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The Bittersweet Taste Of Bleeding Edge Software

The Bittersweet Taste Of Bleeding Edge Software

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

The following guest post was written by Brad Williams of WebDevStudios.com

I’ve been developing with WordPress for a few years now and the projects I’ve been working on have started to expand into bleeding edge software. Bleeding edge software is defined as “technology that is so new (and thus, presumably, not perfected) that the user is required to risk reductions in stability and productivity in order to use it” ref. WordPress MU, BuddyPress, and bbPress are my three current tasks intertwined to work flawlessly together. Of course that doesn’t happen now does it? Is this the price we pay for pushing the bounds of WordPress development?

The Bitter: I’m creating a new BuddyPress focused website which requires an alpha install of bbPress on top of WordPress MU 2.7 beta. Installing beta software and alpha software on top of beta software makes my head spin just thinking about it. As you can imagine there are many bugs that still exist in all three packages, so why use them? The draw of utilizing bleeding edge functionality is too great to bypass for me.

The Sweet: Being at the “bleeding edge” of WordPress functionality is actually an interesting place to be. Many bugs I stumble across are active tickets in development Trac, which allows me to fix the issue for myself and also for the community. Helping out in the development of BuddyPress (or any open source project) is really thrilling, especially when you see the buzz surrounding it and how your code changes are helping.

Bleeding edge software development isn’t for everybody, but if you want to help these amazing open source projects grow it’s great to help out in anyway you can. If nobody used the software packages these projects would die, and thus the need for bleeding edge software developers exists and I’m happy to fill that role. Code on!

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WPTavern Celebrates Thank A Plugin Author Day!

WPTavern Celebrates Thank A Plugin Author Day!

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

It’s only fitting that WordPress has it’s own series of holidays. After all, just about everyone and (everything) else has holidays. Today, January 28th has officially been declared by Matt Mullenweg “Thank a Plugin Developer”. Asides from paying homeage to plugin authors, Matt also lets us know that the plugin repository is called home by over 4,000 different plugins. Another little tidbit is that the average number of plugins installed per self hosted blog is five!

Considering the occasion, I’ll do a little thank you by displaying which plugins that are activated on this blog and believe it or not, I’ll even use a plugin just for that purpose. It’s called PluginsUsed written by my favorite plugin author, Lester ‘Gamerz‘ Chan. I highly encourage you to either thank a plugin author by donating some cash their way via PayPal or at the very least, provide them some link love. Plugin authors love exposure and some would argue they don’t get enough of it. The PluginsUse plugin makes this a very easy process.

Without further adieu, here are the plugins I use on WPTavern.com and vouch for.

There are 36 plugins used: 32 active plugins and 4 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

Akismet
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

commentluv
» Andy Bailey (url)
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html. See the Settings Page for styling and text output options.

Comment Quicktags -Reloaded
» Owen Winkler (url)
Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. WP 2.2 support by Ibrahim Faour

Contact Form 7
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

Exclude Pages from Navigation
» Simon Wheatley (url)
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.

Executable PHP widget
» Otto (url)
Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Heavily derived from the Text widget code in WordPress.

Filosofo Comments Preview
» Austin Matzko (url)
Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them.

Form to Post
» Michael Torbert (url)
Allows users to post a post.

Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page

Highlight Author Comments
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

Insights
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.

KB Advanced RSS Widget
» Adam R. Brown (url)
Gives user complete control over how feeds are displayed.

KG Archives
» Kates Gasis (url)
Yet another sortable archives from katesgasis.com.

No Self Pings
» Michael D. Adams (url)
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

OIOpublisher Direct 2.0
» Simon Emery (url)
Control your Ad Space with OIOpublisher.

Post Template
» Vincent Prat (url)
A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale.

Really Simple CAPTCHA
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.

Short Comment Filter
» Will Anderson (url)
Automatically Spams or Deletes comments that don’t meet a specified length criterion.

Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

The Excerpt re-reloaded
» Luca Biagini (url)
This plugin does something more than the built-in excerpt function. It lets choose exceprt length, allowed html tags, the link text to full post and the html container of the excerpt (,, or plain text).

Thumbnail Viewer
» Tyler Longren (url)
Thumbnail Viewer is a simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller. Add the rel=”thumbnail” attribute to any link tag to activate the thumbnail viewer. It’s based the wp-lightbox plugin and on the Image Thumbnail Viewer from Dynamic Drive.

Widget Logic
» Alan Trewartha (url)
Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc

Woopra
» Elie El Khoury (url)
This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Simply sign up at Woopra.com, then activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings.

WP-PageNavi
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

WP-Polls
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

WP-PostViews
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.

WP-PostViews Widget
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a PostViews Widget to display most viewed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostViews first.

WP-Stats
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display your WordPress blog statistics. Ranging from general total statistics, some of my plugins statistics and top 10 statistics.

