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WordPress GSoC 2010 Program Under Way

WordPress GSoC 2010 Program Under Way

By Jeffro on March 7, 2010

The 2010 Google Summer Of Code program for WordPress is just about ready for prime time. The Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. It was created in 2005 and continues to this day. Thanks to some willing students in 2009, we saw the creation of a new search API, and a theme framework in Elastic. When comparing the projects list from 2010 to 2009, they haven’t changed much although bbPress has been added to the list this year.

One of the project ideas that caught my eye was Template Versioning.

WordPress saves post revisions, but changes to theme files are not recorded, though the presentation layer is sometimes just as important. Build a versioning system for template files within the theme editor.

I wonder if any willing student will snatch up this project. This project idea also confirms that the built in theme editor isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

For any students who want to participate in the WordPress GSoC project, you’re encouraged to review the application template from 2008 as well as the ideas from last year. However, the best way to increase your chances of being selected is to start learning the WordPress code base right now and submit a few patches so the mentors can get a basic idea of your abilities.

Good luck to any student who pursues one of the listed project ideas.

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WordPress Dev Chat For 2-25-10

WordPress Dev Chat For 2-25-10

By Jeffro on February 25, 2010

wordpresslogoWoo Menus Update
Jane has published her UX manifesto regarding the new navigational menu system that you can read here. Ryan and Jane will catch up with Jeff Ikus tomorrow as he couldn’t make the meeting today. Accessibility is a concern as without JS, the menus become inoperable. Ptah Dunbar and Filosofo have volunteered to try and tackle the accessibility issues before release since it’s considered a release blocker.

Schedule Update
3.0 should be ready for freeze on Monday.

Multi-site configuration implementation
For more on this, I suggest you review the log file and scroll up.

To read the dev chat from the beginning, click here and scroll up.

How To Participate:

If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.

chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.

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WordPress Developer Chats Should Focus On Core

WordPress Developer Chats Should Focus On Core

By Jeffro on February 24, 2010

Peter Westwood has published a short document on the WordPress Developers Prologue site that outlines what the focus of the developer chats should be. In recent weeks, issues that are related to WordPress but not to the core code have been added to the meeting agenda providing less time to talk about core development of the software. This is the one hour during the week when all developers get together to talk about the core software, how to implement something, etc so it is imperative that the 60 minutes are put to the best use possible.

However, there is a reason why non core related subjects were added to the agenda for discussion. There is no single page that lists which items should be discussed where. Just like Automattic, the WordPress.org project is like liquid with barely any hierarchy allowing people to fulfill multiple roles. How to get in touch with the people that fulfill those roles is one of the core problems that I hope the WordPress.org website redesign solves. Until then, I highly encourage you to participate in an ongoing project I have started called the WordPress Whitepages Project. The goal is to round up all of the contact information for various aspects of the project and put it together in one big list, bringing order to chaos. The list will also include links to places where ideas and feedback can be discussed.

Once this list is complete, I’ll add it to a Codex page and then ping someone who is in control of WordPress.org and have them take a look at it to see if they would be interested in publishing the information on a centrally located page. There have been a few times where I’ve wanted to get in touch with someone about a particular issue but find myself at a crossroad with no idea on where to go. I hope this project fixes that.

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Help Me Cleanup The Ideas Forum

Help Me Cleanup The Ideas Forum

By Jeffro on February 24, 2010

For those of you that have been following me on Twitter, I’ve referenced the ideas forum quite a bit. I’ve been keeping it under wraps because there was less of a chance of running into people responding to the same ideas but since Jane Wells has made the work more public today, (Highly appreciated by the way) it’s time I make the call for help to clean up that place.

What I’ve been doing is browsing the ideas that are filed Under Consideration and working my way from the last page to the front. So far, it’s been pretty funny to read some of the ideas submitted by some notable community members that today, can code up their own solutions to problems. I guess if you’re given three years, you have the opportunity to learn a thing or two. At any rate, here are the directions to help me with the ideas forum.

If you want to help (this is an easy way to contribute for those who aren’t coders), go to http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/view/considering and start looking at threads. Start from the pages at the back of the list, and on each one you can help resolve:

  • Read the thread.
  • If you don’t know if something exists as a plugin or has been implemented, use Google.
  • Add a comment to the thread indicating the status/outcome. If you found an appropriate plugin, link to it.
  • Add the “modlook” tag.
  • Bask in the glow of knowing that this small task is part of a big job, and is much appreciated by the community.

The sooner we get the old ideas cleared out of there, the sooner it can become more useful as a discussion tool (and clear up Trac to focus on accepted features and enhancements).

So if you have any spare time or are just bored, feel free to go through a page or two of ideas and update them. I’ve actually found a few ideas that are three years old that still have merit and are worthy of still being considered for future versions of WordPress. If you don’t know of any way to answer the idea, move along to the next one and save it for someone that does know.

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How Much Credit Do You Need?

How Much Credit Do You Need?

