Displaying 91 To 120 Of 211 Comments @Matt – I don’t intend to attack (or pile on) here, but I have to comment. This response: Ben, you need to get laid. Reminds me of this Tweet by Ryan Duff: @chip_bennett Seriously, what bug crawled up your ass? Are you unhappy in your marriage or something? You complain about everything I’m just going to keep these two comments in my back pocket, for the next time that someone admonishes about not making personal attacks. Seriously, Matt, such responses are beneath you. Just IMHO, you owe it to the project and community that you lead, to maintain a higher sense of decorum that what is evidenced by this and other similar comments. » Posted By Chip Bennett On July 17, 2010 @ 7:34 AM Automatically Correcting The WordPress Mistake By the way: if this change is so critical (and popular), why does Ozh’ “Correctly Spell WordPress” plugin only have 334 downloads in the almost three years that it’s been in the repository? » Posted By Chip Bennett On July 6, 2010 @ 3:41 PM With this patch, Matt is inherently indicating that, with respect to the capitalization of “WordPress”, end users of WordPress do not, in fact, have the right to use the application according to their own purposes as end users. Users can no longer (intentionally or unintentionally) mis-capitalize “WordPress”, without extending core to remove the filter. I find this inherent indication fascinating, given the fanatical, dogmatic pursuit of software freedom in almost all of Matt’s (and Automattic’s, and the WordPress project’s) words and actions. This statement is part of GNU’s definition of “free software”: “The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or Reiterating: “it is the user’s purpose that matters, not the developer’s purpose” According to the definition and philosophy of free software, Matt and his pedantic desire for “WordPress” not to be mis-capitalized can go pound sand. His desire is completely and entirely irrelevant to the end users’ purposes for WordPress. This function provides absolutely no benefit to the user community of WordPress. It is the epitome of pedantry. If I’m wrong – if such a burning need and desire for such a filter exists within the community – then move the entire function into a plugin, add it to the repository, and see how popular it becomes. It is not so much the bad decision to add the function to core that bothers me, per se; bad decisions are correctable. Rather, what concerns me is the attitude and response of the core development team (primarily, Matt himself) to the criticism from the community for making the decision: The function inherently makes editorial changes to user content without user knowledge or consent? Who cares. WordPress must be capitalized correctly, at all costs! None of the above are responses that give me much confidence in the core development team’s respect of, concern for, or commitment to the WordPress user community. » Posted By Chip Bennett On July 6, 2010 @ 3:07 PM Should The WordPress Support Forum Only Support Themes From The Theme Repository? I would propose that we stop using the term “pirated” for any GPL-licensed theme. If the issue at hand is maliciously modified GPL themes, then I would propose that we refer to such themes as “malicious” themes or “adulterated” themes, or something – just not “pirated”. Use of the term “pirated” in this context introduces an unwanted and inappropriate value assessment of the distribution of the original themes. And since such distribution is explicitly authorized by the GPL, no value assessment should be made upon such distribution. In short: there is no such thing as a “pirated” GPL theme, and even if there were, the issue at hand is not the distribution, but rather the malicious adulteration, of such themes. » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 28, 2010 @ 11:03 AM WordPress 3.0 Upgrade Woes Starting To Come In My own upgrade was utterly flawless. No problems whatsoever. Of course, I had my BackupBuddy backup at the ready, just in case. :) » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 18, 2010 @ 8:33 PM I watched in HD, but didn’t see any easter eggs? » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 18, 2010 @ 9:44 AM Widgets, Modules, Or Metaboxes? RE: “Dashboard Widgets” - What if they’re not on the Dashboard? » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 14, 2010 @ 3:50 PM WordPress.Net.IN Taken Offline But I think it’s worth mentioning that at the time, Matt tried to take care of the domain. However, the attempts failed which is where some people could argue that he should have kept trying. This wasn’t just some site infringing on the WordPress trademark. This was a malicious domain whose sole reason for existence was to exploit WordPress installations. There should have been no “giving up” or “moving on to other things”. Look, the other 230 .com/.net/.org domains infringing on the WordPress trademark are another matter. Many probably didn’t find out the TM usage rules before registering the domain name. Some probably did, but didn’t care. But as far as