In episode 4 of the WebBoy comic series, Quinten finds himself overworked after working on customizing his contact form for days only to experience one problem after another. View the comic to see how Quinten gets help on getting email messages delivered. P.S. that ugly thing called spam makes an appearance in the comic. ∞
While reading a discussion that was being had by the folks who populate the WordPress Hackers Mailing list regarding the difference between the aside and status post formats, Mike Schinkel commented on a practice that I think needs to be stopped.
I’ve been noticing that some themers have decided to implement “link” post formats such that in archives and in the RSS feed the post title is used as the anchor text, and the hyperlink on that title is the actual link being published and NOT the permalink of the blog post that uses the “link” post format!
This approach violates all the experience we have become familiar with in blogs and especially RSS feeds, and can be very confusing when someone sees a link from an RSS feed, clicks the link expecting to be taken to the blog and gets taken elsewhere instead. Where it is especially confusing (and time wasting) is when the user (i.e. me) clicks the link and then switches tasks with plans to read the post later in the day while the blog post loads in the background. But then when I later view my open tabs in my browser I see a page from a web site that I think is just spam so I close it only to later in the day see the RSS feed again and think “Hmm, I never saw that” so I click again, and sometimes task switch after which the cycle continues.
So for the TL;DR crowd, themers PLEASE do not implement themes that break the standard UX for blogs; titles should be hyperlinked with permalinks to the blog post, nothing else. Show explicit link text and/or icon instead. It may seem “cool” but it can be hell on the blog’s readers. JMTCW, anyway.
Please don’t make the post title the actual link to an article when using the Link Post format. It prevents me from linking to you and it’s not the behaviour I’m expecting. I’m excepting to click the link to read comments or such on the post but because the title acts as a link, I pretty much have no way of getting there. It’s a frustrating experience and that’s why I agree with Mike!
Snowshoe Magazine has recently switched over their website from a Coldfusion installation into WordPress with the help of Serafini Studios. During the switch, Gabriel created custom code that exported 1,131 articles in 48 different categories as well as 1,184 events from ColdFusion into WordPress. According to the sites source-code, a custom theme is being used called Snowshoemag2011 with a myriad of familiar plugins such as Contact Form 7, Google Analytics by Yoast, All In One Event Calender and Featured Posts Scroll.
All in all, the site looks pretty good. The thing that gets me though is that I never knew snowshoeing was actually a sport.
Who doesn’t love a good infographic? Oli from WPLift.com has gone through the work of collecting all of the infographics related to WordPress that have been released so far this year into one long post. What’s neat about seeing all of these images on one page is the diversity in displaying relatively the same information. Also, quite a few of these would make for a good poster to hang on the wall. ∞
Well this is interesting. The team behind DevPress are planning to launch a plugin/theme review service. During the first phase of the launch, efforts will focus on theme reviews only. Justin Tadlock mentions that one of the driving factors behind the decision to launch the service is to fill the voids that exist with the theme repository review process.
Another driving factor behind this decision is that WordPress.org has an official theme review system, but it only applies to people who upload their themes to the repository. There’s no place for freelancers, non-repository hosted theme authors, and plugin developers to get an experienced team of professionals to look over their code.
So far, it looks like the process will involve a ticketing system where the theme author will have direct contact with the DevPress team during the review process. These reviews will not be free but will come with a cost. Currently, the price has been undetermined and they are currently reviewing feedback from commenters on what they think the price should be.
So one of the sticking points regarding this service is whether or not the theme reviews will carry any weight. DevPress is currently made up of Ptah Dunbar, Justin Tadlock and Tung Do all of whom are exceptional developers. If a plugin or theme is reviewed by Mark Jaquith as a paid audit, people sit up and take notice because of Mark’s reputation when it comes to WordPress security. I’m not sure if the same level of attention will be given to themes or plugins reviewed by the DevPress team although I don’t see why not, considering all three individual backgrounds. While I don’t have any information as to how much Mark charges for his time, something tells me that whatever price the DevPress team decides on will probably be under it.
That’s the end user side of the equation. For the developer, this could be a good deal considering who will be doing the reviewing. As Justin mentions, the more eyes that review your code, the better. Not just any eyes though. Experienced, talented developers that have proven their worth in the WordPress community that are fully concentrating on your code.
In my opinion, the market is definitely there for the taking with a service like this. But not just anyone can pull this off. Anyone could launch a review service but it’s the people behind it which make the difference. If anyone were going to pull this off successfully, I’d be willing to put money on the DevPress team.
