Back on August 25th, the guys over at Interconnect/it released a brand new plugin called Spots. If I had to describe this plugin in one sentence, I’d say it was a text widget on steroids.
There are quite a few things that make this plugin very cool to use. The first is that it uses a custom post type which means when you create a spot, you get access to the editor as if you were writing a post. You also get access to all the stuff that’s normally attached to a post with the exception of tags and categories. Because you get to use the normal editor, it’s very easy to add media to the spots that are created without using blocks of HTML as you normally would within a text widget.
After a spot is created, you can add it to any sidebar that’s built for widgets. However, you’re not limited to using spots in the sidebar only. In the Visual editor for writing posts, there is a Spots button which uses a shortcode to insert the spot into a post or page.
Shortcode Button That Inserts The Spots Shortcode
Developers can also take advantage of this plugin by using the built in functions. For example, instead of hard coding text into a widget within the footer of a theme, you could turn it into a spot which would enable the end user to customize that spot with whatever they want from the administration panel, not having to touch any code. By doing it this way, theme developers could probably get rid of a couple theme options for text areas or default widget areas.
Conclusion:
Spots is an awesome plugin by the crew over at Interconnect/it. People have been wanting WYSIWYG functionality in text widgets since the day they were introduced into WordPress. This plugin does that and so much more. If you’re looking for a replacement for the default text widget in WordPress that provides more flexibility, definitely give Spots a try.
According to Peter Bright over at the Technorati blog, the best thing about his iPhone is the WordPress App. While it works great for him, the latest version doesn’t play so nice on my particular iPhone 4. When I try to moderate comments, the app crashes. I’ll be publishing a report as well as a support query on the iPhone WordPress App support forums shortly. ∞
Generally common sense material listed in the article but it’s always good to remind people about these techniques. As far as I’m concerned, just being in the know and having the awareness of what’s going on is half the battle.
On a final note, while website security can seem daunting and intimidating, it’s something that should be approached from a standpoint of keeping aware and in the know such that, if issues do arise on your website, you are able to calmly resolve the issue and get your website back to where it was, knowing full-well the scope of the security measures in place.
Here is something you don’t get to see all the time. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Drupal founder Dries Buytaert shared the same stage at an event called Schipulcon. While catering to the web marketing crowd, the event also has a short but concise mission statement:
To grow community champions that make the world a better place through extraordinary thinking, smart technology and cross-industry creativity.
Schipulcon took place in Houston, Texas which is the hometown of Matt Mullenweg. While some expected the two founders to duke it out, according to some in the audience, it looked more like a bromance.
Dries Buytaert and Matt Mullenweg at SchipulCon 2011 by Ed Schipul
Video for this session if not currently available but the folks who ran the event have said that the video will be published soon. However, there were a couple of notable quotes that were shared over twitter. Here is just a sampling.
kamichat
Wordpress founder @photomatt says the next gen for Wordpess is more social and mobile. #schipulcon – via
Beccamus
Cool! Some of the best tech & creative opportunities developed in #Houston like wordpress by @photomatt #schipulcon – via
Janerri
Though biased, I’m enjoying the contrast & comparison of @Drupal @WordPress It’s friendly now, how long will that last? #schipulcon – via
AshleyRSmall
Our architecture is our greatest advantage over WordPress – @dries #schipulcon – via
thisisnotapril
“If WordPress wins; Drupal wins. Because it means open source wins.” -@Dries #schipulcon – via
qcait
Wordpress @photomatt’s Drupal developer profile is #5665, created 8 yrs ago. Profile lists “simplicity” as an interest. #schipulcon – via
I for one am seriously looking forward to watching the video of this session once it’s released.
Additional photos of Matt Mullenweg and Dries Buytaert can be found within this photoset.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I had a roundtable discussion with longtime WordPress community member Eric Mann on a number of topics mentioned in previous episodes. The end of the show featured an interview with Taryn and Martin who are organizers of WordUp Edinburgh to talk about not only the event but also about the WordCamp Guidelines and the interesting dynamic of hosting WordCamp events in the U.K. region.
According to the revised project schedule, WordPress 3.3 beta 1 is expected to be released sometime on Friday, October 7th. Ryan Boren has published a list of things on the to-do list in order to get WordPress 3.3 to beta status. ∞
If you’re curious into how some of the decisions are made regarding the UI/UX area of WordPress, definitely check out this post by Jane Wells on the WordPress Developers Prologue site where she explains the results of her tests using WordPress 3.3 pre-beta. Also worthy of note is the discussion within the comments regarding the Feature Pointers and the concern of whether or not plugin and theme authors will abuse them. ∞
With the passing of Steve Jobs, memorials and tributes are showing up all over the web. While BoingBoing.net seems to be one of the more popular tributes, I’m happy to inform you that if you’re using WordPress, you too can join in with the same tribute of making your site look like the Mac OS via a freely available WordPress theme called Retro MacOS.
Tribute Based On Retro MacOS WordPress Theme
According to the release post, this was Stuart Browns first WordPress theme which was created during the days of WordPress 2.1.2. However, it appears to work fine for the latest version of WordPress if BoingBoing.net is anything to go by.
I wonder if via this theme, WordPress users can celebrate a new holiday called Steve Jobs day by having our site look like the retro MacOS every year on October 5th. I think it would be pretty interesting to browse some of the largest sites using WordPress when they use this theme just to see how it looks. At the very least, this is one way WordPress users can pay tribute to a great man.
Since publishing more content for WPTavern, I’ve become quite fond of the ability to schedule posts into the future. However, one gripe I’ve had is not being able to easily identify the time a post has been scheduled to be published. I was hoping that at some point in the future, on the All Posts administration panel that I would be able to see the time the post was going to go live under the term Scheduled, instead of having to go into the edit panel for the post to see the exact time. My mouse cursor must have been at the right place at the right time because I discovered tonight that if I hover my mouse cursor over the date the post has been scheduled, a tool-tip will appear that gives me the exact time.
It’s little things like this that I really appreciate.
One of the coolest things about BuddyPress is that when it was developed by Andy Peatling, he made sure to put in a considerable amount of effort into creating a BuddyPress Starter theme as well as a BuddyPress starter plugin. Knowing that those two things would be often used as the beginning stages of a plugin or theme, only the best coding practices were used as a means of not only having a blank slate to start from, but also teach developers at the same time. It’s like Hello Dolly! but without the lyrics. Boone Gorges has announced that the tradition has continued with the release of BuddyPress Skeleton Component v1.6. The new release features the following:
Refactored to use the BuddyPress 1.5′s new BP_Component class, making it dead-simple to register globals, create navigation items, and hook into the BP load order
File structure reorganized to better reflect BP 1.5′s organization, and to provide more fine-grained access to functions
Data storage class totally refactored, to use custom post types and WP_Query, instead of custom database tables.
Added a small guide for creating a top-level component directory (a “root component”), which was missing in earlier versions
Tons of documentation added and revised
All WP_DEBUG notices removed
It’s important to know that any plugin built from version 1.6 of the Skeleton Component will be incompatible with BuddyPress versions prior to 1.5. It’s recommended by Boone that you first create the plugin for BuddyPress 1.5 and build in backwards compatibility as an after thought.
Back on August 25th, the guys over at Interconnect/it released a brand new plugin called Spots. If I had to describe this plugin in one sentence, I’d say it was a text widget on steroids.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I had a roundtable discussion with longtime WordPress community member 
