A topic of discussion that’s popped up numerous times within the WP Hackers Mailing List as well as other places throughout the community is when WordPress would stop supporting PHP version 4 and move up to version 5. Well, the good news for all WordPress theme and plugin developers is here in that starting with WordPress 3.2 scheduled for release sometime in the first half of 2011, the minimum required PHP version will be 5.2 while MySQL will be raised to 5.0.15. Mark Jaquith explained on the WordPress development blog why the time was right to finally make the move:
The numbers are now, finally, strongly in favor of this move. Only around 11 percent of WordPress installs are running on a PHP version below 5.2. Many of them are on hosts who support PHP 5.2 — users merely need to change a setting in their hosting control panel to activate it. We believe that percentage will only go down over the rest of the year as hosting providers realize that to support the newest versions of WordPress (or Drupal, or Joomla), they’re going to have to pull the trigger.
Just for the sake of knowing, WPTavern.com is running on a shared webhosting server running PHP 5.2.4.
Over at the Akismet blog, there’s a new post asking users if they appreciate Akismet. The site is currently going through a redesign and new testimonials will be published when it’s finished. Now I know some of you have had your share of bad experiences with Akismet, especially when it comes to leaving comments on someone else’s site and being labeled as spam but in my own experience, Akismet has served me well with very little in the way of problems. So far Akismet has protected this site from 30,739 spam comments already. I’m interested in hearing what the number is like for your site.
Jacob Gube of SixRevisions.com has published his take on ten features that are missing from the core of WordPress. According to Jacob, these features should be adopted into the core of WordPress for the benefit of all. I agree with some of his reasoning on moving features into core but it’s a mindset that I’ve been trying to stay away from. First of all, I as an individual user don’t really know what the WordPress userbase deems useful or worthy of being in the core of WordPress. Secondly, apart from the search in WordPress sucking, just about everything else on his list relates to a specific use case of WordPress and since everyone seems to use WordPress in a different way, these features could end up as useless bloat for many people. However, WordPress already has a number of features that I rarely ever use but I don’t want to see any more of them added to the core software.
This is one of the reasons why I now support the idea of core plugins. Keep the core of WordPress light, add hooks, functions, better APIs and let the third parties do the rest. Keep WordPress flexible and modular instead of weighed down. Unfortunately, there are thousands of plugins, multiple ones that perform the same subset of features, some that are outdated, etc. Having those features in core eliminates that worry but at the cost of modularity. As someone brought up in the comments, the idea of WordPress Installation Profiles seems like the answer to this problem as certain branches of the software could either ship with a predefine list of plugins for that use case or have those plugins built in. Those WordPress branches would need to mirror the development of WordPress though which means the core team most likely will not maintain them. The installation profile idea has been brought up on the WP-Hackers mailing list a few times before with the outcome being that WordPress.org will not create and maintain these new branches but nothing stopped anyone else from doing so. Dougal has a few tips and a link that explains how to use the install.php file to create automated WordPress customizations.
The bottom line is, if you think a particular plugin should be added to the core of WordPress for the benefit of all, you’re probably wrong. Think about the big picture before you come to any conclusions.
BackupBuddy is a great plugin. In fact, recently, it’s become even better now that it has support for Amazon S3 for off site backups and the FTPS protocol. Another staple in the PluginBuddy store is the PluginBuddy Mobile plugin. This plugin enables you to use the built-in style manager you create mobile-ready themes for iPhones or other mobile devices. Considering PluginBuddy is on a roll, now may be as good a time as ever to purchase the PluginBuddy developer suite. And here is one more good reason to do so.
Thanks to the guys over at PluginBuddy.com, I’m able to offer a special coupon code for the first 24 people that take advantage that will take 25% off the purchase price of the Developer Suite. The original price is $197 bucks but after the coupon code, the price is only $147.75. When you figure that a personal membership to BackupBuddy costs $45.00 and the personal membership for the Mobile plugin is $45.00 that’s not too far off from the discounted price which would entitle you access to one year of support and upgrades and any new PluginBuddy plugin released during the membership year. all future products developed by PluginBuddy as well as lifetime support.
If interested in this offer, use the coupon EABDB2C85B during the check out process. If you take advantage of this offer, I thank you very much as a portion of the purchase will come back to me. It’s a win win situation.
