As we near the release of WordPress 3.5, the docs team is looking for your help to insure that the Codex has all of the necessary information pertaining to the new release. So far, there is a hefty list of items that need to be added or amended in the Codex, especially as it pertains to media. You are encouraged to add to the list or if you’re a member of the Codex, to begin adding the necessary information.
Toni Schneider Interviewed On TechCrunch TV
Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic was recently interviewed on TechCrunch TV. In the interview, they discussed the new vertical launched on WordPress.com for restaurants. There were a couple of things within this interview that I found fascinating.
The first is that across the Automattic network which includes sites such as PollDaddy, Gravatar, VaultPress and WordPress.com, Quantcast reports 660,000,000 monthly unique visitors making it the largest network on Quantcast.
The second is that, WordPress.com operates on the principle of small, incremental changes to the service. Because of this, WordPress.com has gone through about 50,000 versions of WordPress, if every change was a bump in the version number. Even at their current size and scale, they still release multiple batches of code every day.
Thirdly, I thought it was interesting that Toni Schneider basically said that WordPress.com is following the lead of the overall WordPress community when it comes to features and or verticals on WordPress.com.
Last but not least, WordPress powers 17.2% of the web, Joomla powers 3% and Drupal has 2%. Everyone else encompasses the rest of the 100%. So while it seems like everyone and their mother as well as their grandpa has a site on WordPress, there is still a huge segment of the market that’s been untapped by WordPress.
After watching the interview, is there anything that surprises you or is this all par for the course?
Comparison Spreadsheet For Content Type And Custom Field Plugins
If you’re looking to use a Content Type or Custom Field plugin, your first stop should be this large comparison spreadsheet produced by Scott Kingsley Clark, Matt Gibbs and other plugin authors. The comparison spreadsheet shows the differences between the various plugins at a high level. Unfortunately, I can’t determine when this document was last updated or find an explanation of the various fields represented. For example, one of the fields talks about whether the team contributed back to the WordPress core. It would be interesting to know the qualifications for contributing back to core.
With so many plugins in existence that aim to serve the same purpose, more informative spreadsheets like these would definitely be beneficial for the community.
300 Free Icons For Web And User Interface Design
Adam Whitcroft has released a 300 icon kit for web and user interface design called Batch. Each icon is a single Photoshop layer making blend modes and scaling a breeze. According to the license, WordPress theme or plugin authors should be able to use these in their works:
You are free to use Batch (the “icon set”) or any part thereof (the “icons”) in any personal, open-source or commercial work without obligation of payment (monetary or otherwise) or attribution. Do not sell the icon set, host the icon set or rent the icon set (either in existing or modified form).
While attribution is optional, it is always appreciated.
Intellectual property rights are not transferred with the download of the icons.
This icon set previously had a price tag attached to it. Adam explained why that’s not the case anymore.
What Developers Should Know About WordPress 3.5
Oneextrapixel.com has a list of things that WordPress developers will need to know about concerning WordPress 3.5. However, end users are able to pick up a few things as well, especially the part about settings changes. According to the site, the admin page dedicated to Privacy settings has disappeared. The options on that page have been moved to the Reading Settings area. Also for new installs, the ability to change the Character set has been hidden and will use UTF-8 by default. I think this makes total sense and would like to see similar option UI be removed in the future. Even though the UI will be hidden, you can still access the option via options.php. Going this route seems similar to how FireFox works. While there are things to configure, those who want access to everything can go into About:config.
Over the years, the saying has been, “Decisions, not options“. I wonder when options.php will be renamed to decisions.php.
Nice Primer On Distributing Themes
Over on the Automattic Theme team blog, Michelle Langston has published a great primer on distributing themes whether they be free or commercially based. Besides the tips offered for distribution, the tutorial also covers a number of things all theme authors should consider doing before releasing there theme into the wild such as making sure it’s adaptable, adding a right to left style sheet and avoiding hard coding. I was happy to see that with regards to licensing, there wasn’t much fluff added. One other thing I noticed that theme authors should find helpful is a codex article that lists resources that are GPL-compatible such as Fonts and icon sets.