WordPress 2.7.1 Available To The Public

WordPress 2.7.1 Available To The Public

By Jeffro on February 10, 2009

Just moments ago, WordPress 2.7.1 was released to the public. This releases contains 68 fixed tickets. Nothing really in the way of features as this is more like a maintenance release.

To upgrade if you’re using WordPress 2.7, browse to TOOLS-UPGRADE and click on the upgrade button. I would still back everything up just in case.

Consult the list of fixed tickets and the full set of changes between 2.7 and 2.7.1 for details.

By the way, my initial bet was for the release of 2.7.1 for Monday, February 9th. Looks like I lost the bet but I was darn close.

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Irrelevant Dashboard Items?

Is It Time To Refocus The Dashboard For News?

By Jeffro on February 10, 2009

Elliot Back recently published a post describing how most of the items appearing in the WordPress Dashboard had nothing to do with WordPress. Elliot published the following image within his blog post which highlights the posts which have nothing to do with WordPress.

Irrelevant Dashboard Items?

Irrelevant Dashboard Items?

Notice how all of those posts point back to Matt’s personal blog. I’m a fan of Matt’s blog. I think he publishes great links as well as great photos but when it comes to WordPress, those things are irrelevant. I agree with Elliot in that perhaps it is time that Matt takes his personal blog out of the Planet WordPress Feed and thus, out of the dashboard. There simply is no reason for photos of Paris or any other place (except a wordcamp event) to be published in the dashboard which is supposed to be used to keep tabs on all things WordPress along with related projects. Also, I don’t consider Matt’s dashboard posts as spam. I consider them irrelevant to the project.

In WordPress 2.7, we have two ways to get news. A WordPress News widget which is tied strictly to the WordPress Development blog and then Other WordPress News which is a condensed version of what you see in Elliot’s image. But the fact remains that irrelevant posts are showing up in the Other WordPress News widget.  While I’m on the topic of the dashboard, I would really like to see the BuddyPress development blog added to the planet feed as I have no idea on what is going on over there unless I visit the site or check my feed reader.

You might be wondering, why not have those sites aggregate a WordPress category on their blog instead of the entire site? Well, after looking at the feed links on the Planet WordPress website, that is indeed what they have done with the exception of a few sites, Matt’s being one of them. I’d love for Matt’s blog to stay in the Planet WordPress feed but only when he publishes something to a WordPress category on his blog. It just makes more sense. If he doesn’t like categories, he could always use the RSS feed from the WordPress Tag.

Just to get a feeling on how other people feel about getting news from the WordPress dashboard, I asked those in the forum as well as those who follow the WPTavern account on Twitter if they used or considered the dashboard useful when keeping up to date with the happenings regarding the project. Here is what I have so far. (Keep in mind that the majority of users on the WPTavern Forum are advanced users of WordPress so this is probably not a good way to judge their effectiveness. I think the WordPress.org forum would be a better measure.)

From The Forum:

Len – I’ve pretty well stripped everything from my dashboard including feeds. I use a couple of feed readers (Feed Demon and RSS Bandit) to follow feeds.

Andrew – I just remove them.

hallsofmontezuma – Personally, I love the feeds in the WordPress dashboard. I don’t subscribe to many blog feeds, but I want to keep up with the “WordPress News,” WP core developer blogs and official WordPress blog, weblogtoolscollection, and Lorelle. I have a couple others in my Google Reader, but I’m in and out of various wp-admins all day so it’s a convenient place.

Kit – I kept one of the WP feeds but changed one to show a client’s feed since it helps me to get a head’s up on anything that may be coming my way as far as customer service.

andrea_r – I mostly leave them and ignore them. I’ve bookmarked the New Post page for both of my blogs so I go directly there. That being said, I do occasionally scan the headlines, and a couple of the blogs in there I’ve subscribed to any, like WTC. On WPMU systems, I try and replace that feed with the sitewide feed of the system, and another area with the main blog feed.

BlaKKJaKK – I view them daily and more often than not check them out. The only ones I never click on are Matt’s because he never posts actualy articel just links, so I view them as spam.

Stefanvervoort – I usually don’t pay attention, I have my feed readers for feeds.

From Twitter:

Frumph @wptavern irrelevant.

jeremyclarke @wptavern the main feed WordPress Planet is pretty vital, though I read it in RSS.

sparun @wptavern I just need a “Delete all spam” button on the dashboard.

katemag @wptavern the WP dashboard is helpful.

Conclusion:

It’s quirks like these in the WordPress project that make me laugh. We can generate a whole discussion around what seems like a problem and the solution is so simple, it’s just a matter of waiting to see if Matt agrees. If you really feel like this is a problem, send Matt an email as he is the man in charge of the sites aggregated on the Planet.WordPress.org domain.

Now I leave it up to you for discussion. How do you use the WordPress Dashboard for keeping up to date with what is happening with the WordPress project? Are those writing about this making a big stink over nothing, or do we have a valid argument?

