Copyblogger has a list of seven items that will help you become a better WordPress based publisher. ∞
The Last 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress
On what has been a longstanding tradition, Aaron Brazell of Technosailor.com has published his list of 10 things you’ll need to know regarding WordPress 3.5. Unfortunately, he also announced that it would be his last one.
For 7 years, I’ve been publishing these articles every time a new version of WordPress comes out. Since version 2.0. It’s been a long run. It began as a need to fill people in about new features in WordPress (and there were a lot in 2.0). There wasn’t anybody doing these at the time, and certainly WordPress wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now (22% of the internet is powered by WordPress).
But many more people have stepped up in recent releases and have started updating readers with new features and expectations. My job here is done. I’m passing the baton but really the baton has already been passed and I’m happy about that. This will be my final 10 things article. Thank you for sticking around and following along all these years.
I want to personally thank Aaron for putting together those 10 things posts as they were always a highlight to read as well as signaling that the next major release of WordPress was very imminent.
Docs Team Needs Your Help For WordPress 3.5
As we near the release of WordPress 3.5, the docs team is looking for your help to insure that the Codex has all of the necessary information pertaining to the new release. So far, there is a hefty list of items that need to be added or amended in the Codex, especially as it pertains to media. You are encouraged to add to the list or if you’re a member of the Codex, to begin adding the necessary information.
What Developers Should Know About WordPress 3.5
Oneextrapixel.com has a list of things that WordPress developers will need to know about concerning WordPress 3.5. However, end users are able to pick up a few things as well, especially the part about settings changes. According to the site, the admin page dedicated to Privacy settings has disappeared. The options on that page have been moved to the Reading Settings area. Also for new installs, the ability to change the Character set has been hidden and will use UTF-8 by default. I think this makes total sense and would like to see similar option UI be removed in the future. Even though the UI will be hidden, you can still access the option via options.php. Going this route seems similar to how FireFox works. While there are things to configure, those who want access to everything can go into About:config.
Over the years, the saying has been, “Decisions, not options“. I wonder when options.php will be renamed to decisions.php.
The Theme Hook Alliance
It looks like after three years since the discussion took place on the WPTavern forums regarding the standardization of theme hooks, Doug Stewart has decided to put together a Theme Hook Alliance project to get theme authors all on the same page.
Child theme authors and plugin developers need a consistent set of entry points to allow for easy customization and altering of functionality. Core WordPress offers a suite of [action hooks](http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Action_Reference/) and [template tags](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_tags) but does not cover many of the common use cases. The Theme Hook Alliance is a community-driven effort to agree on a set of third-party action hooks that THA themes pledge to implement in order to give that desired consistency.
It will be interesting to see how far this goes and what the adoption rate will be like. Doug is looking for some feedback so if you’re keen to the idea, let him know in the comments of his blog post.
How WordPress Changed The Career Of Eric Karkovack
Short post on how WordPress changed the career of Eric Karkovack. I imagine similar designers/developers feel the same way he does.
Of course, WordPress isn’t the only powerful CMS out there. You may enjoy working with different platforms. No matter what you’re using to build websites, the modern tools we have available are making us better designers and developers.
While I’m no where close to considering myself as a designer or developer, WordPress has provided me the opportunity to learn how certain functions within PHP work and has given me a better appreciation of the many technologies that have to work together in order for something like WordPress to function effectively.
Searching Only The Codex
When performing a search on the Codex, you’re presented with a slew of search results. However, not all of those results are within the Codex. The search portion of the Codex is powered by a Google custom search box which not only presents results from within the Codex, but from across WordPress.org as well, mainly the support forum.
While performing a search for Conditional Statements, the first result was the one I was looking for. However, if you want the results to strictly be within the Codex, I came across this link shared by Otto on the Documentation mailing list. While giving this method of searching the Codex a try, I found it difficult to find the Conditional Statements page I was looking for that was easily displayed by the Google Custom Search box. Even by checking each box, I failed at finding the page using both Conditional Statements and Conditional as my search terms.
My advice, stick to using the Search box that exists on the Codex page.
My Apologies To The WordPress Foundation
First off, I want to offer my sincere apologies to the WordPress Foundation. In a previous article, I incorrectly labeled the foundation as harming WordCamps. My main gripe was with the fact that some WordCamp organizers were being denied the ability to have high sponsorship caps and thus, it sometimes adversely affected the event either in terms of it’s size or type of venue they could hold the event in. As time has gone by, I’ve learned that the biggest mistake I made was contributing the organizing and running of WordCamps to the WordPress Foundation which is incorrect. WordCamp Central is the group responsible for all things WordCamp related while the WordPress Foundation oversees the use of the WordPress and WordCamp trademarks. Unfortunately in the original discussion, WordCamp Central and the WordPress Foundation were used interchangeably which muddied the conversation.
Perhaps I should have known better, but even though I’ve been apart of the WordPress community for two years, the project has grown far beyond just being publishing software. There is the foundation, WordCamp Central, Automattic, WordPress.com, various Automattic owned services, Audrey.co, etc. It’s hard to place blame or hold anyone accountable when you have no idea who that person is or what project or group they belong to. It’s frustrating for me but I wonder if many people simply don’t care, just as long as WordPress remains awesome, easy to use publishing software? I’ve often felt that there should be some sort of WordPress White Pages so that the public can know who is responsible for what within the WordPress project. But since so many individuals mingle with various parts, that project would soon be a waste of time.
WordPress Stats Infographic Making The Rounds
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.
What Dev4Press Thinks WordPress Needs
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.