Displaying 1 To 13 Of 13 Comments Small Potato /Tung Do Gets Second Chance With DevPress I wish them all success in the future, and hope this will produce more brilliant and exciting companies and products, rather just one great company. » Posted By Ken On December 15, 2011 @ 7:16 AM Seven Things Not To Do When Localizing Themes And Plugins I’ve been intimidated by L10n and i18n but have been diving in recently. There have been some recent posts out there (not this particular article: he focuses on Pro/Premium shops) criticizing developers for not localizing, or worse not localizing well enough… but this is unfortunately sometimes aimed at hobbyists or developers who’ve released personal use plugins in the hopes that the code might be useful to someone. It’d certainly be wrong to be negative towards these developers who have released as GPL and for free. If the code is indeed useful enough, someone can contribute back to the developer in the form of a patch that internationalizes/localizes it :) It never pays though to be belligerent about a feature request (or calling a lack of feature a bug). I’m glad that the post doesn’t demonize hobbyist developers who don’t localize/internationalize but kind of suggests that its not that tough to do. I’ve taken my best stab at it, but haven’t gotten any feedback about it as of yet. » Posted By Ken On December 13, 2011 @ 4:15 PM Crummy Advertising On WordPress.com I think the model of online ads needs to completely go away. We need a better internet that is clear of non-sense and innovative when it comes to generating revenue. » Posted By Ken On November 15, 2011 @ 11:40 AM Review Of Headway – Where SquareSpace Meets WordPress Griffiths, Glad to hear that the photo plugin will be an improved version of the former core feature. Having not seen its new features I can’t really comment further but look forward to testing. I assume its not flash based? Can alt-text be added/viewed by google via the plugin feature? Hoping it has a good back end system for organizing images, drag/drop ordering for proper display control, Featured galleries, ability to size per spec, etc. » Posted By Ken On August 25, 2010 @ 3:00 PM Headway is a groundbreaking theme with it’s visual editor. It’s weakness relates to image centric/portfolio usage. The photo gallery has been removed from the core in 1.7 but available as a plugin. But it’s so basic it renders itself almost useless. There is a huge community of photographers who need more versatility and customization options for their portfolios. Hoping that something more advanced can be added to the core without needing to use a plugin like nexgen. » Posted By Ken On August 21, 2010 @ 12:17 PM Who’s Right? Network Solutions Or Matt As good practice, setting the proper file permissions sounds good, but on poorly configured shared servers, it seems that file permissions offer little to no protection. On the related thread, someone pointed out that on some hosts all users belong to the same group (thereby making “group readable” and “readable by everyone” the same thing.) Shared hosts bear the responsibility of segregating users, leaving file permissions for users of the same site (ie. multiple ftp users of http://www.example.com). Users of http://www.mysite.com shouldn’t be able to see files of http://www.example.com or vice-versa if properly configured. These are server settings that make the concern about file permissions mute. The alternative (that shouldn’t be considered) is to make WordPress simply not run on servers without very specific settings… And I’m sure there’s no reasonable way WordPress can determine those settings. The most that can be done is to recommend users set the proper settings on wp-config after it is created (WP has to create the file because again on some servers WP would lake privilege to edit the file unless it created it), perhaps also downloading, deleting and uploading the file to (hopefully) assume ownership from the “php”/”web” user, and pray that other users of the shared environment don’t share the same group privileges. There’s really no way around having a properly set up server. Tho if you don’t have multiple ftp users, and you do have suPHP (PHP running as your user credentials, you can set permissions to 700 and 600 to disallow groups and everyone else. » Posted By Ken On April 13, 2010 @ 7:44 PM Should Themes Have Plugin Functionality Built-In? @Jeffro Not that often to tell the truth, but as I progress in my skill level, I do spend a lot of time considering the issue, and work toward do so. For example, I have some functionality that plugins typically handle (featured post front page slider) but doesn’t suit the need of the theme, so I put the functionality in the (With I’m also open to including other coders’ plugins (with permission of course) right in the theme and to defer any updates to the plugin in the same way. Anyway, I mean that I’ll work towards that perfect world in my own code atleast ;-) » Posted By Ken On February 9, 2010 @ 9:18 PM Some functionality is somewhere overlapping the theme/plugin distinction. Themes and Plugins should share and play nicely, and also work in the absence of the other. » Posted By Ken On February 9, 2010 @ 5:09 PM It’s good to note that while theme code is GPL, the CSS and Images are not necessarily so. Its the exception to the copy-left, and probably the only way to protect “premium” themes (besides using web-services on a 3rd party server, which is more likely in plugins). This means while you can take code (unethical?) from premium themes, you might not (depending on the license) be able to “borrow” the css and graphics. The rule of thumb is if a look “feels” enough like the original where a user can confuse the branding, you’ve infringed. Trademarks and copyrights are usually dependent on a market, so using golden arches for a burger joint is a no-no, but for a computer shop called Mac Mechanic, maybe its kool ;-) » Posted By Ken On February 1, 2010 @ 4:16 PM I think that the break-down between Developer and End-user is more stratified then that. I also believe there is room for growth in each layer from non-technical end-user, to novice developer, and up to hard-core developers. Novices will help the non-techicals, Intermediates (those edging into plugin and framework dev work) will help the novices, etc. What this also means is that for each level, there will still always be a business model. Those at Intermediate and above can charge for support, those not interested in progressing up the skill ladder will pay. The non-techie shouldn’t be asking the hard-core programmers to solve much without paying a premium, but the programmers shouldn’t be rude about it either. Say nothing, if not direct them towards the novices. WordPress.org has a bright future, I’m betting the farm on it (Also, this arguement may be WP agnostic: An industry is building up/evolving here. WP might be replaced with some other software, but the business will always be there.) » Posted By Ken On October 22, 2009 @ 2:03 PM Do You Think The Codex Is The Future Of Documentation For WordPress? Matt’s Thread on hackers mailing list seems to have revived this discussion » Posted By Ken On December 15, 2009 @ 3:42 PM You also don’t need to legally register to have legal protections (although it helps), you just have to use it. » Posted By Ken On July 14, 2010 @ 3:54 PM If any portion of Thesis is derived from WordPress (WP functions), the whole of it (WP functions + extensions) is GPL because it’s a combined single program. And if it’s GPL, then the GPL license is granted from the original (WordPress) and not from Thesis. Now, infringing on CSS, TM and/or images is different, but I don’t think Chris has a case for infringement on code, as the licensed code doesn’t originate with him. But it looks like this is a case of style cloning, not code copying. In which case, Chris is a douche, but it has nothing to do with the GPL. Any theme explicitly attempting to copy the “look and feel” of popular news sites or of sites like facebook, twitter or is probably violating copyright if not TM. [P.S. You can get protection (copyright, TM, etc.) on "look and feel". It's more established and understood in copyright law then anything related to css/html or code. I believe the measure is you can't make something look so like a competitor as to cause a potential misidentification. Something so generic as a framework though shouldn't fall under this.] I find myself agreeing almost entirely with Chip for a change :), but if the output matches exactly, and the code different, see “look n feel” infringement above.) » Posted By Ken On July 14, 2010 @ 3:43 PMComments Posted By Ken
functions.php. I’m considering offering the sollution in a plugin if it seems worth it in the end, so I’ll put a check in the theme’s function to check for the plugin and use the plugin if available (and check version). Certain functionality (like this) only makes sense if the theme uses certain template tags or hooks, so the plugin should likewise check for theme support. add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' ); in WP 2.9 it seems as though this could be a beginning, perhaps as a place to open registration of functionality to other plugins and themes (though it could get messy, either with name collisions, or millions of semi-identical feature names). Perhaps some variant on the wp_enqueue_script/wp_enqueue_css functions to handle versioning and whatnot but that might be overboard.)
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