It’s a bit short notice I know, but I’ve been dealing with things behind the scenes. At any rate, to kick off our new Tuesday recording schedule, we’ll be interviewing Andy Peatling, lead developer of BuddyPress. The last time we had Andy on the show was December 19th, 2008. As I’ve written about here on WPTavern.com there has been plenty of changes taking place within the BuddyPress project, specifically with themes. While I’ve got a few questions myself, I know there are readers of the site who are interested in BuddyPress. Just place your question in the comments and I’ll get Andy to answer it.
Andy Peatling Part Deux
HookPress – Seems Like A Great Idea
Angelo Mandato who produces the PluginsPodcast, a weekly show dedicated to WordPress plugins recently pushed out episode 24 which featured an interview with Mitcho, the developer of my favorite related posts plugin YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin). Not only is the interview informative, but during the second half of the show, we find out about another plugin Mitcho is developing called HookPress. HookPress is a plugin that enables WordPress to use Web Hooks. While I did watch the video presentation, I’m still trying to figure out myself how useful this is but considering the fact that these web hooks can be written in any language I believe is a killer feature for developers. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
Webhooks goes beyond the HookPress plugin though as evidenced by the Webhooks blog, Anil Dash and his idea of the Push Button Web, and slides created by Jeff Lindsay explaining the concept. The following is a video presentation of HookPress.
If you’re a developer, please tell me more information about this concept and how it can be useful to you. Also, Mitcho is looking for feedback on his plugin so if you end up using it, be sure to contact him.
WordCamp Hitting The Big Apple
One of the biggest WordCamp events of the year is poised to take New York by storm between November 14th and 15th. The event is being organized by Automattics own Jane Wells. Not long ago, a poll was conducted on the WordCamp New York website asking the audience what type of tracks they would like to see. Surprisingly to me, developer won most of the votes with the large scale CMS topic coming in second. That ought to be a change of scenery for most WordCamp goers as most sessions center around the business/blogger/social media types. Considering all of the WordCamp events I’ve ever attended, the one complaint I’ve heard consistently is the lack of WordPress specific content. WordCamp New York aims to quench that thirst.
Based on talks I’ve had with a few different people, quite a few folks from Automattic will be in attendance at this particular event. There is also the chance that many high profile community members will also be in attendance. Currently, I have plans on attending this event, I just need to buy the tickets. There is a chance that I’ll be once again hanging out with the WebDevStudios crew as they are familiar with the area. There is also a possibility that Michael Torbert, developer of the All In One SEO Plugin will be in attendance but he hasn’t confirmed anything to me just yet.
By the way, WordCamp New York is still looking for volunteers, sponsors, and anyone willing to lend a hand. For more information check out the official WordCamp New York Website.
I believe tickets for the event will go on sale some time in September. Once registration opens up, I’ll pass the news along. Will I be seeing you in November?
GravityForms Launches To The Public
GravityForms which takes form generation to the next level in WordPress has finally been launched to the public. I’ve been playing around with the plugin since I joined the beta test program in late June. Since then, the RocketGenius team has worked extensively to improve the plugin for the masses. For those that don’t know, GravityForms is like a WYSIWYG editor for creating forms. For an expansive look as to what this plugin is capable of, I suggest taking some time to watch my screencast review which is about 11 minutes long.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I can fully recommend this plugin to anyone who is looking for an intuitive, easy way to create and manage forms on their WordPress powered site. The plugin is also licensed under the GPL which makes it that much better. If you’re looking for even more information regarding this plugin, I highly recommend listening to episode 4 of the Press This podcast where Joost De Valk interviews Carl Hancock, lead developer of the GravityForms plugin.
I’ve never signed up or participated in anyone’s affiliate program before, but GravityForms has become the first. So with that said, the following link is my affiliate code which will drop back 20% of your purchase to me. If you do purchase the plugin through me, thank you for your continued support of WPTavern.com. By the way, not sure how much longer this coupon code will remain active but if you use GFORMS20 it will take off 20% of your order.
