Media RSS The Next Core Integrated Plugin?

Media RSS The Next Core Integrated Plugin?

By Jeffro on February 1, 2009

On a recent discussion thread within the WordPress Hackers Mailing list, Aaron Brazell of Technosailor.com suggested that the Media RSS or (mrss) plugin be integrated into the core of WordPress. Media RSS is built on top of the Media RSS Module framework developed by Yahoo!. Essentially the module supplements the < enclosure > element inside of RSS 2.0 feeds to allow for more robust media.

Aaron makes the case that it is one of the plugins he recommends most to his clients and others. With this plugin installed, if you published an image in your blog post, the Media RSS plugin would apply the proper enclosures/formatting so that the image would show up on the social networks you’re apart where you are utilizing your blogs RSS feed. Joost De Valk follows up the initial proposal by acknowledging that it’s also a standard install for 95% of his clients blogs.

I’m not sure about Media RSS. I mean, I sort of understand the basis behind it but I need a clearer explanation as to what it does. Doing a couple of Google searches looking for reviews on the plugin didn’t turn up much and as I tried to review the plugin myself, I didn’t know what to look for.

With that said, Andy Skelton chimed into the conversation and mentioned that Matt Mullenweg was interested in having this feature part of WordPress 2.8. Andy suggested that Aaron write a patch and that is what he is doing. Aaron doesn’t have core or commit access so if Matt doesn’t like the patch or the way it’s written it won’t make it in but based on all indications, the features provided by Media RSS seem poised to make it into the core of WordPress 2.8. If not this time, then next.

What are your thoughts on having the features provided by this plugin integrated into the core?

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Sandbox/Plaintxt Goes Up For Sale

Sandbox/Plaintxt Goes Up For Sale

By Jeffro on February 1, 2009

Scott Wallick, one of the founding developers behind the popular Sandbox theme for WordPress has published an announcement on his blog where he states that he is selling the Sandbox website as well as Plaintxt.org. Scott mentions the following in his post:

I have withdrawn from the WordPress community. Active development of my themes and plugins has stopped simply because I am unable to continue the necessary development. In a way, they have a life of their own.

My WordPress themes and plugins were inspired by other themes and plugins, many of theme long abandoned and forgotten. Yet they remained and influenced me. In this way, I know my contributions will continue. Now, though, I am letting what I created, plaintxt.org, live on without me—for better or worse.

Purchase of the sites will include the domain and content within them. Hosting will not be included. These two domains already have an established brand built on top of them within the WordPress community and that is essentially what you would be buying into.

I have personally never used the Sandbox theme but without a shadow of a doubt, Sandbox is a word I have heard mentioned countless times since I began to take an active role within the WordPress community. In fact, there has been and continues to be discussion on adding the Sandbox theme as a default theme for WordPress. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen but one things for sure, Scott, Sandbox, and PlainTXT have certainly made a positive impact on the entire WordPress community.

I have invited Scott to appear on a future episode of WordPress Weekly. I’ll let everyone know if he agrees to do so or not.

Hat tip to Ian Stewart

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Fix For Filosofo Comment Preview Plugin

Fix For Filosofo Comment Preview Plugin

By Jeffro on January 31, 2009

Community member Kim Parsell recently sent me an email that contained a link to a post she found which describes the exact same problem I was having with the Filosofo Comment Preview plugin. Each time I activated the plugin on this blog, I received an error similar to this:

Call to undefined function get_currentuserinfo()…

While doing research on the error, I found out it had something to do with pluggable.php. So, I uploaded a fresh pluggable.php file from a fresh WordPress 2.7 installation and that didn’t work. I ended up just leaving the plugin disabled and was going to work on it on my local server until Kim sent me this email.

Saphod.com publishes a block of code which you can add to the comment preview plugin which should enable both plugins to be activated at the same time. As for myself, I simply disabled Maintenance Mode as I don’t have a need for it since the site is now open to the public.

