure
• HTC unveils the HTC HD2

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or want your article or find an interesting story that you want to be featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Thank you for your time and hope you guys are having a great week!