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Name This Segment

Name This Segment

By Jeffro on February 10, 2009

The other night, I was asked by Dave Moyer, producer of the WordPress podcast WordCast, if I was interested in doing a pre-recorded segment for a new podcast he is producing called Aimless Agenda. The segment would highlight the hot topics of discussion during the previous week on the WordPress Tavern forum. I agreed to do so but I have a problem. I don’t know what to call the segment. Here are the suggestions I’ve received so far:

  • Weekly Binge
  • Roundup
  • Tavern Roundup
  • Weekly Buzz
  • Bar Buzz
  • Last Call
  • WordCap (recap)
  • Tavern Talk
  • Around The Table

While one or two of these sound decent, I wanted to throw this out there to see what else you guys and gals come up with.

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Devito Design Logo

Great List Of WordPress Resources

By Jeffro on February 9, 2009

Divito Design Logo
Stefan Vervoort who heads up the blog DivitoDesign has published his own comprehensive list of WordPress resources. He has gone the extra mile and published them in easy to browse sections containing everything from theme starting points to noteworthy articles in the Codex to WordPress Hacks. Stefan also includes a section for WordPress related forums and I’m happy to see that he included the WordPress Tavern Forums within his list.

As I’m currently in the middle of organizing my own set of WordPress resources, this post will make for good inspiration on getting things together to the point where I can publish my own list.

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Are You A WordPress Addict?

Are You A WordPress Addict?

By Jeffro on February 9, 2009

We have a great thread going on in the forum which was started by community member Kit. The question is simple. You Know You’re A WordPress Addict When? You’re job is to fill in the blanks. Already, many people have admitted their tendencies on being a WordPress Addict. In fact, some users have replied with multiple statements. Here is just a sampling of what we have so far:

You know you’re a WordPress addict when you visit a website and look at its source to see if it’s WordPress.
You see a problem in daily life and wonder if there is a plugin to solve it.
When you can name 10 active tickets in trac off the top of your head… extra points if you’ve debated them.
Firefox says your most visited sites are WordPress.org, Weblog Tools Collection, Ma.tt, Lorelle on WordPress, WP Tavern, any of the WordPress theme developers, and any twitter accounts for WordPress developers.
You see a cool looking site and look for the tiny smiley face which most WordPress sites have.

Don’t let this thread end here. Jump in and start naming examples of what it takes to be considered an addict to WordPress.

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What is Ping-O-Matic?

What is Ping-O-Matic?

By Jeffro on February 8, 2009

pingomaticlogo
For some reason this morning, I was browsing the web and came across the Ping-O-Matic website and noticed in the footer that the servers the site runs on were donated by Automattic. This peaked my curiosity so I browsed the Automattic website to see if Ping-O-Matic was listed as a sponsored project. It’s not. However, if you view the Automattic blogs page, the site is mentioned at the bottom with the following text:

Ping-O-Matic isn’t an Automattic project, but it shares some of the same folks and is highly relevant to the blog ecosystem, so it’s worth including here anyway.

This left me wondering why servers were donated to Ping-O-Matic without it being labeled a sponsored project while the service was mentioned on the Automattic blogs page. As it turns out, Ping-O-Matic is a Matt Mullenweg project created on April 20th, 2004. The purpose of the site is simple. To ping multiple, popular services so that your blog post is indexed on those sites which results in an increase in traffic. The site currently lists 21 different services that you can ping at one time with 5 specialized services. I can’t help but comment that the logo image as well as the overall look and feel of the site scream 1990s to me but it gets the job done.

List Of Ping Options

List Of Ping Options

One thing I did notice though last night is that the stats page for Ping-O-Matic appears to be broken. All I see is a giant, blank, green square. Let me know in the comments if you see the same thing. In the past, this area of the site featured all sorts of data that you could play with.

Another thing that I found a bit disappointing is the Ping-O-Matic blog. Updates regarding the service were frequent from January 2006 to April 2006 and since then, not one update has been published to the site. Some folks would automatically consider the site dead or at least the development aspect of it if a blog hasn’t been updated in over two years. But, Ping-O-Matic works just fine and if you use the following URL http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ in your WRITING SETTINGS under Update Services, WordPress will automatically send out the ping for you to the various services it supports.

Questions

So in the end, we have a nice pinging service that can easily be plugged into the back end of WordPress. It’s not sponsored by Automattic and appears to be under complete control by Matt. The blog for the service has not been updated in over two years and while everything regarding the service works just fine, I wonder if Ping-O-Matic is just one of those loose ends that has become forgotten in light of the entire WordPress project. I’d rather have the dev blog for Ping-O-Matic either updated with a post or just hide the thing so it doesn’t look like the site or blog has been neglected for over two years.

Do you use Ping-O-Matic? As for myself, I don’t automatically ping any sites and do things the manual way. Don’t want to get banned for pinging too much. If you don’t want to use Ping-O-Matic, you don’t have to. Check out this article on the Codex which contains a wide assortment of replacement pinging services you can add to the Update Services box.

