A Decent Release Schedule For Wordpress? 0
Matt Mullenweg has proposed a plan to the wp-hackers mailing list to implement a 120 day release schedule after the release of Wordpress 2.1. The proposed plan from Matt would greatly improve the current release schedule which is, pretty much, nonexistent. This has been noted by many people, and the past few releases have been marred with complaints about the release schedule. Plugin developers complain about not having enough warning to update their plugins to suit the changes of the new version of Wordpress, while end-users continually ask when the next release is going to be, only to be met with, “soon, maybe.” With this new plan in place, there would be a set date for release (120 days from the last release), a one month feature freeze, and a one month public beta testing period. This plan should make everyone happy, as well as make things run smoother than they have, for developers and users alike. We just have to hope now that it gets implemented.
A Call to Arms 4
Just because I’m a whore to Wordpress, I’ll mention this to you masses (or, rather, you four). For those of you who don’t regularly check their Dashboards (assuming you use Wordpress), Matt’s looking for outstanding young (or maybe not so young) men and women to help with the development of Wordpress. So, you should go on over to the Codex page regarding Responsibilities and sign up under an area you can help out with. “Why?” you ask? Because you’ll be helping out, and that’ll give you warm fuzzies… (plus, you get to be a “rockstar.”)
The Addictive Future 12
The future of Addictions is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a few days now. There have been many feature requests (by email, IM, and comments on the two posts, and I’d like to thank those who took the time to make such requests), all of which have been generally accepted as additions to Addictions 2.0 (yes, I’m jumping to 2.0 rather than 1.5 or some other BS versioning convention).
Addictions’ original intent, though probably not made as clear as I could have made it, was to provide a way to show the readers of a blog the author’s (intentionally singular, I’ll explain in a moment) current interest in fields of entertainment — those being games, books, movies, and music. Addictions 1.0 (which I’m bumping 1.0-RC2 to) fulfilled this intent with ease, and then some. However, the people request more, and I’m curious to see where this goes, so I’m going to continue building on to it until it becomes unnecessary or futile.
Some things you’ll see in Addictions 2.0 will include:
- Archiving of past Addictions;
- The ability to have multiple Addictions in one field of entertainment (for example, your top 5 books);
- A more uniform way of placing images (especially useful for people who use theme switchers); and
- Interaction with Amazon’s Web Service, so the user doesn’t have to manually input links
Now earlier, I said that the original intent of Addictions was for a singular author blog. At the time, I did not anticipate the use of Addictions in a blog where there are multiple authors, simply because I normally work in a single-user system, and therefore think in those terms. However, following a user’s request for such, I have decided to separately launch work on Addictions MA 1.0. Addictions MA will have the same codebase as Addictions 2.0 (though it may have limited support for some features), but will be more geared towards multi-author systems in features and will be easily labeled as to whose addictions are whose.
Features for Addictions MA will include the codebase and features of Addictions 2.0 (but with some limiting of the multiple addictions feature) while offering individualized addictions and distinct labelling of them, using what is now subtitles in Addictions 1.0.
So, that’s the Addictive future, as I see it. This should all take a few weeks, so keep watch here, it’ll be here before you know it. I’m extremely excited about this, not only because it’s going to test my PHP knowledge, but also because of the great features we’ll be able to enjoy from this update.
Wordpress.com Review 6
So, I recently got my grubby, butter-fingered hands on a Wordpress.com invite, and thought I’d do a review on it (aren’t I spiffy? YESH! YESH I AM! >_<!). For those who don’t know, the best way I can explain Wordpress.com is that it is like Wordpress’ TypePad. I’m also assuming (based on what I’ve been told by others and a posts on Matt Mullenweg’s Wordpress.com site). And with that said, I want to stop gibbering and get on with it ;D .
After logging on, you’re greeted with the new-and-improved admin interface and Dashboard
As you can see, this dashboard is not like the WP 1.5x Dash you normally see. You see in this new dash a design overhaul (much better than the current grayscale-esque styling), and a quick list of links of common points of interest for users. You also have your normal “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments” listing on the right. It then goes on to list the fastest growing blogs on Wordpress.com, as well as top blogs and the top posts of the day, and the most recent posts on Wordpress.com. Also, replacing the “Get Firefox” button at the bottom is a BrowseHappy button, now that Wordpress has obtained BrowseHappy from WaSP.
After the initial awe and glory of the dashboard fades, you begin to glance around, and wonder at that little feedback tab in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, labelled “Feedback.” So, you shove your mouse into the corner, and click…
…and dear sweet goodness, it’s AJAX sexiness. Now while this “Feedback” feature is obviously meant for beta testing purposes within Wordpress.com, it shows what’s to come once you dig more in-depth, and just how powerful Wordpress is becoming.
