Displaying 1 To 21 Of 21 Comments Editing WP-Config From Within WordPress It will probably only appeal to developers. I wanted a quick way to turn on/off WP_DEBUG in particular. Sometimes if I wanted to do a screen shot or video it was annoying to have every debug message shown from Plugins you have no control over. This Plugin gives you a super quick way to just toggle WP_DEBUG on/off. I don’t think I want to touch any db settings and make them editable in the admin. I could foresee a deluge of panicked support questions from people who have broken their site! That’s something I really don’t want to get into. What security features would you want to see controlled via the Plugin? » Posted By David Gwyer On May 30, 2012 @ 4:48 AM Getting Started With Designing Your Site This is (or should be!) a massively interesting topic for theme developers. As a theme ‘user’ myself prior to developing them I had similar experiences. I would love a particular theme design, but trying to apply that to my own site involved nothing short of a wrestling match! Now that I develop themes (with Scott Bolinger) we obviously begin with an initial design concept but we try to focus on user experience too. We are always looking for ways to make it as easier for users to start building out their sites. Going back to being a theme user, I guess the number one issue I had when using different themes was that every theme seemed to have a different way of doing things! This was confusing to me, and was compounded by my inexperience with WordPress itself at the time. Even though themes had (or promised to have) the features I wanted it could be cryptic to actually get something to work. Only by posting in forums for help could you get the answer you needed. Also, and this happened again an again, when I activated a theme, it would look a bit naff out of the box, only with a bit of TLC did it resemble anything like the theme demo, or like a site I would dare to show to others. We have addressed this last problem somewhat in our themes with a new feature we are still experimenting with. When you activate a theme you basically get an option to install some default content for that theme. This has to be optional in case you are activating a theme with existing content. The default content consists of automatic creation of a few pages (sitemap, contact, about, blog), a nav menu (adding pages, and setting the theme location), and populating a widget area with one or two widgets. There are many other things we could do I’m sure, but hopefully we are on the right track. How about everyone else? What good/bad experiences have you had as a theme user, and what would have made it easier to get a theme to do what you wanted it to do from initial activation? » Posted By David Gwyer On February 22, 2012 @ 9:16 AM Interview With ManageWP Owner Vladimir Prelovac We will be launching a managed hosting service for our theme users soon, and will definitely be looking to use ManageWP to ease the administration of multiple WordPress installs! Good luck Vladimir! » Posted By David Gwyer On January 27, 2012 @ 12:44 PM Experimental Method For Contributing To WordPress 3.4 I think the team approach sounds really exciting, with each paring/small team being comprised of a lead developer(s) and someone perhaps lesser experienced. This is an excellent way for newbie core contributors (myself included!) to get some experience mixing with the WP guru’s! I hope this mentoring approach works out and becomes the de facto standard for core development. » Posted By David Gwyer On January 5, 2012 @ 11:44 AM WordPress 3.3.1 Fixes Security Exploit I think the major features should always be shown somewhere (i.e. for 3.3, 3.4 etc.), with updates and security fixes for smaller point releases added above. I also found it a bit weird that more 3.3.1 updates were not visible. I didn’t mind the 3.3 stuff still being there but the smaller point release updates need to be included too. As a newbie user, if you were to install WordPress for the first time and it was 3.3.1 and only saw the smaller point release updates then all the 3.3 features would be hidden – which is one good reason for still including them. » Posted By David Gwyer On January 4, 2012 @ 11:42 AM Avoid Hardcoding Your Copyright Information There really isn’t any excuse for adding static date in your footer any more, it’s just so easy to add one via PHP. We try to make it additionally easy for our theme users to add the current year. You just need to edit a textbox in theme options to customize the copyright message/footer links, and simply add in the [year] shortcode anywhere you want it to appear. This shortcode can also be used across all posts/pages/widgets if needed too, without the user having to enter PHP directly. » Posted By David Gwyer On January 1, 2012 @ 2:58 PM Case Study On How WordPress Won The Crown What should, and should not, be added to the core in the future is always going to be a contentious issue. I think the core should stay the core and not be a dumping ground for every possible feature anyone could ever want. It would also quickly become a nightmare for the core dev’s to debug. I think there would be great value continuing to develop the core api’s and branch out major new functionality into Plugins. Two good existing examples of this are bbPress, and Jetpack. » Posted By David Gwyer On December 6, 2011 @ 4:09 AM Upgrading And Backwards Compatibility For Plugins We develop our themes/Plugins to always be compatible with the latest release version of WordPress. I can’t see us ever even contemplating providing a guarantee of backwards compatibility. It is time consuming enough just keeping up with the latest version! Also, people should ‘always’ upgrade to the latest version for the latest bug/security fixes alone, and not necessarily just to take advantage of the new shiny. » Posted By David Gwyer On November 30, 2011 @ 9:14 AM Some Not Happy With Flyout Menus @Engin – Try updating your nightly build, this has been fixed now. » Posted By David Gwyer On October 13, 2011 @ 5:37 AM After testing the new flyout menus, I was so busy playing around with it that I failed to notice you can ONLY have one admin menu expanded at any one time! This seems like a step in the wrong direction. I often have more than one menu expanded. Flyout menus are cool, but if they are at the expense of being able to choose which admin menus you can leave expanded, are they worth it? I’m not so sure now. » Posted By David Gwyer On October 12, 2011 @ 9:12 AM Things To Look For In WordPress 3.3 Beta 1 I always found it slightly annoying that you had to click to expand admin menus to get to sub-menu items. Now that you can access them just by hovering over the top-level menu item is really useful! » Posted By David Gwyer On October 12, 2011 @ 1:49 AM I would be interested to