By Jeffro on September 16, 2009
I’ll be out of town starting next week and although I think I’ll have a few posts of my own that I will schedule, I’m wondering if anyone within the community is interested in writing a guest blog post for this site? The article should be submitted through the WPTavern post submission form located here:
http://www.wptavern.com/submit-a-post
If your post has images, temporarily link to them in the post from an image host such as image shack. I will upload the images to WPTavern and put them in the right place. I’m looking for any posts within the following categories.
WordPress.org, WordPress MU, BuddyPress, Theme Review, Plugin Review, bbPress, Blogging
I’ve already had a few people volunteer to write a post for the site. If you can have the post submitted to WPTavern before the end of the day this Saturday, I would really appreciate it.
Posted in News | Tagged blog, guest, posts, wptavern
By Jeffro on September 15, 2009
The folks over at WPBeginner.com have put together a comprehensive list of the best 404 page designs they have come across from sites using WordPress. This showcase is good for inspiration for your own 404 page, a page which I usually neglect when it comes to WordPress themes. As long as the error shows up, I don’t go much beyond that point. Funny as it sounds, I tend to favor humorous 404 page designs instead of helpful ones. One other good bit of information is the list of tips that WPBeginner provides in order to add helpful information to the 404 page template within your WordPress theme.
What’s the best 404.php template you’ve seen come with a WordPress theme without modification?
Posted in News | Tagged 404, designs, error, pages, wordpress |
By Jeffro on September 10, 2009
I was tipped off by Brad Williams on Twitter, to this video based interview between Matt Mullenweg and Andrew Warner on Mixergy.com which focuses on interviews with ambitious folks. During this video interview, Matt pretty much covers all the bases between his first involvement with open source software to the creation of Automattic and much more. While just about every interview with Matt covers the same general information, I always listen to the interviews because I always pick up a few new things such as this one regarding Akismet. In the interview, Matt mentions that because his mom wanted to start a blog on WordPress.com, it served as a large portion of inspiration to create Akismet to battle spam since it usually contains some nasty stuff.
The interview is a long one, just over an hour long but it’s filled with good stuff. If you’re interested in the audio portion only, Andrew has that available for download.
Posted in News | Tagged biography, matt mullenweg, mixergy, Video, wordpress |
By Jeffro on September 7, 2009
The last I heard about the ideas section of WordPress was that Jane Wells was cleaning up the place to prepare it for an upgrade to bbPress 1.0. Not sure how the progress is going but upon checking my feedreader this morning, I noticed some ideas starting to trickle in. Here is a small sampling.
Enhanced Author Widget – I wish there was a plugin to add am Author widget to the Widget section with options to display the avatar, to display a list of the posts (possibly with thumbnails generated from the articles next them), links to author’s pages on social networking sites, etc.
Offer Usage Stats To Plugin Authors – We can see how many downloads our plugins have, and from comments Matt M. has made we know there are stats on how many blogs a plugin is active on. It would be nice to make that available to the plugin author (maybe on the admin page where the SVN info, etc is). No personal information, just a simple “Installed/Active in ## sites”
I’ve talked with many plugin authors and plenty of them tell me this sort of information would be great to have. If you’re a plugin author and like this idea, I say go on over and voice your feedback, perhaps even include some information you’d like to see in the stats page.
Conditional Tags For ‘if pings’ or if trackbacks. - But now that we have the option to split comments and trackbacks up when displaying in our comments section, there is a small problem: there’s no conditional tag to say “if there’s trackbacks” or “if there’s pings” so we can keep the trackbacks list silent until there’s actually a trackback. The problem is that, with the new formulation, we end up with a non-XHTML-compliant ol or ul with no li in the middle.
While I don’t mind discussion of these ideas here, the discussion would be better placed on the actual ideas page. You can use your WordPress forum user account to login to the ideas forum.
Posted in News | Tagged feedback, ideas, suggestions |
By Jeffro on September 7, 2009
Paul Boutin over at VentureBeat gives us a look at how the NYTimes uses WordPress for their blogging needs. Paul explains the process of getting a post published onto Gadgetwise which is a blog focused on teaching people how to buy and use stuff. The process is similar to a newspaper only more streamlined. Before a post hits the public’s eyes, it goes through something called a Division Of Labor. This is a team of people with expertise on a particular aspect of a blog post whether it be image display or editing. This really gives the writer the chance to focus on what they do best. Write.
