In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I discussed some of the possible changes I have planned for WPTavern.com. I covered some history around why I started the site and why now, things have to change somewhat. Short and sweet episode this week.
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This is just a friendly reminder that episode 108 of WordPress Weekly will be recorded this Saturday at 2PM EST. I’ll be talking about the news stories that caught my eye during the week, the release of 3.0.2, and last but not least, some changes to WPTavern.com. The changes are not major but I figured I’d tell everyone what’s going on so we’re on the same page. I’ll tell the story of why I started WPTavern, what I wanted to accomplish and why I have to do what I’m doing now. By the way, I’m not selling the site or the show. I can’t bring myself to do that.
In this episode, I was joined by Grant Griffiths, one of the team members behind HeadwayThemes.com. During the show, we discussed a number of different topics such as how he got involved with WordPress, the awesome visual editor within Headway, how business has been treating him and much more. We also covered a few of the news stories that made the headlines this week including a plugin that specifically deals with headlines. Hope all who celebrated Thanksgiving had a filling meal. I’m still eating ham and turkey!
On this weeks edition of WordPress Weekly, Grant Griffiths will be joining me live for the duration of the show to talk about the release of Headway 2.0. We’ll also discuss his commercial theme business, themes in general, and perhaps a few business oriented things to top it off. During the show, I’ll be giving away at least 1 copy of Headway 2.0 to a lucky listener or caller.
If you have any questions you’d like me to ask Grant during the show, feel free to post them in the comments below. Other than that, make sure to visit the WordPress Weekly podcast page at 2PM EST this Saturday to participate in the show live as it’s being recorded.
Matt Mullenweg was recently interviewed by KTEH who produces the program, “This Is Us“. The interview goes over a bunch of information such as Automattic, Matt’s enjoyment of WordCamps, the GPL licensing, and more. This is a great 5 minute spotlight for anyone that is not familiar with Matt. One of the best things he said during this interview was that:
It’s never good to see something you put your heart and soul into, being used for morally odious purposes. But, ultimately, the freedom to use the software for any purpose is far more important than the fact that I might disagree with some folks who use it.
He even talks a little bit about the legal action threat against Chris Pearson earlier this year.
Andrew Nacin who many in the WordPress community know as a house hold name by now has published a retrospective post into his first year heavily involved with WordPress development since his first patch was submitted. One of the most encouraging lines within hist post is the following:
I’ve learned what it means to have an opinion without having a personal agenda.
Not only does Andrew tell us what it’s been like for him to be a part of the WordPress development community the past twelve months, but we also find out that he is writing the core contributor handbook which may be ready by the end of this year. Also for those that don’t know, Andrew Nacin is the technical editor of the new book, Professional WordPress Plugin Development which I talked about with Brad Williams during episode 105 of WordPress Weekly. Andrew is one of those people who constantly makes me wonder, how does he do that? Personally, I think he has some robotic DNA within him but who knows.
The bottom line is, thanks to his incredible amount of time devoted to the project, WordPress is better because of it, minus the capital P dangit filter. From me to you, thank you Andrew for your commitment to the project and helping my install of WordPress to perform better.
In the first half of the episode, Gil Rutkowski otherwise known as FlashingCursor on twitter joined me to discuss post formats, a new feature slated for WordPress 3.1. We went over what a post format is, data portability, why the core dev team decided on a standard set of formats, and much more.
During the second half of the show, I played a pre-recorded interview with Chip Bennett which went over a ton of information related to the Theme Review Team. In the interview, we discuss how the team was formed, the guidelines of reviewing a theme, and last but not least, the goal of the theme review team. After the interview concluded, I was joined live by Edward Caissie who is a member of the theme review team to answer some additional questions I had, specifically dealing with the new post formats featuring which will be theme dependent.
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What’s that sound? It’s a cannon ball being shot over the bow of Tumblr. The big discussion point over the past two days has revolved around a new feature slated to hit WordPress 3.1 called Post Formats. Otto as well as Mark Jaquith do a great job explaining what these are. To make a long story short, Tumblr has different ways of displaying content depending upon which format is being used. Matt Mullenweg has actually been doing something similar with his own site at Ma.tt which Otto shows screenshots of. While the notion of displaying content differently based on the type of content being published is not new, the way of doing it currently does not lend itself to data portability.
