With the passing of Steve Jobs, memorials and tributes are showing up all over the web. While BoingBoing.net seems to be one of the more popular tributes, I’m happy to inform you that if you’re using WordPress, you too can join in with the same tribute of making your site look like the Mac OS via a freely available WordPress theme called Retro MacOS.
Tribute Based On Retro MacOS WordPress Theme
According to the release post, this was Stuart Browns first WordPress theme which was created during the days of WordPress 2.1.2. However, it appears to work fine for the latest version of WordPress if BoingBoing.net is anything to go by.
I wonder if via this theme, WordPress users can celebrate a new holiday called Steve Jobs day by having our site look like the retro MacOS every year on October 5th. I think it would be pretty interesting to browse some of the largest sites using WordPress when they use this theme just to see how it looks. At the very least, this is one way WordPress users can pay tribute to a great man.
Since publishing more content for WPTavern, I’ve become quite fond of the ability to schedule posts into the future. However, one gripe I’ve had is not being able to easily identify the time a post has been scheduled to be published. I was hoping that at some point in the future, on the All Posts administration panel that I would be able to see the time the post was going to go live under the term Scheduled, instead of having to go into the edit panel for the post to see the exact time. My mouse cursor must have been at the right place at the right time because I discovered tonight that if I hover my mouse cursor over the date the post has been scheduled, a tool-tip will appear that gives me the exact time.
It’s little things like this that I really appreciate.
One of the coolest things about BuddyPress is that when it was developed by Andy Peatling, he made sure to put in a considerable amount of effort into creating a BuddyPress Starter theme as well as a BuddyPress starter plugin. Knowing that those two things would be often used as the beginning stages of a plugin or theme, only the best coding practices were used as a means of not only having a blank slate to start from, but also teach developers at the same time. It’s like Hello Dolly! but without the lyrics. Boone Gorges has announced that the tradition has continued with the release of BuddyPress Skeleton Component v1.6. The new release features the following:
Refactored to use the BuddyPress 1.5′s new BP_Component class, making it dead-simple to register globals, create navigation items, and hook into the BP load order
File structure reorganized to better reflect BP 1.5′s organization, and to provide more fine-grained access to functions
Data storage class totally refactored, to use custom post types and WP_Query, instead of custom database tables.
Added a small guide for creating a top-level component directory (a “root component”), which was missing in earlier versions
Tons of documentation added and revised
All WP_DEBUG notices removed
It’s important to know that any plugin built from version 1.6 of the Skeleton Component will be incompatible with BuddyPress versions prior to 1.5. It’s recommended by Boone that you first create the plugin for BuddyPress 1.5 and build in backwards compatibility as an after thought.
Meg Heckman of Poynter.org shares her experience from a newsroom perspective with The Monitor using Drupal while sharing the experience of William Davis of the Daily News and their move to WordPress.
So which system is better?
Neither.
The question of WordPress versus Drupal isn’t Coke/Pepsi, boxers/briefs, Red Sox/Yankees. It’s about understanding the needs of your organization.
The five questions brought up within the post are definitely ones you should have answers to before making any decision to go with a particular platform. As a bonus, check out the comment left by pmaiorana who claims to work for Automattic with regards to the important factor of software updates.
With such head-starts, the five figure medium-sized website cost quickly becomes four. The four figure small business website cost becomes three. The home-grown sideline business goes from three figures to two (many premium WordPress themes designs are available for only $50). You can even get a WordPress website on their sister site for free. Buy a domain name for it and you’re in business for just $10.
To the short-sighted web developer or designer it’s the end of days. To the business owner it should be the start of getting the website they always thought they were going to get, but never quite did, for a price they can justify, and that everyone can use. via – WordPress The Quiet Revolution
The e107 importer plugin for WordPress created by Coolkevman is in need of a developer or a group of community members to keep the plugin updated. The plugin was originally created by Kevin to migrate a number of e107 websites he managed to WordPress. His stance was that the plugin would be maintained and updated until he migrated all of his sites from e107 to WordPress. This occurred on July 5th, 2011 where Kevin announced that the plugin would no longer be maintained.
The reason behind this decision is simple and straightforward: I’ve recently migrated my last e107 website to WordPress. Now that e107 is no longer part of my life, I have no interest in spending time and energy working on this plugin.
So if you plan to get rid of your e107 sites in favor of WordPress, do the migration now, as the plugin will self-deteriorate as WordPress API gets updated.
While I have not personally tested this plugin, it has been tested by the author to work with e107 0.7.25, WordPress 3.2 RC2 and bbPress 2.0 Beta. Odds are that the plugin works just fine with WordPress 3.2.1 and bbPress 2.0. With regards to bbPress, Kevin points out that forum posts from e107 go into bbPress the plugin, NOT the stand alone version. e107 version 0.7.26 was released on September 14th with a full change-log located here.
Kevin did say that if someone were to send in a code contribution that he would add it to the project and possibly release version 1.5 but it’s not guaranteed to happen. Now would be a great time to either ask Kevin to take over the plugin or create a fork of it before the differences between WordPress and e107 become so great that the importer needs to be recreated from scratch. One last thing to mention. The plugin was developed and maintained on Github with the WordPress subversion hosted plugin acting as a mirror for the sake of distribution.
LinuxInsider.com has a great case study published from the CTO of eMusic.com, Richard Caccappolo on how the website transitioned from using a clunky CMS to WordPress. While reading the case study, the first thing that struck me was the following: “we found that WordPress was an ideal solution to suit all of our CMS needs.” Anyone who STILL thinks that WordPress is just for blogs really ought to change their mindset. While reviewing the different CMS solutions available, Drupal became a strong candidate but thanks to the persuasion of Scott Taylor who is the lead PHP developer for eMusic, they opted to go with WordPress instead. The case study goes on to describe tips on ensuring a smooth transition, why plugins are both a good and bad thing, and how eMusic decided to use bbPress along with BuddyPress to provide a more flexible platform for their community. After reading the case study, stop back and watch Scott give a presentation on the transition process from WordCamp San Francisco 2011. Watch in full screen mode to read the slides.
If you could ask Scott a question or two regarding the huge transition, what would it be?
Aaron Brazell who heads up Technosailor.com has published a primer on how WordPress Subversion is organized. The primer explains trunk, branches, and tags with regards to what they mean for developing WordPress. Also worthy of reading is Andrew Nacins comment located under the article as he offers more clarification on the use of branches. ∞
WPBeginner has published a review of the Post Admin Shortcuts plugin that enables users to pin a post, page, or custom post type to make it easier to find and edit the next time your in the back-end of WordPress. Definitely a convenience type plugin that can come in handy if you’re routinely editing an old post that is deep within your archive. ∞
This episode was pre-recorded due to some scheduling conflicts at work. They should be fixed by next Friday so I can do the live show again. This episode features a trio of interviews. The first is with Andrew Nacin, one of the core developers for WordPress who gives us an update as to what’s going on with WordPress 3.3. The second interview is with Site5 CEO and WebPub Founder Ben Welch-Bolen who talks to us about what WebPub is and how it will help make managing web applications much easier. Last but not least, Brad Williams gives us the low down on what WPClassroom is and how it works. He also gives us some information related to WordCamp Philadelphia scheduled to take place in early November.
This episode was pre-recorded due to some scheduling conflicts at work. They should be fixed by next Friday so I can do the live show again. This episode features a trio of interviews. The first is with
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