The last time I had a chance to check out the Front End Editor plugin was back on April 28th, 2009. In that review, I mentioned that the plugin functioned well but for some sections of the Hybrid News theme, it didn’t play nice. To coincide with the release of WordPress 3.0, Front End Editor 1.9 is now available and has fixed the issues reported in the first review. The only complaint I have is the use of colors for the editable regions, specifically the edit button.
If you don’t pay attention, the button is easy to miss but thankfully, you can just double click anywhere within the yellow highlighted region to open the editor. This time around, none of the styling issues were present and the WYSIWYG editor functioned properly without all the beer mugs displaying. Other features worth noting in this release:
Custom Post Type Support
Configurable Editor Buttons
Editable Term Descriptions
Improvements all the way around. Nice job Scribu.
Editing widgets from the front page is pretty convenient.
Dustin Bolton, one of the lead developers for PluginBuddy.com goes into detail on their solution to solve the Gulf Oil Spill. Nice to see those guys putting that fancy drawing board in their new office to good use. By the way, I hope that piece of paper didn’t come out of the fax machine like that.
In this series wrap up, Jake and I talk about some of the sticking points from the previous three episodes. We discuss what we’ve learned and what we thought was useful information for those looking to start a business in anyone of the three areas that we covered. Among some of the topics of discussion were the low barriers to entry for theme and plugin authors, the costs of running a Software As A Service model, the majority of panelists not taking to the Freemimum model too well, and other tidbits of information. I hope you all enjoyed this series and if you could, please tell me anything you learned from this series in the comments.
Smashing Book Contest:
Week Three Winner - Carlos Frevert
Congratulations to all the winners.
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This episode did not have a sponsor. If you’re interested in advertising on WordPress Weekly, check out the Advertising information page to find out how.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Jake and I chatted with three commercial plugin authors. Two of which are in the middle of maintaining a successful business while the third was just getting started. The panel members consisted of Carl Hancock of Rocketgenius, Jonathan Davis of the Shopp e Commerce plugin and Ronald Huereca of Ajax Edit Comments. We went from the ground up in terms of questions regarding each persons business. Jake and I had large shoes to fill based on the feedback of the commercial themes round-table episode but I think we pulled it off. Thanks to everyone who showed up in the chat room during the show.
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that excels at getting experts together in a given topic and then exploring that topic from different angles. The next topic to be handled is the UX Web Summit on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (CT). This event will teach people how to improve their websites so that they are more responsive to visitors as well as making this more usable. If you’re interested in this summit, visit UXWebSummit.com
Related Links:
During this episode, we talked briefly about the topic of selling GPL licensed software. To put the issue to rest on whether folks are allowed to sell GPL software or not, please view this link which was passed along during the show. Selling Free Software
Smashing Book Giveaway Contest:
Congratulations to JeremyOLED for winning a copy of the Smashing Book courtesy of Jacob Goldman. If you want to put yourself in the running to win week two, here is what you need to do.
Help us publicize the special WordPress Weekly series on commercialization! Just follow @WPTavern and guest co-host @jakemgold on Twitter, and Tweet a message mentioning us both with a link to the most recent episode. We’ll randomly pick one of our favorite tweets right before the next show.
We’ll be giving a book away for each of the episodes (excluding wrap up). You can participate each week. Each contest starts at 2pm on Saturday with the show’s recording, and ends the following Friday evening. You may participate if you’re outside of the contiguous United States, but will be asked to cover shipping expenses.
Announcements:
Part 3 of this series will take place on April 17th with the Services Round-table featuring Joshua Strebel of Page.ly, Daniel Bachhuber – Formerly of CoPress, and Raanan Bar Cohen of Automattic
I’m dedicating the entire month of April to the commercialization of WordPress through themes, plugins and services on WordPress Weekly. Each week will feature a round-table of guests in each field that is either currently in the market or has substantial experience in the market. Joining me to co-host these shows will be Jacob Goldman of C.MurrayConsulting also one of the organizers of WordCamp Boston 2010. During WordCamp Boston, I had the opportunity to host a panel devoted to having a business built in and around WordPress with one plugin author, one theme author, and two members to represent services. In that panel, I realized that I needed more time and each section needed to have it’s own dedicated time slot to really cover the finer details. WordPress Weekly is the perfect way to do this.
Here is what the outline looks like so far with only one guest pending.
