Several other announcements were released during the past week, including changes to the WordPress database as well as tutorials for creating a better blog with the free blog service, Blogger.

These tutorials and news stories are must reads.

8 Steps to a More Professional BlogSpot Blog [via Blogging Pro]

In this post, Download Squad brought together a collection of the best ways for people using Blogger to get started and how to perform basic steps, leading to a more professional-looking blog, including:

• How to back up your work/blog
• Eliminating the navigational toolbar
• Creating a tag cloud from your label list
• Adding a contact box and “About Me” page
• How to place ads and other content between posts
• Trying out Blogger’s beta features with Blogging in Draft
• Choosing a new template
• Registering and transferring your blog to your own domain

I found the post simple enough that new bloggers would be able to use it to create a better blog, while other “power bloggers” will already know how to do the tasks.

Controlling Archives (WP-Fun)

A short guide has been put together for gaining more control over how your archives are displayed, such as how many months to go back in the past and the format in which the archives are displayed.

WordPres 2.3 to 2.5 Database Changes (Weblog Tools Collection)

This post contains important information regarding the upcoming release of WordPress 2.5 about the database schema changes. If you are a theme/WordPress developer or require backing up your blog on the backend, it is important to do so before the upgrade.

10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.5 (Technosailor)

Aaron Brazell of Technosailor has put together an intuitive guide to the changes in WordPress 2.5 - the amazing new features from the admin interface to the visual editor improvements to the Flash uploader. Another must-read for WordPress users looking forward to added enhancements.