we know, none of them has been used as an on-going, active exploit mechanism for WordPress installs. Three years ago, I was successfully having copyright-infringing content removed from websites. Little, old, nobody me – successfully navigating hosts’ TOS and complaint-resolution systems, to protect my own copyrighted work. If I could successfully defend my copyright and have infringing work taken down, surely WordPress could have successfully defended its trademark and gotten a patently malicious domain taken down – if it had been given the proper priority. I’m not trying to bust Matt’s chops here, but at the same time, I don’t understand defending three years’ worth of negligence – which is what I get the impression that you’re trying to do. » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 8, 2010 @ 2:59 PM Jeff, Regarding priorities: it’s not “meh.” It’s not a minor detail. It is ostensibly a priority for WPF that a certain reputation and philosophy be tied to the WordPress name. Thus, protecting the use of that name is critically important. With both reputation and trademark, if you don’t protect them, you will lose control of them. The creation of the WordPress Foundation to own the trademarks of the WordPress project is a fantastic development, because it will allow those involved to focus their efforts where they are most effective and beneficial. That said, if Matt is so busy with making WordPress the most awesome product that it is (and make no mistake: he’s done a wonderful job in that regard) to be able to fulfill the necessary duties of trademark ownership, then, in the best interests of the project, he needs to hand off (or delegate) those responsibilities to another. Please don’t mistake that comment as a knock against Matt. He’s great at what he does, and WordPress is awesome under his leadership. And honestly, I don’t think very many people in this world could wear both of those hats effectively. But protecting the WordPress trademark simply has to be one of the top priorities of the WPF. If Matt believes that his efforts are not best-spent focusing on that priority, then, for the good of the project, he needs to appoint someone who can focus on that priority, through the WPF. I think getting the .com.in domain taken down is great news, because a known, malicious, exploitative, trademark-infringing domain being allowed to exist for three years is, quite simply, inexcusable. » Posted By Chip Bennett On June 8, 2010 @ 9:48 AM Jay’s a good guy. I hope to have the pleasure of chatting with him sometime – over drinks or otherwise. (There’s always that cross-country trip he’s planning…) And, who has called for Jane’s resignation? I must have missed that. Certainly, Jane and I have had disagreements, but I think she’s a great person for the role she fills. (Though, I wonder why her being female would cause anyone to question her ability to develop either WordPress UI or the WordPress community. That makes no sense to me.) Further, I would assume that Jane would be just as willing to chat with me over drinks as she has several other people recently. That’s the thing: I don’t assume that, just because I have a disagreement with someone that we can’t be cordial, or discuss and/or work out our differences. Jane appears to hold the same belief. If only more people did, as well. » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 28, 2010 @ 7:05 PM So VideoPress saves videos in Ogg, eh? Interesting, but not surprising. Open file formats FTW! (Oh, and file naming conventions FTW, too! ;) ) » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 27, 2010 @ 4:34 PM Once CSS3 goes from proposal to standard, I’ll be a bit less cynical. ;) As for the theme itself, it is interesting to see some of the possibilities, but I do wonder about the usability of such a theme. Using 3D just for the sake of having 3D elements comes across, on one level, as using BLINK back in the bad-old days: serves no purpose, but it’s eye candy (sort of). That said, I’m sure some very talented developers with an eye for usability will come up with some very creative and innovative uses for CSS 3D. » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 20, 2010 @ 2:34 PM Even if it’s free: what’s the point? Safari – as a whole, not just Mac/Safari – accounts for about 3% of the browser market. “Proof of concept” of non-standard browser features is exactly what led to the craptastic IE-locked-in internet of the late 90s. » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 20, 2010 @ 12:59 PM So, really: what’s the point? Mac/Safari browser market share has to be sub-10%, since Mac itself is 10% (or less) of the OS market share. So, if you purchase the theme, 90+% of your purchase is going to be for the degraded theme. (Hope it’s a good one!) How is this any different than the late-90s craze of designing web sites using Microsoft IE-specific features (which led to the interwebs being plastered with “This Site Best Viewed in IE” images)? » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 20, 2010 @ 8:57 AM Review Of The Limit