You should have got the notification to upgrade your WordPress Installation. Most of us do it instantly to have a look and feel of new features, but please make sure that all your plugins are compatible with the new update. I just upgraded my testing installation and found that some of my most used plugins are having some conflicts. It’s always advisable to have a test server where you test all your upgrades and changes before you apply it on a live website.

What are new features of WordPress 3.3 ?

1. The Drag and Drop Uploader
2. Tumblr Importer
3. Flexible Permalinks
4. File Type Detection
5. Menus now fly out
6. And much more

For developers is_main_query(), WP_Screen API, Editor API Overhaul (You can now easily get the WordPress Editor on Frontend), includes the entire jQuery UI stack and the latest version of jQuery: 1.7.1

I was looking to make my blog tag pages with more information and not just keeping it a Tag page. Usually on tag pages, we get all the posts for that particular tag. There are some tags which may have only one post and I wanted to add some related posts to those pages.

First to get the count of posts for that particular tag on the tag page.

$term = get_term_by('name', single_tag_title( '', false ), 'post_tag');
$s=single_tag_title( '', false );
if($term->count<5) {
	$num=5;
}
else {
	$num=3;
}

You can get the title of the tag whichis $s and decide the number of search results depending upon the tag count.
Show search results for that particular tag

<?php
$s=single_tag_title( '', false );
global $post;
$counter=0;
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
$myposts = get_posts('numberposts=6&s='.$s.'&paged='.$paged);
foreach($myposts as $post) : ?>
	<?php setup_postdata($post);?>
	<div class="kishhomepostcontainer">
		<div class="kishpostthumb">
			<?php $thumb=get_the_thumb(141,88); ?>
			<?php if ($thumb!='') {
				echo '<img src="'.$thumb.'" alt="'. get_the_title().'" />';
			}?>
		</div>
		<div class="kishpostsnippet" style="width:300px;">
			<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
			<?php echo substr(strip_tags(get_the_content()), 0, 200); ?>...
		</div>
	</div><div style="clear:both;"></div>
	<?php $counter  ;
	 endforeach; ?>
	</div>

This can make your tag pages more informative to your visitors, could help in reducing bounce rates

There are many blogging softwares like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, etc, but I would suggest you to go with WordPress. I have used many blogging softwares like Joomla, Mediawiki, Drupal other than WordPress. Every tool is good but has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. 

If you are not a person who can write code and just need to write posts and publish them with few clicks, then I would recommend WordPress. WordPress can be used for small websites as well as big e-commerce websites. There are millions of websites that runs on WordPress which is an open source tool and a very strong and active community behind it.

Reasons to use WordPress as your blogging tool

1. Easy to set up
2. Customize the looks using 1000′s of free themes / templates
3. Customize usage using 1000′s of free plugins or get a customized plugin 
4. Regular updates and new features added up
5. Strong community to solve your problems
6. Secure
7. Runs on minimum resources
8. Easy to update your site with new content
9. Tons of features including built in SEO
10. Above all free

I always wait for beta releases and love to test it and try to know about the new features, and also test all my plugins to make sure about the compatibility.

WordPress 3.3 beta 1 admin menu looks good, you just have to hover over the main menu to drop the sub menus. Other Interesting feature that I noticed is the image uploader, just drag and drop the images – Works Great – HTML 5

Top Admin Bar Updated – Looks Good

Sub Menu – Just Mouse Over

Image Uploader – You will love it

If you are interested, you can also download and try it, do not use it on a live site – You may be in trouble

If you are using WordPress and bbPress and both are integrated, you can show the latest form topics on WordPress blog, could be on a sidebar or anywhere else you wish. Please note that this is not for the latest bbPress 2.0 Plugin, but the old version

function kishpress_bbpress_latest_topics($num=5) {
	if(is_bbpress()) : ?>
		<?php return;
	endif;
	global $wpdb;
   	$query = "SELECT * FROM bb_topics WHERE topic_status='0' ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT {$num}";
   	$topics = $wpdb->get_results($query);
   	//print_r($topics); ?>
   	<div id="bbpress-latest-posts">
        <h2>Latest forum posts</h2>
		<ul>
        <?php foreach($topics as $topic) : ?>
        <?php echo "<li><a href='/forum/topic.php?id=".$topic->topic_id."'>".stripslashes($topic->topic_title)."</a>[".$topic->topic_poster_name."]</li>"; ?>
        <?php endforeach; ?>
		</ul>
   </div>
	<?php
}

I am not sure, if there are any other ways. Yes you can load the bb-load.php file and get access to all the bbPress functions are write using the bbPress easy code, but I see many having issues when they load the bbPress file into WordPress.

I have been using bbPress forum for this blog for more than a year now, works well for me, but the major issue came when I wanted to switch my theme to Thesis, which I feel is a good framework and I really enjoy customizing it. Thesis customization should be done only using the custom files and not modifying any core file as we may have to go for an upgrade and to do all the customization again would be a pain.

Last month, bbPress 2.0 was released as a plugin for WordPress which does the deep integration well, but the issue is get customize the theme and when the theme you use is Thesis. I could not find a proper solution for customizing Thesis for bbPress 2.0, so I went back to the old version which is a standalone installation.

I spend sometime hacking Thesis theme and writing a theme based on your Thesis settings taking care of all the hooks. I have done that and you see it live on this blog. If you want to try, you can download it here.

Please note that this is just an initial version, would try to improve on it. You can do any modifications and use it.

Using the Thesis Hooks

Your design settings are taken care, your CSS files are loaded as it loads on your WordPress site, but the hooks needs to be called in the functions.php file in the bbPress Theme. Please note that this is a bbPress theme and you need to install it inside the bb-press-templates folder and activate it inside your bb-admin panel.

If you are using bbPress 2.0 plugin with WordPress and looking for the search to include bbPress Forum posts too, then you can add this to the functions.php of your theme.

function my_add_bbp_to_search( $post_type ) {
     $post_type['exclude_from_search'] = false;

     return $post_type;
}
add_filter( 'bbp_register_forum_post_type', 'my_add_bbp_to_search' );
add_filter( 'bbp_register_topic_post_type', 'my_add_bbp_to_search' );
add_filter( 'bbp_register_reply_post_type', 'my_add_bbp_to_search' );

In the search results you will find bbPress Forum too.