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WPWeekly Episode 40 – Keith’s Farewell

WPWeekly Episode 40 – Keith’s Farewell

By Jeffro on January 31, 2009

wordpressweekly1Episode 40 of WordPress Weekly discussed a wide range of topics from the release of WordPress MU 2.7 to the All In One SEO Plugin reaching one million downloads. Also sad to say that this was Keith Murray’s last episode as co-host. I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Special Announcement:

Kym Huynh co-host of the WordPress centric podcast, WordCast was in a terrible car accident. Kym was in the middle of a three week vacation celebrating his recent graduation from law school when he ended up in a bad car accident. Unfortunately, Kym suffered quite a few broken bones and now has a metal arm. Dave Moyer of DaveMoyer.org, producer of show published an email he received from Kym earlier today that can be read on the DaveMoyer.org website. I personally wish Kym a fast and speedy recovery. Please visit DaveMoyer.org to find out how to send your get well wishes to Kym.

Stories Discussed:

WordPress MU 2.7 Released
BuddyPress 1.0 Beta 2 Released
All In One SEO Plugin Hits One Million Downloads
WordPress.TV Launches
Thank A Plugin Developer Day
CForms 2 Removed From The Plugin Repository
WordCamp Denver, Feb 28th
WordPress Documentation Project
Does The Post Revisions Feature Need To Be Revised?

WordPress Tavern Listener Poll:

Each week from now on, I’ll be featuring a new listener poll question on WPTavern.com The poll is located in the sidebar on the right hand side of the site.

This weeks poll question was: Has the visual post editor ever made you angry?

Out of a total of 22 votes, 20 of you said yes while only 2 of you voted no.

Next Weeks Poll Question Is: Do you think configuration options need to be added to WordPress to configure Post Revisions?

Plugin Picks Of The Week:
Jeff – Revision Control – Revision control gives users control over post/page revisions. With it, you can choose a blog-global setting which is found in SETTINGS – REVISIONS in the WordPress administration panel for pages/posts to enable/disable or limit the number of revisions which are saved per post/page. This setting can even be controlled on an individual level since the revision control shows up as a meta box in the WordPress Write Panel.

Keith – TweetSuite – TweetSuite is one of the most complete plugins available for Twitter-minded individuals. The tool allows for all the usual twitter features that we’ve come to expect (tweet my post, widget my tweets) but goes further: widget for favorite tweets, and most importantly TWEETBACKS. Becoming as important as trackbacks from other blogs are tweetbacks. When someone tweets your post with one of the major URL shortening services (tinyurl, is.gd etc) TweetSuite will find that tweet and add a tweetback to your post. Super cool. If you’re into twitter and have a blog, TweetSuite is a must-have.

Announcements: The next episode of WordPress Weekly will have a new co-host. Who will it be? Tune in to find out.

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Friday February 6th, 2009 8P.M. EST

Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe

Length Of Episode: 56 Minutes

Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode40.mp3

Listen To Episode #40:

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The Beginning Of The Friday Happy Hour

The Beginning Of The Friday Happy Hour

By Jeffro on January 30, 2009

Welcome to the first edition of the WordPress Tavern Friday Happy Hour. Each Friday, this post will provide a summary of what is going on within the WordPress Tavern Community.

From The Forum:

CForms 2 Removed From The Repository – Earlier this week, the popular CForms 2 Plugin was removed from the plugin repository due to it violating the WordPress Plugin Repository guidelines. The good news is, the plugin will continue to be developed under a fully compatible license but it won’t be hosted on the plugin repository.

Using WordPress As A Full Fledged CMS – I started a forum thread for everyone to post not only their ideas, but actual websites in use where WordPress is being used as a full blown content management site. I’m looking for a list of plugins and techniques in order to make this happen.

What I Would Like To Hear At A WordCamp – Jacob Santos describes what it is he would like to hear at a WordCamp. I also chimed in with what I’d like to hear as well. If you’re looking at starting a WordCamp event, check out this thread for topic information.

Why Do You Use WordPress – We all have a story as to why we use WordPress. This thread is a culmination of those. Please join in the conversation and share your story as to why you use WordPress.

