There is an interesting discussion taking place on the Make WordPress Themes site which is the home to the theme review team regarding jQuery and themes. There are three points that are being discussed:
The first point for discussion is that Themes should always use the current version of jQuery as bundled with WordPress, so as to avoid core/Plugin breakage due to an unexpected version (whether older or newer than the WordPress-bundled version).
The second point for consideration is that, if Themes should always use the current version of jQuery as bundled with WordPress, then Themes should not bundle their own version of jQuery, and should instead enqueue the core-bundled version, via wp_enqueue_script( ‘jquery’ ).
The third – and likely, most controversial – point for discussion is that Themes should not deregister the core-bundled jQuery, in order to register a CDN-hosted, minified version of jQuery, as such functionality is better-left to the end user, via Plugin.
While I don’t personally have any thoughts on any of the topics discussed, I figured most people may not keep an eye on this particular site so I needed to spread the word.
Hugo Baeta who has become one of the newest members of the Automattic team has showcased his love for WordPress by getting two tattoos on his body. The first tattoo which shows the WordPress W with what seems like vines around the circle. All in all, it looks pretty good, especially the straight lines in the W.
WordPress On The Shoulder
The second tattoo is the motto of WordPress spread across the forearm. Once again, the detail is pretty good as it looks like a stencil was used. Congrats to Hugo on his new job, I just hope his feelings for WordPress are for life and not just a spur of the moment thing. Also, I wonder if the WordPress Foundation gave him permission to put the trademark onto his body? I ask that question jokingly.
Some folks in the WordPress community were bummed when they found out that Alex King, the guy behind Crowd Favorite announced that he was going to shut down his side project, WordPress HelpCenter because it never gained the traction with developers that Alex was aiming for. This also provided Alex more of an opportunity to concentrate on CrowdFavorite.
WP Help Center Reopens March 14th
As you can see from the image above, the WordPress HelpCenter will be opening its doors again on March 14th under new management. Nathan Garza who has worked with Crowd Favorite will be the new owner of the Help Center while Alex King will be affiliated with the site by being on the board of advisers. Alex states that he won’t be involved in the day-to-day operations of the site and hopes that his experience will be useful for Nathan.
If you used the WordPress HelpCenter in the past, keep an eye out for the reopening as there is a possibility that the business will be structured differently than it’s initial offering.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I shared a couple pieces of information such as the WordPress Weekly podcast has now been properly archived within the WPWeekly category here on WPTavern. I also explained what I’ve been up to regarding the Tavern forum as well as some miscellaneous stuff. After discussing some news stories during the week, I interviewed Lance Willett (@simpledream on Twitter) who is head of the theme wrangler team for Automattic to not only talk about themes in general, but the big news concerning commercial themes now available for WordPress.com users. There interview went off very well and I’m grateful Lance could spend part of his weekend with me.
P.S. Check out the newly designed ThemeShaper.com, the main site for the Automattic Theme Wranglers.
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WooThemes has published the 5th iteration of their comic, WooVille. This time they have taken the WordPress themeing community and transformed it into a cool comic. It took me a little while but I eventually discovered the Woo Ninja who was cleverly in disguise with his surroundings. However, as was shared earlier in the week, this particular part of the image is my favorite and the most humorous.
Guess Who
It shouldn’t take anyone more than 10 seconds to realize who that person is although the illustration certainly shows a different captain biceps that I know. Also of humorous note is that Matt Mullenweg is up in the air in a helicopter overseeing all of the theme companies. I wonder if that chopper is loaded with lawyer cannons for anyone that wants to go the opposite way of the GPL. I’m joking of course but it’s funny to think of lawyers being shot out of a cannon anyways.
Well, here is something you don’t get to read every day. Byrne Reese who was the former product manager of Movable Type and TypePad as well as an employee of Six Apart from 2004-2008 wrote a great article outlining the various facets that have contributed to the success of WordPress. It’s a great post because it comes from someone that was in the trenches for the competition.
I’ve been involved in the WordPress community since 2007 but in reading the Codex as well as various articles from the past, it seemed as though one of the biggest reasons that WordPress was able to generate a strong nucleus of developers and an exponentially growing user base was because of the licensing fiasco that took place in 2004. It was one of those events in time that if it didn’t happen, who knows if WordPress would still be in existence today. Since then, WordPress has become the cream of the crop for web publishing. However, the article is a good read because of the insights that are learned from the mistakes that were made by Six Apart which played a role in their demise as a market leader.