By Jeffro on February 19, 2010

In the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of discussions centered around author credits in themes and plugins. Part of these discussions center around this particular guideline in the plugin repository:

The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a “powered by” link) without explicitly asking the user’s permission.

Themes on the other hand don’t have this as a guideline.

No hidden, paid or sponsored links in the theme. Links back to the author’s site are fine.

This has led me to do a little experiment. Download one theme and plugin from the repositories and see how many times I am told who created the theme or plugin. First up, the Atahualpa theme.

On the theme page for Atahualpa, I’m told that the authors name is bytesforall and the name links to that users profile. The theme page also has links to the authors homepage and the theme homepage.

So right off the bat, I know who has created this theme with links to the authors defined homepage and the theme homepage which are different urls. Now I’ll install it to see who created it.

After installing the theme, I have to browse to the Themes section of the WordPress back-end in order to activate it. On this page, I see the name of the theme, the version and once again, the authors name which links to their forum. While configuring this particular theme, they have taken the options page to the next three levels with over 200 different things to configure. At any rate, I’m once again told where I can get support on their own forum with links to donate to the author. On the front-end of the website, within the footer, I see the following text: Powered by WordPress & the Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. Discuss on our WP Forum the theme name links back to the theme homepage and BytesForAll links back to the authors website with an additional link to the forum. Of course, this all shows up in the source code as well.

For this particular theme, there are four different places that tell me who created the theme.

Now let’s take a look at one of my favorite plugins, Exclude Pages. The plugin page tells me the authors name of the plugin which also links to the users profile. There is also a link to the authors homepage and a link to the plugin homepage.

While browsing the plugin management section of the WordPress back-end I get to see the name of the plugin while also seeing the authors name which links to his own website. This plugin is pretty conservative compared to other plugins dealing with credit links. In fact, Exclude Pages is an excellent example as to how all plugins should behave when it comes to credits. The information I need to know is in the two spots that should have that information. Not in my source code, not in my footer or some other place.

Conclusion:

Obviously, each plugin and theme is going to produce different results but as I’ve shown, there are plenty of areas that show who created the plugin or theme without placing links on the front-end of my site. I think the theme is deserving of having a credit link in the footer of the site although Atahualpa is a bit extreme with three different links. What I don’t like are plugins which need to tell me in every place within the back and front-end of WordPress Hey, You’re Using So And So By Bla Bla with a link to the authors site. There are two distinct places where this information is meant to be. The actual page for the theme or plugin on the repository and the theme/plugin management pages in the back-end of WordPress. There is no reason to have links on the front-end of the site in the footer, sidebar or wherever. If a plugin does its job and does it well, I’m most likely going to tell others about it, write a review about it, put a link to it on twitter, etc. I’m pretty sure all of these measures of advertising and press are much more effective than just a dumb link in the footer of my website. Let the plugin speak for itself.

One thing I’m fine with is plugins inserting a little plug (pun intended) to themselves within the source of the site. I’d prefer the plugs to be the title of the plugin with the author name instead of website URLs of the authors website. In fact, I’ve discovered some cool plugins running on sites this way. This is also acceptable for Guideline 4 of the plugin repository.

So I go back to my original question, as a plugin or theme author, how much credit do you really need?

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WordPress Dev Chat For 2-18-10

WordPress Dev Chat For 2-18-10

By Jeffro on February 18, 2010

wordpresslogoWoo Nav Menu Update
Jeff Ikus who is the man responsible for the Woo Navigation menu system gave an update on his progress of integrating it into core. The menu stuff is ticket 11817. Jeff has stripped down the menu system to remove the Woo branding and has reworked it for the core and in its current form, is working just fine. The area of discussion however is that it adds MySQL Tables to the database. Right now, the idea is to try and eliminate the need for tables with perhaps using a custom post type. A few contributors will work with Jeff under Ryan Boren to accomplish this.

Schedule Update
WordPress 3.0 is currently behind schedule. The proposed release date of late April is now bumped by 2 weeks giving the release time frame somewhere around WordCamp San Francisco on May 1st. This gives more time to hammer out the menu navigation system and some Multi Site things.

The Planet Feed
This topic was not covered because it’s not tied to the core development of the software. Instead, it will be moved to the forum for discussion. This has also prompted Westi to write a 3 to 5 liner on what the developer chat is supposed to be used for with instructions on which other venues should be used for other topics of discussion.

Core Plugins
Progress on core plugins has been very slow. Since Andrew Ozz has been out, nothing has been done with PodPress, one of the three plugins slated to be part of the experiment. Each core plugin will have their own mailing list if you want to keep tabs on them.

Trac Gardening
Nacin has been doing a great job in Trac and gave everyone a status report. There are some other things happening regarding tickets and such that you can read more about in the log file.

To read the log file for this meeting, click here and scroll up.

How To Participate:

If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.

chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.

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WordPress 2.9.2 Released – Security Fix

WordPress 2.9.2 Released – Security Fix

By Jeffro on February 15, 2010

WordPress 2.9.2 was released just a few minutes ago to address a security problem dealing with the Trash feature.