Are You A Theme Hopper? – Kit asked this question in the forum and its become apparent that there are many theme hoppers. It’s sort of like a can of Pringles! Once you pop, you can’t stop!

Of course there is much more happening in the forum then what I mentioned in. Have a seat in the Tavern and join the conversation.

Welcoming Party:

I’d like to thank the following new members for joining WordPress Tavern forum. (These are their usernames)

James, Lorelle, greenshady, katemag, ptahdunbar, Brad, improvingtheweb, aaronwaggs, donnacha, jond, stefanvervoort, GaMerZ, robwhiteus, Techkitten, M.J., margaretroach, Many, Dan Schulz, andrew, PaulCunningham, kdmurray, Jacob Santos, Ted, JGR

Other News And Tidbits:

The first article on WordPress Tavern to be submitted to StumbleUpon is: Matt Mullenweg Talks To USA Today. Thanks to whomever submitted the article, that was awfully nice of you!

If you’re not following WordPress Tavern on Twitter, I highly encourage you to do so. You can follow the account by visiting the @WPTavern Twitter page and clicking the follow button. I use the Twitter account now only to notify followers of new updates, but also hot topics in the forum, WordPress tidbits I discover and I also tap into the wealth of knowledge that you folks have to discover new themes and plugins.

Over the course of this weekend or early next week, I’ll be installing something called OIO Publisher. This is a WordPress plugin that will help me manage the sale of display advertising here on the site. So don’t be shocked to see 125X125 images starting next week.

Later this evening, I will be addressing an issue that has popped up in the forum regarding advertising. The forum guidelines state:

3. Advertisements are not allowed. Generally speaking, posts made specifically for the promotion of a website, product or service are considered advertising or, at least, posts made that unnecessarily send people to a website that you are in some way affiliated with. It does not matter if it is a commercial website, a personal website, a non profit website, etc. I do authorize and/or sell advertisements on a case-by-case basis. If you are interested in utilizing this option, please contact me via THIS CONTACT PAGE.

I have decided that plugin or theme developers who start a new forum thread to talk about a plugin or theme they have recently developed/released is considered advertising. If someone else creates a thread other than the developer, it is not considered advertising. However, I will also be modifying the guidelines to point out that developers should not private message other members of the forum to post information regarding their plugin or theme developments. Doing so will put your account at risk of being suspended or worst case scenario, banned. If there is ever a demand from plugin/theme authors to have a place on the forum to advertise their developments, I may create a forum specifically for that purpose as part of a monetization strategy. But until then, please abide by these guidelines.

Starting next week, WordPress Weekly will be produced under the WPTavern site. Also, I will have a new co-host producing the show with me. Who that is, I’ll tell you next week. Also, the poll which is featured on the front page within the sidebar on the right hand side of the site will be changed each week in conjunction with the podcast. Consider it, a listener poll. I will announce the results and the following weeks question at some point during each episode of WordPress Weekly.

Last but not least, this site will be considered launched in public beta starting next week. So starting next week, I’d love it if you would do a small write up regarding the site and the community forum. If anyone encounters bugs or errors, please contact me via the Contact page accessible via the Contact link at the top of the blog.

Conclusion:

That wraps up the first installment of the Friday Happy Hour. Come back next week for yet another overview as to what is happening around the Tavern. Remember, the drinks are always on the house!

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Matt Mullenweg Talks To USA Today

Matt Mullenweg Talks To USA Today

By Jeffro on January 30, 2009

USA Today’s Jefferson Graham sat down with Matt Mullenweg the other day to talk WordPress. The article covers the brief history of how Matt got involved with the WordPress project as well as how Automattic was founded. Much of what was stated in the interview can be found in Matt’s Wikipedia entry but he did make a few quotes which are worthy of repeating.

The first quote is:

“People might start with LiveJournal or Blogger, but if they get serious, they’ll graduate to WordPress. We try to cater to the more powerful users,”

I simply like this quote because of the way Matt pimps his own blogging platform.

