I’m surprised by the continued success of Feedburner, the popular blog feed stats service. On the one hand, you get a great stats package, offload some traffic from your blog server, and it’s free. However, for those benefits, you give up control of your feed and you give up a share or all of the ad revenue.
With plugins like Google AdSense for Feeds WordPress users can put their own ads into their feeds. With a handful of feed stat plugins around, it must be possible to get all the benefits of FeedBurner without the downsides.
I suppose it’s one of those situations where they’ve “made it” sufficiently that using FeedBurner is the norm. That and they were just acquired by Google, uh oh, the G disease is spreading…
A few people reported problems with the WP Mail SMTP plugin. I’ve resolved a few bugs and added a new feature that allows you to set the From name and email address of all mail sent by the wp_mail() function. I’ve thoroughly tested this version (unlike previous versions, oops!) and I’ve released it for immediate update.
Please note: SMTP authentication does not work in version 0.2, I encourage all users to upgrade immediately.
I’ve written an article on WordPress Optimisation on the WordPress Codex (Wiki). It covers the general areas where WordPress performance can be improved. I plan to expand on the work with more detailed discussions of the individual areas.
I just whipped up a very simple little WordPress plugin called WP Mail SMTP. It’s not my first plugin, I’ve created quite a few for clients, but it’s the first one that I’ve published in my own name. It’s already listed on WP-Plugins.net and I’ve submitted it to WordPress.org, how very exciting! 
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