Instead of hunting down a frequently used code snippet on the Codex or doing a Google Search, wouldn’t it be nice to have a cheat sheet right in front of you to save time? Dainis Graveris of 1stWebDesigner has put together a list of 23 different cheat sheets and resources that are in PDF format ranging from code snippets to SEO.
How many of you will actually print these off? Or do you think it would be more efficient to just place the PDF files or images into a folder for local access later?
Are you fed up with the way the default search works on your WordPress powered site? You’re not alone. As was discussed in the forum thread I just linked to, Google Custom Search was brought up as a way to substitute the WordPress search engine with one powered by Google. I thought about adding Google CSE to WPTavern.com but until I get a bunch of complaints that the search sucks or I find myself not being able to quickly find what I’m looking for despite typing in a descriptive query, I probably won’t go through with it. However, Lyndi of Nice2All.com did go through with it and she shared her experience in this blog post.
After giving the matter a lot of thought I decided to add a Google Custom Search Engine to this site. Initially I thought this would entail a lot of work but I was pleasantly surprised. It went very quickly and in fact it was very easy to do.
Nice to see that it won’t be hard to do if I ever decide to add it to WPTavern.
After debating the inclusion of new smilies without an easy way of reverting them or opening up the decision to community feedback, the old smilies have found their way back into the core of WordPress thanks to Ryan Boren who performed the commit. While using a few text smilies himself, Ryan’s explanation of the change is quite humorous.
Back to the prehistoric smilies that everyone complains about but evidently likes better. :-) I was a fool for not appreciating the explosive topic that is smilies, my bad. It’s almost as close to people’s hearts as stats. :-)
Patches for filters and whatever else needed to make plugins easier appreciated.
I’m not completely sure if this change will progress over to WordPress.com but I would be highly surprised if it did’nt.
Speaking of WordPress development, don’t forget about the development chat. So how do you join the chat? Developer chats are held each Wednesday in the IRC channel (irc.freenode.com #wordpress-dev) at 9 PM UTC (5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific). However, there is talk that the time and day might change. For today’s meeting, it will be at the normally scheduled time.
In case you missed it, there was some bruhaha over a recent change in WordPress where pinging went from being instant to being sent once per hour. Karamell.net argued that this change halted the real time web and that it would negatively affect announcement services such as Google news. A counter patch was then made to reduce the wait limit to 30 minutes and also bundle pings together. Then after all the discussions were made, the final verdict was to restore the original behavior which means pinging takes place when the post is published as well as any time it’s been successfully updated. The changes will be in WordPress 2.8.3 if released or WordPress 2.9.
At one time, I removed the Ping-O-Matic code from my WordPress install because I believed in the rumor that if I published or updated content too much, I could be banned from these pinging services because of so many pings. While it looks like that might still be a possibility, I’ve since learned to schedule posts and try to keep editing down to a minimum.
Every week, the WordPress core developers get together to discuss a series of items that are outlined on an agenda. This agenda is not set in stone and in fact, users can suggest topics to be discussed at each meeting by suggesting them on the agenda outline posts on the WordPress development updates blog. For example, Jane is currently taking submissions for items to be discussed during the July 22nd meeting which is this Wednesday. So far, meta tables and committer workflow are on the table. If you are a plugin or theme developer and have something you want to discuss being added or reworked, I suggest trying to get it on the official agenda for the meeting and then showing up to talk about it. These meetings are where a good chunk of decisions happen which shape the direction of the WordPress software.
So how do you join the chat? Developer chats are held each Wednesday in the IRC channel (irc.freenode.com #wordpress-dev) at 9 PM UTC (5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific). However, there is talk that the time and day might change. For the July 22nd meeting, it will be at the normally scheduled time.
Out of nowhere, WordPress 2.8.2 has been released to the public. You should notice the upgrade notification within a few hours if you don’t see it already. However, I think now a days, the upgrade actually is triggered when you visit the upgrade section of the backend.
Ok, just received word about the dev blog post which contains information regarding an XSS vulnerability that was addressed which of course, explains the need for 2.8.2 to be released.
I upgraded the tavern website to 2.8.2 without any problems, I suggest you do the same.
