1. Suggest Friends and Contacts:
Google+ should have a feature to suggest contacts and introduce people to each other. Right now, this can be done by using huddle, or simply tagging people in a status. But it would be awesome if it was clearer and easier.

2. Joining or Subscribing to a Circle
As Darren Rowse suggested, there should be a way for people to add themselves into one or many of the circles, offered to them by another Google Plus user. This way they can subscribe to updates addressed to that specific circle and wouldn’t be bothered by other things. This will also help people with thousands of followers to speak a selected audience.

3. Improved People Search
There should be search options to find people by age, location, interests, etc. Right now, it seems like the search bar on the top allows you to search for people by name. What if I wanted to find people who are in my city, and interested in poetry reading? Advanced search options would allow more people to connect to each other, increasing the overall network size and interactivity on their accounts and Google+.

4. Chat in One tab:
When I have my Google Plus stream opened in one tab and Gmail in other, I have two tabs showing chat in the sidebar. When someone initiates a chat, a window pops up in every G+ and Gmail tab. I think Google plus and Gmail should ask me where I want to chat, on G+, Gmail, both or none.

5. Who are The People in ‘Find and Invite’?
G+ team should explain to us how they display people they think we might want to add to our circles (Update: I later found out that Google+ does explain how it suggests people). It will help us understand, how we can appear in more people’s suggestions. It will also help us understand why we see so many people that have nothing in common with us. Youtube does a similar thing with suggested viewing feature. It describes that it is recommending a particular video because I watched a similar video, and it also tells which similar video I viewed.

6. Integrate Other Networks into Stream using APIs
We all know that the work is in progress to release an API for G+ which will allow developers to integrate apps into Google+. Currently Google is offering a mailing list where Developers can sign up to get notified whenever there are opportunities available for them. Hopefully with this API release, we will be able to see our Facebook, Twitter and other social networks right into our G+ stream.

7. WordPress Integration and Comments
Hopefully, with the API release, it will become possible to integrate Google plus into WordPress. Every comment I post on a Blogger or WordPress blog should appear on my stream with a link back to original post. This means that I will carry my discussions with me to my stream. It would be awesome if we could also receive notifications for new comments on that blog post. People should not only be able to +1 a blog post or page on a website but they should also be able to +1 a comment posted by someone anywhere on the web.

Google needs to provide tools that make a WordPress blog and commenting system get totally integrated. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently talked about how he would like to see G+ integrated into WordPress. WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS used by millions of people. It will provide a great boost to Google+ and in return G+ will provide traffic to the websites running a G+ integrated WordPress website..

8. Allow users to suggest improvements in Find and Invite
Find and Invite shows suggestions there should be a feature to allow users to remove a profile from the suggestions. There are lots of people in there that I don’t want to add. Removing them will improve Google’s algorithms and they would be able to understand more about what I like. Isn’t this the whole purpose of G+?

These were just the few features that came to my mind, I am sure more ideas will keep coming to the minds of all Google Plus users. Many of them have already suggested similar feature requests using the feedback form. The thing that I am curious to know is how we will be using Google Plus in the future. How it will help people make money, build networks, become influential. What are the features that would make Google plus more useful for everyone?

If you ask me they are all useless since WordPress has built in functionality to fetch, cache and display external rss feeds. The function to do that is Fetch_Feed. It uses SimplePie and FeedCache to do the job and it is very effecient. However, the WordPress Codex for this function shows only one usage example for this function which is fine if you are not a person who has good knowledge of PHP, WordPress tags and HTML. But there is a lot more you can do with this function. To learn what else you can do with it you need to read the SimplePie documentation. Using Simplepie and WordPress template tags you can display RSS feeds in many different ways.

I love WordPress, but each day it is becoming more and more complicated for me. For example if I need to choose a plugin to do some job and I search for it on Google, the results will show me many plugins that do the same thing. Now the problem is that how do I choose the best one? I want to use things that do not cause heavy server load. I prefer plugins with caching abilities, better code and effecient resource usage. But believe me not many plugins out there are that good. They are ok for small blogs but on busy websites with lots of visitors they create problems. So the solution to this problem is to first look at the WordPress it self and use it’s own functions to do the job.