Login Attempts Plugin I use Limit Login Attempts – choosing it over other options primarily for the email notification. » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 4, 2010 @ 6:20 PM MattNote From WordCamp San Francisco @Matt – Great to hear! bbPress integrates perfectly with my site. (Of course, I had to develop a custom theme in order to accomplish that integration, but what I learned about bbPress in that theme-development process more than made up for the time I invested.) I’m excited to hear of bbPress’ continued development! » Posted By Chip Bennett On May 3, 2010 @ 9:16 AM Use The Media Library Or Hand Code? I’ve recently started using the Nextgen Gallery plugin. It offers the best of both worlds: bulk upload via FTP, and then directory-scanning to add to the database and to import image EXIF and other data. Does the Media Library have directory-scanning functionality, to add to the database files that have been uploaded via FTP? » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 20, 2010 @ 9:09 AM Using Amazon S3 To Set Up A CDN In WordPress Yep, though one (WP S3 Backups) appears to be an older version of another (Automatic WordPress Backups), and I am waiting for the resolution of an issue with the latter, before giving it a try. » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 15, 2010 @ 10:53 AM @Mike and @Jeffro: Certainly, using a CDN will almost always provide a benefit with respect to site speed. However, until bandwidth usage exceeds the break-even point I referenced in my original comment, using a CDN also will almost always incur additional cost for the CDN bandwidth usage. For example, on my shared hosting account, I have a 50GB/month bandwidth quota. Currently, I will never come anywhere close to using that much bandwidth. My site averages at best 150 uniques a day. So, for me, using a CDN, while providing a site speed increase (though to what extent, I don’t know), would also incur the cost of bandwidth. For Amazon S3, the tier-pricing is modest; for WPCDN, the cost is a minimum of $6/month. So, even if the cost is quite modest, it is still an additional cost. Now, what would be *really* intriguing to me would be the ability to use Amazon S3 (or another service) purely as an off-server *backup* of my website (files and DB), automated through a plugin. » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 15, 2010 @ 8:21 AM I’m wondering about the cost of using AmazonS3 as a CDN. S3 is great for storage (archive/backup) of files, because storage costs are dirt-cheap. However, the bandwidth costs for transferring to/from S3 aren’t necessarily so cheap. For a low-traffic site that doesn’t exceed its monthly bandwidth quota, using a CDN makes no sense at all, as it merely adds additional monthly bandwidth costs. For a high-traffic site, the bandwidth costs from the CDN are likely much lower than bandwidth quota increases from the web host. So, what is the traffic (bandwidth) break-even point, above which a site would start realizing cost savings using S3 as a CDN (or WPCDN, for that matter)? I would think the traffic would have to be in the tens of thousands per day (or, in my case, almost 2 GB of bandwidth use per day). » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 14, 2010 @ 1:31 PM Who’s Right? Network Solutions Or Matt @Steven - All that security is going to do little good for anyone who has both nefarious intent and access inside the server, especially if that server is mis-configured (as with the Network Solutions hack). WordPress, out of the box, is pretty darn secure. There are other things that can be done to harden a WordPress install, but they are hard to build in or to automate during/after install, because they are things that are outside the control of the application. Other things (.htaccess rules that block web access to wp-config, wp- files and folders, etc.) could be implemented (e.g. in the same way that pretty permalink .htaccess rules are added), provided that servers are configured properly. Some things, though, just require an awareness and understanding that running one’s own web server and web applications requires a certain level of knowledge and effort to safeguard against attacks. » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 15, 2010 @ 3:14 PM @Viper007Bond – It is certainly not the responsibility of WordPress, but it most definitely is to WordPress’ advantage to do so. It would circumvent a lot of the initial, ignorant finger-pointing at WordPress – and the attendant hyperventilating in the press about alleged WordPress “security vulnerabilities”. » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 15, 2010 @ 9:59 AM New Home For bbPress Development Chatter @Jeffro - psst – see the very first word of the post. Gautam is mis-spelled as “Guatam”. ;) » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 1, 2010 @ 2:21 PM Automattic Launches VaultPress – No BackupBuddy Killer Jeff, I think Matt’s comment sums it up: That’s actually why we decided to take a different business model approach with VaultPress. Most of Automattic’s