Nathan Rice Now Part Of Modthemes.com
Nathan Rice who I first came into contact with through iThemes and at WordCamp Dallas 2008 has moved on to a new venture called Modthemes. Modthemes is a fresh new venture that offers commercial GPL themes for WordPress with Bryan Hauer as CEO. Right now, there is only one theme available with another on the way.
The WordPress community has benefited greatly from his contributions in both themes and plugins. I want to wish the best of luck to Nathan on his new career path.
iThemes Responds To Speculation – All Is Well
The other night, I participated in a conversation with a few other people on Twitter regarding iThemes. There was some talk that iThemes was losing momentum and that the company was stagnating. Others said that iThemes was not producing innovative themes and pushing the boundaries of WordPress. While we speculated on the current status of iThemes, Cory Miller who is the co-founder took notice of the tweets and responded in a post on the company blog.
We respect and appreciate our customers who have gotten us here. We are deeply committed to the products and goodwill we’ve built with iThemes. In short, we love what we do!
For as long as I can see or forecast, iThemes will continue to be a creator and innovator of WordPress themes – focusing specifically on CMS and Business themes as we’ve consistently done since we opened the doors in January 2008.
I’m pretty happy to find out iThemes will continue into the foreseeable future to churn out business and CMS specific themes for WordPress. However, I’m really appreciative of the fact that Cory Miller came out and responded to the community discussion in a post on the company blog which not only answers our speculation, but also reinforces the companies stance to their customers. This is the sign of a co-founder who is paying attention and responding when necessary before speculation turns into false facts. If only other companies would be as responsive or alert, I think it would save them a lot of trouble in the long run.
By the way, take a look at Yukon which is iThemes latest offering. A Clean, business oriented theme with a few different post templates and drop down menus.
Who Needs eBay When You Have WP Auctions?
About two weeks ago, I was contacted by the lead developer of the WP Auctions plugin for WordPress asking if I’d take a look at his plugin. Considering my distaste for Ebay, I decided to give this plugin a spin and write a review. Stay tuned as at the end of this review, you’ll have a chance to win a copy of this plugin.
Synopsis:
To make a long story short, WP Auctions enables you to host your own auctions allowing you to keep all of the profit resulting from the auction. No more sellers fees! The plugin costs $39.99 and is licensed under the GPL.
Support:
Support is handled in a way I have not seen before. If users encounter an error, they are told to report it on the Help Page. As errors are dealt with comments are deleted which seems a bit crazy considering there is no way to tell what has been dealt with in the past. Although this does help keep the error reporting area clean. Users also have a way to request features via the feature request page.
Going Once, Going Twice, Sold:
Plugin installation/activation was simple. Once activated, a new menu group called WP Auctions is created on the left hand navigation menu. This is where you’ll find the links to manage, add, and configure auctions.
The general settings for WP Auctions allow me to give my auction title a name, select the currency that the auctions will run in, provide an email address to be notified of when a bid is placed on an item, a link to any eBay feedback I might want to show to the public, how many auctions to display in the widget and whether everyone or only registered members can place bids.
The next group of options deal with the payment and shipping options. There are three different methods supported by WP Auctions. Either PayPal, Bank, or Mailing Address. Obviously, if using PayPal, that is where the auction winners cash will go. Bank details is used to provide information on where to wire the transfer to and mailing address is self explanatory.
That last bit of configuration revolves around the look and style of the plugin. Out of the box, WP Auctions supports 6 styles if you include the default. Additional styles will be available to be purchased at some point in the future. I can tell the widget to show auctions either in a graphical format or a standard list format. Last but not least, if no auctions are ongoing, I can specify HTML that is displayed to take it’s place instead of an empty box.
Auction Creation Process:
Creating an auction is as easy as configuring the plugin. The process is split up into three separate sections. Details, Shipping and Optional features. The auction details describe the title, description, image, starting price, duration and payment method of the auctions. Shipping details enables you to specify how much the shipping cost will be as well as where you are willing to ship to and from.