This is why the core developers have decided to settle on a standard set of post formats. A standard set of formats enables users to switch themes without losing the way in which those post formats are displayed. It’s also been decided that there will be no API calls or hooks available to extend or modify the standard set of post types which is a rare thing in WordPress considering there is usually always a way to modify or extend a feature set. I was against the idea of post formats until I figured out that they are different from post templates, which I use for content that is the same but with different values. Instead, I’m getting excited about the ability to be able to post just a link or maybe just a quote from an interesting piece dedicated to WordPress. Post formats will simply make it easier to publish short-form content and display that content differently than regular posts.
Another thing that interests me regarding the inclusion of post formats is that WordPress.com will most likely see this same feature added to the service which would basically empower WordPress.com users to publish posts just like those on Tumblr with the only thing missing being a slick Bookmarklet. If both WordPress.com and WordPress the open-source project both have this feature set, what will this do to disrupt Tumblr? Considering the strength of Tumblr will essentially become a feature of WordPress, what drive will there be to continue using the service? Granted, perhaps the WordPress implementation won’t be as pretty as theirs but still, I’d be somewhat worried if I were Tumblr. This addition to the software could possibly contribute to a sizable chunk of the Tumblr audience migrating to WordPress.com.
On the flip side, both WordPress and Tumblr continue to co-exist and nothing much really changes. What do you think?
Matt Mullenweg who every now and then publishes a long essay did so today on his personal site Ma.tt, talking about version 1.0 of software and how it’s the loneliest number. In the post, he mentions how Apple is not afraid to release a first gen product that contained flaws because waiting in the wings was the iPhone 3G ready to correct the flaws and public perception of the first generation product. Matt goes on to talk about the time frame between WordPress version 2.0 which was released on December 31st, 2005 while version 2.1 was released on January 22nd, 2007. Quite a long time between releases. Although on paper it looked like the development team took a hiatus, in fact, that specific time period saw a rapid rise in developers contributing to WordPress. However, the ‘one more thing‘ problem crept up preventing a release from happening sooner.
I think that is a common problem amongst software in general, proprietary or open. I can’t recall the first generation of a product or piece of software that was perfect. One more thing syndrome is a mindset issue. Matt illustrates this perfectly within the following paragraph:
I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let’s just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed. But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.
This made me think of the slogan, ‘release early, release often‘. However, you can’t release too early and too often because it will wear out the patience of users. As a software developer, you’ll do more harm than good. That’s why as it relates to the WordPress.org development cycle, I think that 3 major releases per year is a good balance between releasing often and not having a space in-between that would allow for the kitchen sink to be added to the software. Now that software upgrades are relatively pain free with the automatic upgrade system built into WordPress, the interim releases after major releases are not such a problem anymore.
Something that I think theme, plugin and software developers in general should take to heart is the following:
Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.
Your Thoughts:
How many of you out there are sitting on plugins, themes, or little software projects of your own because you feel that they are not ready for release or that the public will consider what you’ve created to be a bunch of crap? Also, I’d like to hear your take on the 3 Major releases per year strategy for WordPress. Is that a good balance or do you think it’s too much or too little?
In this long awaited live edition of WordPress Weekly, I gave everyone a detailed description as to my whereabouts within the past few months. I then went through some news stories that caught my eye during the week. The show ended with a 20 minute interview with Brad Williams discussing his work with WebDevStudios.com, Pluginize, WPClassroom.com and a few other projects he’s working on. I hope I can get back to doing these shows on a regular basis.
On the next episode of WordPress Weekly, I’ll be playing an interview with Chip Bennett discussing various facets of the WordPress Theme Review Team as well as the review guidelines.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I discussed some of the possible changes I have planned for WPTavern.com. I covered some history around why I started the site and why now, things have to change somewhat. Short and sweet episode this week. 