services are freemium, meaning the core product is free with premium upgrades available. That just didn’t seem appropriate as we imagine how we imagined VaultPress evolving over the next 5 years — it’s a high-end product, for high-end users. It’s not intended for average bloggers/average WordPress users. It is intended for WordPress users who deem the value of the potential loss of their content to exceed the price point (which I’ve seen anywhere from $15 – $25 per month). Sadly, hot-patching cannot be part of the free WordPress package, because an ongoing monitoring and patching service requires serious resources. This service must be paid for, there’s simply no other way to get it done Why? If update notification (of core, plugins, and themes) can take place every 12 hours for every single wp.org installation in the wild, why would it be any great resource drain to allow site admins to configure their WP installs to automatically install core updates without their intervention? Why would this functionality take any particular additional resources? Unless you’re talking specifically about VaultPress monitoring a site for (malicious) changes? And if so, aren’t there plugins that do precisely that sort of monitoring? » Posted By Chip Bennett On April 1, 2010 @ 12:15 PM Classic And Kubrick Have Left The Building Classic is most definitely not a good Theme to use as a “starting point”. It has been obsolete for years. Please, for your own sake and for the sake of your clients, do not use Classic Theme as a starting point for anything! » Posted By Chip Bennett On November 13, 2010 @ 1:44 PM Hmm… I left a comment, but it appears to be lost in the ether… » Posted By Chip Bennett On March 30, 2010 @ 10:38 AM @Konstantin - TT is a little bit weird. I mean who builds themes with a file called loop.php? It may be unconventional, but I do something similar. I have a “post.php” file that essentially just contains the loop. I use a (minimal) few conditionals to modify the loop for single, page, archive, and home, but otherwise, it’s 95% the same code for all three. Thus, I can more easily change the layout for the different template file types (primarily, index, single, page, archive) while more easily and consistently managing the loop. It may not work for everyone, but it works for me. :) » Posted By Chip Bennett On March 30, 2010 @ 8:42 AM WordPress Dev Chat For 3-11-10 @Jeffro – I much prefer scrolling down. » Posted By Chip Bennett On March 12, 2010 @ 10:16 AM WPTavern Was Trackbacked To Death @Lynn Dye – I’ve seen some of those, too. If you are unsure whether or not a specific comment is spam, check the name and (if any) URL included with the comment. If the comment text has no links, and the name/email doesn’t contain a URL, then it’s probably not spam. On the other hand, many WordPress blogs are configured to require moderation of all comments from commenters who have not had a comment previously approved. So, spammers may be taking the tack of posting one, innocuous comment in order to get around this first-comment moderation. So, for a borderline comment, just be sure to watch for any future, spam comments from the same email address (assuming such comments get past Akismet). » Posted By Chip Bennett On March 12, 2010 @ 8:51 PM I disagree completely with the argument that trackbacks are useless and should be disabled. Trackbacks epitomize the inter-connectedness of the blogosphere, tying conversations together across sites. A trackback is, essentially, the extension of a conversation. Yes, they can be abused; yes, that abuse must be mitigated. No, they should not be disabled. » Posted By Chip Bennett On March 10, 2010 @ 4:15 PMComments Posted By Chip Bennett
organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall
job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the
developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user’s
purpose that matters, not the developer’s purpose; you as a user are free to
run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else,
she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to
impose your purposes on her.”
The function breaks user content? Who cares. It works on wordpress.com. The damage has been done, and fixed. Everything else is just an edge case.
The function adds unnecessary overhead to core? Who cares. It separates WordPress from all of the other soulless (and, presumably, less pedantic) CMS alternatives.
The function is no more useful than many other functions and patches that have been rejected from core due to their trivial nature and niche use? Who cares. Matt wrote it.
The function is terribly unpopular, as evidenced by the wp-hackers mail list, the wordpress.org support forums, and the overwhelming “+1 revert” comments on the Trac bug report related to the function? Who cares. Matt discussed it with the core devs before he committed it. It’s not really a “vast majority” who are opposed; just a “vocal” minority. And if you don’t like it, vote with your feet, or write a plugin to remove the filter.
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