The second quote I find to be particularly important. When Mullenweg was asked by Jefferson on how much money Automattic brings in, here is what Matt had to say:

“We’re profitable”. “Our goal was never to make the most money possible, just enough to sustain our growth and contribute as much back to open source as possible.”

Think about that for a second. Automattic was not created to become this giant monolithic corporation that hoarded the goodness the WordPress.org project has to offer. Since Automattic was founded, its employee base has grown slowly as well as making excellent use of the $1.1 million dollars they raised for their first round of funding. That money simply allowed them to take a few risks without worrying about payroll but because the success of WordPress.com grew so quickly, they ended up using very little of that funding money.

Too many people in the WordPress community get this notion that Automattic is the only company that can make money off of or through WordPress while at the same time, flattening every one else’s business opportunities. If you haven’t listened to the special two hour interview I conducted with Matt Mullenweg, I highly encourage you to do so. You can find that episode here.

In that episode, it becomes apparent that Matt’s passion is the WordPress.org project. He wants to see as many people as possible become successful through the likes of the software albeit with a simple request to abide by the license for which the software is filed under (GPL). Also in this episode, you find out that Matt is not such an evil person that some in the community would like you to think. He is a smart man, is passionate about not only the software but the people contributing to its success, the people using it, and most importantly, the open source nature of it all. He does things that he believes is best for the community. While we may not agree with all of the decisions he makes, he always puts the community first.

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BuddyPress 1.0 Beta2 Now Available

BuddyPress 1.0 Beta2 Now Available

By Jeffro on January 29, 2009

Hot on the heels of the recently released WordPress MU 2.7, BuddyPress 1.0 Beta 2 has been released to the public. Andy states that the release fixes hundreds of bugs since Beta 1 with most of those being fixed by the community.

We’re not quite done yet, so please test this beta as much as possible. Bugs should be reported on the BuddyPress Trac server, but you can also discuss potential issues with other users on the BuddyPress forums.

We’re three days later than expected with this beta. WordPress MU 2.7 was released yesterday, it made much more sense to sync up the release schedules to ensure there were no compatibility problems. The 1.0 release will now be February 12th, exactly two weeks from today.

I’m glad to see that BuddyPress and WordPress MU appear to be synchronizing their releases with the WordPress.org project. Keeping everything on the same page and release schedule I think will make things easier for end users of the software.

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The Bittersweet Taste Of Bleeding Edge Software

The Bittersweet Taste Of Bleeding Edge Software

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

The following guest post was written by Brad Williams of WebDevStudios.com

I’ve been developing with WordPress for a few years now and the projects I’ve been working on have started to expand into bleeding edge software. Bleeding edge software is defined as “technology that is so new (and thus, presumably, not perfected) that the user is required to risk reductions in stability and productivity in order to use it” ref. WordPress MU, BuddyPress, and bbPress are my three current tasks intertwined to work flawlessly together. Of course that doesn’t happen now does it? Is this the price we pay for pushing the bounds of WordPress development?

The Bitter: I’m creating a new BuddyPress focused website which requires an alpha install of bbPress on top of WordPress MU 2.7 beta. Installing beta software and alpha software on top of beta software makes my head spin just thinking about it. As you can imagine there are many bugs that still exist in all three packages, so why use them? The draw of utilizing bleeding edge functionality is too great to bypass for me.

The Sweet: Being at the “bleeding edge” of WordPress functionality is actually an interesting place to be. Many bugs I stumble across are active tickets in development Trac, which allows me to fix the issue for myself and also for the community. Helping out in the development of BuddyPress (or any open source project) is really thrilling, especially when you see the buzz surrounding it and how your code changes are helping.

Bleeding edge software development isn’t for everybody, but if you want to help these amazing open source projects grow it’s great to help out in anyway you can. If nobody used the software packages these projects would die, and thus the need for bleeding edge software developers exists and I’m happy to fill that role. Code on!

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WPTavern Celebrates Thank A Plugin Author Day!

WPTavern Celebrates Thank A Plugin Author Day!

