By Jeffro on April 17, 2012
A few weeks ago, I posted a link to an article Lorelle put together showcasing the various stats surrounding WordPress and its community. Joost de Valk has taken those stats as well as some others that his team discovered and generated an infographic that visually represents the data. One of the stats that I find impressive is the fact that Freelancer.com reported that 100,000 WordPress developers across the world are listed on the service with reports of over 3.6 million dollars of WordPress projects completed.
What’s even more impressive is that WordPress has yet to reach a saturation point. There are still plenty of people out there that some day could potentially become WordPress users. So while the numbers we see today are huge, I imagine they’ll be even bigger in the next 2-3 years.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged infographic, stats, yoast |
By Jeffro on April 16, 2012
Everyone has an opinion as to what WordPress needs and Dev4Press recently shared theirs on what they believe WordPress needs with regards to features. Any time I read a post like this, it’s as if I can hear the core team in my head yelling out “patches welcome“. But you know, just because you dedicate time to produce a patch that includes the functionality you would like to see in core that works flawlessly with WordPress does not guarantee that the functionality will end up within the core of WordPress. So in that sense, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Of course, there is always the plugin route.
I agree with Dev4Press when they mention that the built-in search functionality in WordPress sucks and needs a major overhaul. It’s something that many users have requested for over two years. Unfortunately, due to complexity or lack of resources, we have yet to see any overhaul on this part of WordPress. There are plugins that enhance this ability but nothing within the core that makes it better. The other issue I wanted to address with the post on Dev4Press concerns their request that Akismet be removed from the default WordPress package as they think it’s a commercial plugin and thus, unfair to commercial plugin authors. In my opinion, as long as Akismet has the free option, it’s not a commercial plugin. However, I’d still like to see it and all other plugins removed from the default installation package just to tidy things up.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged akismet, features, wordpress |
By Jeffro on April 13, 2012
VaultPress is a cool security service by Automattic, but if you take a look at the pricing and plans, some may think that this is the luxury line of data safekeeping. However, tons of people that have had to utilize the restoration feature of VaultPress say it’s worth every penny. Boles University.com has a non-profit WordPress multi-site installation with about 14 sub-domains under its belt. VaultPress supports multi-site but if the subscription is for the main site, only the main sites files and data will be backed up, sub-sites will be ignored. In order to backup everything, each site within the multi-site installation needs their own individual subscription. As you can imagine, it wouldn’t take long for that to be expensive. As David W Boles points out in his article, it would be nice to see VaultPress come up with some sort of plan that allows non-profits the ability to backup their main site along with their satellite sites for a much more affordable price. I’m not sure how VaultPress would be able to verify whether a multi-site installation is non-profit or not without paperwork validation but it certainly seems like this is a missed oppurtunity market segment for VaultPress.
This is the world of WordPress which means there are alternatives when it comes to safekeeping your data. A relatively new service called BackupPress performs many of the same functions as VaultPress but at a much more affordable price. In fact, taking a look at their comparison page, they support WordPress multi-site at just 25$ per year. At the time of publishing this article, I couldn’t locate any specific text that states restrictions similar to VaultPress in that each sub-domain within a multi-site network would need it’s own subscription. Hopefully, a representative from the service will stop by the comments section and fill us in on the details.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged backuppress, security, vaultpress |
By Jeffro on April 11, 2012
WordPress has a reputation of being very portable but after reading a recent article on WPGarage.com, there is a certain condition in which the data in WordPress can become non-portable. It has to do with the serialization of data. However, they offer up a few different ways in which to deal with the problem so that you don’t lose data via a database dump. ∞
Posted in Uncategorized, WordPress | Tagged code, database, serialize |
By Jeffro on April 10, 2012
Yesterday on Twitter, I was informed of a new WordPress code snippets library that sprang up called WPFunction.me. The site has an easy to use interface for grabbing code snippets. While at first, it seems as though you need to perform a lot of scrolling to select code snippets and get the code, you can alleviate the scrolling by clicking on the preview link.