know if the code base differs much from Jigoshop now that it has been audited by Mark. ;) Will also be interesting to see how the two projects evolve/diverge over the next 12 months. We are looking to do an e-commerce theme in the near future (isn’t everyone!), and it’s a bit overwhelming to know which Plugin to choose from. I think taking a look at WooCommerce will be a good starting point though. » Posted By David Gwyer On September 30, 2011 @ 8:48 AM Should Automatic Upgrades Be Opt-In? Opt-out for me too. I wonder that if auto updates were on by default whether this would have a ripple effect on WordPress coding standards? Would it motivate Plugin and theme developers to keep their code up-to-date, to work with the latest WordPress goodies? » Posted By David Gwyer On September 9, 2011 @ 6:12 AM Jeff, before giving up completely on WP Tavern in terms of income, why don’t you just post a poll or something to see the number of people who would be willing to spend a couple of bucks a month to subscribe to WordPress Weekly. If enough people subscribed this would be a great revenue stream for you, and you would have time to make it even greater than it has been in the past! You could also compile all the archives, after show material etc. and make them accessible to subscribers. What have you got to lose..? » Posted By David Gwyer On May 18, 2011 @ 11:50 AM Personally, I will really miss the WordPress Weekly podcasts. I would have paid a subscription (and still would) to keep listening to them alone! The ones about theme development a couple of years ago really stoked my interest in WordPress development, and motivated me to code exclusively in WordPress full time! Good luck Jeff! » Posted By David Gwyer On May 18, 2011 @ 5:33 AM Please Adopt This Plugin – Comment Quicktags Reloaded Sounds like the Comment Form Quicktags is a viable alternative to Comment Quicktags Reloaded. But if you want the Plugin to live on then I would be up for maintaining it on the repository. Pity the name has already been registered but never used (hence why it doesn’t show up on Plugin search results). I’m not sure if it is possible to get added to the list of committers for the Plugin. If not the only obvious thing to do is go with a new name. Suggestions? :-) » Posted By David Gwyer On March 22, 2011 @ 9:37 PM WPTavern Is My Home And You’re Just A Guest At the end of the day you have to do what is right for you. I for one think this is a great site, and would definitely miss the WordPress Weekly pod casts if they ever stopped – there has been some fantastic shows in the past. Personally I would be happy to subscribe to the forum (I am not just talking about the now defunct VIP section). How about offering different tiers of subscription (bronze, silver, and gold), which is purely optional. If a forum user decided to take out a subscription then, on their posts on the left hand side, they get displayed a nice shiny badge icon proudly stating ‘WP Tavern Contributor’, or something similar! I have seen this method used on on other sites, usually on an open source type projects. Perhaps you should consider this Jeff, you may be surprised how many supporters you have out there! :) Worth a shot in any case IMO. Nothing to lose? » Posted By David Gwyer On September 1, 2010 @ 10:17 AM WordPress Support Forum And Themes @hakre Perhaps ‘pirated themes’ should be called ‘hacked themes’ instead, if the theme is under GPL licence and has obfuscated code inserted. » Posted By David Gwyer On June 27, 2010 @ 7:40 AM @Jeffro I use plugins such as Exec-PHP on some of my sites so I can easily to execute PHP in the body of a post or page. Exec-PHP uses the Eval function. This plugin has been very useful in the past in order for me write PHP code directly in the post/page to ‘hook’ into 3rd party membership scripts and show content in the post depending on the user logged in status. I have also used a similar method to access api’s of web services direct from within posts/pages such as videos stored on a content server. This requires you to ‘talk’ to the video content server using PHP and their provided api’s to load in video play-lists. The only viable way I found of doing this (for me anyway) is to be able to execute PHP in the body of posts/pages using functions such as Eval (so I can load in post specific video content). As for Eval security/performance I am by no means an expert in the deeper workings of PHP but have sure found functions such as Eval useful. In the future I think a lot of the functionality of what I need to do could be parsed out to short code functions – but there may well always be a need to execute PHP code from within a post/page. I am not sure yet if there a situation where PHP in the body of a post/page could not be handled by using short codes (with attributes) instead. David » Posted By David Gwyer On June 26, 2010 @ 7:28 AM Jason Schuller Did It – I Can Do It To Thanks for the post Jeffro, was interesting reading. I have to say I have really enjoyed the WordPress Weekly broadcasts on TalkShoe, it was great to hear all the theme, and plugin guys talking about their businesses and offering advice to others considering setting up a WordPress centric development site (which is the position I am in currently). I know exactly what you mean about job security even if it is one that you don’t enjoy. But hearing posts like the one Jason did does inspire you to conquer those fears. :) David » Posted By David Gwyer On May 6, 2010 @ 12:49 PM Making Money From GPL Plugin Development Personally, as a plugin developer and plugin user, I really like the idea of high quality free plugins. Currently (at least for the foreseeable future) all my plugin are free and available on the WordPress.org repository. The only thing I would then charge for is services (support, customisations etc.). It is too early days yet to know if this is going to generate enough revenue on its own to support full time plugin development. I do plan to develop some online/desktop WordPress applications as well as a foray into theme development to provide a more rounded revenue model, but for now is limited to mainly plugins. If I had a very successful plugin and could generate enough revenue then I may not even need to go into theme development but I suspect that may not be possible, but who knows! Another route is to join forces (i.e. two or more one-man-band plugin authors), and putting combined resources into a premium plugin or putting all the free plugins in one place and making them very high quality with paid support. Fingers crossed that plugin development is possible to do full time. If any other plugin developers are in the same position feel free to contact me for further discussion/collaboration etc. David » Posted By David Gwyer On June 16, 2010 @ 8:10 AMComments Posted By David Gwyer
«« Back To Stats Page