The optional features area provides the Buy It Now option, extra images and whether you would like to show the auction in an AJAX popup or direct folks to a post or page. No need to be worried about managing multiple auctions as the management page is laid out as if you were moderating comments. So it should feel natural.
One of the cool aspects of WP Auctions is that they provide a Live Auctions page where purchasers of the plugin can register their blog so that when they create an auction, it shows up on this page. Just another way to get more traffic to your auctions.
Auction Display:
In order to display the auctions, you need to set the WP Auctions widget to display in the sidebar of your choosing. As mentioned in the creation process, you can also point people to a particular post or page where the auction will be displayed. Here is what the widget looks like using the default skin on a fresh install of WordPress.
One thing I like about this particular widget is the fact that it provides an easy way to subscribe to the RSS feed related to that particular auction. One thing I noticed with the AJAX popup window is that when I wanted to close it, I kept searching in the top right corner to close the window when in fact, the close link is located to the right of center. Possibly a UI issue as I expect the close button to be in that corner. It is for everything else.
Final Thoughts:
So after playing around with WP Auctions, I’m pretty impressed that using WordPress and this plugin, you can completely bypass the need to use something like eBay to auction off an item. Granted, you won’t have nearly the amount of eyeballs to see the item, you’ll get to keep all the profits and the only person you’ll pay seller fees to is yourself. I’m also impressed with the fact that overall, the auctioning process is simple as is auction management. Limiting the electronic fund processor to PayPal will be a turn off to some, but that is how most electronic transfers of money are handled these days. In the end, this is definitely a plugin I can recommend to others looking for a way to auction items from their WordPress powered site.
Want A Free Copy?:
So all you have to do to qualify to win a free copy of this plugin is to comment on this blog post. Tell me your thoughts, what you’d use the plugin for or use this as an opportunity to ask questions as the plugin author will be monitoring the comment section to answer them. In the next few days, I’ll place the comment ID’s into a random number picker and choose the winner who will receive one free copy of WP Auctions.
Andy Peatling Drinks The Kool-Aid
Over on the BuddyPress Development blog, Andy Peatling has announced that the project will now have a new theme architecture. The big change between the old way of doing themes versus the new way is that starting with BuddyPress 1.1, there will only be one theme that handles everything instead of a Home/Member theme. Also, those two words ‘Theme Framework‘ pop up again as BuddyPress will ship with its own.
BuddyPress will ship with a theme framework that acts as a parent theme. The default theme will be a child theme based on this framework and contain only images and css. Building a new BuddyPress theme will be as simple as creating a child theme based on the framework.
According to Andy, this approach with themes provides many benefits such as removing the need to recreate every template file for a new theme, receive new functionality when the parent theme is upgraded, etc. While themes that were created on the old system will continue to work for at least the next few versions, converting those themes to the new system shouldn’t be that hard. It’s important to note though that using the Framework is just an option and is not necessary.
BuddyPress 1.1 is on track for a September release.
Has this verified the importance or benefits using a Theme Framework? Theme authors, are you happy to see BuddyPress ship with it’s own framework?
Automattic Gets A New Systems Wrangler
Monitoring the Twitter stream today, I discovered that Automattic has hired on a new Systems Wrangler in Stephane Daury. In his post, you can clearly read the excitement given off by this job opportunity. Hell, I’d be happy to. Stephane has a few WordPress plugins under his belt, WPhone being the one I recognize. While the job is a dream come true for Stephane, he realizes it won’t be easy.
Don’t get me wrong, although this assignment represents, to me, the professional chance of a lifetime, it will also be the most challenging by far, the scale of it all mind boggling. Nothing is won yet beyond the opportunity and everything is still left to be achieved. Needless to say, I will be doing my very best (and then some) to own the said challenge and prove Barry, Matt and others I am indeed the right guy for the job.
Good luck Stephane and congratulations.
IntenseDebate Plugin Version 2.4.2 Released
By Jeffro on August 27, 2009
Share this:
Posted in Plugins | Tagged comments, intensedebate, plugin, service