I also recommend reading Mark Jaquiths comment on the post as he said something that I think more people need to realize.
It is worth distinguishing between Automattic/WordPress.com vs. Six Apart and WordPress/WordPress.org vs. Movable Type. Movable Type is a Six Apart product, but WordPress is not an Automattic product. It is an independent project that Automattic contributes to. But the community is much bigger than that (take me, for example, an independent). The rivalry between Six Apart and Automattic is a run-of-the-mill business rivalry, and one I’m glad I could sit out. The rivalry between Movable Type and WordPress was different. It was about a product versus a project.
Remember, at the end of the day, choose and use the best publishing system for the job. WordPress can do many things but it can’t do everything which is why it’s great to know there are alternatives available.
WordPress 3.0.5 was released the other day to address a couple of issues dealing with security and untrusted user accounts. While those issues were addressed, it was soon discovered that one of the security fixes for 3.0.5 created another problem of stripping HTML on display from people with the unfiltered_html capability. Instead of fixing that minor problem and releasing 3.0.6 which would have been embarrassing to say the least, a hot fix was applied to the latest version of Akismet which was also due for an upgrade. This solved the problem for at least a few users but not everyone.
Mark Jaquith then created a plug in which contains the hot-fix but also mentioned that the plug in could be used in the future to fix selected bugs as well. If a number of WordPress powered sites would have this plug in installed, it would be a handy way of pushing out fixes.
I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning behind this. 3.1 is right around the corner and that branch already has the fix applied while those who know how can simply update their sites via SVN through the nightly builds. In the comments, Ozh also raises a good point in that how do you explain the difference between a hot fix versus an update for WordPress? It’s an unnecessary process that I don’t want to go through. There was also the suggestion of perhaps bundling the Hotfix plug in with WordPress like Hello Dolly or Akismet which is a bad idea. There is a strong contingent of people (I’m one of them) working hard to try and de-couple Hello Dolly and Akismet from the core package of WordPress and the last thing we need is yet another bundled plug in with core.
The best recommendation came from Andrew Nacin in the comments of strengthening the update procedures of WordPress. By the way, one tidbit of information to keep in mind throughout all of this is that somewhere around WordPress 3.2, the goal is to stop updating over the wp-content directory which I know will make some people happy.
Today, I’ve done something that I haven’t done in a long time and that is schedule an episode of WordPress Weekly. This Saturday, I’ll be interviewing Lance Willett who is head of the theme wrangler team for Automattic. We’ll be discussing all sorts of stuff related to themes including the big news of last week concerning commercial themes and WordPress.com. Be sure to join us live on Saturday, February 12th at 3PM EST, to participate in the festivities. There is also a rumor that Ian Stewart will be in the chat room during the show.
While the show used to be at 2PM EST, due to a shift change at work, I’ve increased the starting time by one hour. If you have any questions you’d like me to ask Lance, feel free to post them in the comments.
While there has been a drought in WordPress Weekly, there is a brand new WordPress centric podcast to take a listen to called daWP show. The podcast is in it’s beginning stages with two episodes completed with another on the way. The show is produced by Josh Feck and covers specific topics while at the same time, mentioning a bunch of cool links he’s discovered. So far, Josh has been the man at the helm and although he’s produced the show by himself, it doesn’t come across as sounding monotone. The WordPress community could always use a few more podcasts dedicated to the software as usually, there is a ton of stuff going on that needs to be covered.
You can follow the show through iTunes via the following link.
Is anyone out there interested in adding Post Format support to the WPTavern theme including the necessary styles to go with them? I’m willing to pay $20.00 to have this done as I’m currently working on some other things and don’t have time to add the support let alone the stylesheet additions. If you’re interested in playing around with the Tavern theme, it’s called Tavern News and can be downloaded from here. Note that it’s a child theme for the Hybrid Theme Framework by Justin Tadlock so you’ll need to have that installed in order for Tavern News to work.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I shared a couple pieces of information such as the WordPress Weekly podcast has now been properly archived within the WPWeekly category here on WPTavern. I also explained what I’ve been up to regarding the Tavern forum as well as some miscellaneous stuff. After discussing some news stories during the week, I interviewed 