WP-Syntax
» Ryan McGeary (url)
Syntax highlighting using GeSHi supporting a wide range of popular languages. Wrap code blocks with <pre lang=”LANGUAGE” line=”1″> and </pre> where LANGUAGE is a geshi supported language syntax. The line attribute is optional.

WP Ajax Edit Comments
» Ajay D’Souza (url)
Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

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WordPress MU 2.7 Now Available

WordPress MU 2.7 Now Available

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

Donncha has announced the release of WordPress MU version 2.7 today. Donncha states that this release is mostly a code sync release but it also contains quite a few bug fixes. The most notable change in WordPress MU is the addition of Viper007bond’s admin bar. Upgrading to the latest release should be as simple as overwriting the old files with the new ones. However, always make a backup copy first before doing anything! Congrats goes out to Donncha and to everyone who submitted a patch for the slickest version of MU to date. (MU now has the same backend design as WordPress 2.7)

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WPWeekly Episode 39 – Special Interview With Michael Pick

WPWeekly Episode 39 – Special Interview With Michael Pick

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

wordpressweekly1On the evening of Tuesday, January 27th, I had the pleasure to converse with Michael Pick, an employee of Automattic and also the guy behind the newly launched WordPress.TV. WordPress.TV is a new website which aggregates all sorts of WordPress content in video form. The site has already made a name for itself by showcasing many of the videos from recent WordCamps. Here is just a sampling of what we discussed during the show.

Here are some of the questions we covered on the show:

  1. What is the purpose of WordPress.TV?
  2. How did WordPress.TV reach fruition?
  3. Will WordPress.TV feature content created by people other than Automattic?
  4. What do you plan on doing with videos that seemingly disappear?
  5. Can someone suggest a video that is produced with a language other than English?
  6. If there were any plans to let the videos be downloadable or even a podcast?
  7. Are WordPress.tv videos released under the GPL? Would love to use this stuff for company training videos

Near the end of the show, I let my curiosity get the best of me.

Plug For A Podcast: Plugins Podcast is a podcast which aims to cover one WordPress plugin a week with occasional interviews of plugin developers as well as heavy plugin users. Episodes range between 10-15 minutes and are in mp3 format. Angelo already has a podcast available on the pluginspodcast.com website where he discusses the CForms2 Custom Forms plugin. So if you’re a plugin junkie, this sounds like the show for you.

Announcements: This Friday will be Keith Murray’s last episode as co-host of the show. Please stop by for the going away party as we send Keith off to greener pastures.

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe

Length Of Episode:47 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode39.mp3

Listen To Episode #39:

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Image courtesy of semperfiwebdesign

All In One SEO Hits One Million

By Jeffro on January 27, 2009

Just wanted to give a quick congratulations to Michael Torbert also known as hallsofmontezuma as the All In One SEO Pack has reached over 1,000,000 downloads. While Michael can’t lay claim to every single one of those downloads considering he picked up development for the plugin not too long ago, reaching one million downloads is still quite a milestone.

Image courtesy of semperfiwebdesign

Image courtesy of semperfiwebdesign

You would think that by now, WordPress would have added most of the functionality provided by the plugin into the core. But so far, that hasn’t happened yet and I’d like for it to stay that way. I think the AIO SEO Pack serves the needs of SEO perfectly fine as a plugin rather than being bundled into the core of WordPress.

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What WordPress Needs From Its New Community Leader

What WordPress Needs From Its New Community Leader

By Jeffro on January 27, 2009

The following guest post has been written by Andrew Rickmann who operates the Fun With WordPress website.

Not too long ago, on a domain not so far away, there was a disturbance in the community. It wasn’t the first, it won’t be the last, but it proved to me that a large distributed community like the WordPress community needs more than a project leader, more than a figure-head, and more than a great pool of evangelists. What WordPress needs is a community voice.

The voice of our community needs to be many things. First of all he needs to be respected, not for his mad coding skills, or his design acumen, but for his choice to look at things from a rational and considered perspective. He needs to know when the users are getting a raw deal from the developers, and when the developers are entirely correct in their expectation that users should go a little further to get what they want.

Secondly, while we shouldn’t rule out coding skills, he should be a user first, and a hacker last. He really needs to understand the frustration of getting a theme that doesn’t work, or following instructions that output something wrong, and not knowing how to fix it. This is a regular experience for all users, but where some people see this as a challenge to be solved we need someone who will simply say “hold on, I want this fixed“.

Third, he needs to be able to bring people together. Those people may be Matt and the users, or one user and another, or the community as a whole, but when there is a kerfuffle he needs to stop it in its tracks, strip away the emotions and religious intensity that so often surrounds such things, and help us get to the facts. He needs to mediate: a community peace envoy, if you wish to put it that way.

And of course he needs an appropriate platform from which to do that.

Finally, of course, he needs to love WordPress and the community he serves. He needs to find the new things fascinating sure, but he needs to care about what exists now. It is no good his being an uber-early adopter who quickly moves on to the next new project, he needs to use the mainstream every day and see the greatness in it, not get bored and hanker after progress.