Due to some troubles with a few of my WordPress blogs. I have recently learned a lot about security and protecting my WordPress blogs from hacking. There is no way to be 100% sure that your website couldn’t get hacked. However, using the best practices described below, you can make it very hard for someone to crack into your WordPress installation. Taking these steps does not take much time but it saves you from a lot of trouble, even if your website get’s attacked you can fight back quickly and restore your website easily. Without these security precautions you not only make your WordPress installtion vulnerable, but you also make it difficult for yourself to recover from horrible accidents. So lets begin securing of your blog:

Back up often

You have heard this many times. Here it is once again, back up your website and database at least once a week if you update your website daily, or atleast once a month if you don’t update that often. But please back up. Do not trust your webhost when they tell you that they have back ups of your website created on a daily basis. It is very smart to have backups on hand just in case something goes terribly wrong with you or your webhost. There are many WordPress plugins to back up your database. I use WordPress database manager plugin called wp-dbmanager. Using this plugin you can schedual weekly backups to be sent to you via email.

Stay Updated

Whenever there is a new version of WordPress, upgrade your installation as soon as possible. Since 2.7 WordPress has automated the upgrade process or you can manually update to latest version. It only takes about ten minutes but it saves you from a lot of trouble. Older, outdated and upsupported installations often get hacked. Once hacked it is a very lengthy process to clean your blog and upgrade. So protect yourself now upgrade your WordPress.

Also keep your plugins updated to newest versions. If you notice that a plugin author has not released an updated version since a long time go to plugin’s home page and check its status. If the author has abandoned the plugin then stop using it right away.

Strong Passwords

If no one has ever stolen your password then it does not mean that no one ever will. There are some really bad people out there who randomly pick their victims and crack their passwords to take control of their websites. WordPress has strong password indicator which you can use to generate a strong password. A strong password contains atleast 8 characters a combination of alphabates and numbers and special characters. Avoid using words that can be found in a dictionary.

You should have strong passwords not only for your blog’s admin interface, but also for your site’s SSH shell and FTP access. Doing so you make it very difficult for hackers to crack your site and access your files via ftp. Try to use SSH or SFTP instead of plain FTP.

But strong passwords are difficult to remember. Well you should then read this wonder post from the blog herald that tells you how to create strong but memorable passwords. You can also generate a strong password using Aautomatic password generator tool.

File Permissions

One drawback of using WordPress or some of its plugins is that sometimes you need to make a few files writeable on your server. For security it is important that you keep file permissions as strict as possible. It is ideal to have your directories file permission set to 755 and your files 644. See WordPress Codex Changing File Permissions.

Default Username

At the first installation WordPress automatically creates a user account with the username admin. Now using the default username means that half of cracking is done without any guessing. Unfortunately it is not possible to change this username from the WordPress admin interface. However you can change it by running a simple mysql query.
Update tableprefix_users set user_login='newusername' where user_login='admin';

Replace tableprefix with the table prefix in your wp-config file. If you didn’t add a table prefix then it would the default one which is wp_ . You can run this query or manually edit table in phpMyAdmin or you can also run this query using wp-dbmanager plugin.

Other tips:

Remember, no website is 100% secure. But taking these precautions reduces the chances of your blog or website getting compromised easily. The following web pages has more tips on securing your WordPress even more.

Hardening WordPress
WordPress Security Tips and Hacks
WordPress Security Whitepaper

This is really a tough question. Some bloggers, even the experienced ones, spend so much time looking around for the perfect theme to beautify their blog. There are themes with lots of images in header and every where they look amazingly beautiful. There are themes that are simple and elegant. Themes, with functionality to improve certain aspects of your blogging experience. Themes designed for SEO and themes designed to be used with advertising programs such as Google Adsense. There are three columns, two column and single column themes. How do you know what is right for your blog?