The only troublesome thing about the article is the screenshot of WordPress. According to that backend user interface, Paul had to have been using a version within the 2.6 branch. Either that is an old screenshot or that site is using a fairly old version of the software. Not good considering the recent worm attacks going around.
*Update*
I viewed the source and indeed, the site is running WordPress 2.6.5.
Posted in News | Tagged Blogging, new york times, wordpress |
By Jeffro on September 1, 2009
A few days ago, the highly anticipated GravityForms plugin launched to the public with much fanfare. However, many people voiced their concern that there was no way to try before you buy which put off a lot of folks from buying it. Thankfully, the RocketGenius team is a responseful bunch as they have launched a specific DEMO site where you can login to the backend to see the plugin in action, create new forms and see how it all comes together.
One word of note though is that some of the settings for the plugin have been disabled such as saving new forms, deleting forms, etc. However, you should be able to get a good feel on whether the plugin will fit the bill or not.
Posted in News | Tagged demo, forms, gravityforms |
By Jeffro on August 31, 2009
Angelo Mandato who produces the PluginsPodcast, a weekly show dedicated to WordPress plugins recently pushed out episode 24 which featured an interview with Mitcho, the developer of my favorite related posts plugin YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin). Not only is the interview informative, but during the second half of the show, we find out about another plugin Mitcho is developing called HookPress. HookPress is a plugin that enables WordPress to use Web Hooks. While I did watch the video presentation, I’m still trying to figure out myself how useful this is but considering the fact that these web hooks can be written in any language I believe is a killer feature for developers. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
Webhooks goes beyond the HookPress plugin though as evidenced by the Webhooks blog, Anil Dash and his idea of the Push Button Web, and slides created by Jeff Lindsay explaining the concept. The following is a video presentation of HookPress.
If you’re a developer, please tell me more information about this concept and how it can be useful to you. Also, Mitcho is looking for feedback on his plugin so if you end up using it, be sure to contact him.
Posted in News | Tagged hookpress, plugin, podcast, yarpp |
By Jeffro on August 24, 2009
Monitoring the Twitter stream today, I discovered that Automattic has hired on a new Systems Wrangler in Stephane Daury. In his post, you can clearly read the excitement given off by this job opportunity. Hell, I’d be happy to. Stephane has a few WordPress plugins under his belt, WPhone being the one I recognize. While the job is a dream come true for Stephane, he realizes it won’t be easy.
Don’t get me wrong, although this assignment represents, to me, the professional chance of a lifetime, it will also be the most challenging by far, the scale of it all mind boggling. Nothing is won yet beyond the opportunity and everything is still left to be achieved. Needless to say, I will be doing my very best (and then some) to own the said challenge and prove Barry, Matt and others I am indeed the right guy for the job.
Good luck Stephane and congratulations.
Posted in News | Tagged automattic, stability, systems wrangler |
By Jeffro on August 21, 2009
In this weeks episode of Press This, the podcast of Joost De Valk, he interviews Mashables CTO Frederick Townes. Quite a bit of the interview is focused around listener submitted questions including one or two of my own. The one question and answer I found interesting is when I asked what the delay time was between there being a new update of WordPress released versus when Mashable upgraded to it. The CTO responded that it was dependent upon what the update was for, bug fix, security, etc. For instance, if it’s a security release, Mashable will upgrade immediately while not so for a bug fix release. Considering the size of Mashable.com, I thought there would be a large time span between the two.
At any rate, catch the entire interview right here.
Posted in News | Tagged joost de valk, mashable, press this, wordress |
By Jeffro on August 20, 2009
Thanks to Viper007bond on Twitter, I was notified of a new redesign for Gravatar.com. Seems as though most sites under the Automattic umbrella are getting a refresh these days. The new design definitely provides more information than its counterpart along with links to developer resources on the front page. Also, there is a large screencast video produced by Michael Pick which explains what the service is all about.
Gravatar gets a new look
Gravatar is not a complex site so this simple front page sums up the site quite well. What do you think?
Posted in News | Tagged automattic, gravatar, redesign |
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