Moving on from the Dashboard, we go to the Write tab, which has gotten an overhaul of its own.
The first thing that grabs your attention is absolutely the WYSIWYG editor (turned on by default, but the ability to turn it off is in the Options panel). I am not a fan of WYSIWYG editors, myself, but I must say that this built-in one is quite nice (it has an undo!) — though that may just be the WP fanboy part of me speaking. The really exciting parts (to me), though, are to the right and bottom of the text area.
As seen above, stuff like categories, post password, excerpt, custom fields, trackbacks— they’re all “widgets” (again, AJAX goodness). You can open and close them at your pleasure, drag them into any order you want, and you can create categories on the fly. This eliminates clutter, while being on the bleeding edge and just schweet at the same time. You can also expand and contract the text area by dragging the corner of it up and down, which is neat if you like having a bigger or smaller text area to type in when making entries.
The Manage tab remains largely the same as the current version of Wordpress. However, you will find some differences, such as the fade effect I tried to capture above. Whenever you, say, delete a post, you click “Delete,” then “Ok,” and the post being deleted instantly flares to red than fades to non-existance. It’s quite nice. You also get this effect when you update any of your Options, but rather the “Options saved” box comes up and fades from yellow to it’s normal gray.
Another difference under the Manage tab is the “Referers” sub-menu. It spits out stats, but I’m not going to provide a screenshot because it’s still a bit rough around the edges. It, however, is a welcome addition where stats have been noticably absent, atleast to me.
The Presentation tab, however, has changed quite a bit, even if dumbed down a bit for mass-use in Wordpress.com.
As you can see, the theme’s details is shown side-by-side with a screenshot. This is incredibly helpful for anyone that has a hard time remembering what a certain theme looks like that they have loaded, as well as being just visually nicer than the current Presentation tab in 1.5.2.
I think this preview of WP1.6 (or, some speculate, 2.0) is incredibly nice so far. Don’t get me wrong, however, it’s still a bit rough around the edges, especially some of the newer features, and I still think the organization and looks of the admin. interface could be improved quite a bit. However, judging by the current state of what I just went over, Wordpress is poised to be the best in the market, by far.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
Addictions: The Release 13
The long-awaited (by… uh… Anthony and me) release of Addictions is finally upon us.
My first foray into PHP and Wordpress Plugins, Addictions is a little plugin meant to record and store on your sidebar your current favorites (”addictions”) in the areas of books, music, games, and movies, a la Jason Santa Maria’s “Current Leisures” and, of course, my “Addictions.” There’s not much to say about it, it’s very simple. After installation, you just plug in the information in the Options panel and you’re done. That’s it, outside of any styling you may want to do, and with classes put on most everything, you can do that with ease as well. That being said, you can get more info by going to the official doc page, and download links are below. Enjoy.
Update
Addictions has been updated to v1.0-RC2. There was a bug reported by a user that the movie titles and, subsequently, amazon links (since these two are intertwined) weren’t working. This was due to a typo on my part and was also found in the game code, and was fixed. I also took advantage of the time being spent fixing the “bug” to add the console section to the game settings, so enjoy that added feature. The download links above are still the ones to be used :) .
To Elliott Back: 4
Elliott Back wrote an entry about his experience with the Wordpress Codex, so I think I’ll join Peter Westwood and write a response, here.
The Wordpress Codex is a community-driven effort with a set of guidelines, like any documentation effort. Yes, it is a wiki, and that would give off the impression that you can treat it as a such; but again, I think you have to realize that this is a documentation effort, not just a wiki. I think if you actually read some of the articles, and looked at the quality, you would know they are edited and cleaned up, and not just another wiki posting.
If you’re such a “highly paid software engineer” like you said you are, Mr. Back, then you should know something about documentation. You can’t have crap thrown all over the place, and you have to have a specific aim, especially if it’s a community-driven effort. If you think the Codex is a waste of your time, I’m not going to try to change your mind. The Codex is the Wordpress resource for thousands of people everyday, and we have to set a bar of standards and guidelines. That being said— and excuse me if you get offended by this— there is no honor in denouncing the work of hundreds by saying that the Codex is a waste of your time, or insulting the personality, or the representation on the Codex thereof, of one of the best people I know, and lovable admin, Lorelle. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, but don’t belittle the effort.
Today in #wordpress… 5
<jalenack> “today in #wordpress, we were complaining that no one blogs on sunday. So I am blogging. Ok, yah. Bye”
Done, Jalenack :P
Addictions 34
I’d like to point your attention to the sidebar for a moment, and at this time, you should be seeing a “My Addictions” section (psst… people of the future… if you don’t see it, don’t worry about it… Joey-of-the-Future may take it down or change the title for some unknown reason to Joey-of-the-Present). It’s a nice little addition there, I think… let’s you know what I’m doing, what I like, and what not, inspired by the sidebars of Jason Santa Maria and Jon Hicks. There’s more to this, though.