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Anyone Ever Hear Of A Server Drive?

Anyone Ever Hear Of A Server Drive?

By Jeffro on February 8, 2009

While browsing around the archive of WordPress.org, I came across a blog post from 2004 where Matt Mullenweg describes WordPress having multi-blog capabilities. He also mentions at the end of the blog post about how the server has been up and down with a description of a long term solution. So without further adieu.

To make a very long and frustrating story short: there were problems due in part to the recent popularity of WordPress. They should be fixed for now, but a long-term solution is needed. This will probably come in the form of a Server Drive, where we all drive out to the server and kick it until it works.

I’ve created a brand new category on the site called Quotes. I think that quotes sometimes deserve a post of their own and as I come across note worthy quotes from across the WordPress community, I’ll be publishing them here for me to look back on.

By the way, hope Matt still has that sense of humor from 2004.

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Demise Of WordPress And Its Saving Grace

Demise Of WordPress And Its Saving Grace

By Jeffro on February 8, 2009

Ask JeffThis post is part of an ongoing series called Ask Jeff. This is where I’ll take a question someone within the WPTavern or WordPress community gives me and provide my thoughts/answer to. This weeks question was submitted by community member andrew.

Which current WordPress feature do you think is most likely to be a contributing factor in the eventual demise of the platform, and which feature that has not yet arrived do you believe is most likely to be its saving grace?

My goodness. Could these questions get any tougher? Good thing I like challenges. The first question is especially difficult to answer because a feature that becomes a contributing factor to the demise of WordPress should never make it into the core. But you did say which CURRENT feature so while thinking about the question, I determined that the post editor could certainly be a leading contributor to the downfall of WordPress. When three of your top 5 voted ideas for WordPress revolve around the behaviour of the post editor, that alone makes quite a statement. Add to that, these three ideas were submitted over two years ago and so far, doesn’t look like any of them have been addressed. I don’t know if they are being ignored, if there are no resources dedicated to fixing the problems, or if there are no solutions to the problems, but I can easily see a large group of people catching wind of these three ideas and making the case that they should have been addressed a long time ago. I can also see this large group of people using those ideas as the poster child for a ton of negative publicity on not only the software, but the entire development process. How likely is all of this to happen? I’ll say low but it is concerning to see three ideas which over the past two years, the WordPress user base has made their case known that they want these issues addressed but to no avail.

Now, onto your second question. I’m not sure I would call this a feature but a saving grace to WordPress could be to apply the ideas centered around the WordPress back end redesign for 2.7 and extend that line of thinking to all areas of the back end. WordPress 2.7 re-enabled end users to shape the back end so that it worked best for them. However, I believe this could be extended to the point where end users are not limited by having things in a certain location. I think if the back end could be modularized to the point where the core components behave like widgets, this could become the saving grace as it would empower normal end users to really shape the entire administration portion of WordPress so that it best fits their needs. WordPress can’t be all things to all people and I think the more ways that WordPress provides end users the chance to configure things that best suits them on a personal level, the better.

Submit Your Question:

If you have a question regarding any aspect of WordPress you would like me to answer or at least, hear my take on, you can either contact me using the following contact form with your question or you can follow WPTavern on Twitter and send me an @reply with your question. If the WPTavern account is following you, simply send me a Direct Message with your question. Don’t expect expert opinions or answers as I’m not an expert!

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What Is WordPress Bloat?

What Is WordPress Bloat?

By Jeffro on February 7, 2009

bloatedwordpressKeeping an eye on the WordPress Hackers mailing list of late, I noticed a discussion where the word bloat was used numerous times. Out of my own curiosity, I decided to ask those on the list what the definition of bloat was. The answers were not surprising. Everything from items that are added to core but are barely used to, anything could be considered bloat.

Andrew Rickmann published a response which is more in line with my thoughts on bloat.

In the case of the former, as long as it doesn’t add a significant amount to the download or slow down WordPress almost no feature will be bloat, in the case of the latter almost any feature could be bloat.

Finally, of course, it is so individual that it is impossible to reach agreement. I think the links / blogroll / whatever it is called now, functionality is pointless bloat, but loads of people use it, like it, and would fight me to the death to keep it. We would both be right, and wrong.

I thought this was a great response by Andrew and it’s true. Bloat in WordPress is defined on an individual level meaning hundreds of interpretations around a single feature could take place if an argument was brought up about it bloating WordPress. Therefore, does something in WordPress become labeled as bloat only if the majority of people believe or think it to be or is there some other process or set of circumstances that have to be met for something to fall into the bloat category? Keeping in mind Andrew’s response, can anything in WordPress actually be labeled as bloat if it’s useful to at least a few people?

I believe we could argue all day about what is and is not bloated material in WordPress but I guess the final say always comes down to those with commit access to the core as well as Matt’s guidance.

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