Here is how I do it. First of all I try to think what I want to achieve with my new blog. Like this particular blog that you are currently reading is a place to share tips. So I needed a theme that was easy on reader’s eyes so that they can read the content, apply it somewhere, and then leave a comment if they want. This approach to design is called Usability and it helps a lot in the long run. This blog is new, so I also needed a theme that is easy to modify for my future needs.

I wasn’t sure about sidebar and layout. But then I thought that I don’t have enough content at the moment to fill the two sidebars with interesting items. So I decided to go with a single sidebar theme such themes are also called two column themes sometimes. Right sidebar or left sidebar? I remembered reading somewhere (probably here) that people read left to right so if you put your content on right and relevant links and navigation on the left then it is easy for them to quickly find what they need.

So this the first step of choosing the right theme. You need to think what you want to do with your blog and think of a layout that fit both your’s and your readership’s needs.

The Next step is design, color, and layout. There are so many colors in this beautiful world and please remember that we all love colors. So even if you are into simple looking web pages make sure that it has some colors too. While browsing the theme directories you will see many themes and I would suggest that you bookmark the themes that you like on your way. Once you think you have browsed enough themes then look into your bookmarked themes. And select a few that you like most.

In my opinion themes with large image headers containing pictures of irrelevant things are not very good. because these images provide no benefit to your reader. Still if you prefer images in your header then make sure that they are not too big.

Optimizing your blog for search engines and advertising programs is no more a hassle. But it could be if you pick a theme that is not easy to modify or relies on some plugins that you don’t really need. You don’t really need to pick up a search engine friendly theme, because it could easily be done later on with either plugins or manually. You also don’t need to pick up a theme that has room for lots of advertisements. Because such themes are used widely by bad websites and if your visitor has seen such websites already he would think that your blog looks like those trash sites so it would be useless as well.Choose a theme that is easy to modify and you can always add your advertisement code in it.

Widgets or No Widgets?

Depends on how easy you want it to be, I personally feel easier working with themes in my text editor. But lots of people like the comfort of Widgets. So if you want to make adding items to your sidebar simpler then you go for widgets ready themes.

While picking up a theme don’t just think about the attractiveness. Look for a theme that is easy for your readers so that they can easily navigate your website or blog. Also make sure that the same theme is easy for you too, so that you can work with it in future and add features to it if the need arises.

How do you know that the theme you want is easy to modify or not? I particularly check the theme in theme-editor. Since I feel that most editing goes on in sidebars so I look at the sidebar template. Themes that use complex div structure in sidebars are difficult to use. I prefer themes that have simpler sidebar code so that I could add my own items easily.

Another quick tip, don’t just go for the popular themes. If you browse the theme directories deep down you would find some really amazing themes that are not already used by hundreds and thousands of blogs. Also make sure that you add your own branding to the theme. Like your own image in header, or your customize it so that it looks uniquely yours.

Caution: Please remember to look at the theme carefully. There are some dirty minded people who add links to adware and spyware sites in wordpress themes. Some people even add their own Google Adsense code in themes. So if you see any such thing you can either remove the code or simply choose someother theme. The best place to look for themes is the theme directory at official WordPress site.

There are Google Chrome based themes available for many applications. Google Chrome’s innovative new approach to design inspired these designers and users to adapt these themes. For example there are people who are using Firefox, they either don’t want to use Chrome or can’t use Chrome (as Chrome is not yet available for Linux and Mac users). So they Chromify their firefox.

Chromifox Theme for Firefox will make your Firefox look like Google Chrome.

There are Chrome like themes for popular blogging applications.

• Chrome WordPress Theme
• Chrome Theme for Tumblr
• Google Chrome Template for Blogger

I hope to see a Google Chrome theme for my Gnome Desktop on Ubuntu, and it would be nice to have a theme for Vista and XP too.

There are even websites offering themes to change the appearance of your Google Chrome with themes. I didn’t know that themes are supported or not so I didn’t try it. But HowTo Geek tried changing appearance of his Google Chrome browser to Windows Vista Aero Style theme with satisfactory results.