From now on, the way I am going to format these posts is to bold the item that was listed on the agenda and then below it, publish a summary of what was decided for that item.
Creating an announcements mailing list that include all plugin and theme developers and using it to send information on significant core changes that are likely to affect them. It would be very low volume (1-2 emails per month) and would include by default everybody that is listed as contributor to at least one plugin or theme hosted on wordpress.org. Of course it would be open to everybody to subscribe or unsubscribe.
The majority of folks who participated in the chat agreed that this was a great idea. The list would be low volume where announcements could be pushed out if their are changes to the WordPress API. This would provide theme and plugin authors a heads up on a change that may break their project. Plugin and theme authors would have the ability to ‘Opt-Out‘ if they don’t want the announcements.
matt posted about adopting plugins: “I saw something on PEAR today I like (I know, gasp!) and it was where certain modules were marked as abandoned and up for adoption, and they seemed to have a mechanism for adoption.” example: http://pear.php.net/package/Net_DNS
Many thought the idea of inactive plugins on the repository to be put up for adoption was a great idea. If an author got an email about a change and knew they weren’t going to have time to bother updating, the WordPress team could point them somewhere to announce that. The thinking right now is that based on a number of failed attempts to get in touch with the plugin author could be a base for what is considered non maintained. Then it goes up for adoption, or branches and the old one is marked as dead.
scribu - an edge case: what if a plugin author still maintains a plugin, but doesn’t update it on Extend?
ddebernardy - then he answers the mail
Jane_ - if there’s a policy in place that un-updated plugins in repository go to bed after time, am guessing they’d be more likely to update there too
Meta tables was on the agenda but has been pushed to the July 22nd meeting.
Ddebernardy wanted to talk about bugs and committer workflow, but without rboren, hard to make any firm progress This topic might be discussed again on the July 22nd meeting.
westi posted “User experience for comment deletion undo / trash. (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4529)”
The question regarding this ticket deals with the User Interface. There might be a poll in the future where users can vote on whether they want a link to a trash can or a simpe undo. Next was the discussion surrounding whether the stuff in the trash can should auto-delete or not after 30 days. The decision was that by default, trash will autoclear but there will be hooks available to override how long before things get deleted.
The results from the media survey were to be published the night of the meeting with screenshots but it hasn’t happened yet. Look for that on the dev blog at some point in the near future. Also, the poll results didn’t change much from last time.
Out of all the GsOC projects, all but one passed. The event management plugin suite for buddypress is the one not moving forward, though the student says he is going to keep working on it even though it’s no longer gsoc
To see the entire log file for this day which contains the fine details into the various agenda topics, head over to the WordPress Dev IRC Channel Log.
There was an interesting post published on WPCandy.com by JD Bentley where he discussed three different ways in which WordPress could be used as a project management application. JD describes three different ways to accomplish this functionality. Using a plugin called WP-Project, using the P2 theme, or using a vanilla install of WordPress. However, JD notes that none of these solutions matches what BaseCamp can do either because the solution is too simple or the feature set is too complex.
JD has recently got involved with the development of WP-Project as he believes the plugin has a lot of potential. If you’re interested in helping out with this aspect of WordPress which Ryan Imel says is ripe for innovation, get in touch with him.
PC World out of the UK has published a three page guide aimed at beginners to help them begin customizing their WordPress powered site. The guide covers everything from plugins to themes while even providing a few tips on customizing the look of Kubrick. Just ignore the part where he says the latest release of WordPress is 2.7 and remember it’s 2.8.1.
This guide actually had me thinking that it’s a good outline for my presentation idea regarding WordPress for beginners and what they should know. Would you agree?
Jeff Starr who is one of the co-authors for the book Digging Into WordPress has published a great article that goes in depth on various ways on how to display WordPress pages.
The first, most-commonly used tag is wp_list_pages(), and the second, lesser-known tag is wp_page_menu(). First we’ll explore the highly flexible wp_list_pages() template tag, and then we’ll dig into the new wp_page_menu() tag. Along the way, we’ll check out some delicious recipes, tips and tricks for creating the perfect WordPress Page Menu.
On the topic of pages, we’ve had two interesting threads popup in the forum. This one which deals with wp_page_menu and this one which asks the question what the constraints are for WordPress pages.