Definitely read through the comments that have been published already as they provide food for thought.
Kevin Muldoon of WPMods.com has announced that he has relaunched the forum section of the site. The forums disappeared earlier this year due to spam and the stand alone version of bbPress not having a modern feature set. I thought Kevin would have given the newly released bbPress plugin a try when he relaunched but instead, he chose to use software that was created by former members of the vBulletin team. However, Kevin states that in a follow up post, he’ll explain why he chose not to use the bbPress plugin. ∞
When do you think that WordPress is going to completely rewrite their code base so it’s an actual CMS instead of a hacked together glorified blogging system?
I find I get that question quite a lot and it annoys me. WordPress is being rewritten all the time. Check out the development that happens on Trac. Most of the people who ask questions like that haven’t had a decent look at the codebase for ages. WordPress IS way more than a glorified blogging system already and if there are specific issues you have with the way it’s coded, patches are welcome!
My favorite question and answer via – Questions and Answers
It’s been a long time since I’ve visited the Kvetch page on WordPress.org but recently, I discovered that the page loads a random Kvetch that was submitted by a user upon each page load. Think of this form as an anonymous way to complain or get something off your chest related to WordPress. Now, I’ve never submitted anything to this form before but from reloading the page a couple of times, I’ve managed to see a few repeats as well as determine when some of the submissions were made based on their complaint. Here are a couple examples.
“It annoys me that for every single update I have to download the entire package again and upload it all again. It’s understandable for big updates, but small ones?”
Obviously submitted prior to WordPress 2.7. Can’t believe we’ve had automatic upgrades since 2.7 as it feels like the feature was only recently added.
“I hate having to fix stuff for IE just to get a theme to work!”
Some things never change.
“For God’s sake, guys, implement an auto-saver for posts in case you close a tab by mistake (or whatever happens), and save millions of lives.”
Now called Post Revisions introduced in WordPress 2.6
“Please change the admin interface. It is much too clunky. The Tiger plugin and it’s stylesheet is far easier to navigate and makes so much more sense.”
You’re wish has come true, in many versions actually. In fact, it’s still changing!
Those are just a few of my favorites from the page. I’d like to see whatever responses are in that database emptied out and started with fresh ones. Let’s read some anonymous complaints regarding WordPress 3.2 and beyond! Some of them are good for a laugh or two sometimes. Also, I think there would be enough submissions from people that we shouldn’t see a repeat for a very long time.
Sucuri Security has a great post that begins to review the aftermath of the massive exploitation of the TimThumb image re sizer script. According to their calculations, about a million pages have been compromised by the script but when filtering down their results for the past thirty days, there were over 200,000 results. The exploitation of the script is still an ongoing problem and will most likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. If you think an old version of the TimThumb script is on your server, use the TimThumb vulnerability scanner plugin.
The TimThumb exploitation event is interesting in that so many websites became compromised despite the issue not being relevant to the core of WordPress itself. I wonder if there are any other popular scripts or dependencies that plugins or themes use that could end up in the same situation? ∞
Akismet Testing Out Partner Program
By Jeffro on November 4, 2011
Pro ($59/yr or $5/mo)
For individual sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo.
Enterprise ($550/yr or $50/mo)
For multiple medium size sites, up to 80,000 comments/mo (total).
Corporate ($3950/yr or $395/mo)
For corporate sites, up to 300,000 comments/mo with key monitoring, priority service and annual invoicing.
What constitutes a comment? Are we talking about all comments in general that need to be filtered or 80,000 legitimate comments? A little clarity on that part would be good. Those who are chosen to be part of this strictly invitational program only, will receive $24.00 for Pro subscriptions while Enterprise subscriptions will net them $240.00. I’m very hesitant on calling this a referral program because of the following text presented on the page:
If you’re interested in being a guinea pig for this program, you can sign up here but keep in mind that just because you register doesn’t guarantee you will be accepted. By the way, WPCandy was able to receive 25 openings which may help boost your chances of being accepted.
By far, the most interesting aspect of this entire partner plan is the fact that the links people receive will contain ONLY the plans for which users must pay for. I wonder if this will translate into more paying customers for the service or if users will shy away and either use an alternative anti-spam solution or figure out how to get by using it for free. The only way we’ll know the answer to that is if Akismet shares the data they collected during the beta portion of the program.
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Posted in News | Tagged akismet, comments, services, spam | 5 Responses