When WordPress implemented the new feature they failed to change the permissions granted when the post is in the trash. This means that an unauthenticated user cannot see the post, however an authenticated user can no matter what privileges they have, even ’subscriber’.

There are probably a few other bug fixes in this version but they were not part of the release announcement. If your site only has one author and no registered users, this upgrade is not critical.

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I’m Pretty Happy With MY WordPress

I’m Pretty Happy With MY WordPress

By Jeffro on February 12, 2010

While at work the other day, I thought about how I have not added any new plugins for additional functionality to this site for a long time. The most recent ones being After The Deadline and WordPress.com stats. Other than that, I’ve been pretty darn happy with the features I’ve added to this site thanks to the plugins I’ve chosen to use. WPTavern has 31 active plugins in use. Some add functionality such as WP-Polls while others give me something small such as the ability to have post author comments highlighted a different color. Sure, this could be accomplished from within the theme, but I don’t want to.

Matt has stated at numerous WordCamp events that the average number of plugins active on a WordPress site is around five. Considering the breadth of plugins available in the repository, it’s likely that no two WordPress’s are the same. When I stop to think about that, all I can say is awesome! The 31 plugins I have installed make up the total functionality that I want WordPress to have that I don’t have to force down anyone’s throat. The only time I add plugins to WPTavern now is if I need to test a plugin because it won’t work on my local server. Could things be improved in WordPress? Of course. But, WordPress 2.9.1 doesn’t really pose any problems for me in terms of publishing content. I’m pretty happy with how things are right now.

At any rate, this is just a reflection I had the other day. Are you one of those Pressers that continuously add and remove plugins as time progresses or have you stuck with the same core group of plugins you use on all the sites you administer?

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WordPress Dev Chat For 2-11-10

WordPress Dev Chat For 2-11-10

By Jeffro on February 11, 2010

wordpresslogoQuick update on the menu management progress
WooThemes is currently reconfiguring their menu management system into a patch that can be integrated into the core of WordPress. Once the patch is committed, everyone can try it out and weigh in with their concerns or improvements. The patch may be ready by some time next week. Expect to see a possible case study somewhere down the road on how a wp-based commercial business can work in harmony with core rather than competition.

Quick discussion on the best way for plugins to be explicit about which license they are under
This was quite a discussion but in the end, here is the end result. The Writing A Plugin Codex page has been updated to include a License: Slug as part of the standard plugin information header. The first restriction for getting into the repository has been reworded to say the following: Your plugin must be GPLv2 Compatible. Promotion of best practices which is an ongoing effort.

Now there was extensive talk regarding whether GPLv3 plugins are or are not allowed to be hosted in the repository. Many of the answers I saw said NO because GPLv2 is not compatible with GPLv3. Therefor, I put this information out on Twitter but I was reminded of the fact that this is not set in stone. It’s based on a bunch of assumptions which in my opinion, sums up the GPL pretty good. A bunch of assumptions. But unless I’m told otherwise, which is guaranteed to happen, I wouldn’t try hosting your GPLv3 plugin in the repository.

Update on schedule compliance
There is some UI stuff that needs to be taken care of between the Menu management patch and the WordPress Multi Site stuff. I think feature freeze will happen on Monday as per the dev schedule. You’ll need to review the log file for more details as it was hard to follow the conversation

Update on improvements to Extend for plugins
mdawaffe is currently the lead man implementing improvements for plugin authors. When asked what those improvements are, here is what he told me, expose some of the stuff locked behind the admin tab to everyone, feedback on why plugins were rejected, better tools for our plugin moderators, looking into how to better display multi authors. The feedback mechanism will also help with plugins that get suspended due to a violation. Ptah Dunbar brought up a good question that has been discussed on the hackers mailing list before regarding plugin authors having the ability to remove their plugins from the repo. Right now, their is no good mechanism to accomplish this.

License And Other Stuff
I highly encourage you to read the log file for this meeting, especially all the parts regarding licensing so that you can go as crazy as I did. Also read what happened after the meeting as the conversation is quite good.

How To Participate:

If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.

chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.

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Woo To Power Menu Management In WP 3.0

Woo To Power Menu Management In WP 3.0

By Jeffro on February 11, 2010

One topic that has been discussed a number of times during the development cycle of WordPress 3.0 is how to handle menu management. At first, it looked like the team was going to go with a widget based menu management system but during one of the most recent meetings, that was put on hold to evaluate if that was the right thing to do. Today, we’ve learned that the debate is mostly over and menu management will take the form of the Woo Navigation Menu system. If you’ve never seen it before, watch the video.

Based on what I’ve seen in the video, the menu management system looks like it will be very easy to use. A big kudos goes out to the WooThemes team for allowing their navigation system to be integrated into the core of WordPress for the benefit of all users. A classy move by them. Keep an eye on Woothemes.com as they will be publishing more info about this development on Monday.

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