So what does this all amount to in the real world? Well, for sure, it rules me out in so many ways. They say the best leaders are the people who don’t want to lead; I don’t know if that is true or not, but in this case I suspect it is. We have in our midst someone who never set out be a servant of the community. He never asked to be our voice, he just wanted to make a living from what he loved.

He built up his reputation by writing, by asking questions, by talking to the people who run the great ship WordPress, and putting to them the questions that we all had. Time and time again he has shown us new developments as well as great things about old developments. He has faced down Matt and asked “what the heck is going on with this?” and, more importantly, “What’s your favorite cheese?“. He has connected people. Promoted the views of users and hackers alike. And, through it all remained self deprecating, and one of us: the lowly users.

WP Tavern is already proving to be a great extension of this work. As I write this the very first post on the blog has 33 comments, the forum has 50 members and 750 posts, the first just ten days ago, and it hasn’t even been formally launched yet. Anyone who doubts that we have found our voice needs to come and be a part of this. It is only the beginning.

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Change Those FeedSmith FeedBurner Settings

Change Those FeedSmith FeedBurner Settings

By Jeffro on January 25, 2009

Do you use the FeedBurner Feedsmith plugin for WordPress which consolidates all of the various Feed URLs generated by WordPress into one FeedBurner feed? If so, you’ll need to update that plugins settings once you move your account over from FeedBurner to Google. If you don’t, your sites visitors will end up subscribing to a feed that doesn’t exist.

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WordPress.org Registration Form

Is WordPress Porn A Good Idea?

By Jeffro on January 25, 2009

A quick look at the most recently submitted WordPress ideas and it appears as though spam has once again been able to creep onto the site. However, the ideas section is not the only one to feel the onslaught of spam. The WordPress Hackers mailing list as well as the Testers mailing list every now and then gets a few spam messages. But more notably, the WordPress.org forum appears to receive spam posts every day. Unlike most other forums or registration forms, the one used on WordPress.org does not contain any CAPTCHA images or any anti-spam measures. This could be the reason behind the spam getting through which is then seen by quite a few people. Although I must say, the administrators/moderators do a great job of tracking that stuff down and keeping it at bay but they can’t catch them all, at least initially.

WordPress.org Registration Form

WordPress.org Registration Form

To top things off, both the Ideas and WordPress.org Support forum don’t provide much in the way of post reporting. At least in the forum, if you come across inappropriate content, you’re supposed to flag that thread by adding the tag ‘modlook‘. This seems to have worked thus far but the technique requires that end users read the Forum Rules Forum Post which outlines this method. But who reads rules now a days? Perhaps a REPORT button which is added to every forum thread or post which automates the task of adding the modlook tag would work out better with regards to community moderation?

With regards to the WordPress Ideas site, there is no RULES page which explains the type of content that can be added to that section of the site although each idea can have tags attached to it. Suffice to say, end users can add the modlook tag to ideas which need moderation but again, this requires prior knowledge on the end users part. Something a simple graphic button that says REPORT might be able to handle better. At least one member has proposed an idea similar to the one I just described which can be read here.

While I don’t venture into the Ideas site or the WordPress.org Forums as much as I’d like, it’s a bit concerning to visit those pages and see anywhere between 1-5 spam posts.

By the way, at least one person thought Pornamzon was a poor idea. See for yourself.

One Star For Porn Idea

One Star For Porn Idea

Now I ask that you join in on the conversation by offering your thoughts on the spam problem the various WordPress sites/mailing lists are dealing with. What are some of your ideas on how the team could better handle the situation?

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Innovative Use Of Private Pages

Innovative Use Of Private Pages

By Jeffro on January 24, 2009

Community member Itsananderson recently published a link on the forum to a blog post he wrote explaining how to use Pages in WordPress to allow end users the ability to edit their 404 template page with the Page editor instead of manually editing a 404.php template file. Like Anderson’s post title, this enables even your Grandma to manage 404 error pages within WordPress.

I have yet to come across a theme which uses this method to edit template files although I wonder how useful it would be for template files outside of the 404 page? Have you seen private pages used in this way before?

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PluginsPodcast – A Podcast All About Plugins

PluginsPodcast – A Podcast All About Plugins

By Jeffro on January 24, 2009

Just the other day, I received an email from Angelo Mandato letting me know that he was producing a WordPress podcast called simply enough, PluginsPodcast. The show aims to review a plugin each week with occasional interviews with plugin developers, heavy plugin users and much more. Shows last between 10-15 minutes and are in MP3 format. So far, Angelo has produced episodes for his very own BluBrry Powerpress podcasting plugin, Peters custom anti spam and CForms2.

I took a listen to Angelos overview of the BlurBrry Powerpress plugin and enjoyed the high audio quality. Considering the short nature of these episodes, I believe many of you will be adding this new podcast to your Itunes subscriptions as I did because just about the entire WordPress community loves plugins.

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