Being the freeloader I am, I wanted something like this and I wanted something pre-made. However, I could find nothing like it for WordPress (automated at least, there’s always the… hand-coded way *shudders* ). I was bummed about this, but this is my last day of school for 2 weeks until summer school, and I wasn’t about to let my want go to waste. Oh, no, quite the contrary. I decided to make the plugin myself. Yes… Yes, me… the one with little to no PHP experience, but the will to learn. So, I put my nose to the grindstone, and got to it, and with the help of cross-checking with the source of Eric Anderson’s wonderful WPDI.
So… I present to you the output of “Addictions,” the plugin. For now, since it’s in an extreme alpha stage and this is my first foray into both PHP and Wordpress plugins, I won’t be releasing it, but I will continue testing, and adding features, and will have a doc page up very soon. So, expect a beta very soon, and that page.
The official documentation and info. page for Addictions has been created, along with a Plugins page as a placeholder for a listing of created-by-me plugins ;P .
Freshly Pressed 18
Recently, I was invited by a good friend (Hi, Michael ;D ) to join a new “startup,” so to speak, with an interesting concept. It’s like any web dev/design startup, where people hire us to build and design a site for them, we get paid, and we do what we love. However, this start-up had a twist: its primary focus was building sites around Wordpress. I, obviously, took the job.
Freshly Pressed, as stated above, focuses its design efforts around Wordpress. We will offer professional-quality Wordpress themes for a fee, as well as hiring out for more customized sites. This is seemingly, though not a completely original idea, the only business of its kind surrounding Wordpress. We hope this will bring about amazing results. The people we have brought in are yanked straight out of the Wordpress community (mostly from the Wordpress IRC channel) and know what they’re doing. I am proud to be involved with this project, and with the help of my colleagues, hope to bring this startup from an idea to an amazing success.
The Wordpress Scandal 19
In mid to late 2003, I volunteered for a web design job for a SourceForge.net project. Part of the job was to implement a Content Management System (CMS) so the project manager could post news about the developement of the project. They had previously used Xoops, and Xoops is just disgustingly overweight. So, I looked for another. If I recall correctly, I looked at Geeklog and Nucleus at first. Both Geeklog and Nucleus took a crippling long time to upload and install, especially with me on a 56k, so I ditched them, basically saying to myself, “Screw that, screw you, and screw the horse you rode in on.”
Then, b2 came and slapped me with a big ol’ frozen trout, and said “behold the light weight that is b2.” I wasn’t sure at the time if it was exactly what I wanted, but looking back, it was the perfect solution. From then on, I always used b2 for any project that required a CMS.
When I started Milk Carton Designs, it ran on b2. Unfortunately, it bugged out; I never really found out why. So, with b2 bugging out, I had to pick a new CMS. Fortunately, I knew about b2’s descendant: Wordpress. My impressions of it were extremely positive. To quote my review of Wordpress 1.5: “Wordpress 1.5 is amazing. It’s beautiful, light-weight, easy to manage, and by goodness it’s got so many features I feel like a spoiled rich kid with 20 Ferraris, 10 Lambos, 5 Lotus Elises, and a spit-shined Bentley.” Needless to say, I was sold. My trust and loyalty in the b2-Wordpress line runs deep.
This brings me to explaining why I’m posting this. Recently, Matt Mullenweg (co-creator and main developer of Wordpress) allowed Hot Nacho, Inc. to rent some space on Wordpress.org for a flat fee as an experiment to raise money for Wordpress. This failed miserably. The people running the rented space apparently used hidden words (not viewable by a browser, but by a search bot) and the such to spam search engines so they could get higher rankings and therefore make more money on their ads. People found out what was going on and the word spread like wildfire: Matt Mullenweg, an anti-spam pioneer in blogging software, had allowed the use of search engine spam on his site. However, Matt didn’t know that this was going on. Of course, People judged before they knew all the facts, before Matt even had time to speak for himself. Matt, at the time, was enjoying time offline and was on vacation in Italy. The poor guy found out on a call to his sister whom read him headlines off of Google News upon finding out herself.
Basically, I want to add my voice to the thousands that came to his defense and say, lay off, especially you Andrew Orlowski. The man made a mistake, just like the rest of us humans. He didn’t know what was going on, he was busy developing Wordpress 1.5, a highly-anticipated and highly-loved released. If you can’t be sympathetic enough to appreciate that people make mistakes, then just jump off a cliff— and that’s being nice.