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

It’s only fitting that WordPress has it’s own series of holidays. After all, just about everyone and (everything) else has holidays. Today, January 28th has officially been declared by Matt Mullenweg “Thank a Plugin Developer”. Asides from paying homeage to plugin authors, Matt also lets us know that the plugin repository is called home by over 4,000 different plugins. Another little tidbit is that the average number of plugins installed per self hosted blog is five!

Considering the occasion, I’ll do a little thank you by displaying which plugins that are activated on this blog and believe it or not, I’ll even use a plugin just for that purpose. It’s called PluginsUsed written by my favorite plugin author, Lester ‘Gamerz‘ Chan. I highly encourage you to either thank a plugin author by donating some cash their way via PayPal or at the very least, provide them some link love. Plugin authors love exposure and some would argue they don’t get enough of it. The PluginsUse plugin makes this a very easy process.

Without further adieu, here are the plugins I use on WPTavern.com and vouch for.

There are 36 plugins used: 32 active plugins and 4 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

Akismet
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

commentluv
» Andy Bailey (url)
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html. See the Settings Page for styling and text output options.

Comment Quicktags -Reloaded
» Owen Winkler (url)
Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. WP 2.2 support by Ibrahim Faour

Contact Form 7
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

Exclude Pages from Navigation
» Simon Wheatley (url)
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.

Executable PHP widget
» Otto (url)
Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Heavily derived from the Text widget code in WordPress.

Filosofo Comments Preview
» Austin Matzko (url)
Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them.

Form to Post
» Michael Torbert (url)
Allows users to post a post.

Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page

Highlight Author Comments
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.

Insights
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.

KB Advanced RSS Widget
» Adam R. Brown (url)
Gives user complete control over how feeds are displayed.

KG Archives
» Kates Gasis (url)
Yet another sortable archives from katesgasis.com.

No Self Pings
» Michael D. Adams (url)
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

OIOpublisher Direct 2.0
» Simon Emery (url)
Control your Ad Space with OIOpublisher.

Post Template
» Vincent Prat (url)
A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale.

Really Simple CAPTCHA
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.

Short Comment Filter
» Will Anderson (url)
Automatically Spams or Deletes comments that don’t meet a specified length criterion.

Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess

The Excerpt re-reloaded
» Luca Biagini (url)
This plugin does something more than the built-in excerpt function. It lets choose exceprt length, allowed html tags, the link text to full post and the html container of the excerpt (,, or plain text).

Thumbnail Viewer
» Tyler Longren (url)
Thumbnail Viewer is a simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller. Add the rel=”thumbnail” attribute to any link tag to activate the thumbnail viewer. It’s based the wp-lightbox plugin and on the Image Thumbnail Viewer from Dynamic Drive.

Widget Logic
» Alan Trewartha (url)
Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc

Woopra
» Elie El Khoury (url)
This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Simply sign up at Woopra.com, then activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings.

WP-PageNavi
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

WP-Polls
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

WP-PostViews
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.

WP-PostViews Widget
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a PostViews Widget to display most viewed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostViews first.

WP-Stats
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display your WordPress blog statistics. Ranging from general total statistics, some of my plugins statistics and top 10 statistics.

WP-Syntax
» Ryan McGeary (url)
Syntax highlighting using GeSHi supporting a wide range of popular languages. Wrap code blocks with <pre lang=”LANGUAGE” line=”1″> and </pre> where LANGUAGE is a geshi supported language syntax. The line attribute is optional.

WP Ajax Edit Comments
» Ajay D’Souza (url)
Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.

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WordPress MU 2.7 Now Available

WordPress MU 2.7 Now Available

By Jeffro on January 28, 2009

Donncha has announced the release of WordPress MU version 2.7 today. Donncha states that this release is mostly a code sync release but it also contains quite a few bug fixes. The most notable change in WordPress MU is the addition of Viper007bond’s admin bar. Upgrading to the latest release should be as simple as overwriting the old files with the new ones. However, always make a backup copy first before doing anything! Congrats goes out to Donncha and to everyone who submitted a patch for the slickest version of MU to date. (MU now has the same backend design as WordPress 2.7)

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