However, if you decide that this snippets website is not your cup of tea, check out the list of WordPress Code Snippet repositories put together by CatsWhoCode.com.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged code, respository, snippets |
By Jeffro on April 9, 2012
For the second time in two years, Dan Tynans website, eSarcasm.com has been hacked, this time with code that redirected referrals from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to Viagra ad sites. After conducting a thorough security review with Code Garage.com, an online security scanning website similar to Securi, they discovered that the point of entry was with the zero-day Timthumb vulnerability discovered back in August of 2011.
Last August, a zero-day vulnerability affected TimThumb that allowed hackers to execute their PHP code on any site that was running it. As it turns out, the WordPress theme we bought for the site employs pieces of TimThumb code — including the flaws that were exploited.
Now we have to wait for the spammy search results to evaporate from Google’s cache before everything returns to normal.
Be sure to read the tips that Dan and his security adviser provides on protecting your site. Despite the vulnerability being patched soon after its discovery, sites are still becoming compromised. Because of the long tail effect and so many websites using WordPress these days, who knows when this point of entry will stop being taken advantage of.
Posted in News | Tagged pcworld, security timthumb |
By Jeffro on April 6, 2012
A good example showcasing the is_plugin_active conditional statement that saved Peter from a whole lot of donkey work. All it took was 12 lines of code. ∞
Posted in Themes | Tagged links, resources, statements
By Jeffro on April 6, 2012
DynamicWP has put together a list of 11 plugins that are especially helpful for writers using WordPress. One of the nifty plugins from that list that I discovered is AP Style Dates And Times. This plugin automatically abbreviates times and months according to the AP Style guide.
The second resource that you should keep handy if you’re the journalist type is a post written by Ryan Imel on WPCandy.com that lists a number of different services and plugins that Ryan has used to keep WPCandy readers up to date on everything happening within the world of WordPress.
Posted in News | Tagged links, Plugins, resources
By Jeffro on April 5, 2012
In what seems like forever since the last major release of WordPress, 3.4 Beta 1 has been released. You should know the routine by now. Don’t run beta software in a production environment. Instead, set up a local install or a mirrored copy somewhere else for testing. If you encounter a situation that you think is a bug, you can use the methods described within this Codex article to report it.
If you decide to give WordPress 3.4 Beta 1 a whirl, here are a couple of things to take a closer look at.
- Theme Customizer with Previewer
- Flexible Custom Header Sizes
- Selecting Custom Header and Background Images from Media Library
- Better experience searching for and choosing a theme
If you noticed that these all appear to be improvements around themes, there is a reason for that. Back in early January when the scope for WordPress 3.4 was being discussed, the overall theme (pardon the pun) for this release centered around the sites appearance.
The idea is that a combination of front-end features, dashboard features, and under-the-hood improvements all tied to managing your site’s appearance will be the focus of 3.4. It will also include smaller things that don’t live in the appearance section but are related to the overarching goal, such as making it possible to have links in image captions.
Speaking of links within image captions, this functionality should be in 3.4 beta 1 and is something I, and many others have wanted within WordPress for a long time. This little addition will make it a breeze to add attribution to images when performing an image only post. There are under the hood improvements as well but what I’ve covered here should be a good start.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged images, themes scope |
By Jeffro on April 3, 2012
Sometimes, the most difficult task at hand when operating a website is locating the documentation that helps solve a problem. For those of you who have been looking for a WordPress Multisite reference book to help get you started, Mika Epstein and Andrea Rennick have co-authored a book specifically for WordPress Multisite. The book contains over 40 pages of information ranging from installation to configuration. However, one of the more interesting aspects of the book is that the price tag is PWYW otherwise known as Pay What You Want. Mika suggests $5.00 but it’s not a mandatory amount. Since Sunday, she has seen over 500 downloads of the book while earning $150.00. With that said, the book has been released under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license which basically means you can use it on your website, put it within the Codex, give it away to someone, but what you can’t do is make money from it. I encourage you to read her take on why she released the book as is.
I think one of the things worth taking away from this little experience is that code is GPL, text is not.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged ebook, information, multisite |
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A few weeks ago, I posted a link to an article Lorelle put together showcasing the various stats surrounding WordPress and its community. Joost de Valk has taken those stats as well as some others that his team discovered and generated an infographic that visually represents the data. One of the stats that I find impressive is the fact that Freelancer.com reported that 100,000 WordPress developers across the world are listed on the service with reports of over 3.6 million dollars of WordPress projects completed. 