April 3rd – Themes
Brian Gardner – StudioPress.com
Jason Schuller – Press75 and ThemeGarden
Cory Miller – iThemes.com
April 10th – Plugins
Carl Hancock – GravityForms
Ronald Huereca – Ajax Edit Comments
Jonathan Davis – Shopp E-Commerce (Pending)
April 17th – Services
Joshua Strebel – Page.ly
Daniel Bachhuber – CoPress
Raanan Bar-Cohen – Automattic
As of right now, April 24th will be a wrap-up show where we can talk about what we’ve learned during the course of the month.
Unfortunately, I had to cut off about 15 minutes of the show because of audio problems associated with my connection to talkshoe through X-Lite which is usually very stable. The first 15 minutes explained my week of webhosting hell as well as the weird random issues I’ve been encountering but I’ll go into more detail on those in a new post. However, I didn’t cut much out of the interview with Ronald. In thins interview, we get a better idea on how Ajax Edit Comments works, features that were included in the latest 4.0 release, why they decided to go with a price point of only $10.00 a year, various questions concerning the commercial nature of the business and much more. We also get information on a brand new book Ronald is working on that strictly focuses on using AJaX within WordPress. By the way, those who purchase a subscription to WP Ajax Edit comments before the book is released will receive a free copy.
*Special Coupon* – Ajax Edit Comments has already experienced the increase in price that was mentioned during the show. However, I’ve talked with Ronald and he has agreed to give WPTavern readers and WPWeekly listeners a special coupon code that is valid for 48 hours to get the plugin at the original price of $10.00 The coupon code is wptavern.
Also, Ronald has added a PDF preview of his upcoming book, the WP Ajaxa can be viewed here. The preview includes the first three chapters and a table of contents.
Ad Copy:
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that brings together expert speakers on a given topic exploring that topic from different angles. There will be a WordPress Workshop day on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 from 9AM – 5PM(CT) — covering setup of WordPress in the morning and then theming in the evening with Matt Harris and Stephanie Leary–as well as looking to WordPress 3. More information can be found at CMSdays.com
Announcements:
I’ll be interviewing Paul Kim of Automattic on Saturday, March 27th to talk about his experiences while working for Mozilla.
A topic of discussion that’s popped up numerous times within the WP Hackers Mailing List as well as other places throughout the community is when WordPress would stop supporting PHP version 4 and move up to version 5. Well, the good news for all WordPress theme and plugin developers is here in that starting with WordPress 3.2 scheduled for release sometime in the first half of 2011, the minimum required PHP version will be 5.2 while MySQL will be raised to 5.0.15. Mark Jaquith explained on the WordPress development blog why the time was right to finally make the move:
Over at the Akismet blog, there’s a 
In this series wrap up,
WPWeekly Episode 95 – Commercial Plugins
By Jeffro on April 11, 2010
Ad Copy:
This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that excels at getting experts together in a given topic and then exploring that topic from different angles. The next topic to be handled is the UX Web Summit on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (CT). This event will teach people how to improve their websites so that they are more responsive to visitors as well as making this more usable. If you’re interested in this summit, visit UXWebSummit.com
Related Links:
During this episode, we talked briefly about the topic of selling GPL licensed software. To put the issue to rest on whether folks are allowed to sell GPL software or not, please view this link which was passed along during the show. Selling Free Software
Smashing Book Giveaway Contest:
Congratulations to JeremyOLED for winning a copy of the Smashing Book courtesy of Jacob Goldman. If you want to put yourself in the running to win week two, here is what you need to do.
Help us publicize the special WordPress Weekly series on commercialization! Just follow @WPTavern and guest co-host @jakemgold on Twitter, and Tweet a message mentioning us both with a link to the most recent episode. We’ll randomly pick one of our favorite tweets right before the next show.
We’ll be giving a book away for each of the episodes (excluding wrap up). You can participate each week. Each contest starts at 2pm on Saturday with the show’s recording, and ends the following Friday evening. You may participate if you’re outside of the contiguous United States, but will be asked to cover shipping expenses.
Announcements:
Part 3 of this series will take place on April 17th with the Services Round-table featuring Joshua Strebel of Page.ly, Daniel Bachhuber – Formerly of CoPress, and Raanan Bar Cohen of Automattic
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Next Episode: Saturday, April 17th 2P.M. EST
Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe
Length Of Episode: 2 Hours 28 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode95.mp3
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Posted in WordPress Weekly | Tagged ajaxeditcomments, commercial, gravityforms, Plugins, shopp, talkcast, wpweekly | 4 Responses