Alex King has made available code that creates an admin UI for using Post Formats. While working on their upcoming new theme, FavePersonal, the CrowdFavorite team created an admin interface for post formats that takes advantage of custom fields and replaces the built-in radio button post format selector with tabs across the top of the post editor. Judging by the comments and tweets, it looks like a lot of people would like to see this end up in the core of WordPress. ∞
Service To Help Migrate From Drupal To WordPress
Migrating from Drupal to WordPress is one of the more difficult migration paths. There are scripts available to migrate from Drupal 6 to WordPress but the way in which those scripts were created only allow for the migration of a specific version of Drupal to a specific version of WordPress. Most of the time, these scripts are written and shared by people that couldn’t find an easy path to move from one to the other and generally give up on maintaining the script after completing their move. Instead of relying on outdated scripts, you may want to check out MigrateToWP.com. These folks specialize in moving sites from Drupal into WordPress. While that is their specialty, they’ll also move plain HTML, Joomla, Blogger and other CMS sites as well.
Judging by their pricing page, they seem rather reasonable for what you get, especially when you compare those prices to getting a developer to provide you with a custom migration script. What’s not offered through the Professional plan can be accomplished with plugins after the move is complete. If no predetermined planned suits your needs, you can get in touch with them and they will provide you a free estimate.
If you’ve used this service before feel free to share your experience.
A Theme With 70 Different Widget Spots
I stumbled across this theme the other day called Tachyon by RocketTheme and noticed that is has 70 widget positions. That is insane. I can’t imagine how much of a burden or a nightmare it would be to manage something like that from the back-end of WordPress as just having 15 or so widgets can become cumbersome. This link will show you all of the various widget spots complete with there variations. Check out the following image which shows a blueprint of where all of the widget spots are located.
Checklist Of Things To Do Before Switching Themes
Great checklist created by WPBeginner of things to do before switching to a different theme. Out of everything they presented, number three hit home for me. After using a new theme for a few months, I decided to look at my Google Analytics and discovered that no stats were being saved from the date I switched my theme to the present. I obviously forgot to add the tracking code to the new theme. OOPS. ∞
Andrew Nacin Previews WordPress 3.3 At WordPressNYC Meetup
Andrew Nacin who is one of the core developers of WordPress gave a presentation at the most recent meetup in New York City covering WordPress 3.3. The video is 35 minutes in length with Andrew going in-depth on many of the features that 3.3 will have such as the admin bar, drag and drop media uploading, post names for permalinks and more. The video is best viewed at full screen. Thanks to Steve Bruner for the hat tip.
WPWeekly Episode 116 – WordPress And Drupal Founders Share Stage
This weeks edition of the show features a one hour presentation with the founders of Drupal and WordPress together on one stage to talk about Open Source. This presentation took place on October 6th through the 7th, 2011 at an event called Schipulcon which is a web marketing conference. Unfortunately due to audio problems, I had to cut out the first 5 minutes of the presentation so your ears don’t fall off. Special thanks goes out to Katie and the Schipulcon group for providing me this audio file as well as the permission to play it through the WordPress Weekly stream. The next live show is scheduled for Friday, October 28th at 9PM Eastern.
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Automattic Hires Philip Arthur Moore On As New Theme Wrangler
Philip Arthur Moore who previously worked for WordPress themeing company Graph Paper Press is now under employment by Automattic as a theme wrangler. Arthur has published a great story on how he’s been able to reach this point in his life.
The first projects I completed for Automattic as a trial Theme Wrangler were .org to .com conversions of the WordPress themes Nishita and Bold Life5. The responses to them made me feel wonderful and I hope that a year from now I have many more theme conversions, as well as theme creations, under my belt at Automattic.
Congrats Philip, you’ve joined one heck of a company. By the way, if you’re reading this and thinking about applying for a job at Automattic, the good news is that they’re hiring. Just ignore the pictures of the Pier 38 Automattic Lounge as it’s no longer in existence.
WordPress.com Blogs To Get More Advertising
Federated Media in partnership with Automattic has signed a deal to sell advertising to potentially 25 million websites spread across WordPress.com. This isn’t the first time the two have partnered up as FM and Automattic have been launching a series of websites for specific subjects such as FoodPress and EcoPress. This deal presents Federated Media the opportunity to sell highly relevant advertising in mass. For example, Automattic most likely has details that allow them to know the best performing sites on specific subjects such as automotive, food, tech, etc. This data can be used to display relevant advertising from FM so that the content and the advertising are related to each other.
One of the quotes I’m seeing attributed to Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic rubs me the wrong way.
Automattic’s WordPress software supports 25 million blogs with a combined readership of 300 million unique visitors per month — a total of 15 percent of the web sites on the Internet, Schneider said.
First off, the only thing of Automattics’ is WordPress.com. Secondly, while it seems like Toni is talking about 25 million blogs on WordPress.com, how can that be 15% of the internet? That’s like saying 15% of the internet calls WordPress.com home and I highly doubt that. The only way in which that makes sense is if you combine the sites using WordPress the self-hosted software and those hosted on WordPress.com.
Based on the press release on MarketWatch, the advertising will be Opt-In. One of the most important questions that has not been answered is how revenue sharing will work. One would hope that those who are creating the content will end up getting a small slice of the pie. If not, it’s a bad deal all the way around.
A First For Automattic – Investment In OwnLocal
Automattic which is the company behind WordPress.com and is usually the one being invested in has made an investment themselves in a company called OwnLocal based out of Austin, Texas. The company has existed since 2007 and is built around publications by providing the tools necessary for newspapers to own their local market, hence the name. Liz Gannes of AllThingsD was the first to break the story and managed to get this quote out of Matt regarding the investment.
Their approach is highly complementary to our own goals of making it easy for anyone in the world to have a beautiful Web site
It’s an interesting investment considering local newspapers appear to be dying by the day. But OwnLocal is doing so well that despite the total amount of 2 million dollars thus far in funding, they are currently supporting their staff of 20 based on the revenue they are generating.
Related But Not Required Reading:
OwnLocal nabs new funding from Automattic to resurrect newspaper revenues
Ownlocal scores funds to get small firms online
Chip Bennett Hits 1,000 Theme Reviews
Just a shout out and congratulations to Chip Bennett who recently hit the 1,000 theme reviews milestone. To see each one of his reviews, check out the ongoing list on Trac for the theme repository. Thanks Chip and the rest of the review team for providing your time and knowledge to making the theme repository a better place. .
If you want to learn more about the theme review team, you should listen to episode 106 of WordPress weekly where most of the episode centers around the topic.